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

Still playing Blue Prince. After a week, I feel like I've made a lot of progress and none at all 🤣

Honestly i was feeling a bit down on the lack of progress I was making. But a few nights ago I got so far. Finished a puzzle, picked up clues to another, reached some new rooms, and unlocked a new ability. One run seemed to open up the game again for me. Joy of a good roguelite I suppose.

Still don't feel close to finishing, but I see light at the end of tunnel. Will probably be playing this for the rest of the year

Hey it's me, back at it again refusing to play normal games.

Been playing Dragon Ball Z: Super Saiya Densetsu over the past 3 days. It's a Super Famicom title that never reached the West, but has an English patch.

Man, I wish there were other DBZ games.liie this. The time period covers Raditz to Freeza, and the battle system is turn-based with cards. Its so cool/cute to see the little sprites do the DBZ battles, slam each other into rocks or the water, dodge, do their signature attacks,.etc.

You have a lot of freedom in the game. For example, if you finish King Kai's training early, Goku can arrive pretty early on, and even before the Nappa fight. If the Z fighters survive the battle with the saiyans (minus Piccolo, he always dies), then you bring the whole gang to Namek, where they even have little lines of dialogue. My absolute favourite instance of this is that, if Ginyu changes bodied with you, you can use the frog card to follow the normal route to change back. Or... maybe Yamcha doesn't need his body back. Maybe you kill Ginyu rhe normal way, and now you have Ginyu in the party going forward.

The game is also nostalgic in that, because it never came to the West and not a lot of people played it, it's not that fully researched. There's no consensus on whether you can influence the gravity training at all, or if it's just RNG. Most of the guides say you need to press specific buttons. Some people say it's completely random, and I agree. It feels like playing in the 90s, where there's actually not a lot of information and I have to figure it out.

A big minus is the grinding, because the game takes its power levels seriously. Your 3,000 power level Chiaotzu isn't going to put a scratch on 18,000 Kui. Thankfully, there's an auto battle button and emulators have speed up, so it wasn't unbearable with a good podcast.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it per se, but I'm kinda in love with this game right now.

Got around to playing Deathloop, which I recall seeming very interesting back when I saw the trailer before release in 2021. It's a nice looking game, with good controls, interesting story, funny dialogue, etc. etc. for all of that I do recommend it.
For me, didn't really work out. I don't like grinding loops and the game is literally a repeat the same things over and over until you know every possible thing in order to find the one way to do all the things in a single day without dying or you start over grind loop. I expected a loop because of death and I enjoy roguelikes, I did not expect to literally need to repeat the game multiple times just to finish it once. Even speedruns of the game require looping 6 times.

Put the bow on Hades 2, after 2 months and 140 hours of gameplay. Absolutely phenomenal game, second only to Binding of Isaac in my rogue like rankings. Liked it so much I got 100% of the achievements (only the second game on steam after BoI), and even ground out the last annoyingly-long bond

It's a shame that the beautiful characterizations and dialogue that make the game so great have to run out at some point. While mechanically the game is still solid, without the character interactions I'm moving on. Hoping to start up Hollow Knight soon, but in a classic "hard to start a new thing" rut.

A couple additional remarks about Bittersweet Birthday.

The game had a total of three chapters (you go back to the main menu after each of them). The first two were fine. The third one was painful. Gameplay almost completely gives way to an on-rails series of cutscenes that last a good four hours (if you speed through the dialogue). The characters go on and on about the world building/"magic system" of the game, in a conversational, high friction, endlessly repetitive manner. Someone is listed in the credits as "editor"; they needed a better editor. It was by far the most masturbatory video game writing I've seen in a long time.

It's not like the ideas in the game were bad, or anything. It was a fine game with a fine foundation. But I'd gotten it by then. I'd gotten it when the game gave me a notebook that neatly explains all the concepts - life comes from and goes to another dimension, there's a horizon between them, people are being made immortal by coating them in psychic shrinkwrap that keeps life from escaping, this means everybody else will keel over and die, end of the world, cool. I don't want to read about it for another four damn hours. I want to play a game!

