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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
So I took my 8yo daughter out karting for the first time last week. That was such an emotional experience (for me, she just had a blast) watching her carefully feeling out the track in her first lap and then bravely building speed through every consecutive one. Finally halving her first lap time, without ever crashing out. (Apparently the not crashing out thing is rare with kids, the track operators told me. More reasons to be proud!)
But the most awesome thing for me was to see how much she enjoyed it. She had a smile that was so unfiltered after racing, it reminded me of the first time she walked off the basketball court, so proud of herself. Tired but fulfilled.
So I got into a little wormhole about sim racing, and long story short: now our family has been playing the F1 24 game for the past few days. It’s surprisingly good! With loads of difficulty modifiers and very cool integration of the ‘real’ F1 world, like commentators, race engineer feedback, pit crew reactions, … The overall structure of the game is confusing with just loads and loads of different ways to play the game, but I guess that is just the downside of wanting to make a game for every level of racer.
If you want to play with a child, I’d recommend activating the ‘steering assistance’ and play some time trials or start a Grand Prix with 3 long practice sessions to activated. Those modes are most forgiving.
We’ve been playing with controller until now and tomorrow we’re picking up a race wheel and racing seat. Very much looking forward to that one.
When I was researching the wormhole, the sim racing community came across as such a welcoming place. When people are asking tips for their young ones, it felt like many members of the community were so happy that another one was about to join their ranks. I’ve seen a lot of toxicity in gaming, so it was heartwarming to be reminded of this facet of gaming. (Something this weekly thread never fails do to for me as well. Thank you for that.)
I'm so happy that your daughter enjoyed karting! Let me know if you ever have questions on racing or sim racing, I've been doing both for about 8 years now!
If we are able to get enough interest, we should do a race one night on one of the platforms. It's always such a blast.
Me too! ^^ I definitely will share my questions if they come up. For now we’re still toying around with different racing games and copiloting each other’s races. Ok purchase I wondered if it would be worth the money, a few days later and I’m wondering why I waited so long to order.
Oh, I wonder: what games do you play mostly?
For racing games, I almost exclusively play iRacing these days. I love realistic races, so that's typically what I stick with. Every once in a while, I do boot up F1, Assetto Corsa, etc. and I also enjoy arcade racers like Tokyo Xtreme Racer, Forza Horizon, etc., but iRacing is my main love.
Hm iracing doesn’t seem to be available on PlayStation. From your experience and the other ones you mentioned, which ones come closest to the realness of iracing?
Ah, I missed that you’re on PlayStation. Most ultra realistic sims will be PC only, but there are a number of games on PlayStation that are pretty good and at least scratch the same itch.
Gran Turismo 7, Assetto Corsa Competizione, and EA WRC are probably the three games with the “most” sim like experience on PlayStation in terms of on track driving. Games like F1 and the older Dirt games are great experiences though less “sim”, but still very fun. The F1 games do an excellent job of creating the weekend atmosphere of a Grand Prix and that’s completely unmatched, I just mean the on-track driving model isn’t quite a simulation, but that’s totally fine and to be expected since the game is supposed to appeal to millions of people. You can still absolutely turn off assists and get a difficult and somewhat realistic experience, too. Then of course you have a bunch of arcade racers like Forza Horizon, The Crew, etc. Those are all fun to play, they just aren’t in any shape a simulation.
So yeah, even though some full sims like iRacing and rFactor are PC only, you still have some great options on PlayStation, too. The world of racing is very wide and even though I’m mostly sequestered to iRacing since my goal is to be as close to real racing as possible, there are so many excellent games out there, so I’m just happy to see you having fun with it!
So awesome to hear this! I have more time than I'd like to admit on iRacing and the community is major part of that. If you guys ever have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out. Made my day.
I definitely will. Thanks for taking the time to reply!
Recently started playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance as it was (kinda) recommended before playing the second game in the series.
