29
votes
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.
With all the hullabaloo about Silksong, I decided it was time I tried Hollow Knight. I went in completely blind and my first session lasted maybe 15 minutes? I very quickly determined this game wasn't for me at all. But I couldn't get it out of my head...so I tried again...lasted a little longer...took another break...kept thinking about it...and came back to it.
This is going to be the only game I play for the next week or so, I can already tell.
As someone who hasn't played either games, why did you think the game wasn't for you? Just curious!
I think the biggest thing was that death can mean a long trek back to the area you were exploring and prior to the acquisition of certain items in the game that means just kind of wandering around until you start memorizing the map and I just didn't find that to be very fun. The game is very hands-off in general which I wasn't expecting at all.
I realise that it's an intentional design decision to make people play more carefully but I strongly disagree with death runs as a mechanic in modern video games.
I think that the modern Rayman games did this best: difficulty that feels amazing when you perfect it and the regular deaths putting you straight back into the action.
But video games are an artistic expression and it's up to the creators if they want to make design decisions to make their art accessible to a wider audience. It simply means that I won't play the game but we're blessed with so many other games nowadays.
Yeah, honestly that problem is only worse in Silk Song, but its so damn worth it. SK might be my favorite game of all time now.
That's what I've been hearing. People are frustrated with enemies dealing more damage and the scarcity of benches. Fortunately I think it'll be a while before I'm able to finish Hollow Knight so maybe something will change by then (either the game itself or my tolerance for frustration while gaming!)
They actually just announced a patch with some slight early game difficulty reductions, but I think overall things are intended to be pretty difficult. I'm 40 hours in and have definitely been frustrated at times, but the overall experience is overwhelming amazing that it's hard to focus on the negatives.
I thought the opening cutscene was a precursor to having cutscenes all over the place and was scared off. After jumping in and becoming obsessed, there's only little animated vignettes to lead to important things, and very few actual cutscenes, and it all flows well.
In the run-up to Silksong I was like "An indie with this much hype and no discernable BS has to be good!" I gave it a second shot and it's been my go-to. I had a bit of the same problem I had with Celeste where I started it then picked up some time after so had to re-watch the opening scenes on YouTube to ensure I didn't miss anything.
Strangely, I kinda liked the Dark Soulsy-ness of it with the random entrances leading to tough enemies and having to retreat back to get your geo, it's far better than just losing everything and, in general, you were likely going to be headed back that way anyway. The death/retread cycle is something I like, strangely, except for those longer sections, but at least you don't have to fight all of the same higher-level enemies every time.
I feel like that is just the process for metroidvanias and souls-likes sometimes. When I originally played the first Dark Souls, I probably quit/restart about 5 times over the span of half a year. I don't know what it was but that last time it "clicked" and I've been obsessed with the genres ever since.
I "finished" Silksong this weekend, 22 hours to kill the final boss, according to Steam I'm in the top 1.1% when completing it. It's been an excellent time and probably one of the first times I've felt relatively "normal" in the last couple of weeks. There was definitely some difficulty spikes but I think I've been able to do everything within 10 tries at least.
I actually have been going through the game after rolling credits to explore places that I missed and I definitely missed a lot, even one full ability that might have been good for platforming. Will probably end up trying for the true ending this week but if anyone has any thoughts they want to share or if they need tips and tricks feel free to ask.
Edit note: probably not finish finished yet since I skipped a bunch of side quests, but I definitely rolled credits at the very least.
I'm curious if I'd need to play hollow knight before silksong, or is it a completely different game ? I played hollow knight a little bit but haven't finished it
I'd recommend playing Hollow Knight first, but that's the way I experienced it. The developers say that they want the difficulty to be about the same but I think they forgot about that comment a while ago. (Edit: IMO Silksong is definitely harder/more punishing, not enough that it's impossible, but going back to HK after Silksong might make it feel a lot easier honestly.) Also, Silksong was developed as a sequel/expansion technically so that should be considered.
Just in a meta sense, I'd suggest just finishing Hollow Knight before getting into Silksong. No point in spending money on another game if you haven't finished the first one. It's not like they're taking Silksong off the digital stores tomorrow or anything. That's kinda why I didn't buy Resident Evil 8, because I never finished 7.
I can't imagine going back and trying to play Hollow Knight after Silksong :( even though its one of my favorite games ever, the improvements to movement and gameplay from Silksong are SO good that it would feel really bad to go back to our little empty friend's moveset.
22 hours? I'm already at 17 and haven't even gotten into the Citadel. Granted, I've been exploring everything, granting every Wish, and getting stuck on some optional bosses, but 22 hours feels too fast unless you're only doing the core story. Is that basically what you did, or are you just that much better?
I only did the core story, I didn't even get a specific traversal ability until after I killed the last boss before the credits. I'm going through all the wishes right now and I suspect there's probably something after that , so I don't know if i can say I'm done done.
Sorry to be this guy but... (Not really spoilers for Silk Song, but kinda spoils how the game is laid out)
Click to expand spoiler.
are you sure you finished it? There might be something really important you're missing. 22 hours seems really low considering what goes into getting the true ending.
Yeah, I've definitely missed a lot but I think it's more of a "I rolled the credits at least" kinda deal. Especially with the way Hollow Knight is I bet I'm still missing a whole ton of things.
Silksong story progression spoiler (no details, just a structural thing)
Click to expand spoiler.
Yeah if you haven't gotten to Act 3 you're missing out on the most amazing part of the game, it's really really really good. I'm not talking about like side quests and stuff either, it's main story stuff.
Like a lot of people I've been on Hollow Knight: Silksong when I can spare some time after a busy weekend. All I can say is that I love it and it's pretty much all I could have asked for in a sequel.