I wish they'd focused more on the combat portions and on adding more locations.

So, here's a riddle. In what game can you flood a desert, ride a menagerie of aquatic mammals, do skateboard tricks, surf up a mountain and bitchslap a giant serpent lava god? Why, it's Sword of the Sea, which I played this week. Thanks, Secret Santa!

This is the newest game by Giant Squid, the studio founded by Journey art director Matt Nava, released earlier this year. Previously, they released Abzu, a beautiful game that takes place under the waters of the ocean, and which features a massive variety of aquatic life. Then they released The Pathless, a vast "open world" adventure game featuring archery, puzzle solving and cinematic boss fights. Sword of the Sea feels like it brings all of these games together - Nava has publicly confirmed they take place in the same world! Even Journey is alluded to by scarves and pennants, and the rolling, sandy dunes of the desert.

Some reviewers mention Tony Hawk's Pro Skater, which I found amusing. Tony Hawk's Pro Journey? The Wraith you control doesn't walk, but rather surfs on his giant sword. He can glide on anything, though most of the time you'll be on sand, snow, water or (try not to linger) lava. There are button combinations for doing "tricks", and rewards for doing combos. Level design even includes half-pipes here and there! Even without that, movement is really satisfying. Minor movement-related abilities are unlocked gradually during your playthrough - SotS is largely an exploration game.

The world of Sword of the Sea is gorgeous in a vaguely surreal way. You are attempting to bring "the ocean" back to the world of the surface after mean lava god Tor Namun fought ocean gods the Dolphin and the Shark to a standstill, a story told in free verse through small monuments found throughout the game. You can never quite tell if you're on land or on the ocean, though - sandy dunes will undulate like the high seas, and water will cover the hilltops without flowing downslope. Fish and aquatic mammals will swim freely through the skies. It all works, somehow! The musical atmosphere of the game is, in my humble opinion, top tier. One of the best I've ever heard in a videogame, and it deserves more mainstream recognition (though the game has won a whole bunch of awards already!)

The game is a bit more narrow in scope than The Pathless, a bit more focused and less gameplay-oriented. There is an achievement for finishing in 2 hours, which you can take as a reference for a speedrun. A normal run might take you 6 hours or so, while a thorough run (there are collectibles, some of which are very well hidden) might exceed 10 hours. I loved this game and am looking forward to playing more games by this studio!

Previous

I'm trying to finish Clair 33 before my gamepass is permanently cancelled.

I'm like 15 hours in, and so far the first 5 minutes were hands down the best part. The combat is making me really angry, I can't really remember where I've explored, and I don't remember who the characters are. Honestly I'd probably give it a 5 or 6 out of 10 at this point, and am seriously considering just uninstalling as it is making me feel like an idiot who can't keep time (I've beat sekiro, so that seems unlikely).

People say the music is the best part about the game, but I am not enjoying that either... French accordion music has to be some of my least favourite in the world.

I don't understand the hype behind this game whatsoever.

Yesterday I finished playing The World Ends With You for the Nintendo DS, and with that I've finally finished all my NDS games.

I'm kind of mixed with this game to be honest, I almost dropped it because even though I liked battle system and the music, the rest of the game didn't catch me that much, specially the characters, I'm maybe too old, but I'm not a fan of edgy teen protagonists in JRPGs¹, also the amount of dialog is way too much for how unengaging the story is. But after all I manage to finish it because it was the last cartridge I had still unfinished.

As I said, the battle were great, you can either pick just a few attacks (pins) and finish the game without switching them, or you can go around trying different things, and this is possible because all your health is reset after every fight, so you don't have to worry about wasting your HP trying new moves.

The music was the best part, if you haven't play this game and you like Atlus' Persona, give this soundtrack a try and you may like it, it's great and I'll definitely listen to it again.

