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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.
Lately I find myself continually playing more demos for games rather than making any progress on any games I’m in the middle of, which I have slightly mixed feelings about (but not enough to do anything different). Doesn’t help that I can’t resist roguelite games and that’s currently a popular genre, so there’s an endless supply of demos showing up. Super Fantasy Kingdom, Clover Pit, Ball x Pit, Raccoin, Skull Hoard, etc… so many recently played demos that I’m now forced to wait for, so sad. I’m thankful that releasing demos has become more popular again in recent years, or at least it feels that way to me, maybe I wasn’t paying enough attention before
Recently finished Citizen Sleeper, after finally getting around to play it.
Of the different storylines that take place throughout, I definitely found some to be more engaging than others. Overall though, found the writing to be solid and enjoyed my time on the Eye.
Wishlisted the second game as a reminder to eventually buy and play it.
Helldivers 2 released for Xbox last week along with the ODST crossover warbond, and we have finally ended the console wars. Very wholesome vibes all around with PC and PS5 veterans welcoming the new divers with open arms, and it's great to see them discover things for the first time. They've also reinvigorated the community, just in time for the next major update happening tomorrow, Into the Unjust, where there will definitely be way too much "Rock and Stone" being spammed in game chat as we take the fight against the Terminid menace underground. For Super Earth!
How much does the ODST stuff cost? I'm not familiar with Helldivers's monetization.
The regular war bonds are a 1000 super credits. You can buy 150 credits for a $1,99, 2100 credits for $19,99. So a 1000 credit war bond roughly costs 10-14 dollars each.
The ODST war bond costs an irregular 1500 credits, so its cost is somewhere between 15 and 20 dollars.
Helldiver monetization differs in that these war bonds don't expire. Unlike many other battle passes, there's no FOMO inducing end date. Additionally you can find the premium currency in game at semi-regular intervals and you can unlock an extra 100 credits within an already owned war bond.
Theoretically you could play it entirely for free. If you play often or farm specifically for the premium currency it's entirely possible to do so.
So while a single war bond, or the ODST war bond is somewhat pricey if you buy it outright, I often don't have to spend anything or at most $5 to unlock a new one. In fact, a new war bond launches in two days and I have enough to unlock it immediately without spending anything.
...got it. So it's one of those situations where the smallest amount you can buy that's enough for what you want is still more than you need? The non-expiring passes (like Halo Infinite?) is great, but I do wish we were past the scummy currency pricing. Maybe I'm misunderstanding what you wrote though.
That's on me but I failed to mention there is a $10 pack that gives a 1000 points exactly, hence the price ranges. The small 150 point pack is supplemental in case you picked up 900 while playing and need to round it out.
Though you did read it correctly, it's still not possible to buy exactly 290 points if thats what you need and you'll spend more.
It's still MTX and I have a somewhat negative opinion about MTX in general, but in terms of battle pass like monetization HD is the least predatory.
Regular warbonds are 1000 super credits, or 10 USD. This one is the first legendary warbond though, so it's 1500 super credits. There's nothing particularly unique in the ODST warbond weapons-wise though the weapons are pretty solid, so most of the value is definitely more on the nostalgia and fashion side. That said, the drip is immaculate.
Honestly though, I would wait a little bit before buying the game if that's your intention. It's quite unstable after this latest major update and you'll likely have a much better experience once they push out some hotfixes for the most egregious issues, especially the crashing.
Yeah I'm not rushing out to pick it up, I just love the ODST crossover. Ideally I'd wait for the game to come to game pass, and if it doesn't, I'd just deal with never playing it. Right now my interest level is "I've heard it's very good and also I love Halo 3: ODST so that's very cool" so I would definitely check it out, but I don't feel a need to go out of my way for it. Now if a bunch of my friends got into it, that would be different, and if that happened I'd be likely to pick up the ODST pack as well (even as someone who doesn't do microtransactions). But until game pass or friends happen, I'm mostly just curious for now.
Thanks for the response! I realize I could have just searched it, but it's always nice to talk to a human.
I'm half way through my second run of Freeride, which is a very whimsical indie adventure game. And I love whimsy!
At the beginning of the game, a girl invites you to hop on a train and go on an adventure. The train, which contains a variety of non-human passengers, immediately takes to the skies and into the spirit world. You learn you're in one of the Fate Trains, which follow the Schedule of the Station Master - who is the god of Order - in order to keep Chaos at bay. The girl who invited you is the train's Conductor, a prestigious and respected position. So when she almost immediately disappears, leaving you with her badge of office and her powers of telekinesis, everyone's understandably upset and suspectful of foul play. Worse, cracks in the fabric of reality are gradually swallowing everything, and a massive war threatens the real world as well. You'd better do something about all of that! No pressure.
Telekinesis is your main way of interacting with the world of Freeride. Every location is full of all kinds of clutter, much of it humorous, which you can pick up with the power of your mind, move around, store in your limited size inventory/cell phone, eat (you can't eat everything, but you can eat more than you'd expect), gift to any character, or throw at enemies, which is your only way of winning/affecting combat encounters. This type of clutter-oriented gameplay reminds me -just a little- of other equally charming games I've played in the past, such as Mayhem in Single Valley or Going Under. Items have attributes that dictate what they're "good" for, and characters have preferences that determine how effective an item is when gifted to them.
Narratively, Freeride is highly non-linear, although there are a number of overall chapters and unavoidable events dictating progression. You don't have unlimited time to make choices (or to choose not to make them), and doing/saying one thing often makes another impossible. Without spoiling anything, I'll just say you are supposed to play through multiple times, and thanks to some different choices my second run is going very differently from the first one. One chapter became much shorter, while another became much longer, unlocking content I hadn't seen yet and new insights into the varied cast of characters. There is the odd seam in the fabric of the narrative when you realize something a character had said before makes more sense now that you've seen a scene that just hadn't happened before.