Holy shit, I love it. I like how it is grounded in realism. You're not the chosen one, or dragonborn. You're just a dude trying to survive in medieval Bohemia. The main historical figures (kings, lords, etc) are actually real, and also the main cities/town have real history. I'm usually not a fan when a game forces you to do mundain tasks like sleeping or eating, but it just works, here (maybe because it all feels so real). You plan your trip to another town, arrive in the late afternoon, get to know the town, find an inn to pass the night, do some reading before going to bed, wake up early, find a bite to eat, and do the mission you came to do.
The game came out in 2018, the animations are quite dated, but the game (especially the nature) is so beautiful. I rarely use the fast travel, because I just enjoy walking or riding my horse, from one place to the other.
I'm about 30 hours in, and I feel like I just started to scratch the surface. I have a feeling this will be a long game, and I'm all for it!
Glad to hear you're liking it. It's such a unique experience and I totally fell for it in exactly the same way. Still need to jump back in to 2 here. Played 27 hours, but took a break and haven't returned to it just yet.
Enjoy it! It's an awesome game. Still my favourite of all time. I'm still planning to get KCD2 at some point, but I'm currently working through a few backlog games first, and waiting for a deeper sale.
I'm going through Horizon Forbidden West DLC right now, but KCD would very likely be my next game. I supported it on Kickstarter back in 2013 and never actually played it. I feel ashamed, more so because I'm Czech (and the game too). I should really get into it! I already have it installed on Steam Deck ready to go. I believe it would be unparalleled gaming experience.
There is a lot of Czech history being explained in the game. I can imagine that it's extra interesting if you're already somewhat familiar with it, or if you're from the region the game takes place in.
Forbidden West is also on my wishlist, btw. I really enjoyed Zero Dawn!
I'm certain KCD will be great. When I saw the team behind it on the Kickstarter back in the day, I knew there couldn't be anyother outcome than great game. And they surely delivered. Yet, I still have to play it.
If you liked Zero Dawn, you will like Forbidden West as well. It is superbly executed just like Zero Dawn was. It is almost like Zero Dawn didn't even end and you are just continuing on the journey. The story is quite good and is strongly supported by things (about the world) you learned while playing Zero Dawn. Being second game in the series there are new weapons and skills etc. but you will likely find the style that suits you and will come throigh to the end using it. I'm lame in action RPGs and combos and skill usage and everything and the game was very playable for me (normal difficulty). I will likely do New game+ on ultra hard for achievemens and to go through the story once more without too much interruption by doing side quests.
Have a good time once you play it!
I've been playing Split Fiction, and wow, this game does so many types of gameplays and does all of them right, definitely my game of the year, the only negative that I can find is that the characters talk way too much, and since it's a coop game you don't pay attention to what they say when you're talking with your partner.
But anyways, everything about the gameplay is great, it has some difficult parts but you have infinite continues and well distributed respawn point, so in reality the only difficult part is find a friend with enough free time to play with.
Playing Zelda: Spirit Tracks on the DS: a few months ago I found some patches to play the DS Zeldas with the d-pad, I played Phantom Hourglass first but didn't like the repetitive main dungeon visits and sailing the sea was not fun at all, but Spirit Tracks took the same formula and fixed all those issues and because of that is vastly superior and way more fun, the only downside of course was having to use the stylus for everything, but the patch I found fixes that. So far I've enjoyed the game (I'm around the middle of the story), and I think I would place it on third place my list of the best 2d Zeldas.
Out of curiosity, did you play It Takes Two? How does Split Fiction compare, if so?
I haven't played it so far, so I can't compare them
Ah -- well I definitely recommend it, as well as their earlier games (A Way Out and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons).
I would give it a try when I finish SF.
I think I still have a copy of Spirit Tracks sitting around (and I know I have Phantom Hourglass). Someone loaned me Spirit Tracks, but I remember getting stuck shortly into it and giving up. I should revisit it if I still have it. I enjoyed revisiting the Ocean Temple and going gradually deeper throughout the game, but it can get repetitive to a point. Sailing was a slog and didn't have enough happening. I also just was not a fan of the art styles for the ships (and the very RNG based method of getting new ship parts).