[1]: This is why I think Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is the best JRPG on the DS, nothing like a grown-ass adult as a protagonist.

Recently got back into Blue Prince.
Considering the game, all I'll say is I'm past Room 46 and got to work on a... long task.

The other game I've playing a lot of is Synduality: Echoes of Ada, which is free on psplus right now.
It's an extraction shooter, don't know much about the genre I'm afraid, although I hope it has a bad case of monetization compared to the rest of it's niche.

Seriously, first thing I see is a ~70 day long premium battlepass, shop's full of clothing for the magus (which are a cool idea mechanically), and of course the monopoly money may as well be paid only since you only get like 200 of it via that overly long battlepass on what's supposed to be a premium game.
You also can buy the literal highest quality gear from it straight up, but keep in mind this is an extraction shooter, if you die it's gone too.

Best part is the game isn't even bad or anything. again, don't have much experience with extraction shooters, but I assume the gameplay is the basic formula for it: you spawn in the map, are given 3 extract locations, and have to juggle attrition and your countdown to an insta-loss with doing tasks, picking whatever you need up, and making money, while keeping an eye on your carry limit.
Extract, and keep everything you have on you, die and lose it all. Standard wager stuff.

The gimmick here is your Magus, an NPC who is always by your side and acts as your mission control.
We may as well not exist, so they act as your primary avatars (complete with a character creator).
Map indicator, various combat/farm skills, priority item tagging, comms, you need one of them for anything like that. Early on that's just lore, since you need to choose to go without one while the game (even if they die, you will get them back given enough time and/or money), but objectives does start forcing you to deploy your Magus for a short while relatively early. Admittedly it hasn't gone past that yet, but I could see them making some fun quest based around that (for example, you might need to deploy your Magus at a spot as usual, but they are unable to go back to you directly, so you have to navigate to them using the main map and whatever they can note about their surroundings since you lack a minimap among other things).

As a first extraction shooter it's not bad, even has a safe entry since you start off in a group that penalize random pvp (although you can leave for a proper constant pvp mode), but I can see it running out of steam pretty fast.
Kinda make me wish people would play more with the extraction genre, cause right now only games I can think of are the whole extraction shooter group and like Pacific Drive plus Darkest Dungeon 1.

Lastly, Qualatro is a high-quality mod of Balatro.

It adds 100 Jokers based upon many jokes of the SiIvaGunner channel, which (from a newbie's perspective anyway) feel pretty well balanced and often fits the joke. They will also add themselves to the music, creating a dynamic mashup of the game's theme, depending on the Jokers you have.
If you're a fan of SiIva I recommend installing it. Don't have much to say since I played, like, 3 or so runs.

As a side note, I had to update steamodded (and lovely) for it and that broke my old mod for a deckskin so I had to figure out a way to update that too. That took way too long.

More Holder of Place. Still highly recommend.

Finally tried slice and dice. Better than I expected (most videos I’d watched made it seem math heavy). Great time killer

I finally transferred my League of Legends account from EUW to NA. The experience has been a mixed bag to say the least.

Players interact more in chat on NA, and are definitely far more toxic. But I'd prefer trash talkers who can actually back up the shit that comes out of their mouths than players who just unapologetically don't give a damn about playing the game seriously. Iron 3 on NA is genuinely a better experience than Bronze 4 on EUW, and that reinforces my belief that Europe is genuinely a bad region now, both in terms of pro play, in-game match quality and customer support moderation quality.

The only bad Ranked game I had so far was two days ago, when I locked in an off-meta pocket pick (Varus Support) that I often played on EUW. Arseholes on my team flamed, trash talked, threw their toys out the pram then proceeded to run it the hell down out of pure spite because I didn't pick a meta support.