Freeride makes a big deal of how it collects all kinds of fun statistics about your gameplay. At the end of each chapter, a narrator character will discuss the choices you made with you (the player) and tell you how they compare with other players' on average, which is nothing unique - in fact, Catherine, the previous game I played, had a similar thing going. At the end of the run, the narrator summarizes your choices and tells you your personality type, which seems very unnecessary and Gen Z - though it doesn't really get in the way either way.
I'm not a huge fan of having to replay narrative games multiple times, but the story only takes a few hours and the big divergences in what happens are sufficiently interesting to me. Reminds me of certain old point and click adventure games in a good way!
For some reason I couldn't figure out how you're supposed to play this with a gamepad, but it works great with mouse and keyboard.
Previous
I've completed Dark Souls Remastered.
It turns out that last week was a weird spot for me to write up my thoughts, because the game design does - if not a 180 - then at least a grudging 90 in Anor Londo and beyond.
Up until this point:
But in this second half of the game:
As a result, because your setup can now carry you pretty hard, the game just flat out becomes much easier. Some routes can still be a pain initially due to not knowing where to go or what the game wants you to do, but you're also taking less damage and equipped with more heals, so simply running past all the enemies is completely feasible once you know where you're headed. Similarly, most bosses can just be facetanked without learning their attacks if you go in with decent armour / weapon / heals.
Other closing thoughts:
I got a better handle on the main story once the game introduced NPCs who were willing to give exposition, but anything outside the main story still feels like trying to piece together a narrative out of MTG card flavour text.
Even though the polygon count is clearly PS3-era, the visual design for the enemies and environments is still really beautiful and impactful. The presentation is also top notch, with lots of care for how the enemies are animated and levels often being set against big dramatic vistas.
It's crazy how many well hidden secret items, bosses, mechanics and entire areas they managed to pack into this game. If you're playing offline without the community messages, there's no way you'll find even half of this stuff without reading a guide. I kind of wish they also had more in-game hints for finding it organically, since playing with the garish messages from the internet everywhere kind of detracts from the mood set by the game.
It's often said that this game is tough but fair, and for the most part I agree when it comes to fighting the enemies. However, there are also a good number of deaths due to janky physics activating the moment you're on a surface that's just a little too slanted / suddenly falling to your death when fighting in water where it's impossible to see the edge / suddenly getting yeeted when your model box is clashing with an enemy's model box, all of which very much feel unfair.
You can (and I did) spend half the game without finding a bow, which makes some encounters needlessly hellish. If you don't start with one or get a drop, I believe there's one vendor who sells one, but he's pretty easy to miss. Naturally, there's also no tutorial for using the bow once you do find one or any indication that you can fire it in first person (basically a must outside of Z-targeting range, unless you want to be shooting MGS1 style the whole game).
Overall, I'm glad I bit the bullet and went back to this game. There was a lot of fun hiding behind that learning curve.
Back to playing Sekiro this week.
I've now beaten
spoilers
Lady Butterfly and Gyoubu. The latter was a walk in the park after having been repeatedly taken to school by grandma.The former was the first fight which really demanded that I shift to defence as soon as the enemy deflected me, and then back to attack as soon as I deflected them. I feel like this kind of fight is where the game really shines - when you're locked into those long exchanges of blows, you really can 'feel the rhythm' and enter an exhilarating flow state.
On the other hand, I'm still not a fan of the ninja stealth parts. The stealth feels inconsistent as heck and sometimes guards (particularly anyone with a ranged weapon) will spot you from miles away and remain aggroed until you leave the area, even after you're behind cover. At other times, you can walk right next to them or noisily kill a dude behind them without being noticed.
It's tolerable if you're just clearing the area once to get the items, but stealth killing a big bunch of clustered mobs (with frequent running away to de-aggro) becomes an absolute chore when you have to do it repeatedly to fight a boss - and you can't just fight them regularly either, because the game isn't designed for quickly fighting groups of enemies and you'll almost certainly get ganked (or at least lose health that you're supposed to save for the boss) before you can break all their postures.
Funny to see this mentioned, I beat it back in 2017-2018ish on Prepare To Die edition for PC and moved on to other games. I've since finished all of FromSoft's soulslike games and have spent a lot of my time recently in Sekiro (which I only just beat this summer) and Elden Ring Nightreign which I've been playing at least a few times weekly since it released.
Literally yesterday I made a new character in Dark Souls Remastered and just kinda let myself get absorbed in it again. In yesterday's sitting I rang both bells (gargoyles and Quelaag) as well as foraying into the depths killing Capra Demon and Gaping Dragon along the way, and poking into darkroot a bit as well. It was a bit of a long sitting, but a lot of 1-2 try kills is really why things moved so quickly. It's astounding how much time is spent on first-time playthroughs of these games learning bosses and maps. Once we know where we're going it becomes a very different experience entirely.
Anyway, the #1 thing I was most put off by was 4-way rolling. I haven't played Dark Souls 1 or the PS3 Demon's Souls in a long time, those two titles being the two with 4-way rolling. What I mean by that is how when you're locked on to an enemy, you can't roll in any angle you like, only straight forward/backward/left/right.
Crazy what a difference it makes to game feel. It's commonly stated that enemy behaviour breaks if you fight with the camera unlocked and I think there may be truth to that. Demon's Souls' PS5 version in my opinion did not break by removing the 4-way rolling limitation, but they may have adjusted bosses accordingly. I don't have a good way to investigate or compare that.
