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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.
Been putting a lot of time into ARC Raiders and it's immediately apparent that this is by far the most accessible proper extraction shooter currently available.
I do have a few gripes though:
It's still a pretty good time overall though, and in solo queue you can actually find a good amount of people that aren't out to shoot you in the back and take all your stuff, which is a rarity in this genre. Again though, only time will tell if it lasts.
I praised Escape from Duckov in my last week's post, and I'm craving for more of the same, so even though I know that I don't have the patience anymore with PvP games, I had to try ARC Raiders.
My interactions with other players over 2 hours were the following:
So, more frustrated than anything, because I like the game, the presentation, the gameplay (PvE encounters are fun and challenging). It's certainly better when you play with friends, but my gaming pals don't seem interested in the genre, and I read that PvP is even more prevalent in groups... I'd love to play a similar game that heavily discourages PvP while still allowing it. Something that makes you think "is it worth the risk" to shoot at someone else, and rewards more organic cooperation.
I refunded the game, back to Duckov.
This game sounds exactly like something I'd want to play for hours on end, except that I absolutely loathe pvp, so there's no chance whatsoever that I'll pick it up. I don't know if there's any real equivalent to this kind of game without pvp, but if it exists I'd be very interested.
Hah, if only. I'm truly annoyed at ARC Raiders because I want to play this game without PvP. I want to explore the maps, the buildings, I want to shoot at robots, I want to hide from mechanical spiders while waiting for the extraction elevator... I think I'll follow the game from afar and see in which direction it's going. Then it might be worth trying it again at a discount in a few months, if the developers lean into the coop aspect to offer something different.
If it doesn't have to be multiplayer or robots, the STALKER games are some of the best when it comes to traversing and scavenging a very hostile post-apocalyptic environment that feels alive rather than just reacting to you. They're not extraction shooters, just open world FPS, but the vibes of danger and uncertainty are definitely similar.
Helldivers 2 would be pretty similar. It's not technically an extraction shooter, because you don't bring loot in that you can lose every round, but that may be a good thing, if you want to play more casually.
I'm in the same boat regarding PvP/multiplayer. Just not a fan of other people in my games, unless I can invite them.
I believe after the successes of Arc Raiders and Escape from Duckov we will see a lot more indie/AA entries in the PvE extraction shooter genre over the next few years. We'll just have to wait a bit. 🙂
I have little to add to your post except that it runs like a dream too.
It's pretty and stylish where it matters all while keeping framerates stable no matter where I am. I don't experience any graphical glitches, slowdowns, stutters, framedrops, or any other graphical oddity.
It's fairly impressive in the day and age of Unreal 5 bloat even if it's likely because there isn't all that much on the screen at once.
This is what I'd heard about this as well, but I'm not sure if I got unlucky or not playing yesterday. I'm new to this genre of game (played plenty of FPS's over the years though) and I got blasted in the back three games in a row playing solo last night - all three times while I was trying to end a round in the lift thing. Pretty much turned me off playing anymore for the rest of the night. I guess I need to find people to play with, because I'm not too interested in grinding for 20 or 30 minutes just to get shot in the back and lose my loot. At least you keep the XP so you can level your character, but losing the loot is frustrating.
Use raider hatches. The keys are very common, can be crafted very easily, and allow you to extract with virtually no chance of being killed in the process.
Just finished the quest that showed me these things last night, so yeah I think I'll be going this route instead.
I did do some random grouping and it was way more enjoyable that way.
All in all it seems like a good game and I'm sure I'll spend some time on it.
I normally hate PvP, but I've been having great fun with AEC Raiders. I pretty rarely encounter aggressive players (when solo) and usually make it out alive, which feels like a nice balance and has avoided any frustration on my part.
I've been enjoying the hell out of this game because it's not as sweaty as something like Tarkov. Yeah, I do sometimes get absolutely smashed, but as long as you are mentally prepared to lose everything, then it really doesn't matter. What I really appreciate is that it's really quick to get spun back up to what you need. Horde important components or make some visits to the traders and then you can be right back and ready to go.
