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

I just picked up Ghost of Tsushima. I have no idea why I didn't sooner, because it's been a lot of fun. It reminds me a lot of what I liked about Witcher 3's gameplay, but newer, and the katana combat is well done. Though I would like more chances to do iaijutsu, besides when you initially start encounters, though I'm still in Act I, so maybe that changes.

I think it's also the first game I've seen make use of gestures on the DualSense controller. It basically gives you an extra d-pad, since you swipe in four directions to trigger non-combat actions. The game also does really nice, subtle haptics that add to the immersion. Horse galloping, sword swinging and impacts, bow drawback and straining, etc.. It really feels like it was made for the PS5.

The lack of a minimap or compass is interesting. The wind blows in the direction of your tracked quest objective, and birds and foxes sometimes lead you to points of interest. It feels surprisingly natural.

I kind of wanted to play it with the Japanese dub, but I can't realistically pay attention to subtitles while fighting, given how unforgiving the parry and dodge mechanics are.

Edit: Also, you can pet the foxes sometimes after they take you to an Inari shrine.

This week we played Orcs Must Die! Deathtrap for our podcast on roguelike/lite games.

Despite only one out of the four of us liking it, I feel this is one of the funnier episodes we’ve done in a while. Not every game is for everyone, but sometimes it is fun to dunk on questionable design decisions.

None of us ever played the other games in the OMD series, but I can sympathize with some of the reviews the game got in their behalf. Having to wait 4 years for a new entry and getting…this would make me similarly frustrated.

Deathtrap looks good, it plays good in the moment, but when compared to our episode we just did previously to Deadzone Rogue or with the mega hit Elden Ring Nightreign, OMD Deathtrap feels like an especially lackluster experience that was a riot to pick apart.

No Man's Sky for about 91 minutes. I saw the trailer for the new stuff in it and got kind of excited, forgetting that over the prior 9 years (has it been that long?) I haven't bothered to buy the game because it looks completely uninteresting to me. Largely navigating samey planets and an awful UI that is basically just moving icons around and clicking on things. Sorry to those who like this game, but I do not understand the appeal and I'm a little disappointed in myself that I forgot that this is what the game was, having blown $20 I won't get back.

I'm being unnecessarily harsh. I know people like the game and Hello Games certainly seems like a stand-up company, fixing this game and adding to it for basically nothing over the past 9 years. I'm just disappointed in myself because I've known for those 9 years I wouldn't like it and yet I went ahead and blew my money anyway. It's no NMS or Hello Game's fault and they don't deserve the salt.

So what I've actually been playing is loads of Hairbrained Schemes Battletech with the BTA mod to add tons of new mechs, more variability in play and all kinds of stuff. This game is slow, janky and takes forever to load and it's even worse with mods, but I absolutely love it. I've been on something of a tabletop Battletech kick lately since I bought a new 3d printer, printing and painting tons of terrain for my games, but I've been unable to actually play it just due to the business of life. I hope that'll change soon. But in the meantime, I've been absolutely hooked on HBS Battletech, adding to my already 230ish hours I had previously. I do wish it ran better on my Steam Deck, as I'm getting in the low-teens during urban battles, but this game runs pretty bad on every computer I own, so I guess that's not surprising. At any rate, it hasn't stopped me from being absolutely hooked on it and playing multiple battles each day over the weekend, even though they tend to take between 30-45 minutes and with mods, I can't save.

I played through the first two episodes of Dispatch and I actually really enjoyed it! I think the episodes are a bit short and Aaron Paul's voice is so recognizable but it's an interesting world that's very corpo superhero without being super overly cynical a la The Boys.

Also been playing Megabonk when I'm just vegetating, it's a good time sink and a good podcast game where you don't really need to think too hard to play, and the loop itself is really addicting.

Monster Hunter Wilds has been taking my time with friends, we've been hunting Omega Planetes and it's been really tough! It's nice to have an actual hard hunt now and I'm hoping they keep the traction going. The performance on PC is still pretty garbage though, hoping they fix it in the December patch.