In the case of Dark Souls I find it really painful in places with narrow walkways, which would explain a lot of the hate for blighttown (which has always been kinda chill for me even in my very first playthrough back in the day when it was my first souls game - blighttown was where the game clicked and I began having fun.)
I ran into it in a spicy situation with ghosts in an early looting dip into New Londo Ruins yesterday. On a ledge with no railing or wall on either side, and targeting ghosts I'm trying to back away from while having gone around a bend in the walkway. Since my locked on camera puts me facing diagonally off the ledge, all 4 dodge directions would drop me off the ledge. Ghost is attacking, I die. :(
The more I reflect on and return to the series as a whole now that I've finished them all, the farther and farther DS1 is falling in my ranking, to my surprise. It's a great game and they built a lot off it, but I think it also steals a lot of credit Demon's Souls deserves at times, and is a hugely flawed experience that becomes more difficult to go back to after playing newer FromSoft souls games.
Regarding Sekiro:
The bit about the stealth parts and dealing with a crowd before a boss sure is sounding a lot like seven-spears in the reservoir. Yeah it's a pain in the ass. For the most part at least in my experience, the sight cones and grass cover feel like twice as important as sound if not more, so getting through situations like that quicker to make reattempts less painful came down to improving my route through the sightlines in some way, usually.
Interesting to hear about the better rolling in the sequels. I definitely often felt like it would have been nice to roll just to the left or right of an enemy when targeting, as rolling right into their face was often not optimal if they had a follow up attack. I'll play around more with that if I get around to playing the other games.
Ultimately it wasn't a major issue just because the game felt surprisingly lenient in other ways - e.g. most enemies have terrible tracking, so I could often just circle-strafe them once lured to a somewhat open area.
I would love to check out Demon's Souls at some point too, but I don't have a PS5 and the PS3 version is selling at a considerable premium now that the series is popular. I should have picked it up back when it was obscure and going for $5!
It's been a bit but I think at least from my recollection that I really liked dark souls 3 as the game that fulfilled the 'dark souls' vision for me. Most of the aspects of it fell filled out an developed, systems made sense, there felt like very little jank through the game. It doesn't have that really cool tight map of dark souls 1, but it is close enough to feel good.
Even with elden ring I feel like there were some things about it that I didn't like, and I found the open world in it just not a great open world. I realized in elden ring that I much preferred the set pieces and discovering all the little traps and surprises along the way as you wound down into the bowls of some level.
Sekiero is well defined on what it wants to be as well and is a great experience. I have not been able to get myself to play through sekiero multiple times though, it felt a little challenging to relearn all the bosses, however I have been able to get through dark souls 3 a few times due to being able to level up past difficulty if wanted.
Overall great games, not sure if you had played them, but I feel like 3 was a great culmination of the dark souls formula.
DS1 and Sekiro are the only Fromsoft games I've played. I think I've kind of grasped the right mindset to enjoy these games now, so definitely plan on checking out the other ones at some point!
I just want to say I agree. I have like 60 hours in Elden Ring and I keep just kind of falling off of it, because I generally just feel kind of...meh about it. It's fun when you discover an area that seems like it was designed like something from a previous game, but generally I just feel a little bit bored and like the game is meandering.
I loved DS3 and played through even all the DLC, which is generally more rare for me. Maybe I'll have to start that one again and see how I feel. I've been kind of wondering if I'm just over the From formula having been playing essentially the same game since the original Dark Souls came out on PC.
I just recently took the plunge to play Cyberpunk 2077 and finished the uhhh tutorial I suppose? The opening storyline? I had already read spoilers (not an issue for me, the game has been out for years) but I still ended up crying. It all felt so unfair. I guess that's Night City for you :(
Cyberpunk 2077 Spoilers (if you've somehow avoided them all this time)
I know RPGs often rely on plot points you can't change (like Jackie's death) but I couldn't help but feel particularly frustrated by it. Aren't you carrying around a med-inhaler?! We're working for one of the biggest fixers in the city but we have no body armor, no med kit, no nothing? There's some world-building inconsistency I feel grating against how his death happened that feels a little frustrating to me and took me out of the experience a little. Granted, still cried so I guess the emotional impact was still there. But from a storytelling perspective I think I'd have been less annoyed if he'd caught a bullet with me while we confronted Dex together >_< Ah well. Take this as me complaining into the void.I'm hoping I can work out why the game is lagging so badly during...I'm not sure what to call them. In-game cut scenes? I'm not sure if it's related to my character being in the car or one of the texture mods I've added to the game...something is causing some pretty awful performance issues. Everything starts to go in slow motion essentially. My new computer should be plenty capable of running the game with high settings so I suppose I'll need to search around online to see if anyone's experienced something similar.
Computer Specs For the Curious
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D
RAM: Corsair Dominator Titanium 64 GB
GPU: MSI GAMING TRIO OC GeForce RTX 5080
limiting FPS usually helps a lot. Even though I have a 160hz refresh rate ultra-wide, I typically cap my FPS at 24 to 30 but turn on Vsync.
(even if your computer is rendering at a higher FPS (e.g., 120 FPS), a 60 Hz monitor can only show 60 of those frames each second--though it could show more via partial frames with screen tearing)
Oh - I should have included my monitor; it's the MSI MPG 321URX QD-OLED. It says it can handle up to 240Hz I think? I was originally just testing the game to see how it ran at different presets but it crashed when I switched it from Ultra to Low...oops! I'll have to play around with it more later. But my attention might be pulled away by the new season of Fallout 76 which starts today! I am so excited~
While looking through Ron Gilbert's ouvre I came across Maniac Mansion. I have played Day of the Tentacle before, a long time ago; totally oblivious that it is a sequel to Maniac Mansion. Yesterday was the first day I sat down and watched a playthrough.