My KDA by the end of the match was 6/9/17, and many of my deaths came as a result of the bot laner abandoning my lane and leaving me to fend for myself in 1v2s against a pure bruiser duo. I had dealt 39k damage to enemy champions. The Vayne bot? 19/19/6. While they did the most damage, they also dived more than Cristiano Ronaldo and spent much of the game roaming outside of their designated lane. Our Cho'gath Mid? 2/18/0, 9k damage dealt to champions. My shitty teammates were genuinely dying every 95 to 100 seconds, which I'm shocked isn't grounds for an immediate automated inting ban.

Imagine my glee when I logged into League last night and got four instant feedback notifications, and saw that these guys had suddenly gone inactive. My reports actually did something.

Other than this, I started playing Cookie Clicker again, going back to the OG idle game. A lot has changed and a lot of the game's mechanics have been slowly coming back to me.

I have been absolutely obsessed with Darkest Dungeon 2 for the past three weeks or so.

I bought this game back in 2023, having played over 200-hours of the first game on my PS Vita a couple of years ago. It really didn't click then and ended-up leaving a bad taste in my mouth after about 12-hours. I never went back to it since then, but a few weeks ago, I started thinking about playing Darkest Dungeon on my Vita again, which got me thinking about the second game and how I should maybe give it another chance, reminding myself that the philosophy of the game is different.

The devs clearly set out not to just make Darkest Dungeon but better and more, but instead refine a lot of the mechanics and make something that felt a little different, especially given it's more of a Roguelite game. In the first game, you build teams of Heroes to explore various dungeons, bringing supplies enough to try and complete an entire run of the dungeon and balancing those with collecting as much loot as you can to bring back to your village to upgrade it. Your Heroes are a big part of that game, but they're really not important in it; early on in that, if you have Heroes who are low level, no skills and end-up very stressed out after a few runs, you simply kick them to the curb and hire someone new. It's too expensive to fix them and upgrading your village is far more important, because those are the upgrades you always have.

The game was criticized a lot for this, I think. It really gives you the impression that the Heroes are your most important resource and I've seen that complaint levied at it often. I think due to this, Red Hook decided to go in a different direction and actually really focus on the Heroes for the second game, as they do become the most important thing in the game. Through the course of a run, you're trying to maximize your Candles, a currency that's used at the beginning of every run to permanently upgrade your Heroes, Stagecoach (your conveyance through the runs) and unlock more items to use on your Heroes. You maximize those Candles by visiting marked locations on your map, completing Hero goals and bringing special items to the Inns at the end stages of each map. You'll get at least a few candles for every run, but it definitely feels like you need to have an understanding of the game to really make some progress upgrading stuff; I really felt like I hit a stride when I beat the first chapter for the first time and got something like 72 Candles, allowing me to unlock new Heroes and upgrade my existing ones to a point where they're significantly more powerful.

Anyway, that's the basic gist of the game, but one thing that really strikes me about it is that it's the most XCOM-like game I've played since XCOM and XCOM2. I feel like often in forums, Steam on gaming websites, games are described as "XCOM-Like" when they're nothing of the sort. Games are often described this way when the superficially resemble XCOM with tile-based, turn based combat and that's about it. What truly makes a XCOM, XCOM is what I like to call the genre of "Plate Spinning Games".

So what is a Plate Spinning Game?

It's a type of game where you're forced to balance a bunch of choices with each other and one choice in one area can often have negative effects in another. You have limited resources, so you really need to think about how you're going to balance that with the other choices you're going to need to make and how to mitigate the negative effects of those choices. Often, you might be forced to make a "Suboptimal" choice because it's expedient in the moment.

So how is Darkest Dungeon 2 a Plate Spinning Game?

There's just a lot to manage. When I begin a run, I'm sometimes sitting at the Party build screen for ten minutes, trying to pick which Heroes I want to take, how they mesh with each other and then ultimately what skills they ought to have. Position in the Party matters a great deal and you need to choose your skills based on that. You can have a Party build with excellent damage to the front row or two of the enemy, but if you can't address the back rows of the enemy, you'll ultimately be doomed.

