I'm on the third and final act of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Voice acting is phenomenal (Troy Baker does one hell of a Harrison Ford impression) and the story is very classic Indiana Jones. The game play is fun enough but the stealth elements, while good, are hindered a little by my overwhelming urge to punch fascists and the extremely generous detection system.

My biggest complaint are the visuals. The graphics are quite beautiful but there are some minor issues with texture pop-in and shimmering, but more than anything else it's quite common for people to get motion sickness while playing this game. I can only go an hour playing before feeling nauseous. I've tweaked all my settings and looked for mods but no luck which is really unfortunate as it kind of ruins an otherwise pleasant experience.

I will forewarn you. You are about to engage with more material about some mech games than anyone should. I have included screenshots throughout to enhance your reading experience.

Since finishing Armored Core: Verdict Day, I went looking around for Armored Core V. That game, turns out, runs like dogshit in RPCS3, and when it doesn't, it crashes at the end of a mission. If there is one way to make Armored Core absolutely intolerable, it's to have a random shot at crashing at the end of a mission. In my disappointment I was struck with a sudden realization: The Xbox 360. That was a real thing. It existed, and games were made for it. And, because it is the future, there is an emulator for it.

After grabbing Xenia, finding iso's and dlc's and all that, I fired it up and it was, after a little bit of fiddling basically perfect. Playable at full speed on the Steam Deck, which pretty much sealed the deal. I was gonna play AC V and then Verdict Day again. The save can go from game to game, I have an idea of a build I like, not a huge time commitment.

AC V in terms of gameplay is basically the same as Verdict Day. VD, when it isn't something you've contracted, is like a sped up/tuned up version of what AC V did. A bunch of slight-yet-important adjustments plus a big expansion on parts on top of a new campaign/content. V is the same basic gameplay albeit a little rougher around the edges. Though, with these it tends to be that being a little rougher often translates to feeling more grounded, which I tend to actually enjoy a bit more. I've written about gameplay enough, so I won't go into it much. What stood out to me with AC V was the story concept - it kicks so much more ass than the games before it, and a significant portion of ass relative to all the other games. Perhaps the most ass depending on what kinds of stories you like.

Unfortunately that cool concept is locked behind a final product that just doesn't communicate it very well. There are some baffling design decisions that make following the story in AC V especially difficult. All four PS3-era games are connected to each other, but it's pretty tough to get that without delving into supplementary material. Just playing through, you are in the story, the characters don't usually know more than you do. You're participating in events that sometimes carry great significance despite not looking much different from other stuff you did. The voice acting can be pretty flat, and some material didn't make it through the production process.

Well, I did it. I went and read the wiki pages and out-of-print art books and all that. Allow me and a robot named "Scanmodo" to do what a lore video does, in less time.

This is a post in two parts. The first is a spoiler. The second is opinions.

What the hell is going on

In AC 4, and For Answer, the stakes had been raised dramatically. Where the games before told a story about humanity putting up with dangerous AI, in these games war had rendered the Earth practically uninhabitable. Corporations had overcome nation-states, locked the world in perpetual war and by the time of your badassery had fooled folks into thinking they could ride out an irradiated planet floating along in big airborne city-ships. You help a group of rebels destroy what keeps the cities afloat to break people of thinking this, and then fire off giant cannons to destroy a network of satellites the corporations built to prevent anyone from escaping to space. This is framed as cleansing the Earth of the sin of the corporations. By the end of the games all you knew was that the endeavor succeeded - cannons fired, cities came down, satellites blew up, humanity had what was supposed to be its one last shot to escape itself.

By Armored Core V it is 100 years later. Only some of the spaceships got off the planet. Most didn't. All around the world, they stood abandoned while the planet got more harsh and everybody had to migrate around to survive. Settlements, cities as we know them, disappeared, except for one in North America just called "The City". It is ruled by a gang-leader-turned-dictator who managed to get into one of the old spaceships and steal a bunch of its tech. His oppressive rule has stoked rebellion, and you, a City Police officer, have decided to join that rebellion. Except, when the game opens the rebellion has failed, and you are making your escape. Across the game you build up your forces, try again, succeed, but are prevented from taking power by an entity known as "The Corporation" - the group who helped the dictator get into the spaceship. They come after you with all kinds of automated weapons, until eventually you face off and learn the organization's true nature.

When the world became locked in perpetual conflict a century ago, the corporations built a supercomputer to try to figure out "the answer" to the problem of, well, being stuck in a pattern of perpetual war. It never found one. When people left for space, because they knew damn well most people were gonna get stuck on Earth they left the computer behind to continue working. The Corporation is that computer, and its aims remain mysterious by the end of the game. In the aftermath of confronting it, you play out a story that fills in some worldbuilding details - you fight a squad of centuries-old cybernetically enhanced humans who have lost all sense of purpose, rescue one of your friends and help her realize her destiny, fight duels with every single other pilot known to the region, typical things you do after squaring off with a hostile supercomputer.

