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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.
Still working my way through Hollow Knight: Silksong at my own pace and trying to explore as much as possible and do all the side quests I can before progressing further. The fact that I'm 40 hours in at the end of Act 2 and I've only recently discovered several new areas is both exciting and frightening. Also, call me basic, but I think I've developed a crippling addiction to Wanderer's Crest. Is it the least creative way to play the game? Yes, probably. Will that stop me from hacking everything to shreds as quickly as the game will let me? No, quick slash and vertical pogo is life.
Bruh I’m 50 hours in. Still finding stuff. Hunter crest gang for life.
Megabonk!
What a way to kill 10 minutes! I'm still not very good but getting certain weapon/tome combos is very fun and I've been enjoying competing with my friends.
10-20 minutes has been all I can manage per day, but I just got a steam deck and it's a game changer.
It is a really great drop-in game. I don't feel particularly good at it, and in fact, I don't know if I've gotten better even after understanding more mechanics (I just learned what the Boss Curse does after being confused by its effects multiple times) and unlocking a lot of stuff. But it's enjoyable nonetheless.
+1 for Megabonk
I got it in my recommended pop-up one time when I opened Steam and I got hooked immediately. The price is very good and it got me ton of quick fun. It's quite hard also! But it's rewarding when you hit a good combo of tomes/weapons. The fact that you are effectively way worse by not picking weapons early already makes it better than Vampire Survivors imo. With VS, I felt like the game was really easy and it was just a matter of waiting 20 minutes destroying endless waves. The balance is a little better in Megabonk, although it's easier to sink time in VS, tho.
I realized this year that I just cannot immerse myself in a game any more like I used to. And it's not for lack of trying, but I feel like after an hour or so, especially failing multiples times, the restart after a failed run is harder and harder. I used to be able to just go run after run after run, but with the responsibilities and maintenance that adult life brings, I really only go max 2 hours, and often it's just 30-45 minutes here and there. Megabonk is perfect for that.
I’ve put about 10 hours into Ghost of Yotei so far and it’s fantastic! It generally plays similar to Tsushima, but everything is smoother and more polished, from the moment to moment combat to how you explore the game world. The story is also pretty emotional right now and Atsu is a fantastic protagonist, I’m loving it!
Can I ask, how much of the game is stealth-oriented? Is core to the game and you can't really avoid it, or can you choose a more aggressive play style if you want and the game adapts?
Thus far, I haven’t hit any mandatory stealth missions, but Tsushima did have a number of them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there were at least a few. So far, though, I can tackle encounters however I want. You could see if any reviewers mention mandatory stealth or something.
There is no mandatory stealth but it is highly advised in certain areas or you will have to fight a whole camp of enemies. I’m about 30 hours in. Sometimes I do just take the full fight but it can be annoying.
Hades 2. Needless to say, it's absolutely fantastic. I've managed to finish the main story. As tempting as it is to talk about it, the only thing I'll say is that it did not disappoint. :)
I'm sure that there are others here either playing or looking forward to playing it, and I can tell you to look forward to it. Like the previous entry, it is a masterpiece.
Indeed it is (not finished yet; I die too often, but getting better (and stronger, which helps too)).
I like how you don't start a new loop right away, but you always have a small break in the camp, seeing what changed, listing to some piece of story or some unique one-off comments from some NPCs.
Finishing up Act 3 of Silksong and its been a hell of a trip. Didn't think I'd enjoy Hornet as an insanely fleshed out character as much as I am. It's a genuine hero character and I would not mind traveling the rest of this world with them and I want to know what the think of other civilizations and characters. Also really enjoy constantly switching up crests and charms. Hornets move sets are like different smash characters and it's fun to pick for the boss or level.
On the other hand, I really should have waited a bit longer before Hades 2 1.0. Maybe a year or two on a fresh save. But nope. Just jumped in on night 135 at stupid heat which is definitely how it was intended to be played and it feels weird how the narrative and gameplay are clashing. But I really want to just want the gameplay loop. It's a weird catch 22. I'll probably wait a bit and start a new save. I am a little disappointed that there wasn't a surprise fully playable Zag mode. That would have made it an instant classic game for me.