Yeah I never cared for the ship parts since they look really ugly when you don't use all of them from the same set. And the sailing was disappointing for me because on Wind Waker sailing was my favorite part.
I did not play Wind Waker so I had no expectation on sailing. However, sailing was quite weak since there just was not much going on, but just enough that you could not disengage. I remember chasing down the ghost ship in the fog was fun, and drawing routes was a fun mechanic.
I enjoyed both Phantom Hourglass (yeah, it's not Wind Waker but I think it worked as a Zelda you could play on the go in bite sized pieces) and Spirit Tracks (loved having Zelda follow you around and comment on what was happening; she's such a fun character in this game), but I'm curious if playing with the d-pad trivialises the difficulty in these DS games, kind of like playing Goldeneye with mouse aiming.
Also, from memory, there are other mechanics like the boomerang which also use the stylus. Does the patch also get around those, or is there some way to hold it so you can use the buttons, d-pad and stylus all at once?
Well, Zelda is not a franchise people play for the difficulty, and all the special items still need to be used with the stylus. The only thing that the patch changed from the items is that you don't have to blow into the mic to use the fan or the pan flute, so instead you just press A.
Ah, fair enough. I forgot all about blowing into the microphone; that was definitely obnoxious and not something you'd want to be doing if you were, say, playing on a bus.
I forgot that with the DS games, there were a few uses of the devices hardware that were interesting, but as a kid I just found them frustrating. Especially in Phantom Hourglass when you had to close the DS to transfer something, and almost everyone figured it out by just closing the game in frustration and coming back to it later
Recently started playing UFO 50 since it came out on the switch and I have been loving it. It's a 50 game faux-compendiun of a game developer throughout their publishing history starting in the mid 1980s. It's a great mix of retro hard plus nostalgia. The games being a mix of styles and genres means you can try on for 5-10 minutes and then if you don't like it move into the next. I'm only 10 games in but Currently loving avianos, a turn based strategy game where you play as fighting dinosaurs, and mortal, a super meat boy style game where you beat puzzles with a fixed amount of lives and the previous bodies stay around to help solve the puzzles. Highly recommend!
I'm still on Oblivion Remastered. Now working on the Murderer Guild questline at level 25. I've barely touched the main quest besides the tutorial part and a little bit I unintentionally did. Not sure what I'm going to do next as I've already done thief and mage guilds, probably work through the misc sidequests I picked up and clear random dungeons. I also should go through and buy all the houses as I've accumulated a good amount of wealth at this point.
I'm at 70 hours so far. Still a long way to catch up to my original Oblivion playtime at 470 hours, let alone my 1k hours in Skyrim.
I finally finished Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 now that I had free time after my summer classes finished. I am truly blown away by the ending of it. The only steam achievement I haven't gotten yet is the Gestral Beaches completion. I am the worst at platformers :(
Platforming is also the game's weakest point. Don't feel bad, it doesn't work well to begin with. They're a test of patience rather than skill.
What got me heated is the bomb volleyball type game that felt so wildly out of sync I had to wait for good rng to get close.
Such a magical game. Easily GOTY for me.
Same, it's incredible. I can't stop listening to the soundtrack.
Went on a hunt for some co-op survival crafting games to play with my brother and we tried these two:
Generation Zero is an open-world sci-fi FPS made by a subdivision of Avalanche Studios, the folks that made the Just Cause series, and unfortunately this game did not come anywhere close to the levels of excitement that Just Cause did for me. It just feels overwhelmingly amateur in so many aspects - the shooting is serviceable but not particularly fun, the mech enemies have interesting enough design but are extremely limited in variety, the story and voice acting are barebones at best, the weight and storage system is very cumbersome and limiting, the map locations aren't particularly interesting and also become repetitive, the base building and base assault/defense mechanics feel like an afterthought, the skill tree's very underwhelming, etc, etc. At least we got it at a very steep discount.