Verdict Day takes place 100 years after that. The groups that formed the rebellion went off and formed what's basically a prototypical nation-state, and ended up discovering there were others doing the same out there. The Earth has regained some of its habitability, so folks spread around and started to develop again. This led to, you might have guessed it, resource wars. The three groups have become embroiled in conflict, and a fourth entity calling itself "The Foundation" is supplying weapons to all of them. It's the same sort of stuff you saw in AC V, so immediately, seems to be our supercomputer friend is at it again, though none of the in-game characters know about that. The person you were in AC V has faded into legend, a barely-remembered myth. Across the runtime of the game, you come to learn more about the supercomputer's aims. It was created from the mind of a person, who by the time of this procedure had become enveloped in a nihilistic urge to destroy everything. The computer, with its task of having to find the answer to perpetual war, determined thanks to the obsession of this man that there isn't one. Humanity will destroy itself, and so the computer has decided it will help, by opening up all of the old spaceships and unleashing automated weaponry upon everyone. You don't end up thwarting this plan either - nope, for the sake of the multiplayer, the game ends with you having inadvertently triggered the computer's final plan. It unleashes the weapons, the world descends into a total war, and the multiplayer was an infinite game of territory conquest and raid bosses. For ten years that was the end of the story.

Except it wasn't. I found a video by a creator named CinnamonLyn, who played the multiplayer when the servers were permanently shut down. Their AC videos are all very good. On that day, they set up a 4v4 team match, where each player was armed with an Ultimate Weapon. The deal with these, was that in exchange for less weapon variety, you could trigger a limited-time state in which using the weapon could practically one-shot anyone. The trade-off is that when the time is up, you are left permanently damaged, and the weapon is no longer usable. Each player was equipped only with one of these weapons, and when the match loaded in they approached each other and let loose. They all missed. So, after a flurry of explosions and noise this group of people was left unarmed and unable to fight each other. They flew around, jumped off of stuff, talked shit, just kinda screwed around until the server shut off and the war was over, forever.

I think that ending is poignant. After playing through what was supposed to be the last ~250 years of humanity, the cycle of perpetual warfare ended in peace. Not through ideals, enlightenment, ingenuity, technology, or sick mech piloting, but through a complete accident of human activity. Folks just did silly shit and then the world ended after the next game finally came out.

What (the hell) I think

Imo, this rocks. A mecha show about a rebellion in The Last City on Earth is something I would watch. Unfortunately, across all four games it is just about impossible to get this just playing through them the one time. Even multiple times, you can easily end up with a distorted interpretation because they all do weird things with endings and mission structure, on top of delivering itself by way of character dialogue more than anything else. AC is opposite to Souls in this respect - characters do a *lot* of talking and they don't *all* tragically die. AC V straight up wrecks its own story, because though its two stories run sequentially, you can play them simultaneously. It just lets you jump into those missions, with cutscenes and everything, right alongside the main narrative, so good luck figuring out what the hell is even going on. Verdict Day makes the obvious change, side missions are on the side.

Despite this post being a spoiler for four games together, it doesn't really matter that the broader story gets spoiled. AC, more than Souls, puts gameplay first. It always prioritizes the moment-to-moment experience so a big portion of what's enjoyable can be had without knowing a damn thing about what's going on. The games have no problem throwing out a silly reason to justify a strange, fun encounter. When you know what's going on you can see a bit better the extent of the worldbuilding, and I think that has always been a cut above what you get in a lot of other games. Especially mech games. "Mech game" can mean a lot of different things. Really, mechs are a fantasy vehicle, so if we're gonna put a genre label on it, mine would be "Fantasy Vehicular Combat". There is a range in the "(Mechs)" sub-category, from Gundam to Battletech. Armored Core is center-Battletech. Battletech with Japanese Characteristics. The machine is a thing you work on and improve, tune and tweak, but you go real fast and occasionally pull off anime bullshit when you jerk the controls around the right way. That, as opposed to the machine being a stand-in for a guy doing anime bullshit when you hit the button the one time.

That groundedness is what attracted me to Armored Core in the first place, back when the primary way I played anything was on a PSP. Let me tell you, if you thought a game had bad controls, and you have not tried to do AC (or Monster Hunter) on a PSP, you do not know what bad can be. I made it through the games but the absolute hell of controlling them meant I just didn't investigate much further. As I've replayed them, with nicer looks and remappable controls (there are mods to do analog sticks in the old games), I've come to really appreciate them for being something you just don't see in the world of giant robot video game nonsense. I like my nonsense to be situated in a rough analogue of reality, where machines at least try to correspond to what they would be, if we loosened up on physics a bit and otherwise remained about the same. Armored Core hits the sweet spot, with stories of people being people and mechs that can't (usually) end the earth.

The games are not as difficult as they're made out to be. "Hard" just means "practice", and you can build your way through problems. There are some that tend to be easier, some that tend to be harder, but you can't really go wrong going with your gut. Most things are effective and most builds can win. It's really a matter of how bad you want the fashion build to succeed. Imo, don't play to win, play to try to pull off cool shit. If you can leap across a building, fly over a guy, drop down and smash him to pieces, do that, because that kind of shit is what the game wants you to be doing. Aggression is rewarded, but also ingenuity and patience. Sometimes you plan on getting smashed and just need to out-gun the thing.

I would advocate a certain mindset: For a while you'll just be a Col. Pern Andersman, Brade Gangerton, Zeon Soldier #4, a redshirt. The guy who shows up for a frame or two, gets shot, and no one cares. The little robot will talk shit at you while yours crumples into pieces after a bunch of flashing on the screen. But eventually, your brain will put it all in place and achieve transcendence, your Newtype potential will be unlocked. You'll make it across the story threshold and everyone starts remarking on how much of a terrifying badass you are. The computer talks shit at you and you think, you know what fucker, how bout eating these rockets, and then you'll do it, and you'll say "GOTTEM" before you thought about it. They become like arcade games after you finish them - collect parts, build what you want, see how good you can do it. Each game takes its own approach to that but they all try to offer a little extra. Fromsoft is ready to meet you where you're at if you have a build you like and wanna see how hard you can push it.