Today's anecdote is where I really love the game: Completely blending the PvPvE aspect:
I was playing solo on the Buried City map, and I spawned in late. No big deal, but I was 90% sure someone was nearby. Most solos are friendly and don't really want to fight, but there are people who break that trend. Given that they clearly should have known I was there and didn't announce themselves, I was automatically suspicious. I went outside and saw in the distance a Rocketeer, and it was pretty roughed up and on fire. I assumed that it killed a few people and took the damage in return, but I figured I'd try an experiment: Could I use it to take out this random person near me? I fired a few rounds in it's direction and it wandered towards me. I then moved further away from the building I was in and it fired a couple rockets in my direction. Once I got behind cover, it started searching and then went on a murderous rampage in the building I started with a raider flare popping up. I was then able to quickly dispatch the bot, as it was nearly destroyed and I figured I'd catch my spoils.
Problem was, I don't think the person who damaged it was dead because not long after it went down, someone who was clearly upset that I stole it's kill rained fire down on me and took me out. If that's true, then I guess I kinda deserved it, but it was worth seeing how difficult it was to get a bigger muderbot to come over and do my bidding without a lure.
I've been playing Tactics Ogre: One Vision, a mod of the PSP version of Tactics Ogre. TO is not a game I think most folks recognize, so I'll expound a bit.
Tactics Ogre is the precursor game to Final Fantasy Tactics. Some of the same people worked on both. Where FFT focuses more on building a small party of five, TO is meant to more closely resemble building an army, with 8-10 units. Its narrative is one of civil war in a medieval realm, with a more subdued approach to its fantastical elements and a lot more emphasis on intrigue/politics. In it you play as a young man leading a militia, a war orphan who grew into a rebel. As he becomes more of a leader you are left to decide what sort of leader he is - one possessed of a sense of loyalty to liege and adherence to the law, or one who lives by his own sense of what is right and just? Perhaps neither? While this plays out, you're exposed to the fantastical nature of the world and become entwined in things beyond the realm of men like any good fantasy game. A lot of what TO did is in FFT; if you really liked one you are well served playing the other.
It was originally a SNES game, got ported to the PSX and Sega Saturn, got remade for the PSP, and then remade again for PC with Tactics Ogre Reborn.
There are really three versions of this experience. The pre-psp titles were more straightforwardly similar to FFT. You built characters and improved them mostly through better gear and good class arrangements. The battles tend to demand 10 members, so you're meant to balance classes with each other to be effective. Characters would die permanently in battle, as part of that goal of simulating an army over a party. Characters leveled individually. The PSP remake ambitiously elaborated, adding in systems for class skills along with reworking the statistics. Classes leveled instead of characters, so you could more easily change out teams to meet new demands. A huge chunk of content was added at the end, with battles that demanded finer command of the mechanics. An issue of the remake though was time, so while the new systems were welcome additions there hadn't been enough testing to really dial in how it all fit together. In the end most of the game could be done by just leveling up and keeping gear up to date - what was new was interesting but not actually very necessary. The very end demanded more of you but that comes well after the narrative has concluded - most folks just wouldn't end up getting that far so a lot of what worked went unnoticed.
The PC port took that setup and tried to sand the rough parts. Combat got faster, skills became simpler, and leveling was made into a more collective thing instead of being focused on character class. It's good for what it is - a revision, with some fantastic music, good voice acting, and a few new things here and there. Seriously the music is just phenomenal, considering a lot of it was originally SNES music the composition is pretty impressive, and they chose nice instruments for the remake's ost.
One Vision takes one step back, to the PSP's setup, and then a momentous leap forward into being that version's full realization. It's a product of nearly ten years of work, to take what all was there and get it all to fit together, hammer out every rough spot and give everything a place. The end result is one of the finest tactical rpg's I've ever played. TO was always my favorite of this type of game but it had clear shortcomings. Some classes weren't very useful, a lot of spells just weren't worth using, and you could barrel through by just leveling a bunch of archers. One Vision corrects for imbalance in all directions, the weak is made strong and the strong is made more contextual. You have to maintain a range of options for dealing with different kinds of opponents, and choosing to use the more obscure stuff doesn't leave you wanting.