I'm impressed! It's a really funny game. Apparently it is also the first use of cutscenes in a game or rather Ron Gilbert invented the word "cutscenes" during game development. The way the cutscenes work is very jarring too! Instead of playing when characters exit or enter a room it just totally interrupts whatever you were in the middle of and plays a scene far away.
So probably we are all using the word cutscenes wrong because there were non-interactive narrative sequences in video games before Maniac Mansion but not abrupt ones where you need to invent a new word to convince people that it is intentional...
But there was an arcade machine in Day of the Tentacle that contained the full Maniac Mansion! Or was that only the specific version I had?
(EDIT: Computer apparently, not arcade machine. It has been more than 25 years!)
Oh that's wild! Maybe the ScummVM version doesn't have that--or maybe I just didn't click on the arcade machine! lol
edit: yeah I guess it wasn't working without additional configuration at the time that I played it
https://forums.scummvm.org/viewtopic.php?t=14030
I helped a friend test the Linux version of Day of the Tentacle Remastered, it has a key to switch between classic low res graphics and the new stuff, pretty impressive what they came up with!
wait... are you saying DOTT: Remastered had both Maniac Mansion and Maniac Mansion Deluxe running at the same time or something? If so seems like not that many people figured it out...
No sorry, I think the easter egg MM was just the original, the graphics switch is for DOTT itself.
It looks like the deluxe version was from Lucasfan who got a C&D from Lucasarts and was shutdown, so not surprised it wasn't included!
I've been playing Hollow Knight: Silksong these last couple of days.
Good (bad?) timing is that I've been unwell so just at home with little to do, so I've put a large amount of time into it since its release yesterday.
Possibly...too much time, as I'm not sure Silksong is making it any easier to recover - this game is very hard!
First impressions: it's more Hollow Knight with no expense spared.
Environments are lush and beautifully rendered, animations are fluid and detailed, and gameplay is even snappier than the original, with hornet feeling like a fundamentally different character rather than a reskin of the knight.
A big highlight for me is the music, which feels like an extension and expansion of Christopher Larkins previous amazing score for the first game, with heavy emphasis on arrangement for string orchestra to lean into the 'silk' narrative.
It's certainly a steep climb up from the difficulty of Hollow Knight, which was certainly not a walk in the park, especially towards the end game.
Spoilers
The first large departure on this front is normal enemies more often dealing 2 points of damage, which was mostly reserved for more challenging bosses in the original. This, combined with a potentially more punitive economy and difficult platforming sections, can occasionally lead to large spikes of difficulty. An area that is accessible relatively early - Hunters March - is a big death trap when starting out. It's probably best returned to once more tools are acquired, and I imagine this was probably the intended approach, though it took me a number of frustrating deaths before swallowing my pride and moving on. Those tools are also wonderfully varied, with the option of collecting different crests which fundamentally change how Hornet attacks and moves. I've so far beaten around 8 bosses, maybe more if you count some miniboss and room encounters and they've mostly been fun and challenging, although a couple tread the edge of sadistic (looking at you Willow!).I'm not very far yet, but have been liking it so far. There are only two things I've not been liking:
There's also one other thing, but it probably doesn't apply to just about anyone else. The triggers do not behave correctly on my preferred controller. It's nothing wrong with the controller because input tests and all other games work fine. It's only HK and Silksong that are busted. The incorrect behavior it exhibits seems consistent with it somehow missing frames of the trigger input. I've created similar bugs in my own programs in the past when not correcting for wacky poll rates, so maybe its something in that vein but I'm just speculating. It probably has a like 25% chance of a press or release counting, effectively meaning it rarely works and even when it does trigger it then has a tendency to then become stuck in the trigger action. I'd prefer to not have to use a backup controller for some of my favorite games to play on the TV, but since I don't care quite enough to make an input mod there's not much I can do about it.
small spoiler
I swapped out the hunters crest for the beast crest pretty much immediately and haven't looked back. I think this crest system is going to be amazing value in terms of replayability too - I've never played a metroidvania that allowed you to swap out your basic moveset before, and there are definitely some bosses that I think could be made easier if I was willing to try something different.On double damage, I think it has a lot of problems that they boxed themselves into with a few other decisions. Wanting it to be harder but the only lever being to double incoming damage is a rather blunt instrument that limited their ability to fine-tune difficulty.
It also doesn't meld well with the new healing system. When you get hit in chunks of 40% and heal in chunks of 60% you either need to waste thread or wait to heal until you're one hit from death. Though in my opinion the biggest issue is that it causes poor messaging. To pick a random example: falling objects. If someone were to make a quiz of the various falling objects and ask how much damage you'd take from each I'd wager that there would be a lot of wrong answers. This wasn't an issue in HK because the answer was almost always 1 (none that aren't even come to mind, but there could be some I'm not remembering right now).
Overall I don't think that using HKs mask system with no modifications is the best for Silksong, but it does work. I do think it would've been better served by having some adjustments to better fit Silksong though.
For pogoing I used something different than your spoiler, but the problem does eventually have solutions. I do wonder why they made the default one be so rough though.
I'm a little over 2 hours into watching a playthrough on Youtube. I'd intended to play it myself, but it looks like Silksong hasn't changed the one thing that stopped me from buying the original HK - the combat still feels too laborious for me. I thought Hornet would have a snappier base move set and make things more fluid, but (so far) it doesn't look like it. It's a real shame, as I really like everything else about it. The Buglish melodies that some of the NPCs sing are so infectious, they're already getting stuck in my head.
I'm also noticing a bit of an HK-Ori feedback loop... I know that Moon Studios got 'inspired' by a few things they saw in Hollow Knight and incorporated pretty much the same systems/mechanics into Ori and the Will o' the Wisps, and now I'm seeing certain stuff basically lifted from Ori and incorporated into Silksong. I could well be wrong - there's probably a limited pool of ideas that designers draw from when making 2D metroidvanias in general - but that's what it looks like to me.