I love the new enemies and world. Everything is somehow both darker and more humorous at the same time, it is a very cool line the game walks.
I'm really not a sweaty type gamer, but can only partially agree with some of the criticism I've been seeing online about the difficulty. I think a lot of enemies and environments dealing double damage feels really cheap sometimes, but I haven't had to replay any bosses more than 5-6 times before getting through them. It feels like I'm somewhere in the mid-game though so I might feel differently later, who knows. The exploration, puzzles and platforming feel so rewarding, I really don't mind some harder enemies. The game is so huge, if I can't get through something, I can just buzz off to the other side of the map and start exploring new areas.
Neon White
Doing my second playthrough. Been almost 2 years since my first. Unfortunately the game doesn't have "files" or profiles" so I had to lose all the data from my first go. Except I guess my old times are still on the leaderboard, but I don't really care about it. Skipping all the bad anime dialogue this time feels great.
I forgot a ton of stuff about the levels, which is great cause I get to discover them again. Finding the collectibles on the later levels feels like a bit more of a chore this time around. I could just look up where they are, but don't feel like it.
The weapons - mainly their movement tricks - are still a blast, and I think the levels/courses are designed really well.
Celeste
After beating some intermediate levels from the Strawberry Jam Collab and the 4th D-side, I was looking for more levels to play that weren't as challenging. I tried a mod called Breeze Contest. It has ~75 levels. I tried around 5 levels but unfortunately didn't like any of them much. A couple of them were a lot harder than I was expecting, too. Maybe I wandered too far in the lobby (a thing I still dislike about these mods...just give me a list).
I'm sure I'm not the first to say it in conversation with you, but to their credit though, they really nailed a vibe and an era. Reminds me a lot of what my classmates were like when I was like 11-15 during 2000s emo and scene fads. Violet is extremely cringe but in the exact same way that I cringe at my actual memories of the era that the dialogue feels like a callback to. In that way, it's really good at being that specific kind of bad.
I actually dig the plot itself though, like behind the cheesy dialogue the actual events that happened in the story were entertaining. Also the aesthetic of levels goes crazy and the soundtrack is something I still put on regularly years later. Absolutely fantastic game that for my personal standards was second only to Elden Ring that year and honestly, more likely due for a replay sooner than ER. Just more digestible, it's gonna be an eternity until I want to play ER again, additionally with Nightreign sating my appetite for ER, pushing back any replay of that further.
My best friend decided a year ago to get married on Silksong release weekend so only had a few hours to get into it. I have a bad habit of intentionally trying to sequence break in Metroidvanias and Hollow Knight did that far better than most. Here I managed to skip chunks of Act 1 by ignoring skill check enemies/bosses and brute forcing my way through to abilities I should not have. A lot of fights are a real grind but it feels like pushing through the red ants got me a really good feel for combos, smarter use of dash and using tools.
Everything else about the game is spectacular. Environments are gorgeously detailed and this team has a talent for making areas blend into each other. Hornet is just a fun and violent character and its sweet to see her have an identity of her own in the gibberish voice lines, interactions and journal notes. And I've already lost track of how many unique animations they have for everything from bouncing off a flower to the multiple fighting styles. However I can't shake the feeling that your character is not the "real" Hornet from the last game, or that this game is happening a very long time after the last.
Also the word is just brimming with subtle details. From the squishy moss in the opening area to tiny ants dragging away enemy remains and events that are easy to miss like the spa incident or the funeral scene.
Will probably sink an ungodly amount of hours into it and I can see it rivaling the 150 I put into the previous game. If this game is not part of the Godmaster plot line then I expect it to come up in DLC. And it would be funny if they just port the knight into this game and Hornet into the previous game.
I can't tell you how many times I re-read this trying to understand because I took it too literally.
"Your friend was waiting for Silksong to be announced to choose their wedding date? They planned a wedding in 2 weeks? How did they afford anything on such short notice? Why did they choose this? Why was their partner on board with this? Are these the biggest Hollow Knight fans ever or something? Was this a themed wedding? What does @SloMoMonday mean by "only had a few hours to get into it" - are they trying to beat the game in time for the wedding?"
Like no joke, this one took me minutes to actually understand.
Sorry for the confusion. The fatigue and jet lag really got to me last night.
Summary: My buddy planned his wedding a year ago for last weekend. And then Silksong was announced for last Thursday. So we had a running joke that he planned to have his wedding on the weekend of a big release.
Of course it wasn't that big a deal but the whole thing was a lot funnier when in a festive mood.
Anyway we all flew down for the event. Was a lovely time. I had too much fun on too little sleep. Then got a few hours to play on the plane ride back. And I enjoyed it so much that needed to gush about it for a bit.
Two of my gay friends got married the weekend that Kylie Minogue released Tension, so we had similar jokes about what a queer power move that was.
Oh to be clear I'm not saying you did anything wrong with your wording there, I'm the one who should've picked up on the obvious, that it was scheduled long in advance of that date and Silksong had nothing to do with it. I was just getting stuck on it in my own head.
Tunic
Got an achievement last night for Secret Treasure #5... I have solid guesses for where 1 and 2 are but boy howdy there seems to be a lot of meat on this bone I haven't even caught a whiff of. I don't want to get derailed too much so this is probably going to be a multiple-playthrough experience for me.
This game is on my list to play this year! I've seen a couple of videos of people playing it and it looks awesome. I really like the art style and mood of it. How long have you been playing it?
15-20 hours maybe? I'm not moving very quickly but also I'm clearly missing stuff so playtime is going to vary a lot based on how much secret-finding you're doing.