I just can't think of anything I would recommend over it for someone who likes those kinds of games. It successfully weaves together the giant collection of ideas lurking around, takes all of the little things the remake tried to do and makes them as worthy of choice as anything else. Imagine chess, where you can choose a set of pieces to bring and slowly improve over time. Your pawn can upgrade to move a little more, your rook can do a diagonal in the right context. Where before doing the diagonal was rarely worth it, now there is ample opportunity, because the context for it more often happens. Your enemies are more smartly designed, and use more of the available repertoire in ways that just didn't occur in the original game (as much, or at all). TO has some secret mechanics/classes and weird shit you can do in the late game, that originally was kind of extraneous but here feels like a real reward.
I would hold it up as the definitive way to experience Tactics Ogre, but beyond that, I think it outdoes much of its genre. My only gripe is I want that PC version music. One Vision genuinely feels like something you should have to pay for, but you don't! If you get the mod you'll need to patch an .iso of the original, but too you can find prepatched copies in the same sorts of places you can find .iso's. It's actually a really good game to have on a phone - the controls are simple, no need for fast reactions or hitting lots of buttons, and you don't need particularly good hardware for it.
Are you playing it with the PPSSPP emulator? If so, do yourself the favour and install this high-res UI pack:
https://forums.ppsspp.org/showthread.php?tid=26100
Most importantly it scales up the font, so all text is more readable.
The readme file tells you how to set the emulator settings to see it in its full glory. I like to use the texture shader 4xBRZ. This way the pixelated graphics are upscaled and it kind of fits better to the high-res UI is what I find, but this is a question of taste. I play it on the Steam Deck and with this high-res UI it looks like new.
It‘s a fantastic game indeed!
Omg thank you, that is exactly the sort of thing I like to have
Bless thee, kind traveler
Ooh this looks interesting. Makes me want to pull out my Vita and patch my game. I've been playing some FFT recently. I bought the TO PC remaster but never got around to playing it even though I really meant to!
This week for our podcast on roguelike/lite games, we did a special episode covering the soundtrack and main story (except the ending) to Caves of Qud
It’s an incredible game once you get past the learning curve. The amazing soundtrack adds so much to a game that looks relatively simple from the Atari-level fidelity of the sprites. There’s so much to cover we had to break our coverage of out into two episodes. The next one on gameplay and systems.
The main story to Qud is a great hybrid between something like Dune and A Canticle for Liebowitz. The writing is something Byron or Keats would be proud of. I think it wholeheartedly deserves the Hugo award town for sure.
One of the most original and interesting sci-fi stories I’ve had the pleasure to experience and the ending is just such a perfect cap to it that it made the 150 hour ride worth every minute.
NGU Idle: Finally defeated the final titan and obtained 10 of the 16 End pieces needed to finish the game. Of the remaining six, two are going to be massive time sinks (grinding 2.5 billion PP and 10 million QP respectively), one will be a moderate time sink (cast an End spell for 594 Mayo, or 99 of each type, currently each point of Mayo takes about 30 mins to generate), one is locked behind a Blood Magic spellcast, and two are from ascending items I've already maxxed.
Old School RuneScape: I'm having moderate fun with Grid Master, but there are a few things I don't like about the event. A lot of the combat masteries are locked behind tiles which are either really difficult and/or tedious to complete. Examples include defeating TzTok-Jad (the final boss you face on Wave 63 of the TzHaar Fight Caves who can one-shot you if you don't use the correct protection prayer, and also spawns adds which heal it back up to full), defeating a particular mob on Wave 35 of the Inferno, a stronger follow-up to the Fight Caves, completing the Corrupted Gauntlet, or obtaining rare drops from both Vorkath and the God Wars Dungeon. It's felt like I've had to do these challenges in a particular order based on their difficulty, and I almost failed my first Fight Caves run on Jad after missing a ranged attack and taking 79 damage. Luckily, the healers spawned in a really awkward spot and Jad just kept spamming magic attacks over and over again. There are some people so sweaty that they speedran the event and cleared the entire grid in 11 hours or less. I am not one of those people.