Enshrouded was the next thing we picked up after we gave up on Gen Zero, at full price no less but oh boy has it been worth every dollar so far. This one's an open-world third person fantasy RPG where exploration is only really limited by patience, pickaxe durability, and the "enshrouded" zones, which you can only stay so long in before you die. The game has a voxel terrain system so you can dig your way through most things, with structures being a major exception (can't just tunnel through the walls in a house). See a cliff that you can't really climb? Just dig a path up the side of it. The terrain outside your base building area does reset after a while though, so it's not permanent but that also means the resources respawn.
It's also just very forgiving and flexible in general, where there isn't a weight system at all but just inventory slot limitations, you can't die of starvation or dehyrdration though you can get hungry, you drop loot when you die but it either doesn't expire or lasts a very long time and there's no real penalties otherwise, items have durability but don't disappear when they break, just become unusable until they're repaired, which is free. The skill tree is more like a skill web but not nearly as daunting as something like Path of Exile's, and some skills can be very transformative for overall gameplay. Respeccing skills is also dirt cheap so it encourages experimentation. The story's nothing amazing and mostly delivered through reading quest dialogues or various books and notes in points of interest (in other words very quickly skimmed over), but it's all decent enough quality. We're only about 20 hours in, we've rescued 5 survivors and wandered into zones with enemies many levels above us that kick our asses, and we're having a great time so far.
I got Generation Zero on a Epic giveaway (I think) -- installed it and uninstalled it within 30 minutes of play. It was extremely not my thing, and reading reviews it seems like it didn't impress anyone.
I finished playing through Enshrouded a month or two ago and really enjoyed it. I didn't have much luck getting any of my friends to play with me, but I did finish it solo (though a new big update is coming soon). After playing a couple of different games (Nine Sols and Heroes of Hammerwatch 2) I started playing Soulmask which is very much in the vein of Enshrouded with its own interesting take on the genre. I highly recommend it if you later find you want more of that sort of gameplay, but different enough to not feel "samey".
Now I'm playing Granblue Fantasy Relink, which feels like some sort of mix of Monster Hunter, Genshin Impact (minus most of the gacha) and the later Ys games. This isn't usually my cup of tea, but it's fun thus far.
Back to playing The Hundred Line this week. I've now seen 74 of the 100 endings. More specifically:
Spoilers
I've now seen ending 001, which feels like the 'canonical ending' insofar as it fully resolves the plotline set up in the first half of the game.However, I have not yet seen ending 100 which I suspect is some kind of 'true ending'.
Playing this and the similarly large Xenoblade Chronicles X in recent months has caused me to reflect a little on how I spend my gaming time. Assuming I can fit in an average of 2 hours per day at most (a pretty hefty 12.5% of my waking life), that's still only 60 hours a month, which isn't enough to get through even one of these monster titles. Sure, I'll probably be having a good time for most of those 60 hours, but would I have had more fun playing 3x 20 hour games with a more focused scope / greater variety of experiences? Should I be making an effort to mix it up more?
You can really tie yourself up in knots going down this line of thinking since there are so many dimensions to it - e.g.
games not being fungible even if they happen to be the same length;
larger games being their own experience that can only be evaluated as a whole;
fun itself being qualitative and different games being conducive to different types - e.g. discovery vs mastery
the player's mood and mindset affecting what gameplay they're receptive to;
so I don't think any universal conclusions can be drawn about 'maximising fun'. However, given the tendency of big titles to dominate the popular discourse, just the initial step of discovering those smaller games so that they're on the table as an option in the first place does feel like something I should probably pay more attention to.
I completed Mafia: The Old Country. I really enjoyed it. It didn't overstay its welcome, and I was engaged throughout which is quite hard for a guy in his mid thirties who hasn't got a lot of stuff going on but wants to do anything except be stuck at home. Good job, Hangar 13!
Okay, I'm making a second comment because I played a game and I need to talk about it. Sword of the Sea came out today, the new game by the creators of The Pathless (one of my favorite games) and Abzu (still need to play). Sword of the Sea was short, but beautiful. The visuals and audio were just perfect and the narrative was emotional and had some interesting lore to back it up if you went looking for it. The game had me crying at its beauty within minutes of starting and it just kept getting better and better until the spectacular third act and finale. I don't want to say anything specific because I feel this game should be played blind to get the best experience out of it, but the last hour or so is going to stick with me for a long time.
