Monster Train 2

Deckbuilding roguelike similar to Slay the Spire. I played the first one for about 130 hours. It's been a great side game to play while eating dinner or watching a show. I've only got a few runs down in the second game. I have somewhat mixed feelings at this point.

It's nice having new mechanics, new heroes, new cards, etc. But it's not intuitive yet, as I often have to check things like "what does Conduit do again?? And have I unlocked any cards that synergize well with it?" So it requires a bit more mental energy to play.

Also, the changes from the first game feel a bit like "just make the numbers bigger and add more things to keep track of" sometimes. I.e. power creep. And I don't like that the final boss fight has 7 waves, as it drags on IMO. Some of the elegance of the first game seems to be diluted.

But that's an early impression, and I'm sure that will change over time. I've just unlocked the third clan and started my first run with them, so I've only seen a fraction of the game so far.

Sifu

Third-person brawler with tight combat. I realize now that watching this game doesn't really do it justice. It feels fluid and satisfying to play. Like Mirror's Edge but focused on martial arts instead of parkour. Singleplayer action games have not grabbed me recently, but I think I'll stick with this one. It's basically a fighting game, but one that's not weighed down by old tropes (saying that as a casual fighting game fan).

It's the kind of game where the presentation doesn't really matter, because the core mechanic is so good. But the presentation is actually cool too. Revenge story set in China (it feels like Hong Kong specifically, but apparently it's not, and there appears to be some discourse around that and other cultural issues on the web), that provides a fitting atmosphere without bogging down the gameplay.

I played just an hour or two so far, so again these are early impressions.

Metaphor Refantazio

Continued my playthrough, just hit 32 hours.

I was ready to drop this game pretty soon after I posted my last update. The letdown from my unrealistically high expectations for the story made it easier for some "annoyances" to pile onto my frustration towards the game: the amount of friction I felt the Calendar system adds to the game, how janky some of the animations and backgrounds look, how uninspiring a lot of the side content can be.

And then I reached the climax of the second area of the game. Everything about that sequence landed for me.

Ever since this part, I've been enjoying the game way more.

Which is weird since nothing really changed. A lot of the parts of the game I found annoying before are still pretty annoying now. The story still has a lot of those shonen-isms (like directly during the denouement of the second area).

I think it's just my headspace ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. In a lot of the JRPGs I play, if I don't vibe with the story I can usually just ignore it. Metaphor's storytelling is very central to the experience and is tedious to skip through, so I had been dreading playing through the rest of the game. Hitting a story beat that I genuinely enjoyed seems to have reframed my expectations enough that I'm now looking forward for the next parts of the story that land for me.

As planned, I played Constance! It's a metroidvania in the Hollow Knight style. The titular Constance is suffering from mental distress - I'm not an expert so I couldn't tell exactly what, but I think at least depression and burnout. In her sleep, she finds herself trapped in a fantasy world where she has hair made of paint and wields a giant brush, and a shadowy puppeteer is trying to keep her from leaving!

I don't actually have much to say about this game. It was a polished and competently made game. I experienced no bugs in the core gameplay and had fun playing it all the way through. There are some fairly difficult platforming sections, but for the most part they are optional. The boss fights were good too! I appreciated the novelty of having to slot the "charms" (here they're called inspirations) into a grid like puzzle pieces. I think there are a couple of glitches in how the map measures progress and marks things as complete, but I noticed they have a map upgrade scheduled for about now, so I imagine this will be fixed!

I learned while I was half way through the game that the level designer was friends with my brother. According to my brother, the devs were a bit miffed because this year - of course - Hollow Knight Silksong came out, and as I'm sure many of you know it's criminally underpriced. It apparently completely skewed mainstream perception of how much content players should expect out of a cheap metroidvania, which I feel is a fair thing to be annoyed about. I got 15 hours out of Constance while being a completionist (except for the optional platforming challenges). There are achievements for 8 hours and 3 hours for speedrunner types.

EDIT: All of the devs' other games kind of looks like my cup of tea. Currently I have a bit of a backlog, but maybe in later 2026 I'll pick up another one!

Previous

I’ve finally been able to go a month now without being sick (2 months of anxiety caused sickness + covid right after, ugh) and I’m finally over my depressive slump, so I’ve been playing games a lot more!