Tunic has been on my list for several years now. I played like 3 or 4 hours of it back 2022 on Game pass and then put it down because I got a Steam Deck.
Never did pick it up again because I canceled Game pass and just haven't gotten around to buying it on Steam. Such a cool game.
Sekiro
I'm at the last boss!*
...but I need a break from this game.
I've enjoyed the game so far and beaten most of the optional bosses, but even the hardest bosses so far have only taken a couple of hours to beat. In the case of this last boss:
My skill level is not where it needs to be to beat this guy, and it's going to take a substantial time investment to get it there - significantly more than just a couple of hours.
I'm burned out. Although I'm still making progress when practising, it's starting to feel like studying for an exam rather than fun. I can't be spending my limited gaming time like that, and it doesn't feel like a mindset conducive to winning either.
To be clear, though:
I don't consider this last boss to be a BS difficulty spike and he hasn't soured me on the game at all - I still think it's great. The fact that I'm struggling on him is on me for not having completely mastered consistent deflection and perilous attack responses, both of which the game has been teaching since the tutorial. If you can pull those off instinctively and on demand, there's no doubt in my mind that he is totally beatable - but conversely, he is tuned to basically 2-shot you from full health if you screw up, and this is a long, unforgiving fight with many opportunities to screw up if you haven't mastered those skills (unless you cheese him with AI exploits, but I'm not going to do that just to say I 'beat' him :P).
I definitely haven't given up. I will come back when I'm in a more receptive frame of mind, do the Rocky training montage and beat this guy. I just need to mix it up for a bit with something other than just playing this fight.
*I know you can potentially get a different last boss. This is
Spoiler
Isshin, the Sword SaintI also thought this. I remember finishing my play session saying to the stream, "this is going to be one of those 300+ attempts bosses, I can already tell." The next time I played, I won in about 30-40 minutes of attempts. Really took myself by surprise there.
Of course I can't promise the same will happen for you, and I understand feeling burned out so don't take my comment as pressuring you to force through it or anything.
The nice thing is, since the game is so simple mechanically and straightforward, I would argue it's 100% one of those games you could shelf for like literally 2 years if you wanted, and then probably still sit down and start progressing the final boss just fine. Within a few attempts you'd be right back in the swing of things, or if it doesn't go so well, there's always reflection of strength refights from the sculptor's idol as a way to derust. In other words, not one of those games where "if you don't finish it now, you will have to start over later."
Absolutely. I also appreciate that the checkpoint is right outside the boss door, so there's no runback and really no friction to just practising until you learn every part of the fight inside out.
Might work out better for me to just practice a few runs every day rather than bang my head against it for long periods on end.
I've done this. Didn't do it with Sekiro but did it with some Dark Souls bosses, had some sessions that were no more than like 1-3 boss fight attempts and then shut the game off for the day until one day I won. When I played my very first FromSoft game, DS1, I sometimes played as little as making it from one bonfire to another, or even not making any traversal progress but just getting enough souls for a level and then qutting game for the day until eventually I hit the breakthrough and the game clicked.
Also don't underestimate how much gains can be made from resting and sleeping over what you learned from last time you played. I can't tell you how many times I have been banging my head against something difficult in a video game and then after sleeping, it's a pushover the next day. I've experienced something similar with learning guitar parts too. The brain really does figure things out and lock things in during sleep somehow.
I wanted to play this game sooo bad when it first came out. My partner at the time got it and after playing it for a few minutes I realized I was doomed. It was my first FromSoftware game and after playing all of the modern ones I'm just not good at these kinds of games. I get so stressed playing them! I can see why you would say you're starting to feel like you're studying.
It's definitely a challenging game, and they really use everything from the enemy design, the music and the SFX to the flashy attacks and dramatic camera angles to try and intimidate the player, but in the end, the player has the ultimate advantage - being able to retry unlimited times and coming back more experienced each time!
Conversely, however strong a boss is, they are defeated for good if they lose even once.
When you think of it that way, you could even say that these games are easier than those old NES games with limited lives / continues.
I don't know if you've already tried this, but you could try Mist Raven or the umbrella. Both fantastic defensive prosthetics. I like Mist Raven in particular, since it allows you to do lightning reversals without taking damage.
I definitely found the umbrella useful in the spear phase, but I would often get hit right after going for the projected force counter because he just doesn't stop attacking after I shield the initial couple of hits with the umbrella.
I feel like I could win if I learned the openings for safely doing that a bit better because the umbrella is very inexpensive to use.
Another part of me feels like maybe I'm just taking the long way around by relying on the umbrella and I should just grit my teeth and learn to deflect / mikiri his spear phase, with the umbrella only used to stay close during the charge attacks. It seems to me that the fight can actually end quite quickly if you can sustain the high-pressure posture damage focused approach, but this obviously:
On top of that, I haven't worked out when it's safe to heal when fighting close up, and running away to heal just resets his posture - but if I don't heal, my posture will just build that much faster!
I felt in love for Sekiro. It was a soul game that really pushed me out of the comfort zone.
Tell me what u want about dark souls, but at the end of the day, with the levelling and the shield, there are no really hard encounters.
If things get tricky... you level up a bit, you use the shield, and you are good. But not in Sekiro, where skill matters for real.
Funny story.... when i reached the last boss, I watched a ton of videos where they told u it's very difficult and showed you how to cheese him.
... I tried those methods a lot of times... never managed to take him to half of his health bar.
So i decided to use the skills learnt during the game... killed him at the 5th try.
I suppose there is a lesson here...