I finally got Hades II this weekend. Unsurprisingly, just like the first one, IMO it's a masterclass. I like that it's completely true to the first but with a handful of added bonuses. I have a feeling it'll be holding my attention for the next while.
Mostly Hades II here as well. I'm so bad at the bosses :)
Dysmantle: Bought the game yesterday since I was looking for a "mindless" grinding game I could play while watching shows/streams on my other monitor. Enjoyed my first play session so much I bought all 3 DLCs right away! I'm really liking the game so far. It's like a survival crafting game without the (frequently annoying) survival aspects.
If there's one thing I don't like, it's that you can't use the scroll wheel to zoom in or out – which I would be okay with if this just weren't an option at all, but it is an option: there's a slider for the camera distance in the settings. Don't really understand why they wouldn't add a keybind for it, but maybe that's also just my MMO brain that's too used to "scroll wheel to zoom" talking. So far it hasn't really bothered me, I just find it odd.
Ghostwire Tokyo: Not sure how to feel about this game yet, but I also only played a little bit so far. The movement just feels somewhat clunky, and there's something I'm not understanding about the parry system. Once I figure it out, I'll give a more thorough review.
Immortals: Fenyx Rising: I broke my long-standing rule not to purchase Ubisoft games because a lot of people on the internet kept recommending it, saying that it's a copy (but a better copy) of Breath of the Wild. I've never played BotW, so I can't comment on that front. So far I'm enjoying the game – the combat in particular is more fun than I expected from a Ubisoft title – but that could change quite quickly, since it doesn't really seem like the core mechanics or core gameplay loop are going to be iterated on in any meaningful way, and it's essentially just an "open-world collectathon" kind of game. I don't always dislike those games, I just tend to get bored of them before I finish them. We'll see.
I played all three of these games via Xbox gamepass and I really enjoyed Dysmantle and put several hours into it. The other two games I played for less than an hour before uninstalling. You really hit the nail on the head with Immortals. I don't understand the praise for this game at all, it's just more of the same from ubisoft.
Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024
I had been looking for something to hold me over before BF6 launched a few weeks ago and since I have Game Pass I downloaded MSFS 2024. I had played a fair amount of 2020 when it launched so I knew generally what it was like. Anyways BF6 launched and it didn't click with me, nor did it have bot modes like BF2042 which is what i play like 3/4 of the time when I just want to relax after work. So I refunded and with my Game Pass subscription ending the next week went ahead and bought MSFS 2024 instead.
My dad built two ultralight planes before I was born. I remember going up in the one that had dual seats next to each other. In fact, the little airstrip on the farm we lived on still is registered apparently so I can take off from the house I grew up in.
This definitely falls into my ADHD hyper-fixations. Watching tutorials on using the Garmin navigation systems, reading FAA material, following checklists to actually start and turn off the engine, etc. Looking into getting a Honeycomb Yoke but $200 is out of my budget at the moment so I am sticking with my already existing flight stick. Though I did grab a miniature macro keyboard for shortcuts (was hoping to get the knobs to work with the Heading/Altitude knobs in the game, but have not been able to).
Game is good. It is very pretty, but it all kind of depends on the resolution of the photogrammetry taken. The Career mode is buggy, but I work around most of the issues as best I can.
Vampire Survivors got a new update and a free DLC. So it's "Vampire Survivors week" for me.
The new DLC is a collaboration with Balatro, the contents are quite small compared to the other ones (it is free after all), nothing too exciting in this one, but it provides an excuse to play more Vampire Survivors, so I'm all for it.
The base game got an "online co-op" feature. Luckily I do have exactly 1 friend that play this game, so we've been doing some runs together. Things do get crazy with more people around. There is no matchmaking though, I hope it'll get added in the future.
The "Ode to Castlevania" DLC got a content update!