No Man's Sky received quite possibly the coolest free update in history, adding a new class of completely custom ships with traversable interiors, along with hundreds of parts to work with, and brand new space walking and skydiving mechanics. It has consumed all of my free time this week.
The No Man's Sky subreddit has also gone completely bonkers with custom starship builds.
I had a busy week with moving, so I wanted to play something that was just dumb fun without needing to fiddle with anything or think too much. I picked up Donkey Kong: Bananza and it’s the exact vibe I wanted! The game is just so much pure fun. I was just punching things all weekend and I’m having a great time. I just got to the forest world. Oooooh, Banana!
I’m also practicing for the 6 hours of Indianapolis in iRacing this weekend. My team usually runs the Porsche 963, but we’re trying the Ferrari 499P this time around. It drives completely differently and is definitely harder, but it’s a very rewarding car. I’m looking forward to the race!
I have started playing the Hundred Line Last Defence Academy again and it's been rough. The writing quality is often great but I'm now in what I think is called the Comedy Route and it just feels like the writers are running a bit out of ideas? In the game there are sections called Free Time where you can train or talk to other characters. They are for the days where there is no plot because they are usually waiting on something, but now it just keeps happening and I just want to see story content- it's weird because in other routes they would just go "oh yeah you fell down stairs and skipped 20 days" but now apparently they want me to just do nothing for 20 days
Definitely agree that a lot of the routes would have benefitted greatly from a shorter day count / removal of the 'free time' padding days (I guess this is in there for you to grind social links / resources, but you can just repeat days so it's totally unnecessary). Sometimes they even do a 'we did X for Y days' timeskip without you necessarily passing out - I wish they'd used that way more.
It's such a major contrast to the main route where you're constantly dealing with some kind of major problem (sometimes multiple problems) and there's very little waiting around.
I noticed that the Phoenix Wright trilogy was £4.50 as part of the first tier of a capcom bundle on Humble Bundle. That's the first three Ace Attorney games. So I couldn't resist picking them up at that price.
I ended up (temporarily, I promise) parking my Final Fantasy IX: Trance Seek and my modded Stardew Valley playthroughs to binge through the first Phoenix Wright game in the trilogy.
Oh wow. I played through this game 18 years ago so I remember the rough case structure and most of the murderers but I have been having so much fun. I'm starting the second game now.
Been bit by the MMO bug again and am mostly playing LOTRO. I had enough points for the Mariner class, and I'm so happy I bought it. It's exactly the class fantasy I was hankering for, a rugged duelist making his way through Middle Earth.
Really enjoyed the new questing experience in Swanfleet and Carolan. Am currently questioning in Forochel and Angmar, but I'm hitting the same roadblock I hit 40-50 in that I'm happiest if I'm questing in a green area with elves. Angmar is not that.
I've recently started I Was A Teenage Exocolonist and so far I love it. I'm still early in my first run but I really enjoy the atmosphere, storytelling and gameplay. And it's probably going to get a whole lot more messed up given what I know so far story wise, which is something I look forward too(well until my favorite characters end up dying of course).
I've been really enjoying the 0.3 Path of Exile 2 patch! The abyss league mechanic is neat, if a bit too rippy (as expected of league mechanics in the first week), and I'm excited for the new story stuff and endgame changes! Been slowly making my way through the campaign on a staff invoker
Started back in on POE2 as well. I had skipped .2 but the features from .3 got me to want to get back in. I'm still mid act 2 as I haven't had a lot of time, but I really like the sprint mechanic and am re-enjoying the game again. I don't know that I will want to work on any maps through the end game and am more setting a goal for myself to see the new act and interludes.
Overall i think the last epoch philosophy is more up my alleyway, but it just doesn't have enough content to grab me for very long yet. POE2's campaign is really great, the set pieces, voice acting, and overall graphic quality is peak. I'm going to see how the asyc trading works for me. I disliked trading heavily in poe, but even with the fix in general I'd rather play the game to get things rather than browse lists of items. Had much better time getting currency in the kingsmarch poe 1 with the marketplace, but hated the act of finding things to spend it on and quit.
I'm dreading the upcoming trials mechanics as I see they haven't changed much since .1. I was big fan of the lab even though I sort of hated doing it as I'm a player prone to making big mistakes and disliking timeloss. I liked the idea of sanctum in POE1 but as side content you could choose to engage with if you felt like it, not as a major wall for getting ascendancies.
All in all I'm very excited for POE2 still and looking forward to them filling out all the missing skills and classes as well as finishing off the acts, they are hugely fun to play through as they are right now, and the moment to moment action is great IMHO.
I started the act 4 stuff this afternoon, it's neat stuff! Lots of new lore!
Also had a chance to try the async trade, went and bought something... Then I looked at what other items that person had for sale, hehe. I really like it! I'm probably going to only really engage with it in endgame, since you need to be in the hideout to set the shop tabs up and I'm focusing on the story
I also skipped 0.2 entirely after playing 300 hours straight after launch, needed a few months of break. I do intend to engage with the endgame, I really like the concept of clearing areas on the Atlas and removing corruption. We'll see how the new elements feel and play as I go along
Been getting back into Deadlock (Valve's MOBA-via-hero shooter) after having not played since launch. As a longtime DOTA fan I found the game at launch to be good, but not great - too much downtime, too messy to parse, items not impactful enough - so took a break. I came back this week with the release of six new characters, specifically The Doorman. He's got a Portal gun! And not a weak version where "oh you can walk through to go somewhere else", a real, fire-bullets-through-it-and-create-new-angles Portal gun!