And the last game was a mini platform puzzle game called Ooo. Its simple, beatable in an afternoon and some of the most satisfyingly designed puzzles I've seen in a while. Will not spoil anything but its a good time. Highly recommended.
I actually beat two games over the past week! It's pretty rare for me to play a game from start to finish...
First one is Teardown. It can be described as a "voxel based heist simulator" - but that really translates to "destroy and use elements in the world to set things up with as much time as you want, so you can grab items spread across the map and return to your escape vehicle in 60 seconds." It's executed really well, but it would be a difficult game to 100%. I probably overdo it, but I got the achievement for spending 1hr planning a single heist, so it can be time consuming. Technically I still haven't made it through the expansions, but the base game was a lot of fun (admittedly with some head-scratchers).
Second game I beat is Oblivion Remastered. For this one, I did actually 100% the achievements, which was more straightforward and simple than I expected. Basically just played through all the factions and DLC. I beat the original Oblivion a bit before Skyrim was released. But I definitely did not do much (if any) of the Shivering Isles DLC, which was... pretty unique. I had fun with this but I'm definitely at a point where I've had enough and don't see myself going back.
This will probably be a short post (for me, so probably like 4 paragraphs anyway) as I'm having a lot of muscle pain right now and struggling to think clearly.
I finished RoboCop: Rogue City the other day and I'm happy to be finished with it, but still really enjoyed myself. The fact that I finished it at all is testament to the fact that it's very fun to play and just an interesting game in general; it took me about 20-hours and I see there's probably multiple endings, but I won't bother playing through again to see them. It's a budget game through and though, but absolutely worth the $5 I paid for it. It runs absolutely terribly and the fights against ED-209 are annoying, but it's otherwise worth the time and money.
I've put down Baldurs Gate: Enhanced Edition for now, though I do want to return to it. I was having fun exploring the wilds and trying to tackle various party member quests; last I played I was trying to make it to, I think, the Gnoll Stronghold for Minsc's quest. I'll absolutely be picking it back up after I play though...
Chrono Trigger which I've never played before, but am playing for the CGA. I'll spare most of my thoughts for that thread, but I'm enjoying it a lot, much to my surprise. I like JRPGs ok and usually the ones that get the most praise, I really end up disliking, but this one is a good one. I've been playing it on my SNES, but I've been finding it hard to sequester myself in my office the past couple of days to play and with many projects going on for me this week, I may not be able to. But I've moved my save file over to my handheld and tablet, so I can at least continue to play there with some CRT shaders to approximate playing on my SNES a little better.
Have been playing Enter the Gungeon a lot recently. It's a really fun roguelite (a genre I'm not particularly well-versed in honestly), even though I suck at it. Haven't made it past floor 3 yet. It's a nice game to pick up for a run or two while
procrastinatingtaking a break.Same, actually, both the game and the level 3. It's one of those games that hinges on twitch timing, so I'm not sure if I'll actually be able to progress, though it looks like they
spoiler
allow you to start from at least level 2 once you fix the elevator, and maybe further downFinished up Silksong.
spoilers
I was a bit mixed on Act 3. The story is interesting and definitely the highlight, but the other content wasn't particularly compelling other than the return to and escape from the Abyss.Other than the plant boss, the extra bosses felt pretty uninspired, and having to fight waves of mobs before some of them even show up is just obnoxious. I thought the first two Lace fights were some of the best in the game as pure one-on-one sword duels, but having to do it a third time while she spams AOE attacks and you often can't even see her windup because she's overlapping with them and everything is the same colour... bleh.
There's very little to explore. All of the newly accessible areas are essentially just linear corridors with maybe one branch. The main map is also largely unchanged without any cool 'upside down castle' twist.
I guess they didn't want to lock anything super substantial in an optional chapter, which is fair enough.
Won't say too much about the difficulty as I think that's already been discussed to death, but there's so much good stuff in this game that's totally independent of the difficulty (art, music, atmosphere, exploration - all great!) that it feels like a misstep not to just throw in some sliders and let everyone enjoy it at whatever difficulty they like.