It is adding more characters and an Adventure mode to the DLC. I've been a long time fan of the Castlevania series, I finished almost every game in the series, and this DLC is definitely one of the best DLCs that ever was. There're so much content, and every character I can think of is here.
I saw the Balatro DLC for this game, which I had never heard of before! I DLed in on mobile a few days ago and it's been quite fun. Easier to manage than a twin stick shooter. I haven't been able to play too much but based on things so far, my bet is I will be inclined to purchase the DLC available.
Only downside for mobile is there is no "pause/save mid-run" so you can come back to it later. If you pause and put the app in the background, unpredictable chance the game will just restart, which has been a bummer a few times.
I haven't played anything myself in 4 or 5 months (after sustaining a thumb injury from playing V-Rally 4 all day for like a week straight... I swear I've given myself early-onset arthritis), but yesterday I resumed watching a Silksong playthrough that I still haven't finished. It's been nice so far, but I think I maybe was expecting too much and ultimately made the right call in not buying and playing this myself. I'm a little disappointed by the distinct lack of Shaw! so far, but apparently the YouTuber I'm watching is only just getting to Act 2, 7 hours into the 12-hour runtime.
As an aside, thanks to last month's Insert Cartridge topic, I went digging to see if I had sold my copy of Final Fantasy Chronicles and found that I still have an old PSX sitting in a box under a pile of cables. I'd thought that I'd sold my collection off a couple years ago, but I still have the system along with a few games. Funny, at the time I was totally fine with letting everything go, and now that I've rediscovered them I want to hold on to them again for a bit.
Well, this weekend I was pleasantly surprised to find out about....
Morrowind - Tamriel Rebuilt
This was mind blowing to find out about. It might sound extremely stupid but I was very aware that Oblivion and Skyrim had very active modding scenes but I'd just assumed Morrowind wasn't as popular. Nope.
I was so pleased to find one of my favorite games had this (and other!) gigantic projects adding loads of new, high quality content... I had to check it out.
If you're unaware, Tamriel Rebuilt is a passion project to attempt to add the mainland to Morrowind and it's done a fair chunk of Morrowind itself. It's also more than doubled the quest count from the original game.
So I hunted down a mod list with Tamriel Rebuilt (Path of the Incarnate which has a heap of graphical, quest and other nice mods) and got to try openmw for the first time and... Wow. Like Morrowind looks amazing in 2025. It hit pretty hard to go exploring and really just enjoy a good old role playing game again.
It's really good. I'm obviously bias because I grew up with Morrowind but playing it again now is like coming back to cigarettes after you quit.
In a way it also made me a little sad because I've not played a game in a while that's been as magical as that. I'm not as jaded as some gamers, in that I do play some serious gems between all the slop. But none of them scratch the itch like Morrowind.
I could go on, but I won't bore you. Instead have my glowing recommendation for Path of the Incarnate including both Tamriel Rebuilt and a bunch of other massive quest/land mass mods.
I didn't know about either Tamriel Rebuilt or OpenMW. I'm reinstalling Morrowind as we speak to try both of these out. Looking at Tamriel Rebuilt led me to Project Tamriel, which seems to be the "umbrella project" encompassing Tamriel Rebuilt along with a bunch of other mods that aim to add the other Tamriel provinces to Morrowind. Apparently they're all meant to be compatible with each other. Very exciting stuff. Morrowind is still my favourite TES, so I'm eager to travel outside of Vvardenfell and try some of these mods out. Thanks for the pointer!
Glad you found them all! The quality is outstanding, it's an incredible effort by the community. I'm having a blast and I hope you do too!
I've still been playing Battlefield 6 most days. It's just such a solid multiplayer experience and very easy to spend an hour or two in without realizing it.
That said, I've been losing most of my gaming time to Hades 2. I picked it up when it hit 1.0, but this last week is when I really went hard on it. I'm too lazy to spoiler tag and I won't spoil anything, so I'll say that I beat the final boss on the first path three times and beat the first three bosses on the second path and only just saw what I think is the final boss on that path and what the fuuuuuuuck.