In addition to beating Expedition 33, which I mentioned in the last thread, I also beat Jusant this weekend. It’s been in my library for a bit and I wanted something short and easy after E33. It took me just around 3-4 hours to beat, but it was a satisfying and cute game! I do recommend this for a nice palate cleanser!

I also started playing Control. This has been on my list for years and I always knew I would love it, I just never had the spark to start it. With how insane the trailer looked for the next game, I knew I had to start this. I’m only about 3 hours in, but I love the vibe so far. The gun play is just okay so far, but being able to telekinetically hurl objects more than makes up for it and it sort of reminds me of an older game called Second Sight. I’m loving it and I know it isn’t the longest game, so I’ll probably beat it this week at some point.

Next up after that will be Black Mesa. I also want someone to be proud of me, I finally uninstalled Destiny 2. I have gigabit internet so it’s not like I couldn’t just download it again in 20 minutes, but it feels like a step. Tbh I don’t have an addiction to it or anything, I just keep going back every few weeks even though I haven’t really found the game fun in over a year now. I did enjoy the new dungeon with friends, but most of my friends have stopped playing and the game isn’t really introducing amazing new content like with prior expansions. The days of getting expansions like Witch Queen and Final Shape are over and it’s just time for me to move on.

Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty

At the point of no return in the main story of CP, I downloaded the DLC and left it installed on my system, burnt out from gameplay and just casually roamed Night City doing side missions here and there for a year.

Then I finally had the time to sit and play this thing properly over the holiday break. I mean , my mind is blown. I wish I had the guts to write like a Choom or whatever but it still makes my shoulders go up and my face to scrunch in disgust when I read it, so…

Man, this story is out of control. Living through such a movie/theatre play made me love the game all over again. Dogtown being a shithole wrecked by the Unification War has pockets of beauty, but overall just feels like a garbage heap. The cast is outrageous, and the diversity in missions… ghaddamn.

I got the King of Cups trophy at the end. I guess I can finally finish the main story now, but that was incredibly satisfying.

Paradoxically, I don't have much time to play during the holidays, as the kids are at home, go to bed later, and as a result I can't really afford to spend 30-45 minutes uninterrupted in ARC Raiders.

However, we dusted off Rocket League on the Switch 2, and it performs much better than on Switch 1. And since we (parents and children) all suck at it, we can enjoy it equally.

And when the console is free, I've been replaying Torchlight 2. It's probably my favorite ARPG ever, it has the right speed during its long campaign, itemization that feels good to loot, yet don't make you feel like a god after an hour, a simple skill tree, simple stats, enough QoL to not feel ancient... In my opinion, it's perfectly balanced and is the true sequel to Diablo 2.

I played Type Help, and while I liked it, my overall take is “meh” because

I did however love the “frustration” of the game, the friction of not being able to immediately discern who or where or how many. In that regard, I highly recommend. But be sure to save if you play on mobile, as the save file is linked only to the browser’s cache; I had to restart after spending some time away from the device.

Hopped back on Monster Hunter: Wilds after a half-year break to check out the performance improvements and Gogmazios and here's my impressions after a dozen hours and a decent number of hunts:

• Performance is definitely a little better than before on my machine (5600x, 3070, 32gb RAM), especially in the camps where it used to sometimes tank to below 20. Now it'll usually sit pretty solidly between 50-70 on mostly medium settings, which still isn't ideal but it's acceptable.

• Gogmazios is a cool fight, pretty straightforward once you learn the mechanics of it though it's not hard to cart on it if you're careless or underprepared, especially if you're using a ranged weapon. Last phase gets pretty cinematic, a little slinger-heavy though.

• Gogma artian upgrading adds yet another layer of RNG for min-maxing. On the one hand, it gives people super rare god rolls to chase. On the other hand, all the monster weapons are totally left in the dust. Artian IS the endgame, and even when the expansion rolls around I expect they'll have some upgrade for artian there too.

• I still hate flying wyverns (swaxe main). Stupid rathalos land you dumb lizard, I only have so many flashpods to knock your ass to the ground.

Also picked up The Alters on sale and I've got about a dozen hours in that too, currently mostly through Act 2. I'm enjoying the writing so far, mostly the interactions between the alters themselves. It's an interesting thought experiment, seeing how you'd interact with different versions of yourself that went down different paths in life, and I think the game does a reasonably good job of portraying that. As for the gameplay outside of the narrative stuff, it's a pretty simple but polished resource management game with a little bit of exploration and some hazards. It's definitely not for everyone but having put a lot of hours into Frostpunk 1 and 2, it suits me just fine.