Also finished PARANORMASIGHT.
The introduction set me up to expect horror / death game / social deduction, but there's actually barely any of that in the main story. It's more of a police procedural with supernatural elements where the characters methodically investigate and solve a bunch of interrelated mysteries, along with a few puzzles which require thinking outside the box.
Despite being short, the story is pretty complex with a ton of characters and mysteries. The game has a notes feature which is pretty good for keeping track of what's what, but a fair bit of important info is only conveyed through the notes, so you really have to read them each time they're updated in order to fully grasp what's happening.
Still decent overall, but pretty different from what I was expecting.
On the one hand, you have a point that a lot of people are missing out on some great music and art because the game can be too difficult for them. Just hearing the music in Cogwork Core for the first time put a huge smile on my face. On the other hand though, we wouldn't get the collective catharsis and memes from r/fucksavagebeastfly, which would be a real shame to not have now that I know it exists.
My quest to play every survival crafting game possible continues.
Core Keeper: Didn't have this one on my radar at all before playing Abiotic Factor, but Abiotic Factor features a crossover with Core Keeper, so I thought I may as well check it out. If Terraria is 2D sidescroller Minecraft, then Core Keeper is 2D top-down Minecraft. It's really good! I'm not very far (just into scarlet tier), but I've been enjoying myself a lot.
Grounded: Not sure what to think of this one yet. The setting is incredibly cool, but there are some gameplay elements (particularly the very slow traversal across a massive map) that I find somewhat tedious. I'll reserve my final judgment on it until I've actually finished it though.
The Planet Crafter: If you think about it, this game is really just a very rudimentary idle clicker in 3D with survival crafting elements (or a survival crafting game with idle clicker elements, depending on your perspective) – but as with seemingly all idle clickers, it's incredibly addicting. I'm enjoying this one a lot. Thank the stars it's a Unity game though – without certain QoL mods (particularly the ability to craft from storage and to deposit items into nearby matching containers) the game would be downright unplayable.
You get zip lines later in Grounded, so usually people build a big tower in the middle of the map somewhere and zip lines back and forth to the major areas for fast traversal once you get into mid game.
Early game it's good to have the slow traversal so you can explore, discover areas. and collect resources including killing tons of bugs for their parts which are also resources.
Planet Crafter was amazing, I can't wait for the next DLC! Also the QoL stuff you mention comes with the drones and auto crafters. Once you have those you can automate crafting most resources. I had a pink crystal/fusion core auto crafting farm setup with auto selling rockets to farm terra tokens. Once it was setup I never had to touch it again.
Oh how I loved the planet crafter! All the more once I found out it's actually made by 2 (I think French) brothers. I agree with your point about it almost being an idle clicker kind of game. But I also felt a lot of love poured into it by the devs. This was not some "lets try to squeeze as much money out of as few dev hours as possible" scheme. I felt the devs punched above their weight with this one, and that's shown in some of the jank in game. Too bad the DLC didnt get good reviews, otherwise I definitely would play that one too.
Not sure where you saw bad reviews, everything I saw about the DLC was positive. The only potential negative was it was similar to the main game. There's a couple differences, but if you love the game, it's more of the game.
And with the Moons update from earlier this year you can connect both planets as well as the two new moons together with rockets.
I would definitely say the DLC is worth it if you enjoy the game. It supports the devs and it's only $8 for essentially double the content of the base game (not counting the moons as those came after)
Lately I've found I'm getting worse at games that require any kind of quick reactions. The straw was when I couldn't get past a boss on Luigi's Mansion 3, which up to that point had been pretty easy. So instead I've been playing some more cerebral stuff on Switch.
I played through Pentiment. I knew nothing going in to this, and initially was pretty disappointed given its good reviews. The game is described as a medieval murder mystery, which it kind of is. I'm not sure how much actual mystery solving you can do. While playing it felt like I had little input to the story, and nothing I did really made a huge difference.