This game is just incredible and it might be my game of the year. The gameplay is ridiculously smooth, I've been having a ton of fun with almost all of the weapons and have put together some seriously bonkers builds. And there just seems to be more and more game that's unlocking even after having multiple successful runs. I'll be in this one for the long haul.
I picked up a Quest 3 headset and have been playing some Beat Saber. Pretty fun game and a nice light workout too! I'm currently only really playing with the included songs, which aren't really my favorite but its still fun to move around and slice blocks with lightsabers. I do see there's a few music packs I can buy for other artists but I might wait a bit before trying those.
I got the 3S at this time last year specifically to play Beat Saber. The two Lindsey Stirling tracks are far and away my favorites to play.
In truth I was fiending to play Guitar Hero. I own every title on Xbox but have no working guitars and they were going for $200 used at local shops so I just bought the quest instead.
I purchased a Nintendo Switch 2 earlier this year. My nieces, nephews (young kids) and older kids (high school and college age).
I purchased several games. Mario Kart, DK, Yakuza, Sonic Racing, Persona 3R, Madden, Nickelodeon fighters, NBA 2k and Pokemon ZA.
I am not a big gamer anymore. That said, I play a bit with the younger kids.
I can honestly say, Pokemon ZA is the most fun first party game on NS2. I have never played a pokemon game previously, so this is no comparison to previous entries.
The simple battle mechanic is extremely fun and engaging. If you are not hung up on the graphics, it is very fun to play with the kids. I am told Pokemon ZA will connect to Pokemon Champions? If this is true, then there is incentive to play and catch as many as you can.
I can not judge the story, but the kids are really enjoying it. The battle mechanics are fun. It is the NS2 game I am most pleased with published by Nintendo.
Pokemon ZA is so fun and all I'm playing. I didn't like the old Pokemon games, which I'd only tried on emulators, probably because I don't like random encounters. Pokemon Violet was the first mainline game I purchased, and I really enjoyed it (no random encounters - you can see the Pokemon).
That said, I like ZA waaaay better. Active battles instead off turn based is great! A lot of people have mentioned that it's more like the anime, which I totally agree with. I watched a lot of that as a 10-12 year old when it was first on, and this feels like what I expected Pokemon to feel like.
Don't have much to add but I did get 100% completion for Hades 1 - looking forward to playing Hades 2 in the near future
I remember a number of folks here recommending Proverbs by Mark Ffrench ( Divide The Plunder ) -- a hybrid Picross / Minesweeper chill puzzle game, and it's on sale right now for $4.
Otherwise, my pick up the phone and play mobile browser game is still @RheingoldRiver 's Set
it makes me so happy to read this!!! ♥♥
Legion Remix is heading into a new tier today so I'll be playing that for the next couple of days, but yesterday, after some arm twisting, I purchased Arc Raiders and it's been a blast. During its playtest, I had some performance issues which put me off from the game despite liking it, but most of the issues have been resolved.
I haven't played solo yet, at least not to the extent to give an opinion on it, so I don't know how that experience fares but with two and three stacks, it's been fun even if you're total dorks. Despite enjoying PvP, I echo @0xSim sentiment that the game eventually needs a PvE mode though, and I think it will be implemented in due course. The devs might be reluctant pushing it since it might take away some players from PvP for the time being, but there are only handful of games that can retain their userbase. Arc is good, but I don't think it's that good. People will eventually move on to other things and that's when they might want to add PvE.
Speaking of performance issues, I'm mentioning this in case it helps someone because it's a rather specific issue. Most of my performance issues were solved with the release of the game, but, I'd still get micro stutters in the menus (and using the in-game dials) when and only when I move my mouse. Turns out, this is due to DisplayFusion, a software that helps you manage multiple monitor setups. You can find the solution on this Reddit post.
I’ve finished South Park The Stick of Truth last week and loved it. Great humor, light gameplay, overall a good time. Started The Fractured but Whole immediately after and it feels so tedious and I’m not enjoying it at all. It’s been 5 hours in-game and I’ll stop playing it. The humor is not there, combat is better but still unnecessarily tedious. Encounters are long. I miss the funny and crazy attacks from stick of truth. I’m not enjoying the actual superhero-like attacks at all.