But there's so much more. You need to manage your Stagecoach, which may take damage through a run. So you need note how much damage it can take in its areas and choose your route through the map based on that. If you take too much damage on it, you're going to be forced to spend resources to repair it and if it gets fully damaged during a run, you'll be forced to stop and repair it, which means a difficult fight.

You also need to manage the Flame on your Stagecoach. Choosing a route through the map will either diminish or reinforce your Flame and your Flame is important because it gives your Heroes a chance to form positive relationships which each other, which is extremely powerful. If you don't manage your Flame well enough, your Heroes will form negative relationships, which can potentially doom a run (though they can sometimes be mitigated with smart play), as well as making enemy encounters harder as you proceed through the map.

You're managing your Heroes health and Stress levels. The more stressed they get, the more likely they are to form negative relationships or have meltdowns during combat, which can turn an encounter in favor of the enemy. Managing Health and Stress requires managing that Flame and making good choices as you proceed to the map, which can help heal your Health or Stress.

You'll need to manage your Heroes skills as well. You might see that soon you'll encounter a boss and while you can make the choice whether to fight the boss or not, you need to ensure that your skills can take care of the Bosses quirks. So you can switch out your skills before an encounter to make sure you've got the right setup.

You'll also need to make sure you're managing your Heroes combat items and trinkets. Combat items can give you little minor boosts in combat, from reinforcing your flame, to mitigating negative tokens on your Heroes and/or providing healing to them. But combat items are limited and also cost resources (but can also be found) to buy more of. Trinkets reinforce a lot of your Heroes skills and resistances, but can also come with negative effects on lower level trinkets. You might be able to give your Grave Robber extra damage, but at the cost of Her speed, which may end-up either a wash or negatively effecting you if you can't kill and enemy before it harms a party member.

There's just all kinds of little, constant, interesting decisions to be made in the game and it all reminds me of playing XCOM2. in which your managing all the facets of your strategic layer, putting Engineers where they need to go, doing the right research, etc, etc, so that you can be better off during the actual battles. I feel like with Darkest Dungeon 2, Red Hook really took Sid Meier's adage of "A good game is a series of interesting decisions" to heart and made a game absolutely rife with them.

I just love it to pieces right now and I think it's supplanted Darkest Dungeon for me. Much as I love that game, my main complaint with it is that I constantly had to be looking things up and I'm not the only one, which I know for a fact. That game can be so obtuse and difficult to play for people with a Goldfish memory like myself that someone made an app for all the stuff that goes into a run in that game. Making sure you know what the right items to bring are, what items interact with what and so on. Darkest Dungeon 2 just gives you everything you need to know right from the jump; everything is explained in tooltips, icons are everywhere, you always know what's going on so you can make the best informed decision in any given moment.

That's all I have to say about that.

Spirittea updated last week so I've been playing that. Started a new file because it's been a while and the exact mechanics felt rusty in my head (and the update added new stuff anyway), and so far I'm pretty pleased with it. The most immediately obvious change in the new game is that there are now many more cosmetics available. Finally I can wear shorts and tank tops! I can have a ponytail! I'm also trying to solve some riddles to unlock new "bathhouse formations", so that's a neat little new mechanic.

So far I've solved only one riddle, and it was totally by accident. I was trying to interact with something else entirely and a formation scroll popped up seemingly randomly. I was confused to later see a riddle marked as solved and had to look up the answer before realizing what happened.

Halls of Torment

This week for our podcast on roguelike games we played Halls of Torment

This was a fun one to come back to. I remember first playing the prologue some time last year and taking that it was a fresh and fun take on the Vampire Survivor-like sub-sub-sub genre. With something like 500+ of them on Steam, HoT is probably the best one.

A great, low-fi Diablo 1 style aesthetic and great music work really well here. He’ll, there were parts of Diablo 1 that almost felt like a horde survival game already when you got to the late game, competing but into practice here makes perfect sense.

There’s some very good gameplay mechanic decisions, great unlock progression, and great pacing overall to make you feel like you have some new toy to try after every run. Really quite a fun game!