For the most part, you speak to NPCs and there's a limit on how many conversations you can have before the story moves on almost automatically. For example, you can choose to have lunch with one family or another, and depending on who you eat with you will hear one side of a story or the other during the meal. You can't eat with both groups, and when the meal is over, the in-game clock advances, and people move on to their new chores or locations. You definitely will miss something. But in the scheme of things, it doesn't really matter, since hardly any of the information is actually used for anything.
Now that I've finished the game, I listened to a spoiler-filled podcast about it, and all of the major beats are left fairly vague or ambiguous, so any story choice you make is valid (whoever you point the finger at as the murder culprit). Choices seemed forced on me at several points, perhaps depending on who I spoke to, the replies I gave, and so on. Some of those were determined by selections of "abilities" made at the very beginning, like can my character read Latin or not. The podcast hosts made some different choices to mine, but the overall outcome was basically the same.
As the game went on I made more milquetoast choices in conversations, since saying anything slightly "controversial" seemed to lock me out of certain paths. Maybe. Anyway, it's an alright game, certainly unique, and once things picked up about an hour in it held my interest to the end, and the whole story wrapped up well. However it was more like a 7/10 for me, not the 10/10 it has been given in reviews. And I found a lot of it quite depressing! There were a few times I stopped playing because I didn't want to know how it continued, or to speak to NPCs who were very sad/depressed. In some ways it was like a Ken Follet novel, where unjust things happen to regular people over many years, as those in positions of power take more and more until there is a tragedy.
The conversation-based gameplay reminded me in some ways of Heaven's Vault, which I played a couple of years ago. That game has a more procedurally generated feel to it, but the choices you make seem to have more impact on what happens. I played through HV several times to see all of the possible story beats, whereas I'm not keen to play through Pentiment again.
I have to say, your experience with this game is almost exactly similar to mine. While trying to role play as myself in most scenarios, I ended up getting morally corrupt options only in some situations, and was wondering how I even got there. It was frustrating, and then finding out how the story actually worked, as you did, made it all seem a little pointless.
I did however love the atmosphere, music, and storytelling. The history is accurate enough, and as a snapshot of that era in time, it's fascinating. The meals are all detailed and true to the period, with each plate, slab, or bowl of food uniquely fitting for each conversation and guest. It really made me long for that kind of kinship in community that we seem to lack today. Sharing a meal with anyone, even someone you may not see eye to eye with can be a wonderful way to open your mind and understand more about your little part in this life.
That was my main takeaway from this piece of art, although it was definitely a slog to have to run around and try and figure things out. If you do take the time, and enjoy the atmosphere, the little details are pretty great.
I recommend trying the game Viewfinder. It's in the same vein as what you're going through with quick reflex skill, and has some cool mechanics.
Yeah, I maybe sounded too negative overall. I enjoyed large parts of Pentiment, and it is unique. There aren't many games where you discuss the meaning of the communion bread in church ceremonies with some random NPC. I also liked the actual parts where it was at its most "gamey", running around and gathering the information, and certain aspects of that do carry over. Townsfolk remember some of the earlier interactions you had, so it isn't all on rails. I suppose my disappointment was in part from the very high review scores, and going in spoiler-free so I wasn't aware it's more of a visual novel.
As for Viewfinder, that does look good. I am going to have to bite the bullet at some point and get a powerful enough PC to play these newer puzzle-type games. Blue Prince is another one I'm interested in there. I recently finished Lorelei and the Laser Eyes (on Switch again) and that was brilliant. That got great reviews too but had kind of mixed word of mouth so I avoided it for a long time, but I thoroughly enjoyed every moment of it when I finally played it.
Just finished playing the original Donkey Kong Country trilogy for the Super Famicom (SNES).
Here's a quick review:
NGU Idle
Finally taken down the 12th Titan on Brutal difficulty and 13th Titan (who doesn't have difficulty settings, let alone drop any rewards.) Despite doing a month-long rebirth, and then doing another rebirth (which I'm 5 days into) for the increase in number, I still only have a third of the stats needed to actually defeat the final titan in Adventure Mode, and am on the 297th boss in Boss Fight.
Starting to think Sayo's guide was inaccurate on recommendations and timings and that I should have done far more 24 hour rebirths to get to 12v4 level.