Most of my initial issues have been either fixed or toned down at this point. The map has been compressed from four lanes to three and sub-objectives have been added (a boss in the middle of the map a la Roshan, urns to pick up and deliver for bonuses), so there's less of a sense of aimlessness. Items feel better than before, though a lot of them still feel underpowered (though I wonder how much of that is a toning down of DOTA's "every item is a power spike" thing).
The real highlight is the character designs. These are some of the most fun, fleshed out, unique characters in hero shooters, from a gameplay and a Vibes perspective. I really enjoy all the new characters, but especially the aformentioned Doorman (whose Ult transports the enemy to an alternate dimension parkour map), Billy (a melee-focused Punk Goat), and Paige (a support Bibliomancer). Like with TF2/DOTA, the characterization is fantastic, with a lot of small details in the animations to help build out these heroes.
The beta test for Sonic Racing Crossworlds is out for a few more hours.
Game's fun and chaotic, it does lead to having a "last second matters" issue since you're always right by the pack, but that's one side of the kart racer design flaw coin (the other being someone too far ahead just becomes untouchable even with pick-ups).
It's big gimmick is customizable machines and gadget loadouts. The machine customization effectively don't matter stat-wise, just looks (a quick look + napkin maths tells me car types give 2/3 of the stats, the characters 1/3, and the parts selection barely reached 10 point difference in any stat when I deliberately went from highest to lowest), but the loadouts and machine type will change how you play a lot.
For example, a Speed character on a Boost hoverboard with a drift-heavy loadout will have a lot of speed while boosting, boost nearly constantly thanks to the loadout making it incredibly easy to fill a least one gauge, but WILL stop when hit by any weapon for a few seconds, enough in this game to make you go from first to last.
Meanwhile a Power machine and a ring thief/boost build might not be the fastest at any time, but they recover from attacks fast, and usually will be able to get back to their wincon fast (namely roadraging everyone out of their life savings) that you can expect them to always be very close to the pack, but rarely behind- or ahead- of it.
If they balance the gadgets well, it could create a lot of variability.
I've also picked up Receiver 2. An extremely manual FPS. By manual, here's what I mean:
When using a double-action revolver, you must hold the fire button to fire the weapon, unless you cock the hammer first (then you just press it to fire), but doing so also means you cannot reload the weapon until you fire or uncock it.
To reload it, open the cylinder and eject all bullets (this might take a few tries, you will also need to pick up any unspent rounds off the ground), then insert each bullet manually. You might have some blocked cylinders, so you'll have to align them according to the direction the cylinder rotates.
If it sounds like a lot, it kind of is, especially if you're under pressure (which, as you're so close to being a one-hit point wonder any enemy will put you under a good amount of pressure). Thankfully, there is two modes to this game: the Dreaming (original mode, collect tapes while avoiding and shooting drones) and the Compound (safely train your handling of the weapons), both modes have their own progression (the Compound's one is permanent, the Dreaming partially isn't), and nicely complement each-other (try a level in Dreaming, afterwards decompress by running around the Compound while doing some challenges or just drills, then return to the Dreaming).
The atmosphere of the game is just as oppressive and uncertain as the game itself, the Threat is not given so much as a... body, really (it sounds outright like a memetic hazard, where it infects purely by being heard), the location of the game doesn't quite make sense (all locations are directly linked to one-another, an hospital is one door away from a catwalk on a industrial site which is one door away from an art museum with a built-in apartment and so on), the tapes you collect are mostly spoken in monotone (and the few that aren't...), there are no humans (even your reflection is that of a target cutout) or any organic life besides potted plants, but you can hear noises during the Dreaming (I swear I heard dogs barking at one point). Time being not quite right is a plot point that explains why collectibles are not in any order.
Even the Compound maintains a level of this despite being a safe place. Admittedly, it does lose some of it depending on what you put on the intercom (which affects the audio a lot, you might not hear the intercom at some places in the Compound).
Also tried this as a couple online friends were interested so we picked a time and met up to play together. Lots of variability is possible for all the reasons you indicated. The game is kinda fun. I find the handling across all vehicle/character types to be kinda arcadey, like if I saw the game in some type of arcade machine form it might not feel as weird as my immediate reaction to it on my PC with a modern controller. Overall it's a cool game, but it was a cool game to play for an evening with my friends while it was free. I'm pretty much certain I'm never going to buy it once it fully releases.
I tried out Tooth and Tail (Steam/PC) about a week ago. It's an RTS but feels very stripped back. Which I think is the problem. I went in blind, expecting a traditional RTS, but it's not. And it's right away obvious from its control scheme which is mouse only.
I have other criticisms, but the movement and control system alone threw me off. I only played for like 30min before I was done with it. But it all ties back to not being a pared down RTS. Its reminds me of something made for a tablet or mobile game and not a PC. Even though the game isn't on mobile (though it does have a PS4 port).
Which is a shame, because the story does seem interesting. It reminds me a lot of the anime Beastars, where anthropomorphic animals live in a society with a rigid pecking order where some animals eat while others get eaten. And Tooth and Tail seems to be told in like a Bolshevik revolution style concept. I love political themes in games, after all.
Elden Ring Nightreign
This week we played Elden Ring Nightreign for our podcast on roguelike games.
Wow what a blast this was! I was initially skeptical and baffled when Nightreign was announced: a Fortnite Souls game? Cmon. But I remember how much I liked base Elden Ring before getting burned out on the Mountaintop of the Giants and I was excited to jump back in.
And man does it deliver. It’s not perfect, but it’s got amazing potential to it. If you’re a fan of souls games at all, then you get a really solid 45 minute experience of monster bashing. I was always big into the coop covenants from souls games and this feels like the ultimate incarnation of it.