I’m still going on Donkey Kong: Bananza and it’s absolutely fantastic. I love that I don’t have to worry about achievements, missions, or anything. I smash as much or as little as I want, but most of the bananas are genuinely fun to find, especially the challenge rooms (I forget what they’re actually called). That said… I think something with the game is a migraine trigger for me. I suspect it’s the switch 2’s HDR, as I’ve heard it isn’t the best or is overly bright. I might try turning off HDR the next time I play.
The Battle on the Bricks in iRacing did not go how my team expected. We fielded two Ferrari 499P GTP cars and neither finished. In both cars, we crashed from the lead in separate splits… I’m slightly disappointed since usually I’m one of the slower drivers on my team, but I was the fastest car on track this time and my teammate usually doesn’t make mistakes like crashing from the lead. Oh well, on to the next one. I used to get super beat up over bad results, but after getting an endurance win and a handful of podiums in the last couple years, the monkey is off my back and it’s easier to shrug off a bad one.
I briefly played Hollow Knight last week as I’ve never beaten it, but despite how much I generally love metroidvanias, it was just not clicking with me. I’m sure I’ll eventually beat it and get Silksong, but apparently not this week. I’m tentatively waiting to see if Borderlands 4 is good anyways, so fingers crossed for that.
Tokyo Extreme Racer also finally got a 1.0 release date of later this month and HONDA IS COMING!!! I’ve been vibing in the game a bit last week, so it couldn’t have been better timing.
Please give Hollow Knight another chance. It starts slow but I promise its worth it. And Silk Song is so incredibly good you owe it to yourself to play both if you can!
Finished playing Split Fiction and the ending was amazing, this is one of the best experiences I've ever had, the best thing is that I can't even think of what genre of game I would classify it as. It has a little bit of everything, and everything plays really well. Definitely my GOTY.
Playing 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors: So far, no strong opinion of it, it's ok, it's neither easy nor hard, the characters are OK, and the biggest impression I have had of the game is when the puzzles make me go "huh".
I read it has multiple endings. I'm playing it blindly, so if I happen to like whatever ending I get, I'll go try to see the rest of them, but we'll see.
Playing Donkey Kong Country for the Super Famicom, I've never finished any DK game, and I'm trying to play the ones I own in release order. Even back then, I thought the SNES games looked way better than the N64 ones, and time has confirmed this to me. It's amazing how this game looks and plays. And yeah, it's tough as nails, but not in a BS way.
My gf convinced me to play Hollow Knight, and while it plays smoothly and feels incredibly polished, I honestly can’t stand metroidvanias. I find the constant backtracking and lack of clear direction frustrating. That said, the visuals are stunning and the controls are tight and responsive. I just wish a game this well-crafted had a more linear structure, something that maintained the pacing better, because when you're in the flow, it’s genuinely enjoyable to play.
In terms of 999, you need to get a specific ending first, and then do a second playthrough to get the true ending. Thankfully, I landed on the correct ending by sheer blind luck, but just thought you should know this.
I've been bouncing around quite a bit before settling on something to play, which initially was HROT a Boom Shoot I started quite awhile ago, played apparently up until the last two levels of the last episode and then just dropped.
So I started playing again, not realizing how close I was to the end and ended-up finishing it. Now, it's been months, possibly longer since I last played it, but I really loved it and it reminded of a game I never actually played, though have strong memories of seeing screenshots of in PC Gamer: Chasm: The Rift from 1997. HROT has strong similarities in the graphical style and also takes place in Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, I believe) in the...I think late 80's?
Anyway, I did enjoy it, but the last two levels were an absolute slog. The penultimate level is basically three monster arenas strung together by hallways and ends-up being pretty tedious and feels pretty thoughtless, even if one of the arenas is kind of cool (a trainyard, with passing trains to watch out for). The last level is just a simple boss fight against a shirtless Putin on a Bear that has 3 pretty obnoxious phases. I eventually decided to just cheat in some ammunition because I kept losing this fight, as Putin is a damage sponge and by the middle of the third phase, I was completely out of ammo. I could have probably thought of a new strategy, which is to cool the enemies he spawns in during the third phase to recover ammo, but the fight itself felt so uninspired and boring, I really just wanted to be done with it.
Still worth a play, I think, but those last two levels could just be God moded through and you wouldn't really be missing much.
After that I decided to start playing Robocop: Rogue City which seems pretty cool so far. I made it through the Prologue and the opening mission where you have a small city block to roam and do little missions in, as well as issue tickets for various violations; it's definitely neat and I certainly feel like Robocop, to the point that I refuse to use any of the other weapon pick-ups and prefer to just stick with Robocop's gun for the authenticity. The game also really encourages me to roleplay as Robocop through the dialogue, which is just fun. I'm looking forward to playing some more of this one, though I don't know if it's a game I'll end-up seeing through to the end. It's fun enough, but it has a lot of stuff that I don't know is necessarily additive, such as all the RPG stuff with it.
Lastly, I picked-up my Abiotic Factor save again. I have about 60-hours on this save and ended-up putting it down about two months ago, right before the big final update to the game. I had simultaneously gotten frustrated with a portal world I was in, as it was very difficult and I was ready to not reach the end of the current content; but then after that, I kind of lost interest and thus the long break. But I'm happy to be back; I was a little worried I wouldn't remember what the hell I was doing, but it was pretty quick to pick back up and start sorting my stuff out. I did manage to finish the difficult portal world I was going into, so I'm happy to be done with that and am now ready to make some progress through the Reactors area, after I get a few more ingredients to update my armor...
Still playing Darktide
This is one of those games where most of the end game progression is skill based and I’m still enjoying getting better at all the classes.