If you want to get into the games on their level, aesthetics are as important as the rest. The customization is half the game if you want it to be. You can do paint and stickers and all kinds of shit. Get your kid in on making your robot look sick if you've got one around. As you get more modern the tools for it get more sophisticated. If you like gunpla, it is something made by people who understood. It isn't necessary, but it's intuitive enough and why not do a red one? Do a red one. Then put some black on it. Then put a crab on it. Do a yin-yang. Oh, wait, you can put them together? You can put them together. Next time some asshole in a watermelon green robot says I'm pathetic, they can say it at the crab while the laser sends them back to hell. In the world Armored Core builds, bipedal humanoid robots are the thing people do, everybody has one. They're treated like a completely normal part of the world and folks use the paint and emblems to express themselves. You never actually see human models, so in the end it's sort of like playing through the bleakest Pixar movie. Be a WALL-E if you want.

So, there you go, a minor obsession has been brought to a close. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk. Play an Armored Core game. You can find em out in the wild pretty easily, the emulators mostly do the configuring themselves, beat the RAM shortage and play old stuff.

EDIT: In this little box is some info about what to do to run these, for completeness' sake

PSX/PS2 - Duckstation and PCSX2 don't need anything special, you're free to just do what you think looks good. On a Steam Deck, 3x resolution looks great, widescreen looks nice too if you enable it. Titles that don't have analog support have versions which enable analog support, a place like retrogametalk will have versions with patches pre-applied available.

PS3/X360 - RPCS3 is good for the 4th generation games (4, For Answer). You can right-click the game and choose to create a Custom Configuration so they'll boot with the right stuff pre-enabled. All you need is to open the GPU tab and check the box labeled "Write Color Buffers", besides that default settings are fine. If you've never used RPCS3 on the deck before, you can get a more stable picture + fix some sound issues by setting limits on your GPU clocks and refresh rate.

Xenia is best for 5th generation (V, Verdict Day) and requires the most fiddling. You need to use Xenia Canary, and after launch open up xenia-canary.config.toml. Use the search function and change these lines:

apu_max_queued_frames = 8
readback_resolve = true
vsync = false
protect_zero = false
guide_button = false
keyboard_mode = 0

The key with these two games is the setting for "readback resolve". If this is set to False, you get much better performance, but your AC will have garbage textures. If you turn it off after a mission begins you can play at full speed with everything looking nice. After launching Xenia, open the Steam Input menu. Map "SELECT + A" to the B key with a Long Press. That way, when the mission begins and you see your mech on-screen, hold B, performance is good. When you see "mission complete", hold B again, worse performance but you'll be good for the next mission. Think about it like hitting the ignition, easy habit. On the deck, reenabling this setting will cause a big lag spike, but the controls are set up where holding B is never necessary during gameplay.

If you want to play other games on Xenia, you don't need to undo these settings. You can copy your executable to a new folder, launch, it's a fresh install with a new config file. Doesn't matter if you're on Windows or Linux. Just be sure to add the executable to steam and force a proton prefix, like any non-steam title. Keep AC in one place, anything else somewhere else, good to go.

If you want to do multiplayer, the Armored Core discord server has preconfigured packages they all play on. Not all features are available, but you can do free battle and raid bosses, folks set those up from time to time/you can ask and a few people will probably do it with you.

I’m most of the way through Control and I like it! There are some moments of frustration around the gameplay, but the setting and story are pretty great. TLDR I think the gunplay is pretty average and the movement feels like it could have a bit more of the special sauce. Levitating is fun, but it’s just kind of clunky, but being able to chuck any object at enemies makes up for it. The setting and story have sucked me in, though, I love all the lore bits.

I’m most of the way through the main story, I think, and inadvertently did the Alan Wake DLC, which was fun. I’ll probably beat it this week. I do like some of the side quests, though I don’t think I’ll go back and do absolutely everything. This is getting me excited to play the Alan Wake games, too.

I also started Sekiro. It’s taken me a long time to get to this one, especially since Dark Souls and Elden Ring are some of my favorite games. I’ll be honest… I kind of hate it. I’m going to try to get a bit further into the game before putting it down, especially since I’ve heard the beginning of this game is brutally hard, but yeah, it feels unfairly difficult so far. I’m not a fan of how you start with almost no healing and only have enough health to take 1 or 2 hits, and your attacks don’t do shit to health bars so you have to perfectly parry bosses with no mistakes for minutes straight just to beat them. I’m just not vibing with it. The timing windows are incredibly tight and the game just feels unfair and overly demanding. Like I said, I’m going to try to get past the first few bosses to see if the game lightens up a bit once I get more health and attack power and some upgrades, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I don’t finish this one.

I know I have it in me to beat it, I’ve beaten all other FromSoftware games I’ve played. I play dark souls every year and I beat pre-nerf Consort Radahn in Shadow of the Erdtree, so I kind of feel bad that mini bosses and the first main boss are making me rage quit when I never get mad at games otherwise.

Prior to the Minecraft server starting up again, I was playing a lot of RimWorld. I recently tried out the Medieval Overhaul mod and that like completely revamped my interest in it. The dark forest biome, the massive trees, the new animals, the new crafting, and just the general medieval aesthetic is chefs kiss. In particular I love the extra challenge of preserving food for winter without electrical refrigeration. You can dry / salt meat, or farm water and make ice and get a more challenging refrigeration (that consumes ice at a steady rate).