The gameplay is relatively simple on paper, but the momentum you can build feels excellent and the game encourages you to use your abilities to explore. There are even a few areas where you have to be pretty cheeky with your ability usage to get to them, so you get a good sense of discovery with your tool kit over the course of the game.
I beat my first playthrough in just over three hours, but the game very much encourages multiple playthroughs (there is NG+) and you'll need those to find all the secrets and trophies, which I will be doing. I very much appreciate shorter, but more emotional games these days. As much as I also like 50 hour RPGs, I love games that I can pick up for a night and receive a profound emotional experience.
Despite the short run time for a single playthrough, this is probably my favorite game I've played this year so far. Granted, I haven't yet beaten Expedition 33 or played DK Bananza, but I do especially love emotional games, so this one sits at the top for me at the moment, it was just an extremely special experience.
BTW, this is included in PS+, so if you have that, you can play it "for free".
Journey was their break out hit and it remains an absolute pleasure to play or see people play it.
I did play Abzu. It's more beautiful than emotional, though it hits those emotional beats too, while never to the level of Journey I'd still recommend it. Just looking at the trailer for Sword of the Sea I can tell they took inspiration from Journey, Abzu, and Pathless to put it together into one.
Thanks for letting me know they released another game, I'll likely check it out. Their graphical style and emphasis on visuals are always a treat.
Still playing Trackmania (goal is to get max of Silver medals on all of the TOTD). A bit better with tech, not ideal, but I feel like drifting is "clicked" for me. Still struggling with ice.
Started playing gacha game Grimlight on Android. Game is officially dead but developers decided to convert it to free offline version. (Glory, glory to the team!). And I love it! No pressure to complete daily tasks, no IAPs, no way to miss content. Grinding is tolerable, and I just love it that I can play it the way I like - again, no pressure, no way to miss anything.
Also playing Stellar Blade. Game is beautiful, combat is smooth and I honestly love it. Currently slowly finishing the game and I think I will try NG+ after that.
As a fan of "interactive movies", I made it a point to eventually play all the games from Quantic Dream. All of their games suffer from weak writing, and I wouldn't call myself a fan of their work per se, but if there's one thing I appreciate about them, it's how the game lets us interact with the world.
I understand that doing laundry, picking up trash, cooking, etc might be unimportant and a time waster for many, but it's these kind of moments that make me feel immersed in the world. Idk how to explain it, but watching the characters doing mundane things make the world more real... Like, even though you might be some cowboy or chosen one fighting dragons, watching our protagonist having to worry about mundate things like dirty socks makes the setting more grounded, and the protagonist more real. It's one of the reasons why RDR2 is one of my top 5 games.
I feel the genre of "interactive movie" is not being explored enough. Two of this genre's biggest studios, which is Quantic Dreams and Telltales, suffered from their own unique issues that didn't make this genre justice imo. Telltale was a one trick pony that never changed their design formulas after the first walking dead, and Quantic Dream's potential is brought down by their own leader/writer.
Well anyway, tangent aside, I played all of their games except for one: Beyond Two Souls.
I've been avoiding this one on purpose. I already got spoiled and knew what it was about, and knew that it's the weakest game in their library. And I also knew about the controversies (example). Still, I thought, maybe I should give the game a fair chance. Maybe the videos I've seen were unfair or overly critical.
Nope, they were on spot. This game is terrible.
David Cage was never a good writer but I kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt because, from experience, writing multi branched stories is hell. Writing a good linear story is already hard enough, a story that can branch and you need to account for choices? Especially on their usual level? That's even harder. So because of that, I gave it a pass. At the end of the day, if you turn off your brain and treat their games as B tier movies, it's a good time watching the characters react to your choices and see what happens.
Not Beyond Two Souls though. Idk what happened, but even for David, the writing took a dive. It's utterly horrible, even for him. I swear that I could feel in several scenes him thinking "Hmm, how can I make this dramatic?" and throw everything out the window! No thought on how the characters would react, no thought on the consequences, nothing!