I got the ‘Auric Storm Survivor’ title without cheesing it, at least directly. I say that because a lot of people try and get the title (which requires 5 consecutive Auric Maelstrom missions completed without dying, which are kind of like a hard difficulty with an extra set of modifiers) by just dropping the mission if they get downed but before they die. I didn’t need to do this though because I just played the wildly overtuned Arbites class which definitely needs to be nerfed a bit.
I think I need to get a little bit better with the other classes before I start pushing through Havoc. Psyker is one of my favourite classes but I still go down at least once every game on Auric.
I started playing Final Fantasy XII again. The story is interesting and the art style is nice. I like the game universe and gambit system. The voice acting is all over the place (mostly bad in a fun way and wildly over-compressed on the Switch version of the remaster). Enjoying it!
I played it about halfway through when the remaster came out on the Switch years ago. I'm not sure why I stopped playing it back then. Picking it up again now, it's been really fun! That battle system is so wildly different than all the non-MMO FF games. It reminds me of Xenoblade, though I know FFXII was first.
I've played most of the Final Fantasy games throughout my life and there are a couple that are in the same universe that I really love: Final Fantasy Tactics, Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and Final Fantasy XII. There are 2 (?) more games in this game universe, but I haven't played them. I never finished the first Final Fantasy Tactics game, either. I think a remake is coming out soon that I'll absolutely download. Next on my list is Vagrant Story but need to look into the best way to play it.
I could be wrong and should probably check some footage before I post this comment but I'm gonna be lazy and just say: I seem to remember the voice acting always sounding over-compressed in all versions of FFXII, is it really a switch specific thing?
On a separate note, I really like the ivalice vibes and XII is awesome. My original playthrough was on the PS2 version and I'm quite glad it was cause even though combat at 1x speed while fully gambited up can be a bit too passive for me today, I better understood what was going right and wrong with my gambits setups and felt more invested in the results of my configuration when I was keeping an eye on combat in real time.
Fast-forward has damaged my experience replaying the game, in some ways. I of course now feel less invested in tuning my gambits when the combat resolves so fast I can hardly tell what's going on, and using fast forward for overworld movement speed really takes the journey out of some parts of the game. In particular, the first time I played I was in absolute awe at the journey across the sandseas to raithwall (and others). The amount of time it took really added to the perception of distance, I felt like I had never travelled so far in a JRPG before. Now, that's probably not actually true, and with fast forward in play, it became clearer to me that the zones are perhaps not really that big, but in a way the slower movement at 1x served the sense of scale. Maybe this feeling about fast forward is kind of like how some MMO players say flying mounts "shrink" the world.
Of course, despite all these feelings, as an adult who is concerned about time, I can't actually resist using fast forward so it's pretty much all self-inflicted...
I’ve only ever played the Switch version so I can’t speak on if the original had the same over compression issue. I just assumed, really. I think I remember hearing about the Dark Souls remaster having better/more faithful graphics but worse audio for similar reasons.
I have slowly been playing a lot of older games on a Retroid Pocket 5 and always have it at least at 2x speed. I often think about how much time I spent playing games at normal speed and can’t imagine having that much time now.
Dark Souls Remastered on switch is weird, and very different from its PC and other consoles counterparts. It doesn't have a majority of the graphical and lighting changes that Remastered has, it usually looks like the older PC "Prepare to Die Edition." In the case of that game, the audio compression issue is known to be unique to switch. There's a lot of interesting quirks to that release TBH
In the case of FFXII, I had more time this time and checked some PS2 emulation footage and can see that this audio quality is exactly how I remember it, the game has always kinda sounded like that, and you should also notice it's not across all sfx, it's primarily voice acting that is affected. Likewise it also sounds the same in non-switch versions of The Zodiac Age.
To my ear it sounds worst on lower end bassy voices like Basch speaking at the bottom pitches of his range, what do you think?
I've been on a survival crafting binge in the past few months, so I finally have something to contribute too!
I tried:
V Rising. Fun game, I love the vampire aesthetic, and while this game's kind of strict grid-based base building can feel a little limiting, I thought it was the best implementation of a grid-based building system I've ever seen. The system they implemented for moving bases especially impressed me. That said, in the later game bosses were beginning to border on "unfun" for me. Maybe I'm just missing something, but plenty of boss attacks at that point in the game just feel borderline unavoidable to me, even if your entire build revolves around mobility and dodge cooldowns, so I took a break from the game for now. Maybe I'll come back to it at some point and finish off the last few bosses.
The Division 2: I always saw criticisms floating around the internet about the game being unfun because of "bullet spongey enemies" and I just absolutely don't understand that at all. Sure, some enemies are like Call of Duty juggernauts and take a few more bullets to kill, but that's by design – they're wearing heavy full body armour. Higher difficulties have higher enemy HP, but if that bothers you, just don't play at higher difficulties? I don't see the problem here. Very fun game, though after I completed the main story (which was entirely unimpressive, but the gameplay made up for it), I realized that I didn't look forward to the grind for all the good exotics, so I put the game down for now. Still got over 50h of great fun out of it though (especially once I discovered the "Determined Head Hunter" perk combination)!
Once Human: This one might be a bit more controversial. I was really intrigued by the whole "season" mechanic that the game uses, similar to PoE, so I was looking forward to try it out. I installed it, discovered that you can't rebind your interact key to E, and also can't rebind a bunch of other keys, and immediately uninstalled it. Maybe that's a petty reason to uninstall a game, but I really don't feel like changing up my whole gaming muscle memory just for one game.