The one thing I don't like is that insanely powerful, often potentially hostile creatures keep spawning, even on lower difficulties. Not sure if that's a bug or what, but when something has 3000 Health, restores health, and all you have are 6 dudes with pikes and swords it's basically a game-ender if you're playing commitment mode.

I've been sick as hell and unable to do much, so what better way to spend my time than a nice roguelite? I spent 20+ hours this week playing Revita, courtesy of @kfwyre (whose mad translator turned it into "To Live").

The game bills itself as a twin stick shooter, and takes place in a succession of fairly simple randomly generated monster-infested rooms of varying sizes (sometimes with doors or secret passages to special/NPC rooms). A typical run consists in 60 rooms divided in 5 areas/biomes, each with a boss fight at the end, plus a (harder) final boss. In that, as in many other ways, I would say Revita is similar to Dead Cells. It has progression based on unlocking items for future runs (at ever increasing costs), a variety of base weapon options, and daily challenges. In fact there are tons of unlockables beyond the many items that can appear in the run, including all manner of NPCs and rooms, gameplay extras, many cosmetics for the base area, wearable hats, etc. Revita runs are however pretty focused since it doesn't have Dead Cells' sprawling dungeons.

Besides shooting monsters and dashing for i-frames, the key mechanic in the game is health management. Dead enemies drop "souls", and the protagonist can "focus" to turn his soul bar into healing or - if your health is already full - quarter heart containers that can slowly make your health bar bigger. But items and upgrades during the run are paid for by taking either the protagonist's health or maximum health, so you need to strategize and determine whether it's more useful to get an item or keep your health. It works very well!

I've found Revita to be pretty well designed, addictive and enjoyable to play. The music and faux-16 bit graphics are also fine. Clearly a lot of work went into all of it. Unfortunately, the game never made it big and was eventually abandoned (put on hold?) by the developer before they were able to fully realize their vision for it. Players are advised to play the beta version, which is more advanced than the stable one (which I did). I would agree with some reviewers that not all items are well balanced; some are quite crap! Also, the control scheme on a gamepad feels unpleasant. I recommend playing on keyboard and mouse; there, it works very well.

Before that, I also played MotionRec! This charming puzzle platformer can be finished in 6 hours (good/completionist ending). You play a little robot making its way through an underground world. You can only ever do four things: Walk, jump a little, record your motion and replay your motion. Motion replaying isn't affected by gravity, so solving the puzzles in the game mainly entails recording tracks that you can suitably replay from a different starting point in order to avoid spikes, cross gaps, bypass killer lasers, collects keys, leverage teleporters, etc.

You progress through the game's world in a mostly linear fashion, but there are many secret area detours to find if you're attentive! These are instrumental to finding all the "musical note" collectibles of the game. At key points in the game, there are doors that only open if you have collected a certain minimum amount of musical notes.

During the game the graphics are entirely monochrome (black and white pixels) except for the temporary tracks when recording and replaying motion. At first they appear pretty basic, but some areas contain pretty complex graphical elements that do a great job of depicting a sprawling, bizarre, melancholic underground facility, long deserted except for malfunctioning computers. Some hidden areas contain downright beautiful vignettes as an additional reward for exploring. By the time I reached the end, the game had successfully conveyed a story entirely through its visuals.

If you enjoy puzzle solving and want something that's not overly difficult (except for a minority of the optional rooms), doesn't take too many hours to complete, and isn't too expensive, you might want to give this one a try.

Previous

I'm having a PlayStation 1 RPG throwback moment with the Final Fantasy Tactics re-release for Switch, and with Eiyudan Chronicles: Hundred Heroes, the Suikoden spiritual successor.

With Tactics, I'm incredibly impressed with the voiceover work and the new script. A level of plot depth and intricacy has been introduced to a story that I thought I knew, and it's amazing. The gameplay continues to be addictive, even as I run through the game for what's probably the 10th time.

As for Eiyudan Chronicles, it's cool in some ways and in others, the kind of game that I'll likely stop playing. 3 hours in, the character stereotypes are terribly annoying and so far, the plot feels too similar to Suikoden 2, but minus the charm that the older game brought to the landscape in the 90s. It's likely that I've aged out of the audience for a title like this, but I do feel like there's still plenty to be desired here.

Bouncing around quite a bit recently, but all games I want to spend time with. I'll start with the most recent:

Elite: Dangerous

I really like this game and it's one my friends just jumped back into after I reminded them about it (I saw them experimenting with Eve and asked them why...). I set myself back up, refamiliarized myself with the controls (which took awhile) and started up my process of trading again. I was doing some of that last night and then had that thought I often do with Elite which is, "Why?"

So I think I'll stop playing. I did have fun the evening my friends and I spent with the game, landing on planets and generally screwing around, but Elite always elicits the "Why?" response from me. The game is fun enough, but the gameplay loop isn't interesting enough to me to stick with it for longer than I have (about 200 hours). Simply jumping from place to place, landing on stations and doing it all over again whether you're trading, hunting, exploring, etc all feels pretty much the same and it only ever feels like I'm doing it to acquire a bigger ship so I can continue doing what I'm doing. So yeah, I'll probably stop.

Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker HD

I've been pretty lackadaisical about the CGA in recent months, because I haven't had the motivation to play a lot of the selections. But this month is getting me pretty well. I've never played Wind Waker before and I'm not really a huge Zelda fan, but I am very much enjoying this one since I started it a few days ago. I love the art style and the general gameplay has been quite fun; I basically just finished the first island (Windfall?), doing all the quests I could find and having just acquired the Sail, I'm ready to go and do some more exploring. Excited to play some more of this one.