I just 100% completed God of War (2018) - what a great game that was. Because I usually play FromSoftware games for difficulty, I usually play other games on a relatively easy difficulty to enjoy the story.

My goodness, I still struggled with Sigrun on the easiest difficulty of the game, it took me like 4-5 attempts to beat her with a resurrection stone. The difficulty spike between her and every other fight in the game is gargantuan, I have not seen such a stark difference in difficulty between one opponent and another in any other game before.

Regardless, this game is 100% worth playing, just for the main story alone. This is probably one of the best reboots to a series ever, and I'm already playing Ragnarok. I can't wait for Santa Monica studio to take Kratos to other realms, providing it's in their plans to do so.

I got a Switch 2 for Christmas with Mario Kart World! Played it a bit last night.

My main thought: wow I really want to be able to just walk around and explore on foot. Funny thought, but the free roam mode leaves me yearning to just... walk. I love exploring in games, and the karts' movement hinders the exploration. I want to be able to talk to the NPCs dotting the cities and tracks outside of races, and actually see the world as... Well, a world.

That aside, it's definitely fun and reminds me of why Nintendo remains so popular. I love indie games, but Nintendo's games are pretty much always very well polished in a way that most indie games just can't achieve. The tracks are colorful and well designed, the movement is smooth, the world is genuinely gorgeous—and just overall, it's fun. Even among AAA devs, Nintendo stands out to me since their games are consistently high quality.

I really like the drive-through costumes in particular. Something about them is so fun to me among everything else, and contributes to my desire to interact with the world dang it

I've always shied away from the free games in the Linux repos because the assets look so basic (my common complaint when it comes to FOSS), I figured they can't be much good. But I saw a post somewhere a couple days ago that SuperTuxKart is one of the best games they ever played on Linux, so I said what the hell, I'd give it a shot... and it's hella fun! Despite the dated look, it runs great and the AI is devious. I'm having a blast.

I was very fortunate to receive a key for DOOM 64 from @kfwyre during the Christmas Giveaway, and have been giving it a lot of playtime since receiving it.

Compared to the balls-to-the-wall, take-no-prisoner difficulty of mod compilation Final DOOM, DOOM 64 (as the other non-id-made creation) takes a very different approach. It's still crushingly difficult with obscure secrets, but tone takes a much different approach with an ambient soundtrack that co-mingles synthesizer tracks and crying baby sounds. Its slower pace invites players to relish the oppressive atmosphere weighing upon them, so much so that a better name might be DREAD instead of DOOM.

If it can be said, DOOM 64 is more contemplative than scary. It's more Hellraiser than Resident Evil (movies). It's an examination of dire moods as evidenced by more spooky castle levels than any DOOM game I can think of. It's a winning combination of spooks and shoots that the abomination DOOM 3: BFG Edition could only dream of becoming.

Anyways, having a blast finding the 3 runes that finally give the cheese-tastic Unmaker its proper badassery.

Been playing Rogue Trader lately, and I'm really enjoying it. I'm a big fan of Warhammer 40k in general, and all the over the top absurdity being played straight is wonderful (and I appreciate that dialog choices give you a choice between being normal or playing into the same dogma). The combat system feels much more fun and fluid for me than BG3 did, while I imagine playing it on the tabletop is probably a nightmare this system lends itself to much more engaging video game gameplay than D&D does IMO.

Only just wrapped chapter 1, so don't have a lot of insight on the story yet, but so far it's been fun and seems to have a good amount of choice involved. I've been playing a pompous, mostly dogmatic but not entirely aloof rogue trader (I love the recurring gag of making Abelard introduce me in all sorts of tense scenarios).

The game is dense, and the number of choices you have to make constantly wrt gear and level ups is heavy, but I'm just taking it as part of the process. You do have the option to respec characters, so if you do make mistakes or want changes you're not locked in.