Palia: Played this one for a handful of hours and, to be honest, I really fail to see the appeal. Maybe it's because I played so many other games in this genre lately, so I've had first-hand experience with how nice a well thought-out crafting and gathering system can feel, but both the crafting and the gathering in this game just feel so tedious. With gathering, you just hold left mouse at a gathering node for 15 seconds until it's done. As for crafting: like most survival crafting games, you first need to refine your materials before you can use them in most crafts. Refining anything, however, takes an exorbitant amount of time, much longer than any other game in this genre that I've played. You need to wait 30 real-time minutes to craft a simple table, for heaven's sakes. As far as I know, there are also no mounts or any other way to get around the massive map faster, so you end up spending a majority of the time sprinting back and forth between your base and the gathering nodes. There's a button to instantly return to your home, but it's on a 30-minute cooldown.
I will say that all the outfits in the shop look fantastic. That's the one thing I really liked about the game – whatever team is responsible for designing the clothes, they're absolutely on point. A lot of games could take a page from Palia in that regard. Unfortunately, all outfits except for the starting ones are cash shop only, with limited dyeing, so even if I continued to play the game, I couldn't see myself ever buying one of those outfits.
Dune: Awakening: Currently my main groove. The game is very buggy, but the devs are continuously improving it and it's coming along very nicely. This game definitely has the best new-player experience out of any survival crafting game I've played. The first 60-80 hours feature a near-perfect progression for this genre. The endgame does have quite a few problems, but again – they're working on it. I'm optimistic they'll find a way to fix the endgame and make it feel fun and rewarding for everyone in the future.
Abiotic Factor: I recently found this gem, and holy crap. I only have about 10 hours in the game so far, but I just cannot put it down. This game perfectly encapsulates why I prefer indie games over triple A games. The game is only 5 GBs in size, and yet it's more complex, more well thought-out, more atmospheric, more bug-free, and a dozen other adjectives, than most triple A games that have released in recent years. I cannot praise this game enough, and I'm sure I'll praise it even more when I'm done. If you've ever wanted to play Half Life, but not as an omnipotent security guard but as a hapless scientist in a survival crafting game, this game is it. Or if you just want to play a survival crafting game without the classic gathering node system (in this game you get materials through scavenging and foraging, not chopping down trees or picking at rocks).
I'd like to buy Abiotic Factor and play it in coop. Is it a game that is "one and done" (and if so, how long would it last?), or are there features that enhance replayability?
You might want to ask @BeardyHat about that. Based on their post, they're much further in the game than I am. But to my knowledge, everything in the game is handcrafted and there are no procedurally generated elements, so in that sense I don't see big replayability potential here, at least not for me. However, because the game is so much fun and (I think at least) quite big in scope, I could definitely see myself playing the game for close to a hundred hours if not more.
There is class and trait selection at the start of the game, and
these are permanent and cannot be changed once you start your character(there's actually a way to respec, but you don't unlock access to it until later on), but your class only really gives you extra experience points when leveling certain skills. Traits are more interesting – there are positive and negative traits (choosing some negative traits allows you to pick more positive traits), and some of them have quite debilitating or powerful effects. Still, I don't think I would start a new playthrough just for the traits alone.Maybe there are mods that add new levels or change the gameplay to a sufficiently significant degree to warrant a new playthrough? I'm not really sure how moddable the game is and, in the interest of avoiding spoilers, haven't done any research in that regard yet.
Depends on how you define replayable, but in the strictest sense, no it is not replayable. It's pretty linear and in multiple playthroughs you're always going to be building the same stuff to survive and going through the same areas in the same order; that said, you can make difference choices about where you place your base.
I haven't played Co-op at all, so this is all based on my solo experience, but I've played just over 90-hours total between two different games. I started one initially last year and played about 30-hours and then earlier this year started another one and now I'm at the 60-hour mark on that particular game. So I have replayed a bit of the game, but I certainly don't mind; exploring and fighting, trying to figure out what you need and how to get it is a lot of fun.
It seems to me that each area takes me about 10-hours to explore a piece. I just started on the second to last area yesterday, so it looks like I've probably got another 20-hours or so left of the game for a total of 80 in this current playthrough. I could see myself playing it again in the future, maybe in a year or two, because even though I generally know the beats, it's a good time and I find it infinitely more fun than a more open ended, procedural survival game like Valheim. Not that I hate Valheim or anything, but I like having these handcrafted areas to explore, it feels much more interesting and rewarding.
For The Division 2 IIRC it was another case of a long patching cycle post release, so a lot of early impressions probably don't matter anymore. I do remember going from 1 to 2 and they basically made the harder endgame guys from 1 the 'standard' enemies in 2 at launch. Hence the dislike.
Similar to something like Destiny 2 or WoW where there has been so much commentary about different phases/versions of the game at this point you basically need a rubric with what version each is talking about for them to be relevant.
The Slormancer
I finally beat Adam Nostrus. I had to craft a bit more to focus on my build's strengths, and level up a Slorm Reaper that is stronger against elites, but I did it. Of all my life, it's certainly the boss that killed me the most times without me giving up. Because each time I failed, I knew what was wrong and what I could do to do better next time. Really my GOTY so far.
Now there's still more grind to do to beat the titular boss.
R.E.P.O.
You're a robot, exploring and looting cursed places of a post-apocalyptic world. Find as many valuables as possible, sell them, and try to not break them in the process, or get yourself killed by weird monsters. It's incredibly funny if you manage to get 4-6 people together. The proximity chat with the robots opening their mouth (like South Park Canadian characters) and their round eyes looking everywhere is awesome.
At 2-3 players, it's still great, but you're playing less recklessly because death is pretty punitive: you can only be revived when extracting valuables, which only happens 1-3 times per level. So you're alone waiting to get respawned, and/or the other player is alone trying to save you and get enough money to progress. There are a few mods that make it easier to resuscitate players, and IMO it's a necessity with a low player count.