CyberMage: Darklight Awakening

This one is a blast from the past for me. Relatively recently I installed eXoDOS on a couple of my systems and in poking through the game list, I stumbled across this one. This is a game that was pretty formative for me; I probably originally bought it back in 1996 when I was 12 or 13 and it was absolutely mind blowing at the time, being a sort-of proto-ImSim/FPS-RPG Hybrid. Rather than what I was used to at the time (I hadn't yet played System Shock) of running around an FPS level and blasting everything in sight, in this game you needed to listen to NPC's, follow their directions and explore expansive levels to get to your objectives. And several levels weren't just over when you were done with them, but you had to go back to previous levels where you now unlocked new areas and were able to explore further. Environments changed (as much as they could for 1996), such as the city; when you first arrive it's taken over by enemy forces, which you gradually wipe out, allowing the city to become a somewhat safe place for you to explore at your own will. Stop in shops, buy new guns, armor, etc. Drive tanks, air cars and use jumpjets to reach places you couldn't in any other FPS at the time.

I played this a lot when I was a kid and even played it a handful of times in my early 20's and then somehow just...forgot about it until stumbling back across it on eXoDOS. Can't say exactly how much time I've put into it so far, but I'm probably roughly halfway through the game at this point and looking forward to playing it more. What's funny is that even though I've played this game so much in my youth, I've actually never completed it, getting to the last or second to last level and then ultimately giving up, I'm not sure why.

What's interesting about revisiting it now as a 41-year old man is that I'm understanding a lot more of the game now, being more considerate, exploring more and paying so much more attention to my environment and the details put there as storytelling. It's just...been kind of a revelation for me and it's been really fun to play it on my Steam Deck.

I want to say that what's also interesting about this game is that it gives me some insight into the person I would become or at least, the preferences I would develop as I aged and continued playing games. This is an early game by Origin and Warren Spector in particular, so it's no wonder I very much loved Deus Ex later in life and earlier than that, the Thief games, System Shock, etc.

I can't say if Cybermage holds-up. It's a little janky, the controls are weird (mitigated by the Steam Deck, thankfully), it's got some dated stuff in it (with only one exception, any woman in the game is a prostitute), but I'm having a great time with it all the same. The levels are fun to explore, the story is fun to follow and those are really the main things for me.

I've been playing The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, which is the only non-multiplayer mainline Zelda game that I have not beaten yet. It's funny because I've been trying to play it since it came out for the Wii (this time I'm playing it on Wii U), but I always dropped it around the events after you beat the first dungeon. But this time, I'm going all in, and I have started to like it a lot. The tears collecting parts were a bit boring, but I started to appreciate the game as a whole.

I love how Castle Town looks in this game; it feels so alive, almost like a real town.
And also, I like how they decided to split Hyrule fields into separate portions this time, so it doesn't feel like a big empty blob like in Ocarina of Time^[1].

Anyway, I hope to finish it this time. I'm already halfway through, and after finishing it, I might play A Link to the Past again since it was the first Zelda I played, and it would be a good way to close the cycle.

[1]: I know grass fields are a big empty blob in real life, but it was definitely the weakest part in OoT.

Thanks to @kfwyre and the Holiday Giveaway, I had the chance to play Etrian Odyssey HD and be blessed with the game's affirmation that manual mapping is the best part of dungeon crawling. Like CGI to a comic book movie, automapping is a quality of feature of dungeon crawling whose mandatory inclusion actively makes it worse. This game makes an approximation of making old-school grid maps, and it directly nails what makes monster habitat spelunking so compelling.

I don't know if I have the required number of hours to put into this time sink and its massive skill tree, but I am glad all the same that cute anime girls don't seem to be the focus of this modern blobber.

Since I've been watching the anime Gnosia, that kinda triggered an itch to play some Danganronpa v3, the third in the main series. I started v3 back in 2023, but then put it down because I just could not stand most of the characters. They're mostly just assholes, seemingly for no reason. Which is pretty different from the first two games.

Having returned to the game, 2.5yrs later, I'm reminded how much I can't stand them. Some of them, like Miu Iruma, are also super edgy in a not that funny way. At one point someone calls her a "cum dumpster" and she's like "Someone's finally called me a cum dumpster...yay!!!" Like, tf? What is wrong with you? I get that she's very likely never had sex and knows nothing about sex, so she talks and acts like she gets around, but...why? Is that supposed to be funny? None of the other characters really talk about sex.

I'm hoping that these characters being this way is related to the overall story. That they were chosen for this latest "killing high school" -- it's kinda like the book Battle Royale, but the murders much more devious and stealthy, so that's why the remaining characters have to investigate and deduce who the killers are -- because of their terrible personalities. But frankly? I don't care if most of these characters die. I'm not attached to them like I was to the characters in the first two games. The characters that seemingly were worth a damn were killed early on in the game.

I'm halfway through the third class trial, which means I'm almost halfway through the game. At this point, I just wanna know the story, so I'm mostly using a guide. Maybe I should've just watched a Let's Play. But I'm committed. Again. For now anyway.

Metaphor Refantazio

Continued my playthrough, I finished the 4th and maybe also the 5th area. My save has me at ~50 hours, but the store I'm playing from has me at ~64 hours which makes more sense to me given how long I got stuck at some bosses.

My enjoyment of this game's story has continued to oscillate between these really high peaks as the story hits the climax(es) for an arc, to some pretty low lows for everything else.