Overall excited to play more of it, and unusually for me for these types of games I kind of want to play a second time, the large space in build variety intrigues me. I'm loving my current highly-lethal sniper, but just from peeks at the other characters I can see so many more options for so many other fun builds

I just finished Keeper over the holiday (yay $1 gamepass trial), and it’s classic Double Fine studios attention to detail. The game runs great and every moment is like a painting. A bit like Brutal Legend with the wild environments, but a completely different aesthetic.

The start is a a bit of a slow walking simulator, but it starts throwing in some surprising variety and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It’s definitely an easy game, but the incredible art and moody soundtrack kept me engaged. I highly recommend it.

In The Hundred Line, there's a character who enjoys the most horrific, gut-punchingly shocking adult games, and in a specific conversation, she recommends a list of her favourites. All of these are real games, and out of morbid curiosity, I wrote them down to check out at some point. Suffice to say that the writers did their homework, because these are exactly the sort of games you would imagine this character playing. Even as a VN nerd who enjoys horror and is pretty thoroughly desensitised to anything you can do to fictional characters, it's a lot.

To balance this out, the rest of my gaming time is being spent on cute, colourful games that are simply joyful to play.

Öoo

Short but delightful.

The mechanics of the game are very simple - all you can do is move, lay bombs and detonate them - but through its puzzle design, the game is constantly teaching you new ways to use those mechanics. Instead of powering up your character with new items or skills, it's the player who is being powered up with a better understanding of what can be done with the existing mechanics, which feels very satisfying.

The puzzles themselves also feel very well tuned in a way that usually demands some experimentation (so that the player often feels like they're organically discovering the new techniques which the room is designed to impart) and lateral thinking while never being so hard that you're banging your head against a wall with no idea where to start.

Add on top of that some simple but expressive pixel art and a bopping soundtrack and you've got a great little package that pretty much anyone can enjoy.

Kirby and the Forgotten Land (Switch 2)

It's basically Super Mario 3D World / Land with Kirby, which is great because I loved those games.

All of his moves and mechanics from the 2D games are here (on top of a cute but completely unnecessary soulslike dodge) so you're pretty overpowered, but it's a great game to just chill out to as you 100% a level or two a day. Each level has plenty of secrets and collectibles to find, but the levels themselves are short and you receive enough of a hint as to where to go / what to do that none of it ever feels obnoxious.

Currently playing Cassette Beasts. I'm having a lot of fun! I really focus on the music when I'm playing a game, so this was great for me. It's a very creative design, and I can't wait to explore more of the story. I got it from Epic Games free game on Thursday, so if anyone here wants to play and hasn't picked it up yet, now would be a good time.

I've been back in GTA Online lately, mostly because GTA6 hype pulled me back in. And honestly: free updates for over 10 years is insane. Like, it's easy to forget how unusual that is in games. Even if a lot of the missions seem to be the same at this point, the fact they still drop new cars, new businesses, new little systems and QoL stuff this deep into a decade-old game is genuinely impressive. The driving still feels great, customizing cars is still a bottomless pit, community-made races are ridiculous (in a good way), and the game still feels alive in a way.

That said, when you step back and look at the incentives, it's hard not to see the other side of it: a lot of decisions feel less like "make the best game" and more like "optimize revenue." GTA+ is the clearest example, taking vehicles out of normal purchase availability and putting them behind a subscription/paywall feels like a pretty gross escalation.

And public lobbies still feel like they're built to keep the pressure on. The Oppressor Mk II has been an obvious griefing tool for years, and instead of solving the imbalance at the root (or giving robust PvP-less public lobbies), it feels like they keep selling "a solution" (Scramjet, Toreador, Imani Tech, etc.). That arms race hits low-level players hardest, who are also the least equipped to grind quickly, and the most likely to cave and buy Shark Cards to afford these counters.

So yeah: I'm genuinely grateful the game kept getting free content for a decade. I just wish fewer of the systems around it felt designed to turn frustration into spending, but I guess it's the easiest way to make the free updates sustainable.

I played most of the Thinky Award nominees! They're all great in their own way, even if they're not necessarily for me. I only played a few hours of each, but I'll be coming back to most of them.

The standouts were:

• Chroma Zero, heavily inspired by Outer Wilds
• Gentoo Rescue, a challenging yet acecssible penguin puzzle game
• The Roottrees are Dead, a superb logic and deduction game about family trees.

But really, they were all nominated for a reason, so you can't go wrong!

https://david.reviews/articles/thinky-awards-2025-impressions/