I wouldn't recommend to play solo, as half the fun comes from the shit talking and the blunders that doom the team.
Peak
You're a group of boy-scouts, stranded on a beach, and you need to reach the peak of the island. Another great co-op game that offers something different, as you need to manage food and tools to find a path and climb to the top
I finally got some time to do an expedition with a friend. Despite the child-like art direction, this game is difficult and requires some dedication: we played for 1h45 straight and died at the beginning of the last biome. I'd love to play more of it, but you're forced to finish the expedition in one sitting, so that's some commitment. And if you all die, too bad.
I have just started Shinobi: Art of Vengeance.
Im having a blast so far. Its a hack and slash side scroller with large sprawling maps.
I really love the ninja in Neo Tokyo vibe, and the 2d sprites blend really well with the variety of art styles in the various stages to make a really aesthetically pleasing composite.
The combat so far has been really fun and dynamic. There core game encourages you to be proactive and blitz your enemies to stun lock them, while managing your dodges to account for having 3-5 enemies attacking.
There are a number of extra challenges in both combat and platforming to encourage revisitng stages and exploration. The game has been regularly introducing new skills and abilities to facilitate the platforming.
All in all Ive really enjoyed it so far. Im in the 3rd story segment so far, so Ill see how it progresses from here.
I’m very much looking forward to getting this one. I’m kind of just waiting until I finish 2 in progress games and I want to wait to see if I’ll be picking up borderlands 4 or not, but if not, I’ll probably work Shinobi into my calendar this month.
I bought No Man's Sky a few days ago when it was on sale
Had my eyes on it for a long time since release because it felt like the perfect space game from the trailers and was subsequently disappointed on how it was released
But after seeing the honest effort by Hello Games, I even held back pirating it and finally got it at a discount
And now I'm 24 hours in already
It’s such a huge game, regardless of the scope of the universe. I didn’t expect to use it as meditative relief…
NGU Idle:
Nearly thirteen days into the final long rebirth (LRB) before The End. Part of me thinks I should have just done another few weeks of rebirths to level up my MacGuffin Fragments more before doing this, because I'm still not quite at the level of stats needed to defeat Amalgamate v2 despite spending nearly two weeks of real world time. I've clocked 5,314.7 hours played into this idle game according to Steam and I'm still three titans away from finishing.
I cannot believe what an absolute timesink this game has turned into. Nor how woefully unfinished the game seems to be by the time you reach Sadistic difficulty. 4G pretty much abandoned this game (and its successor, NGU Industries) like a deadbeat dad who went out to buy milk and never came back.
World of Warcraft: Legion Remix:
I have played a little bit of Turtle WoW, but given the recent lawsuit, I haven't been so active on there.
Part of me is worried (from the wording of the legal complaint) that Blizzard will compel their server hosts to give up their data and that they'll go after current/former subscribers who had played on Turtle.
What I have been playing more of is Legion Remix on the PTR, and I've already reported a few bugs from playtesting. Can't use the flight master to fly from Dalaran to Stormheim because there's a debuff that desyncs you from the timeline and teleports you back to Dalaran if you fly too close to the Broken Shore (thanks to Blizzard's deliberate and frankly unwarranted time-gating of this event.) I was also unable to finish the Titanstrike (BM Hunter) artifact weapon quest because the game almost immediately boots you back to Dalaran as soon as you travel to Ulduar as part of that scenario.
I am legitimately blown away at how insanely good (and insanely huge) Silksong is. The game just keeps going and going and going and going. Hollow Knight was one of my favorite games of all time and Silksong just took everything I loved about that game and turned it up to 11. It is absolutely mindblowing how it's possible this game was made by such a small team. It's a must play if you have the time and the skill to put in. If you don't have the skill you should honestly at least watch someone play it, its that good.
I've mostly been playing Pioneer. It's a Free software take on what is essentially Elite II: Frontier, a space sim set in a future where much of the galaxy has been colonized by humans, You travel around with a ship to make ends meet however you want (trade, mercenary work, exploration, smuggling, policing, assassinations, passenger traffic, courier services, shipping...), with very simple simulations of things like economics, conflict, legal systems and so on. It's all at realistic scales, although you can use some kind of wormhole travel and time compression to make travel bearable. The spaceships have crazy levels of acceleration, yet even so it would take days to do even interplanetary travel in real time.
I enjoy it. Although a lot of its basic concepts are more fleshed out in Elite: Dangerous and its production values are nowhere near that, the relative simplicity and quick startup makes this fun enough in its own right. Very addictive, especially if you have a weakness for "numbers going up". They can do that forever here, and there's always a better ship to buy or some subsystem of the ship to upgrade. If you like the original Elite or Frontier, it's a no-brainer, but I can't make a great case for why you shouldn't play Elite: Dangerous instead.
The greatest weakness is the sound I think. The music and sound effects really aren't to my liking. The lighting and graphics aren't great either, but functional. The ship models in particular are actually pretty great.
Still playing LOTRO. I'm going through a big Tolkien kick this month (finished the Silmarillion, Children of Húrin and Beren and Lúthien, working on Fall of Gondolin), and playing LOTRO is part of that. I love being able to zone out and catch up on my audio books while I hand around Rivendell.
Legitimately surprised to find another lotro player here. It's not exactly a popular game.
I have my moments! I've never had a high level character. My Mariner is the furthest I've gone (lvl 48). Currently on Book 13, and I love the story.
It's mostly why I've abandoned other MMOs. I want to get immersed in the world, and I'm finding that increasingly hard if the world isn't trying to be immersive.