Given how low I was on the setup for the game, I've been surprised that basically every big moment in this game has landed for me. My playtime in the last week was peppered with me going holy shit at the reveals, the fights, and other big moments. I think these moments have been landing, even the more cliche ones, because of an appreciation for the threads Atlus sews to build up to these moments.

I've enjoyed feeling like I'm back in high school english, since Atlus uses narrative foils a ton. The emotional payoff in a couple big moments is emphasized through the contrast between 2 characters that Atlus spent that arc building up. And Atlus breaks the 4th wall (not a spoiler, it's literally the first thing that happens in the game) to set up the game's world as a foil for our own, which causes the player to reflect on the character's thoughts on their world in relation to the player's.

 

But god, this game also has some pretty low lows.

A lot of the writing that gets us between major plot points is questionable... I've been stupefied on multiple occasions by how asinine some of the plans the characters come up with are (Louis infiltration) and by random huge plot holes (Eupha Drakodios Forden).

Basically every member of the main cast feels flat. Talking to them in the world gets you mostly uninteresting one liners. You're meant to follow a line of social side quests for basically the entire cast, which are essentially vehicles for character development. But most of the questlines I've finished so far felt like they could've been an email (coughStrohlcough). Even more egregious is that the game can't really build on any of the growth from those quests in the rest of the game, since they have no guarantees when (or if?) you'll actually do them. The cutscenes in the main story have been the only consistent way the game has meaningfully shown any growth for characters, which to date has only really covered half of the main party.

Oh, as an aside, does anybody have turn based RPG suggestions? After playing Expedition 33, I want more. Besides that, I’ve really only played Pokémon games in terms of other turn based games (and CRPGs, but I’m looking for something less like that and more like E33). I know many of them probably aren’t as “active” combat as E33 (with the parry and dodge mechanics), but I want to try some other good ones!

I finally started playing Moonstone Island on Saturday. It was a game I had on my wishlist for a while before buying it last year, but I'd put off starting it since I can get sucked into games pretty easily.

I'm already at summer. Time seems to pass fairly fast compared to a lot of games, never really feels like a slog. I keep getting thrown off by it being sunset. In terms of gameplay it's fairly simplistic (I usually have the TV on playing videos while I collect resources or grind). I remember feeling a bit wary of the fact it uses cards, but it makes for a refreshing spin on turn-based battling. Every turn has a different hand, so there's some strategic thinking beyond just mindlessly spamming attacks. Especially since the monsters have armor, so you need to weaken it first before you can really do damage.

So far the one complaint I'd have is that there isn't really much fast travel outside of a warp whistle to go back to the main island. But... I actually don't mind the travel too much. It doesn't feel like a slog to reach places like it does in some games. My main gripe with it is just how quickly the day passes so I have to plan out expeditions. Actually, I might just need to craft another tent and build myself an outpost!

So I can highly recommend the game to anyone who likes the monster taming genre. It's fun!

The Roottrees are Dead

I thought this would be pretty dark based on the title, but it's just a very chill (and often funny) Obra Dinn-like deduction game where you're just googling, taking notes and making connections against a laid back soundtrack.

I've finished the first of the two chapters and felt like the difficulty was pitched at about the right level. Like with Obra Dinn, there'll occasionally be spots where it's seemingly impossible to 100% nail down an identity and you just have to take a flyer, but usually there are enough context clues that you can at least make a sensible guess, and by the end, there were only two optional identities that I couldn't find any clues for at all.

Chapter 2 is rather diabolical and ramps up the difficulty even further, perhaps beyond that which a lot of players would care for. I'm planning on at least giving it a shot as I enjoy the gameplay, but chapter 1 is a pretty self contained story and worth checking in itself.

Bō: Path of the Teal Lotus

2D Metroidvania, definitely Hollow Knight-inspired, but with a focus on staying in the air and Japanese mythology. Got it as an Amazon Prime freebie, took about 7 hours to finish with a 95.6% save file, the remaining % stuff is money-gated and I don't feel like farming or the postgame races/boss challenge mode. The main thing that distinguishes this gameplay-wise is how hitting anything with an aerial attack refreshes the jump and dash which A) lets you stay in the air indefinitely against a target B) kinda lets you facemash against a big aerial target (and the tooltip itself says to change attacking directions to attack faster) and top off on tea to heal off any hits/use the daruma skills without worry. Managed to not have a single death so I'd say it's easier than Hollow Knight. Kinda linear though: 2 tutorial areas before the main hub, and then the area order is meant to be right area, left area, bottom right area, bottom left area, and then it gives a collectible finder before the final area. It is quite a pretty game though and I had my fun from it (besides the no-hit item delivery sidequest).

Pizza Tower

2D platformer, Wario Land-inspired, with an unkillable hero (aside from the escape sequences and boss fights). Picked it up because it hit a historical low of $10/50% off from 33% previously and because it's a very highly rated game. After finishing it (68%), I don't think I'm the target audience though? I don't have the nostalgia for the artstyle and there's a pretty strong focus on scoring and collectible finding (and scoring by getting all the collectibles in each attempt). I really don't have the mindset for secret finding or route memorization so I guess a lot of the game's value is lost on me considering my playthrough ran 4 hours. At the least, I really do like the thrill of the escape segments so I dunno what that says about me. I'll have it marked in my New Game+ Backlog for the Noise playthrough.