A new mode is coming in a few weeks which should offer a different, possibly less sonic level speedrun speed to it also. Very excited to see how this game develops and am praying as hard as I can to get an Armored Core Nightreign in the future.
I just finished up The Last of Us Part II and loved it from start to finish. It followed a recent replay of Part I, with both being the remastered versions on PC, so I dove into it for the first time with that still fresh in mind and got to experience the story as whole which has cemented it as probably one of my favourite gaming experiences now. So many twists, turns and emotional gut punches in the narrative with some real philosophical depth underpinning it all. What I found most affecting was how the characters are so well-written that you get pulled into them on an emotional level and can really empathise with the motivations behind their actions while still being aware of the ethical problems they raise, I can't remember any game ever developing such a moral conflict in me as a player. Just superbly crafted throughout.
Finally decided to bite the
neckbullet and go for Project Zomboid. It's been on my wish/watchlist for years now and seeing someone play it made me give it a go. I think it helped that I didn't go in entirely blind because I'm enjoying it far too much as I still have a lot of deep cut mechanics to figure out but I don't have to worry about learning that I need an empty pot and a paring knife to create a stew for food or even the basics of carry weight and inventory management.I always thought the basics have quite a steep learning curve which made me hesitant to start playing. I'd rather try to figure out a long term plan for food before the power cuts out so that's exactly what I'm doing. Aside from utilizing a generator and somehow learning how to operate one, I don't know yet! Which is good!
I never saw that game as a roguelike where you progressively survive longer each run. Instead, by knowing at least the basics, I feel that every run starts on an equal footing and then I'll figure out how long I can survive based on how the world spawned and if I check my doors and corners. It makes the experience different every run instead of iterative. The difference should be in how I approach difficult situations and utilize my skills, not learning whether or not a bread knife is a good weapon.
Having seen some gameplay means I knew what settings I wanted in my sandbox settings. I would've disliked some of the default settings of the Apocalypse or Survival modes, so I very very slightly upped the lootchance in highly infested areas, extended the day time to 2h real time, enabled multi-hit, and to balance that I set it to instant death on saliva infection. A single bite means death. And boy let me tell you that even 1% of all zombies becoming sprinters makes for some serious pucker moments that I think really enhance the game.
That aside: It's such a well thought out game and I love every moment of it. The dull moments are sharply contrasted by the heart thumping near death moments and they amplify eachother in a way that makes it difficult to put the game down. Reading a book and calmly going to sleep only to wake up coughing and hear banging on your door is enough of an emotional whiplash that it keeps me engaged every moment. Every trip is dangerous, even the ones where nothing happens. I'm also increasingly worried about my packrat and loot goblin tendencies.
It's randomness done right with genuine feeling emergent gameplay.
I've also played some Witchfire. A very smoothly optimized singleplayer shooter experience. By having you go to a map, clearing events and spawn areas that rotate, and making you choose between continuing or leaving through preset portals, it has a mix of elements reminding me of extraction shooters and looter shooters while not being exactly either.
It has a decent variety of weapons and playstyles, gives you the opportunity to squeeze in a single run for as long as you like, and coming back to it later. There is nothing pressuring you to keep going. Seriously, check out some footage. The game punches far above its weight.
Though it runs so buttery smooth and it almost doesn't feel like it, I do want to give a fair early access warning to those that care. The developers are very active and seem to be keen to develop something they think is fun. It's turning out well.
Path of Exile 2 just received their latest 0.3.0 update. I've had some playtime but not a lot. Overall it feels a bit smoother? Some of the changes they made to gems and elemental afflictions are noticeably better and the sprinting is a great addition. The season has an interesting enough gimmick too. Haven't hit late game yet in the new season so I can't say too much about it other than that the game seems to be in a better place right now.
I just finished my first Project Zomboid run last month. I had tried to play it years ago but couldn't last 5minutes trying to figure out UI and combat before the hordes got me. But this time I had a friend who knew the game show me the basics and it made such a huge difference that we were able to last well past the first major event.
I really like the level of detail and object interactions. I was surprised that the game feels a lot more like a sandbox than survival once through the basics though. We did end up installing a ton of mods which probably made some of it a little easier.
Yeah, exactly that. It felt unfair. I don't even know how to manage equipping a skillet, let alone survive the 5 zombies now surrounding me. Nothing about that looked fun so just watching someone else for a couple of times made me at least understand the basics.
It's a lot better when you're past that initial hurdle and hit the skill floor of understanding. Something like Shift + Scrollwheel through the inventory system is such a big difference in speed it sometimes literally means the difference between life and death.
I know it has a very substantial mod community but I haven't checked it out yet. I feel like that's something can't come back from. "Once you pop" and all that.
I'm loving the game as is and seeing how it changed in its lifetime, even between just build 41 and build 42, I think the important quality of life stuff will show up at some point anyway. The level of care by the developers is felt throughout. For now though it's a blissful ignorance that I want to keep alive because I don't know what I'm missing. Without major grievances so far I'll keep that up.
I do too. It's near enough to real life, or at least real life zombie-movie logic, that items are often intuitive enough to immediately understand whether or not something is useful. When they occasionally break down zombie movie tropes by making items a little too realistic on purpose that it becomes detrimental I'm especially enjoying myself.
League of Legends. I have developed a Varus Support off-meta build that has currently put me in a 5 game winstreak in Ranked. Even the games I did lose prior to this were down to shitty teammates deliberately inting because of my pick.
Basically, I have developed a low-cost build with just support items (Umbral Glaive, Zaz'Zak's Realmspike, Imperial Mandate, Vigilant Wardstone and Shurelya's Battlesong) which allows me to poke out my opponents in laning phase and hard-carry team fights in mid & late game. The build got me from Iron 3 to almost getting into Bronze.