Oh yeah, the lv40-50 stretch is, sadly, a bit of a pain in the butt. It's manageable, though. Sadly, I've found The Wastes + Mordor to be an even bigger pain in the butt, so I kind of quit the game around that time, and only last year did I (somewhat) come back to it with a new character and played all the way to The Wastes.
Moria is pretty interesting. Lothlorien, not so much. Mirkwood and the entirety of Rohan are easily my favourite areas to quest in at all, though.
I'm enjoying the story, but it is dragging a bit. I know I'll be done by Book 15, and like I mentioned, I like the story. But I don't like the delivery of messages back and forth between elves all over Eriador. It wastes a lot of the little time I have after work.
I'm surprised that I'm probably going to hit 50 just with book quests alone. I'm going to finish that out, finish the bingo quest in the area, the Mariner quests, and then abandon everything and start fresh in Moria I think.
Very understandable; vol 1 is a little tedious sometimes, especially after book 8, and I'm aware many folks even skip that questline altogether in future characters after doing it once. I feel like I'm the only player who actually kind of enjoys that "back-and-forth"ing simply because it forces you to revisit most of the areas you were previously questing in. Though, yeah, it's a lot faster if you're using a class with "teleportation" abilities (e.g. hunter) or a class that allows someone else to summon you anywhere (e.g. guardian). Or if you've ever paid for VIP even once.
I probably should pay for VIP. I had a goal that if I got to lvl 50, I could justify it.
I'm a Mariner, so the sailing abilities help, but I think I need to write down a list. I didn't even know I could swift travel to Bree and Michel Delving from Celondim, which means I have a permamen port there.
I don't mind the back and forth so much, but I find that specifically getting to Rivendell is a pain. Not sure why, maybe I'm not porting to the right place. I usually port to Swanfleet and go from there, but not sure if that's actually faster.
How does the game change at Moria? Are the epic quests more streamlined after that?
Paying for VIP even just once and then not paying it again is generally worth it as you get some permanent benefits from it (e.g. fast travel is available everywhere for any character you had ready created when you had VIP). So I can definitely recommended. VIP is a lot less needed "permanently" nowadays that they gave out almost all questpacks for free, but it was definitely very much needed in the past where anything except for the 3 starter areas and Bree was paid.
There's actually a trick for that. In the Prancing Pony, in Gandalf's room, Gandalf gives you the quest "The Road to the Lonely Mountain", which teleports you to Rivendell once you accept it. It's a quest that only concerns skirmishes, AFAIK, so most of us never complete it and just use it as a fast travel to go to Rivendell instantly.
The answer is kind of "it depends". Vol. 2 is kind of its own thing - almost the entirety of it happens in Moria. In the later parts of the book there is some back-and-forthing, but you're just going to use stables to travel between those areas because otherwise Moria is a little bit of a maze. The entire area is more or less "love it or hate it" design-wise. But I do find the book a lot more linear than vol. 1 by far.
Vol. 3 is, in my view, the most linear of them all. After it actually gets into the story, it is in fact so linear that it doesn't even feel like an epic book, but instead feels like just a normal (albeit long-form) quest guiding you to each questing area. It has its overarching story (& some very lovable characters).
Vol. 4 doesn't follow that playbook itself (it's definitely less linear), but it's pretty good with the exception of Minas Tirith. Minas Tirith is honestly a terrible area to quest in in general, and you can already imagine why.
I can say that the game goes through a lot of changes after you're done with Eriador - as Eriador was kind of its own "era" in terms of game development. Newer mechanics, gear actually can look really good cosmetically, + the experimented with different questing styles throughout the years.
Personally, my favourite area is, by far, Dunland, mainly due to the lore and worldbuilding in that area. I genuinely love the Dunlendings.
Welp, I wish I had known about that Rivendell trick! I just finished Book 15 last night (and loved it, and am gutted I don't get to interact with Narmeleth anymore), and started the beginning quest for Moria. My plan is enter Moria, clean up the Mariner and housing quests languishing in my quest log, abandon everything else and then start fresh from Moria (and the Bingo quests, obvs)
Good to hear about cosmetics, because I've basically had the starter Mariner set cosmetically equipped since level 1. God, most equipment either looks too stupid or too fancy so far.
This is the first time in LOTRO I've ever go beyond lvl 50, so I'm very excited.
Hollow Knight - I just got to the Resting Grounds (i hope placenames aren't spoilers, but IYKYK), fought the red guy there and called it a night after the story elements there. This game is blowing me away with its story (sparsely told, but honestly pretty deep/well-developed), mechanics (getting wall-jumping completed the featureset for me), and overall feel. It's a little creepy, kinda cute, and generally just good fun. Hard, but not cruelly so, and sorta like Dark Souls, if I blew a boss fight, it was because I did something wrong, not some weird movement pattern.
I've wanted to play a game that I felt properly challenged me for a minute, and Hollow Knight is definitely that. It's super satisfying to be stuck for 45 minutes then find the spot I missed and find a bunch of new progress to make.
And a cheeky vent (spoiler):
Spoilers abound
Fuck the Soulmaster. Fun fight, two stages. I was *heated* after "defeating" him, collecting the soul, watching him flit around the screen in what appeared to be a death throe, then crash through the glass. It took me *four more tries* to finish that fight because the phase two was so difficult. But *so* worth it.I'm also back into the roguelite deck builders. Still trying to get that first non-daily Slay the Spire ascension, but might need to watch some Northern Lion or something (his videos are great, he talks through every decision which helps thinking about strategy), but I can't crack the second boss. I'm trying to focus on the Ironclad for now, just because I want to push with him. I'm chipping away at Balatro's challenges, as well.