Skate
EA's Skate revival was a majorly anticipated release for me. But after playing 90 mins I'm just... underwhelmed. It could be that I'm playing with a cheap third-party Xbox controller (I can't be arsed to plug in my 8bitdo SF30 Pro and try with that) but the stick controls do not feel accurate at all and leads to situations where you do kickflips, heelflips, even other unintended tricks when you're trying to do a mere ollie. The game otherwise just feels lifeless and artificial with a very cringe premise. The dialogue is genuinely so bad that whoever at Full Circle wrote it should be ashamed of themselves.
RuneScape 3
Finally unlocked the fifth relic in Catalyst League and haven't had much desire to play since. I take my previous comments about RS3 back. What puts me off about this version of the game and its league compared to OSRS is that it feels the game has taken one step forward and three steps back.
A good example is with the Agility skill. Old School has rooftop courses for training Agility which, yet for RS3 the best way to train your Agility level up to 30 is to start the Nature Spirit quest and repeatedly leap across the broken bridge outside the grotto. After this, you can either do Anachronia's beginner course to 52, or do the Penguin course if you've unlocked and completed the Cold War quest.
Lots of RS3 content is gated behind quests, and unlike with Old School's most recent league, relatively few of these are auto-completed. Catalyst League would be "sneeze and you get a 99" difficulty, if the main timesink wasn't completing the game's tedious-as-fuck quests.
Fellowship
Played a little bit of their open beta, but was met with long login and instance queue times and the few dungeons I did do had people leaving part-way, so took a whole lot longer. My time playing this wasn't so fun this time around. I am still looking forward to the Early Access launch later this month and really hope this game succeeds, because I want Fellowship to scratch that Mythic+ itch in a way that World of Warcraft and its toxic-as-fuck community hasn't.
I have also been playing Skate. through the PlayStation 5 version, and while I agree the stick controls are frustratingly inaccurate, they are not quite at the level you describe. All the basic tricks I can pull off fine, and the game hasn't misinterpreted those at all yet, so maybe its the controller? On my end, the more complex tricks, like the laser flip and hardflip, which involve sharp and precise changes in stick direction are the ones I that I find nigh impossible to pull of reliably. The game seems to autofill for the easier tricks far too much, and I find that halfway through the motion for a complex trick, the game already selected the gesture for a Pop-Shuv-it and plays that animation instead. Maybe its just a skill issue, but I think that if I'm making an incorrect gesture nothing should happen, so i can try to learn the proper motions, but instead the game chooses the next closest option, making that process much more difficult.
That said, I do find the game to be fun on the base level of skating. It feels good to nail grinds and sequence a bunch of tricks and motions together in a really satisfying way when the game actually does feel accurate to your intent. I think they make grinding slightly to easy. You definitely magnet on to rails and corners, which I don't mind too much, but I do think it would be better to have more of a balancing act to do to continue holding the grind. The physics can still get a laugh or two from me on particularly bad wipe outs and the world is fun to poke at the corners of and find new places to skate at, as lifeless as it may be. having the world be populated would definitely add to the experience imo.
That's where the nice-ish things I have to say about the game end, because I definitely agree the game feels artificial, cringe, and soulless. The choice to make the main speaking role a basic and forgettable AI personality, which is shitty on so many levels, but especially feels like a direct manifestation of in-authenticity in a game that on paper is supposed to be about authentic skater culture. In reality, it feels more like it was designed as a predatory trap to bring in longtime fans of the old games and fans of skating, then bombard them every manipulative live service grind set tactic they can get away with. And the worst part is that this is the best they could do, a game whose premise feels like it was spit out by the same crappy AI they chose to make the main character. Thankfully you can just mute the dialogue and turn off gameplay comments from the AI in the menu, and every line of dialogue and cutscene can be skipped through, so you can essentially avoid engaging with any of that, but it still leaves an icky feeling playing the game. I feel for the devs who made it, and i think on the pure mechanical gameplay end, they have the chops to get the game to a good place, though I think that the games live service nature will put it in an early grave before that could ever happen. But the story and entire premise feels like it was mandated by a boardroom more than any creative.