Imagine this: the main character has a some kind of ghost that can't get away from her, and this ghost also protects her. This ghost is so protective in fact, that it can even get jealous of romantic interests. It tries to ruin a date and depending on your choices, it will ruin it. This is the level of protectiveness that we're talking about.
Again, for emphasis, this ghost cannot get too far from the protagonist. It doesn't sleep, it doesn't get inactive, it's always with the protagonist. It's a fact that the game beats you over the head several times.
So, how in the hell, why in the hell, would it ever, ever, let 2 guys almost rape the protagonist!?
This blew my mind when the scene happened. I clicked on the triangle several times and I couldn't control the ghost. It only intervened when they pinned her down on the table.
What, the, hell...
I'm not... Iffy about rape scenes, attempted or otherwise. I don't get angry about the simple inclusion of it. No, what pissed me off here was how David went "hmm, teenager girl escapes at night to meet some friends in a shady bar, what's the most dramatic thing that can happen here?" and he just went for it. Turned off all the logic and rules that he himself set.
At best, he just didn't care and wrote it that way - this is not the only example of plot holes, just the most egregious.
At worst - and more likely imo - it was a fetish thing. Quantic Dream tends to sexualize their female characters. While - personally - this isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself, it draws a picture of a studio that will easily put their female characters in compromising positions. The I-forget-her-name from Heavy Rain can be submitted in similar "rapey" situations; she takes suggestive showers as if she was filming an ad for a shampoo. Same for the protagonist in Beyond Two Souls btw.
Well, anyway, that whole scene is avoidable. I reloaded to skip it, but I went through it the first time out of morbid curiosity. I wanted to see if David would actually break his own rules so blatantly for the sake of cheap drama. He did...
I played for a few more chapters (or whatever they're called), but I couldn't take the game seriously anymore. The protagonist becomes a CIA agent with her own training montage, she meets a totally hot guy that also works in CIA and oooohhh they even go on missions together! Bah, the writing started giving off strong fanfiction vibes, like a bad Twilight knock-off. The plot just lurches from one contrived event to the next. I eventually just dropped it.
I played 18 hours of the Battlefield 6 open beta between last weekend and this weekend and that was even with being entirely unable to play this last Friday and Saturday. You could say that I maybe liked the game... I do think it's a return to form if you're a fan of the battlefield 3/4 days, it's very reminiscent of that. The gameplay doesn't have many gimmicks and I love it for that. The gun play is excellent, the beta ran extremely well, I don't have any complaints. I will for sure be picking this game up day 1 later this year!
Besides that, I had a massive week in iRacing. I race in a gen 4 nascar league on Wednesdays and I've had a horrible string of luck this and last season with being wrecked out of races when I haven't really done anything wrong, just abysmal luck. Well, I finally strung together a few good races and on this last Wednesday, I placed 3rd at '08 Atlanta, an extremely difficult track! To top it off, my team and I then placed 3rd in top split in the inaugural Portimau 1000k!! So I had a pretty fantastic week, I'd say.
I've had a little time and came across an interesting game called Missile Command Delta. It's published by Atari and reimagines the original arcade game into an escape room with a sort of RPG tower defence puzzle game baked in.
I know it's weird but it does seem like earnest attempt from Atari to make decent small games with their old IP and I'm pretty happy with the result.
Any sort of gameplay or story explanation is essentially spoilers but it's not rocket science. Theres free roam escape room segments that I'd grade as beginner friendly. And the missle defence mini-game that can escalate quite drastically if you don't make an effort to find some very powerful secret weapons. Not a very long game with passable YA writing and some deeper secrets for the observant, but its enough for a fun Sunday afternoon. It feels like the game would have benefited from some voice acting and maybe an even deeper layer of meta puzzle because Blue Prince has set a very high bar.
I've also been obsessed with The King is Watching but I really want to 100% it before putting my thoughts together. It has a weird way of making me think things are broken or unfinished, and then I experiment for a second more and a hundred new strategies come up.
Been on the Battlefield 6 open beta.