Sonic X Shadow Generations
I find that this is a game I want to enjoy more than I actually do. The primary culprits are the controls and camera.
The controls aren't quite good enough in my opinion. Sometimes Sonic doesn't feel as responsive as he should, making simple things feel quite frustrating. I also don't love some of the context sensitive buttons. For example, because jump is also an air dash it is too easy to make dumb mistakes like throwing yourself off a platform you are trying to land on by attempting to buffer a jump input slightly too early.
The camera issues are slightly less of a problem overall since the camera is mostly on rails so it should be good in general. There are edge cases where it's kind of a nightmare though. One example that comes to mind is there's a level where there's a bunch of enemies that you have to defeat that are kind of near an edge, but the is edge on the bottom side of the screen and the camera is angled forward. This means that a lot of the fighting is done with Sonic facing the camera, which notably means fighting toward an edge that is off screen.
Once Upon a Galaxy
If you're into an Autobattler, and liked Storybook Brawl before it was bought up and shut down by FTX, the talent reformed into Million Dreams, and started a new project that is far more fine tuned and pretty reasonable if you're not into the micro transactions or gem currency. They just released their new content update, Candylar, that introduces new Candy based creatures and mechanics, and game clients are out through Android, iOS and Steam.
I played Wanderstop. It's a fairly cozy game by the developers of The Stanley Parable. You play as an ambitious warrior who collapses in the forest and wakes up in a magical clearing where a friendly man invites her to help run a tea shop. Unable to pick up her sword, she reluctantly agrees.
I have mixed feelings. I like this developer, and this is the first game they made (or at least that I've played) that has true professional polish. The whole game is supposed to be a metaphor for burning out, and well, that does come through - maybe excessively, at times. The various mechanics of running the tea shop - growing plants, mixing infusions, weeding, etc. - are fairly well implemented and while not quite addictive, it's easy enough for one not to mind spending time on them.
I think there is a conflict at the very core of the concept, though. The game strongly encourages you, directly, and indirectly, not to be goal oriented. It wants you to chillax, make some tea not only for the clients but for yourself. Sit down somewhere, enjoy the magical forest clearing and reminisce some backstory for the character (jarringly, introspection segments are practically the only voice acting in the whole game). And I get it - the character (and the player) are invited to stop being so fixated on "winning", to pace themselves and enjoy life.
But the game does have a goal, which is to walk us through that very message by providing character development for the protagonist. So there is a strict progression of duly tracked milestones. You barely have any time after a customer's order and there's already someone else signaling that they want to talk to you (often, there are multiple simultaneous objectives). Even things that might be completely optional, like taking photos and decorating the shop, are included as part of tracked goals that require you to go all in on them. That completely ruins the point!
And if you choose to let the customers wait and just do your thing? The same conflict strikes again. Throughout the game, you meet various characters who visit the clearing. They are suitably "colorful" and varied; some stay for longer, some leave quickly. Some are nicer, others are jerks. And all of them will inevitably run out of dialogue lines as part of the plot. When this happens, the shop owner says it's time to visit a shrine and meditate... after which the whole clearing is reset and you start over, losing all your gardening and shop decoration, and gaining a whole new set of NPC acquaintances. What happened to the old ones? Shrug.
OK. No goals means no goals. Not even gardening goals. Or decoration goals. Or friendship goals? There's almost a nihilism to the whole thing. You get fed the message about letting go and about changing yourself - I understand, I've been through serious burnout myself and come out of the other side of the process. It's the correct message, it's educational, but I'm not sure it makes for a satisfying videogame. And it's such a waste of a nice set of "open clearing" mechanics!
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It's a sand mandala. It's doing for sake of mindful recuperation, not to productively construct a final outcome. The story is what's meant to be the satisfying thing--and the memories (pictures) formed along the way.
But I was certainly shocked the first time it happened and all my work was gone. Which feels like also the point. It's very much more on the art and emotion side than pure dopamine loop, for sure.