Since I'm furloughed, I've had plenty of time to play this month's Tildes' CGA title: Chrono Trigger. I'm playing the Steam version on my Steam Deck (though I'm pretty sure I still own the DS cart). I've put in like 34hrs over the last 4-5 days.
I'll reserve my full review for the end of the month CGA post, but man is it nice to play an old school JRPG again. It's not my first time playing Chrono Trigger. I originally played it on the SNES, back when renting from Blockbuster was a thing, and then played it via emulators over the years and then on my DS/3DS. I think it's held up quite well. There are some things that, from a modern perspective, I think are a little annoying, but overall, it's still a great exemplar of JRPGs from that era and of the genre as a whole.
My goal is to finish it within the next day or two. Got through all the optional non-NG+ content (including the slog that is Lost Sanctum), so I'm about to enter the Black Omen.
I picked up Avernum Ruined World from Spiderweb and overall I am really of mixed opinion on the game.
It is a generally competent old school party based RPG. Story and lore is very passable and the combat is fine.
Playtime is somewhat freeform in what order the player does things in but areas are effectively level gated even if is not explicit.
Despite being a third entry in a trilogy it is perfectly playable on its own.
Then there are far too many various QoL issues. Especially considering this is seasoned developer reusing the engine for multiple games the various problems simply don't have any place here as far as I am concerned.
Overworld map chunks are too small and honestly not loading more as you pan around the map is an odd decision.
It is far too easy to misclick in combat.
Inventory is a mess. No sorting and five separate inventories is not very nice. Especially considering the amount of junk around, even discounting the literal junk as labeled so by the game.i
Far too many quests give far too vague directions on even things that should be crystal clear, such as who and where to turn it in too.
Pathfinding around hazards is truly bad to nonexistant, creating unecessary micromanagment.
Having an entirely random limit on amount of money allowed and then not even telling the player they reached it is insane.
Whatever is the reason for these, personally I don't consider not having basic QoL features a virtue in any kind of game.
I've tried repeatedly to get into the Spiderweb games, but they just never do it for me. In theory, I really love them, it's just the practice that never pans out for me.
Having a lot of fun playing Megabonk and Doom (2016). Before Megabonk I was consumed by Vampire Survivors so Megabonk provided a nice change without being too different. As for Doom, it's the first Doom (2016) I've ever played apart from the original one and I don't know what I was thinking. It's a blast to kill monsters by tearing them apart into two. It also lacks complicated systems and more or so a straightforward shooter which I like in games in general.
Legion Remix is launching tomorrow so I'm excited about that. I did not play the Pandaria Remix so it will be nice to experience the game in a new way. I already have every class at max level, so the leveling part will be redundant and there aren't a ton of rewards I'm after so I'll just take my time and soak in the experience.
Speaking of WoW, given the upcoming housing feature, does anyone have any plans on what to do? I know we have some WoW players here, and it might be nice to have a Tildes neighborhood in the game.
So many new games being played on this list! For me, I was lucky enough to pick up Snake Eyes Dungeon for free, and it's been occupying my time quite enjoyable recently. It's gotten a lot of hate in the Steam reviews for being a mobile game from 2016 that uses an overused dice-rolling mechanic for its battle system. But even though reviewers complain that gameplay is all random, the opposite is true.
Snake Eyes Dungeon employs a very simple gameplay loop: here are your probable outcomes (based on 2 six-sided dice rolls), and here are your options -- now get to the end. It seems like the sour naysayers are spamming the combat button and getting killed when retreat is an overlooked strategic move. Of course, it is a roguelike, sometimes your character is going to die and there is nothing you can do about it. Then again, once you break past its "secrets", the chore switches from needlessly dying to gaining enough cash to buy the next huge upgrade.
Honestly, I like it most for its "pure" mechanics and the chance to think about probabilities all day, even though it's pretty obvious the game has its thumb on the scale to really be called "random". If you can pick it up for cheap, this is a fun little ditty and sparkles in its simplicity.
