What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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...

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).

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.

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.

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:

1. 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.

2. 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