Still playing a lot of Hades 2, I got the ending recently and am working on true ending. Mechanically game is still wonderful, and the fact there's still things to unlock post-ending is a testament to the massive amount of content.
I do have thoughts on the ending:
Major Ending Spoilers
I wasn't thrilled with the ending, or how it was handled. I knew there had to be some shenanigans; being a rogue like they couldn't very well permanently kill the final bosses. I predicted the "Chronos turns good" twist, as that is just kind of the vibe Hades has had as a series, and I think it's fine. My issue though is it didn't feel earned or built up to at all, it just kind of happens and he goes from arrogant and angry to super docile and apologetic out of nowhere. It really didn't feel authentic, or like real character development.
My other big gripe with the ending is that Zagreus, instead of Melinoe, had the big decision and impact. Like we spend the entire game as Melinoe, there was all this opportunity for her to decide to spare Chronos or "find another way" or some such, but that gets taken entirely out of her/our hands and instead a Zagreus gets to be the "hero". I feel like it took so much agency away from Melinoe that it really feels just dumb, like the equivalent of a male coworker repeating a woman's idea louder and then getting all the credit. Top that off with Melinoe doesn't even experience these weird alternate past memories and it's just... what the heck dude?
And then to top it off, the normally incredibly distrustful and vengeful gods just accepting Chronos' sudden weird change, with a grand total of one voice line each being like "eh idk maybe" before dropping it, just feels so out of character.
Anyway, so while I don't really like how the ending was handled, the other story bits and character arcs are as lovely as ever, and mechanically the game is amazing. I look forward to playing through true ending.
I recently finished my first run of Blasphemous (which took about 20 hours), a metroidvania with heavy Spanish Roman Catholicism influences. I'd been working on the game for a while on and off, distracted as I usually am by other games or my TTRPG hobby, but it was very entertaining, such that I immediately pivoted to Axiom Verge, another metroidvania with incredibly surreal sci-fi vibes. This run took me about fifteen hours, and was very much worth the $3 I spent on it. I really enjoyed the remote drone and how well the map traversal was integrated with the movement upgrades you got over the course of the game. That said, it felt significantly easier than Blasphemous and Metroid Dread, which was my first metroidvania, and I think it really needed some form of fast travel between either save rooms or bespoke rooms, because even when I knew exactly where I needed to go next there was a ton of backtracking; while my tracker says I died 20 times, at least a quarter of those were me using death as a form of fast travel to mitigate some of the backtracking.
Dispatch released a couple weeks ago. This is my first Tales type of game, but so far it's great, and the style of game is a logical evolution of the visual novel. I've got two runs of this game going simultaneously; one with a couple of friends as we sit in Discord and watch/collaborate with the friend playing it, and one with the wife that we sit and play an episode or two each week.
ARC Raiders also released, a game in which my friends and I participated in both the beta and the pre-release Server Slam event. In the time since release I've put in about 36 hours with them and we're having a blast. Even though I've never really been a fan of PvP (nor really all that good at it), extraction shooters like Escape from Tarkov have always appealed to me. ARC Raiders has a lot of nice casual QoL that fits the general vibe it's going for. I love the third person camera and how jank the guns are.
I have also been making some steady progress on Hades II, having defeated the final boss for the first time and working my way towards the actual ending of the game. Good iteration of the first game, well worth the money, though I'm a touch disappointed in the characterization of a couple people we'd seen in the first one.
While I've owned Vampire Survivors on PC for a long while now and have been chipping away at that one or two runs in a blue moon, I recently picked it up on the PS5 to play with my daughter, and she's been having a blast with it in both solo and co-op play.
Finally, I have reached Act 3 of Expedition 33, and... wow. This whole game has been a rollercoaster of emotions and is well worth the time and full price, in my opinion. Not sure how much I can properly convey without going into spoilers, but the gameplay knows exactly what it's trying to do and be; the exact kind of turn-based RPG iterating on the ATB system of Final Fantasy X I've been waiting for. Another game that comes to mind with a similar style of initiative is Othercide, a gloomy grid-based tactical RPG.