Aside from Chrono Trigger for CGA, I also have Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake on the go. It's my first time with DQ3 in any form and it's definitely interesting. There's clearly loads of QoL and features built up upon the game and yet it still feels like it can't get away from the low complexity of its NES roots.
That said, ironically the class system feels almost too complex... well, not really. It's stupidly simple but because it's so simple and low on restrictions it becomes complex because it's almost too open.
When the servers come up in a few hours, Final Fantasy XIV will be releasing a patch containing a Monster Hunter crossover trial, which as usual with Extreme trials, I'll be trying to clear in the morning. I'm not really into Monster Hunter so my hopes are mixed; for the MH fans I want it to lean on MH inspired mechanics to make them happy, but I'm also worried it could end up being a trial I hate as a consequence. I didn't like the potion mechanic of the Rathalos EX trial from Stormblood.
The other big piece of battle content this sub-patch is Pilgrim's Traverse, a deep dungeon with the final boss separated into its own instance with scaling difficulty. I've never been a big deep dungeon guy, usually not finding people to clear them as a group, leaving clearing them at all to be assumed to be part of eventual solo attempts in the "someday" bucket. We'll see if the changes to this one attract more groups to it and if that means I find a place in one.
I think I the first time I did that, I was SGE -- a class and overall role I'm poor with -- and I was like "WTF is going on here??" I died so quickly. That said, I think I've only ever done the normal version of it, which isn't terrible. Or if I have done EX, with some friends, it was only farming unsynced. So I never got the "true" awful experience that I hear people talk about so much.
I would love to dive into DD more. A couple friends and I did PotD to Floor 100, but they didn't want to go further. Then we did Heaven on High, but only got to Floor 50, before we stopped and never got back in it. I get that it can be monotonous, but it was also stupid fun at times.
It's a shame that a good chunk of players don't want to do some of the optional side instances, aside from normal raids and alliance raids. Like I enjoy the V&C dungeons a lot. You know how many times I've done Delubrum Reginae? Technically for relic farming, but also just for funsies? But even in PF it can be hard to find people who want to do those.
I'm a huge criterion fan. If you've heard the complaints I'm sure you're aware people have complained that specifically the first two Criterion (Savage) dungeons have no reason to be repeated, and yet I've done each of them multiple times.
Generally speaking though, yeah the community has always been a bit neglectful of content off the beaten path. I really love that kind of stuff too. Delubrum Reginae is a good shout, the Savage version will always be one of my favourites. Trinity Avowed's hot and cold mechanics, Stygimoloch Lord's doom stack autoattacks, Queen's superchess are all very fun mechanics.
Regarding Deep Dungeon, I've had pretty similar experiences, never had a group who wanted to go all the way, so I've never seen the top floor of any of them. I assume the first three I'll never see until I step up and grind it out solo for the titles/achievements. This new one with the "Quantum" mode boss at the very end may improve interest levels among my raider friends though, hopefully I can get a group for that going soon.
The new Arkveld Extreme trial turned out to be quite easy for what it was. Cleared it in the morning in PF in a couple lockouts. I had a lot of fun but it's probably the easiest Extreme trial so far in Dawntrail and probably also easier than any Endwalker extreme trial. Very low on coordination and higher on boss animation based tells. Still, I liked it a lot.
Didn't happen to step foot into the deep dungeon at all yet.
I've been playing Stardew Valley on my Steam Deck lately, now that I finally took the time to learn how modding works on it (super easy, thankfully) and I'm really enjoying it. Finally seeing things from the most recent updates, and really getting into the Stardew Valley Expanded mod.
I've also started playing Final Fantasy Tactics - The Ivalice Chronicles on my PC. FFT is one of my favorite games that I've bought multiple times across at least 2 or 3 platforms and long ago I had started working on having a roster of characters that have mastered every single class, which I intend to finally finish. I think I might take the time to have 20 fully mastered characters, each one representing my most optimal version of a job. I'm so pleased to be back in the world of Ivalice.
It helps that I've found a trainer that will let me turn off character XP gain while still accumulating JP, so I won't have that weird problem of level 99 enemies in random battles vs. level 6 enemies in story battles.