Cuphead

2D Run and Gun. About 3 hours to beat main campaign (98%) and another hour or so for the DLC (62%). Picked it up because it's never going below 33% off and also because it's a very highly rated game. Also like Pizza Tower, I didn't expect the game to be so short? I mean by genre standards, it's pretty lengthy with a lot of bosses and everything being drawn and animated by hand is well-noted. It might be because a succesful stage is about 2 minutes so things feel short after the boss is downloaded and high expectations from how hyped up it is? I suppose I should take a crack at Expert difficulty and perfecting scores in the future, but right now, the game doesn't grip me on a personal level.

For my loadout I settled Converge for the piercing spread crowd clear, Spread for upclose damage, Smoke Bomb for the i-frames, Super Art 1 just because it's the least likely to get me killed, and Astral Cookie/Super Art 2 for the DLC.

I've been playing Chroma Zero after seeing it recommended by the creative lead of my favourite game, Outer Wilds. It's a puzzle game, but is supposedly designed around discovery, in a similar way to OW.

I'm not certain how well that comparison really works. Outer Wilds, at least to start, felt a lot like a 'lets go out there and see what we find' game. Chroma Zero feels more like a game of scientific experimentation. There's a ton of mysterious interactive objects around, and the game has thus far been interacting with them and observing changes, and trying to figure out from that what the rules of the world are.

I'm really enjoying it so far though. I won't spoil anything here, but from what I've figured out so far, the world works in a very creative, but still logical, way. And there was one (clearly intended) way I found to exploit the world's rules which felt really good to find.

The only criticism I have so far is that it has a character who talks to you when you reach certain locations and directly reveals certain actions to you, which feels very jarring. I do wish they'd found a way to make you learn those things from the environment instead.

Mostly I've been playing Donkey Kong Bananza since I picked it up around Christmas.

It's fun, but not nearly enough to justify the price tag. The digging gimmick lost its novelty after the first hour or two and now it's pretty repetitive and playing like pretty much any other game of this ilk. Prior to this I figured I'd always do PC gaming + Nintendo for portable/console gaming because I've always enjoyed their exclusives, but this game with the day 1 DLC bringing the price tag up to like $100 has made me deeply regret not picking up a Steam Deck instead of the Switch 2--this will likely be the last console I ever purchase.

Old School RuneScape has been my main game of the week. Current goal is to hit 75 Attack and get a Godsword then hit 66 Herblore before I really start farming the Moons of Peril. Melee otherwise feels far too slow to train for me, even with methods like Scurrius (only got good when the spines FINALLY dropped) and Sulphur Naguas netting me nearly 100k XP an hour.

When my work temp contract finishes, I plan to play and stream the new Deadman Mode season. I fucking hate PvP but I also feel like the only reason I hate playing on the permanent Deadman world is because it's full of a few griefing assholes who have genuinely chased any new players away from the server. I hated the fact that we didn't get Leagues last year and I didn't like how short Grid Master was, so I'm eager to get into another seasonal event, even if it's mainly for PvPers.

DMM is brutal. It's a version of Old School with 5x to 20x XP rates, where the entire map aside from a few sparse safe zones are open PvP. There used to be no combat level brackets whatsoever, but currently the brackets which determine what players can attack you is 3-75, 76-85 and 86-126.

This would be all well and good if the permanent worlds weren't full of mage or range pures, a.k.a. griefing sad fucks who min-maxxed their combat stats to minimise their combat level and maximise their raw DPS standing outside of every safe zone ready to 2 shot you.

And if you die on a Deadman world, good luck progressing your account. The PKer gets a key and can loot your 10 most valuable bank slots. Even if you found a way to travel between the mode's sparse safe zones, barely any of them have activities that are going to raise your stats or earn you meaningful gear.

Other than that...

Cookie Clicker has quickly turned into a slog. I last rebirthed when I had roughly 1 quadrillion heavenly chips and now it's taking me whole days of idling for me to even get a remotely sizeable amount of prestige levels. And all of this to unlock one, maybe two upgrades.

Vampire Survivors. Picked this one up yesterday when I saw a Hypixel Studios developer had created a mod for Hytale (releasing in 8 days) that was like a recreation of this game. I played a few rather shitty mobile clones of this without knowing what the OG indie game was. And I've been playing it mostly whilst in bed on my Steam Deck because I have a really terrible cold that has left me borderline bedridden for the past two days. Despite the Overwhelmingly Positive reviews, I'm not sure if I like Vampire Survivors that much. I just have a lot of nitpicks with the game, like:

• About 95% of your gold income will come from opening treasure chests which come from minibosses that occasionally spawn.
• The animation for opening these chests drags on for far too long, cannot be skipped and gets old really fast.
• 30 minutes is far too long for a single level playthrough. Even the mobile clones I've played have limited levels to 15 minute bursts.
• SteamOS's performance overlay is permanently on and cannot be deactivated. I get this problem in this game only. The overlay is genuinely disabled in my Steam Deck's options menu.
• It feels like the game demands maybe 10 - 20 hours of non-stop grinding for enough gold to buy all the upgrades before you can realistically start clearing past stage 2.
• Stage 2 is genuinely easier than Stage 1. I cleared it first on multiple characters.