Maybe it's because players in Iron are morons, and this wouldn't actually work in higher elo brackets, but I have almost consistently been able to solo carry every game I've played this on, with some exceptions.
Keystone rune choices are either First Strike or Arcane Comet, with Magical Footwear, Jack of All Trades, Manaflow Band and Gathering Storm being mandatory runes.
Currently in the process of writing a guide in case I ever decide to publish it on Mobafire.
Do you mind linking your op.gg summoner profile? I'd like to have a look!
I would but it's the same as my Reddit ID, and I kinda want to keep that separate from my Tildes name.
That's okay - I totally understand. Thank you for letting me know :)
All love from a like at-best Silver player back in Season 2 who probably would also rank Iron now, but, yes. Skill in any mid to high level team matchmaking game is less about being "good" and more about not making glaring, repeated errors to be exploited. Which If there's a meta reason something like this only works because play isn't going as expected - poor map awareness, low income from missed last hits, overextending (probably your success here with an aggressive support), bad rotation, whatever - then better players won't give you those opportunities to snowball a champion who wouldn't otherwise snowball or have the income to make it work.
That said, if the build capitalizes on bad play, and your opponents regularly give you bad play, exploit the shit out of it. Just expect a ton of similar morons pushing back in champ select because you're not following pro strats in Iron or Bronze...
I remember I got a lot of pushback from trying to play Jhin Support in Ranked. Like, people would ban the champ if I hovered it in champ select, troll pick, run it down, dodge, flame, etc.
Iron/Bronze players thinking they know better than BeryL, a two-time world champion.
I finally went through and played through an ending of Arcade Spirits. I started playing this game probably two years ago and only now actually got around to playing the second half of the game.
It's an interesting game. It's a visual novel and a relationship simulator with romance, but it is not anything like a dating sim. Instead it's simulating relationships with a group of friends. And that's a good thing because at least all of the male characters are rather poor romantic choices. They could be easily be described by their personality tropes. One is the cold calculating type, another is their medical condition, and the other is... a twink, I guess? I honestly can't remember much about them. If I were straight or bi, I'd care to romance the female characters more because I felt more emotionally invested in three of them than any of the boys. But of course, I had to pick the bear. It's in the rules.
The game is analyzing your personality through the whole thing via an absurd amount of choices, but you're not necessarily gated off from most things based on accumulated points, and the things that you are gated off on are the choices that you probably wouldn't want to make. I rather liked this because it felt like the journey I was going on was relatable for my own personality; loading back and chosing different options presented a crazy amount of script customizations that go deeper than just picking different routes. The downside is that the overall plot is not actually built for me. It kind of goes on too long with characters I didn't particularly like. But that's a good thing in a way; it made me feel like they were friends. That seems to have been the point of the story. Even if it's not a perfect story, I really loved the themes of acceptance, self-worth, and personal growth.
While I'd put Arcade on my persona list of games worth playing, I don't think I liked it enough to play the sequel, Arcade Spirits: The New Challengers.
Even though I haven’t picked up Arcade Spirits specifically, it’s nice to know that we play our games by the same rulebook. 😁
Finished my evil playthrough of BG3 at about 85 hours.
Went full Bhallspawn and enjoyed every minute of it and the Dark Urge evil ending was perfect. Truly a masterpiece of a game.
Burned through a few demos I've had downloaded while playing BG3, nothing really of note just yet. Not sure what I'll play next. Kinda thinking a shorter game as a counter to long games like BG3, but also not necessarily burned out on a long game yet either, so we will see.
Oh, also played, and beat in one session, Donut County - https://store.steampowered.com/app/702670/Donut_County/ - cute, funny, worth the current $4 sale price, I wouldn't pay the full price $13 for it though. Way too short for that.
Games I currently have installed that I have not played yet (if someone wants to toss out a suggestion, not that there aren't hundreds of other games I haven't played that are in my library, just not installed yet):
Scythe
Weird West
Iron Harvest
No Man's Sky
Ignited Steel
Starcom Nexus
Tactical Breach Wizards
Mainframe Defenders
Disco Elysium
Hellslave
Next Jump: Shmup Tactics
Besiege
Rustler
Battlestar Galactica Deadlock
RoboCop: Rogue City
The Outer Worlds
Deathloop
Figment 2: Creed Valley
Sky Racket
I just finished 100% of Tactical Breach Wizards. I had a great time with it. Tom Francis's writing always entertains. The overall story had much heavier themes, and the lightness of the dialogue was welcome.
The game itself was a lot of fun - tactical strategy always ends up mostly feeling like a puzzle game to me, and the gameplay was extended through achievements and extra goals that asked you to do specific things in each scenario that make it a little more complex.
I didn't find the game super difficult, and I did dabble with much higher difficulties for a bit. That's something that's unique to this game, as well - the difficulty settings are granular, and you can change quite a bit to make certain aspects easier or harder.
I played through Gunpoint multiple times, put almost 70 hours into Heat Signature, and have almost 35 in Tactical Breach Wizards (although I think I'm completely done at this point). Can't wait for his next game.
The Silksong hype got me, I finally started and committed to Hollow Knight. I didn't expect a sort of soulslike platformer with interesting combat and a weird (but fun) world, and have been enjoying every minute of it.
No Man's Sky: New update is amazing except for the fact you can't switch to a Corvette on your freighter. My hope is it's just an oversight they fix, but you have to dock with your Corvette to have it available. I plan to get the expedition done, but intend to try to finish Hollow Knight first.
I finally got around to playing generation zero I very much recommend it just for exploring around the world. its very unique in terms of game play it way a fun ride... every bathtub has an ashtray on the side.