Just finished Sword of the Sea. It's a very short game (4-5 hours), but I loved it. It's from the team behind Abzu which I also really liked. Both have their puzzle and platforming elements, but the core of the game is really the environments, which are beautiful, peaceful, and mysterious. Sometimes I want a game that delivers an adrenaline rush, but often I want something relaxing but that still offers a few challenges, and this fit the bill perfectly. If I could recommend one other game that I felt similarly about it would be Jusant, a climbing game that came out in 2023 which has not gotten the credit it deserves.
I've played through Mouthwashing yesterday evening.
It's a fairly short game (~2h30) that tells the story of a stranded space cargo crew, in a non-linear fashion. The game starts with you as the captain, voluntarily crashing the ship into an asteroid. You then take control of the second-in-command for most of the game, trying to keep the crew's morale high, and slowly getting clues to what drove the captain to do this.
It's not a scary or stressful game (there are just 3 really short sequences that can get you killed), but I'm still thinking about it. For its price and duration, it was more enjoyable than a movie like Alien Romulus.
Okay, for the life of me I can't find the post a new topic button on desktop which makes me feel old as hell - so...
This isn't out yet but it looks incredible and the type of indie hilarity I feel Tildes would love:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5dYcRvxF7k
Devil May Fly is a great pun name, I hope he formally replaces the name of "Delivery Must Complete" lmao.
This week we played the FPS Deadzone: Rogue for our podcast on roguelike/lite games
This game has a fascinating history starting out as an extraction shooter in the heels of Tarkov, failing miserably, then totally tearing down and rebuilding up as a roguelite design. I think the fact that the game is event remotely good given that backstory really underscores the effort the developers put in to making sure it was a fun game.
I was glad to be forced to sit down for two weeks and deep dive Deadzone Rogue because my first impression from the Steam Next Fest demo was extremely underwhelming. But one of my cohosts LOVED it at the time, so I figured something g had to be there.
Fast forward to now and after having rolled credits on it, I’m happy to say I was wrong about my first impressions and that Deadzone Rogue is a perfectly fun game for what it’s going for. There nothing really revolutionary about its design, there’s some clever builds and interesting decision making here and there, but I think it’s backstory adds a lot to its relevance.
The games story is also kind of slapdash and generic, but fun in a kind of low brow 80s Canon Films sort of way. After the end of the first act I was actually quite interested to see where the game was going plot-wise and the ending left me feeling very interested in what’s next for the game.
I think the worst part overall is the grind. Standard difficulty feels padded out with enemies being overly bullet spongey and I had a lot more fun playing on easy mode. The fact there’s special side missions you can do that are shorter runs but with more focused challenges is neat and I think adds a lot to wanting to beat challenge X in harder difficulties.
I've been playing Mafia: The Old Country for the past couple of weeks and am just about at the end of it now. I have enjoyed it immensely. It is very linear, despite having what looks like a big open world map that the game takes place in, but is tightly scripted and well written, and it looks gorgeous. It is essentially a sequence of linear levels chained together by the story.
As for the gameplay, there's a bunch of stealth mechanics, but usually when you screw up and get discovered you have a good chance of shooting your way out of the situation, especially if you have already thinned the enemy herd significantly enough before you got rumbled. Although, there are a couple of missions were stealth is a requirement and you fail immediately if discovered. I'm not a fan of stealth games normally, but they implemented it well in this game.
The gunplay is pretty satisfying, although the range of weapons is pretty limited. You can carry one knife, one pistol, and one long gun. There are a few pistols and knives to choose from, and a couple of rifles and shotguns. I did find that the pump shotgun was pretty much the most useful weapon type to have on me, as it made aiming easier and was still pretty lethal at medium ranges.
The game doesn't really have traditional boss fights, but there are high-profile enemies that you wind up fighting, and these almost always boil down to a knife fight with the bad guy at the end, with dodge/parry/strike mechanics.
I have clocked about 15 hours on it, and I feel like it is just about the right length. Solid recommend from me if you like a story-driven first-person action game. Also, in an age of $70-80 games it only cost $50.
I played it on Xbox Series X btw.