Good fun. Admittedly, I haven't played a battlefield game since Bad Company 2 (LOL) and the last COD I played seriously was Ghosts.
It feels as good as I could hope for. The theater is there, the sound design is there. The gunplay feels quick but not comical. The physics feel grounded but not stiff.
My computer wasn't particularly fast enough to run larger ground wars--but that's okay, I prefer a smaller lobby anyway.
It's definitely really solid as an FPS but personally I was a bit disappointed they didn't show off a map in the beta that really gave that sense of awe from the scale or destruction. BF3's beta had Caspian Border and collapsing the radio tower; BF4's beta had Siege of Shanghai and leveling the skyscraper (though that did make the map worse for the rest of the game from the reduced framerate, haha); BFV beta didn't have a huge map with a massive destructible feature but it did have the V1/JB2 rockets and watching those things land never got old. Fun, really well made pvp shooter, yes, but not exactly what I wanted from a Battlefield game. I'm going to see how launch plays out and wait for a sale.
This is how I felt as well. I enjoyed it and it felt to be headed in the right direction but the small tight maps made everything so chaotic. Hoping they are just saving the best for the release.
While playing it I couldn't help but wish I was playing Squad or Hell Let Loose instead.
This is where I'm at too. It was fun to play the beta, and it's well put-together. But it didn't really scratch my Battlefield itch, just a more general FPS itch. At this point, it's unclear whether the big vehicle-based action will be back in the same way IMO.
Your appreciation for the franchise is noted and admired. I wish I had a better grasp on how Battlefield has evolved over the years and could give a more encompassing comparison, but I always considered myself too impatient to commit.
Damn, did the mid-range warfare feel like a homecoming for which I didn't earn, though, haha
I've been eyeing this as it keeps popping up in the spam screen areas of Steam. I am a huge fan of the middle classic Battlefields (3, 4, and V in particular), but was disappointed by One, and just totally avoided 2042, which has perpetually had abysmal Steam ratings and reviews. If 6 delivers something nostalgically similar to 3 and 4, I just might give it a try, after ensuring the userbase reports having good impressions. I'm worried, though, that the anti-cheat might not work under Linux Steam. Early protondb reports say it doesn't.
Recently (sometime in the past year), easy anti cheat updated and borked Linux support for all the old battlefields. It's not limited to just Proton, it's actively hostile to near native VMs as well. Bf4 is one of the last ones (there's hardline, but we don't talk about hardline) to work on Linux, as it uses punkbuster. So there's little to no hope 6 will run on Linux.
Been playing a lot of Astral Ascent, local co-op with my best friend. To be honest I wasn't very into it, it had too much going on (Basic attacks and 4 spells that you did in order but also there's a ton of different spells and 5 elemental types and each elemental type has 4 or 5 mechanics that intersect with each other in different ways and ahhhh). But I kept playing as my bf was very into it, and around the 20 hour mark something clicked and I started to really enjoy the game. We just got the "true ending" yesterday and plan to work through more ascension levels. Being local co-op is a ton of fun too, even if there's some annoying parts that don't seem super thought through (like only one of you can be looking at a pickup at a time).
Overall, I still don't think I can recommend it, as I'm not comfortable reccing something that takes 20 hours to make sense. But it does turn into a fun and powerful rogue-like, and you can make some truly busted stuff, so if you decide to put up with the learning curve it's a good time esp co-op
Started playing on Turtle WoW a few days ago. It's a World of Warcraft Classic+ private server and fan-made expansion that adds several new zones, hundreds of new quests, class/spec reworks, High Elves & Goblins as playable races and new dungeons/raids to the Vanilla game. Currently, they've just launched a patch with three new zones, a new PvP arena, some dungeon extensions and they're working on an Unreal 5 custom client which would majorly overhaul the game's graphics.
Much of the content they added focused around the mid to high level experience. It's like an expansion of Classic that represents what WoW would have been like if the base game was expanded on without going into expansions.