I have been playing The Baby In Yellow which I have to say is easily the best Cosmic Lovecraftian Horror Babysitting Simulator that I've ever played. I don't always try to get 100% on the achievements in a game, but I did manage to do so with this one. It's not a lengthy game - steam tells me I've played 9 hours and at least a couple of those I just had the game paused while making dinner - but it was a pretty fun. Really not much more to say about it; actually I think "Cosmic Lovecrafting Horror Babysitting Simulator" is probably the only 5 words I need to perfectly encapsulate the sort of game it is, and every other word I've put here is a waste.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

Love the game. I finished the main storyline in about 260 hours (!). That sounds alarming, but I'm thinking one could hurry along and avoid most side quests, and just focus on the story line, and maybe complete it in under 200 hours. Comparing to KCD1: I estimate that I finished KCD1's storyline in about 150-160 hours, including side quests. So, KCD2 this has a lot more content; and I'm still playing it, doing more side quests and DLC content. Given the length of this playthrough (and I'm not even done), I suspect I won't do another playthrough. A fair bit of the fun in KCD2 was the surprises in the storyline, so, without the surprise factor, it'll feel odd (knowing what will come, or what decision branch is better). That said, trying other decision branches, or succeeding at stuff I failed at in this first playthrough may prove rewarding. I'll see.

This series is a steal if you can get either KCD1 or KCD2 during a Steam discount. I got the KCD2 Royal Edition (base game + all DLC) for like 30 to 40% off. I think any RPG fan can easily get 300+ hours of enjoyable playtime from the series.

KCD2's story was quite good, though nothing mind-blowingly life-changing or anything. Towards the end it was feeling like it was creeping a bit into "this is taking too long" territory, but then the story wrapped up. It ran the gamut of exercising the different skills and mechanics in the game, and (micro spoiler...) there were plenty plot twists and surprise events and outcomes. I've heard it said that this game explores darker themes, and, with the moral dilemmas it presents the player, I think it certainly delivers. Several tough choices, and some scenes are still vivid in my memory.

KCD2 provides several welcome QoL improvements over KCD1, including being able to switch loadouts in like 2 keypresses, and having a few potions at-the-ready, and usable during combat with hotkeys.

The combat system is still mostly what it used to be (so whether you love it or hate it, you'll probably keep your sentiment), though they changed the master strike mechanic a bit to require a bit more skill (not a lot more, though). It makes it more interesting. Minor spoiler: I think poison in KCD is a bit OP. It's inexpensive to make or get, and really tilts odds in battle.

As I'm up at or near max stats, I feel like the game has become a bit too easy, even in Hardcore mode. I don't feel threatened any more except in the most dire combat situations. I can easily take on 3 opponents at once; more if I can use archery and/or horseback riding. Skill checks (e.g. convincing during a conversation) are almost always passed now, too. I would prefer they kept the game more challenging even at higher levels. Perhaps a trade-off system where getting good at one thing hinders progress in another thing. Money is also no longer an issue at this point, as I know the good farming spots, and don't have much need to spend on big ticket items any more, since I have most eq that I need.

I still have at least 2 more DLCs to dive into. The forge DLC seems quite worth it, to me, because it lets you have a home location with many convenient amenities. I've grown fond of it (the in-game home/property), and wonder how inconvenient it would have been not to have had it as I completed the game.

Overall, two thumbs up. Highly recommended to any 3D RPG fan, especially if you like history (this game is very history-rich).

It's a few years old but I finally got around to playing WikiArena and it's surprisingly entertaining. You get the title and first lines of two random Wikipedia articles, and you have to make a guess about which article is longer or which article has had more views in the last 60 days. It leads to a lot of "is this something most people would be interested in?" questions, combined with the fun of discovering an interesting article.

My wife and I got the family a Switch 2. She got me specifically the Switch 2 Breath of the Wild. I haven't played a LoZ since the handhelds for the DS, so this was a much different experience than what I was expecting.

My group chat of gamers has been getting various gems from me as I play. Which gems as

IMO the worst mechanic

I have, I think, Identified the worst mechanic in this game.

Main Quest: find these 12 locations. None of them are marked, obviously, because they are secret until you find them.

The clues? Match these pictures to a picture you would take with the in-game camera.

Excuse me what the fuck?

silliest mechanic IMO

Silliest mechanic tho? Also tied to the camera. You can use it as a recipe book.

I finished Chronoquartz (although I played it on Switch), which is an indie metroid-brainia, similar to Minit in some ways. You have 10 turns before the game resets, and each turn is when you change rooms. You start out locked in the dungeon for some reason, and have to figure out how to escape the castle and what's going on. It never got impossible, although a few puzzles required some lateral thinking. There were a few fun time shenanigans moments, as well as a couple of "meta" puzzles. I don't want to really go into any more details because not knowing anything is the best way to play these types of games. How long to beat says 3 hours but it definitely took me far longer than that, probably nearer 10 hours without looking up any guides or using the built-in help. I had to take screenshots and notes for quite a few puzzles, and I always love it when a game requires that.

I've also been playing the DLC for Outer Wilds. It has its moments, and the DLC has a totally different weird vibe compared to the main game, while keeping the lonely exploration of a (new) moribund society. But I just don't love OW as much as some people. Going back and doing the same tricky parts over and over to get to a location before it all falls apart drives me nuts. Uncovering the mysteries is good, but the game's player-hostility and obtuseness frequently leaves me feeling like I don't want to play it any more. As in, I'll spend ages "doing a thing", multiple steps that all have to be done in a race against time, and the only reward is yet another mystery that makes no sense. At some point, I think "screw this, let them keep their mystery, I'm off to play something else" xD

I finally picked up Blue Prince a couple of weeks ago and it has been great so far. I love how open ended it feels at the beginning and most of the puzzles are really clever, although a few are very farfetched cough cough Drawing Room. I've gotten to a very frustrating point with the RNG though. I have so many things I want to try to do but it feels like the stars must align for me to be able to do any of them. So now I have tons of days where nothing productive happens.