Started playing a Human Paladin and immediately noticed a lot of new quests. This includes:
Paladins are also finally no longer dogshit. At Level 6, they gain a baseline ability called Holy Strike, which functions like Crusader Strike does in later official expansion, except it does Holy instead of Physical damage, and it also heals and restores mana to nearby allies. For context, Paladins used to do terrible damage in Classic, and it inspired iconic forum shitposts about how they were the class to play when watching porn, such as this one.
Usually I don't advocate for playing on private servers. My last foray into a pserver was playing on Nostalrius before Blizzard shut that project down, and this was back when they dismissed the calls for a classic version of WoW. But fuck, the Turtle WoW team have knocked this out of the park and given Classic WoW the OSRS treatment that I wish Blizzard would do to their game.
My Human Paladin and Tauren Hunter (on their PvP server which is double XP rates) are only level 10 at the moment and Turtle WoW is already turning into one of the best levelling experiences I've had in a MMORPG. My only complaint is that the RP-PVE server I rolled my pally on had a huge population and it was hard to kill mobs. I normally dislike levelling, this is the first time in ages I truly felt engaged.
On a related note I wasn't so impressed with the social side of the server. You can't chat in public channels until level 10 (understandable anti-spam policy), and nobody invites you to parties to share kill participation on quest mobs, which has made me think that the player base is quite isolationist and toxic. The world chat channel isn't full of the usual Dirge, Thunderfury or Anal spam or gold/boost selling ads you'd see in a traditional WoW chat channel, so either their playerbase is more mature or the team actually gives a shit about policing their game unlike Blizzard with their official servers.
The single-player indie FPS HOLE was in sale. After playing it for some 20 hours I gotta say that the 5 euro normal price is a steal. The vibe is brilliant and this is the first extraction shooter I really got into. It starts off pretty difficult due to both your lacking skills and somewhat different playing mechanics, but is pretty easy when you've received all the upgrades. Best game I have played in a while.
Previously I also tried the hyped puzzle game Blue Prince and the Battlefield clone Heroes of Valor but wasn't really hooked by either so I refunded them.
As for future Artis Impact looks like an interesting game. Also Tiny Combat Arena is on sale and seems like it might tickle the nostalgia bone (eugh) since I played a lot of flight sims in the 90s. Also considering Incursion Red River, which seems to be a PvE Tarkov from a German developer and on sale right now.
edit Power of Ten, also on my wishlist is currently at -70%!
This week for our roguelike podcasts 75th episode, we covered the legendary platformer Spelunky
I had a lot of fun revisiting this brutal game that drove me to insanity the first time I played it 12 years ago. I didn’t beat it this time around but my main goal was playing the daily challenge consistently during our two week evaluation period.
On the steam deck, it’s a dream. The form factor is great and the smaller screen helps to hide that it’s locked at 720p which is unfortunately apparently on 1440p monitors. But the gameplay remains so crisp and solid and easy to pick up and play.
That’s not to say it’s easy though. Spelunky is one of the most famous “tough but fair” games out there and I really appreciate the thoughtful design decisions behind it. Opening shortcuts teaches you level progression and gear juggling. The shortcuts allow you to practice against the enemies in that biome. But the shortcuts also start you tremendously under-geared, so you’re incentivized to start from the beginning and work your way up (down?).
It still holds up today and is well worth the under $5 sale price it routinely goes on sale for. If you like punishing platformers, that is.
Balatro
Had a pretty cool run on my phone's second profile where I bought ALL the vouchers. I don't often get very deep into "endless mode" but this was a huge personal best for me, despite my goal just being to unlock stuff. Shoutout to Roffle Lite on YouTube; I think seeing some of his runs really helped me understand how to make number go WAY up.
Heat: Pedal to the Metal
A racing board game that's all about managing your hand of cards and taking risks by adding junk "heat" cards into your deck to blow past corners, get a speed boost, or shift multiple gears. Higher gear means you play more cards to go further, lower gear means fewer cards and typically safer around corners, plus you get to remove heat cards. You can also get a slipstream +2 boost if you end your movement on the same spot or just behind another car. I found the core mechanics really fun! There are some optional modules to mix up the gameplay further but we didn't try them.