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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Finally got some more time this year to play some games, and have been having fun in the last few weeks. Got some incredible games during the holiday giveaway thread and have tried out a few of them on my Steam Deck:
Haste (thanks @Protected)
This one is definitely an interesting one. I have no clue what the hell is going on. The world is ending apparently and yet some people seem pretty chill about it? Your character is freaking out trying to find answers, and there's this angry grandma telling you to get a move on. And you go into these crystals that teleport your to different worlds (or are they just different parts of this same world? not sure). Regardless, the actual minute-to-minute gameplay is pretty fun. Gotta go fast. And fast you go. Before starting this game I thought it would be a lot like the 3d Sonic games, but it doesn't feel like that at all to me. Feels more like a snowboarding or gliding game where you're just going downhill all the time. Not gonna lie it feels incredibly fulfilling to hit some perfect landings, especially getting a few of them in a row. Makes me feel like a badass despite having no clue what I'm running towards, lol. There's also some roguelike mechanics too, which I typically like, I just haven't figured out enough about the game to figure out what type of bonuses or skills I need. Will keep trying! I find this to be the perfect game to play laying down in bed late at night when I don't want to think about anything other than getting into a flow state of perfect landings.
Dave the Diver (thanks @kfwyre)
This one really surprised me. I've been meaning to check it out since I got the Deck about a year ago, since I've heard how great it was on it. Well I went into it and at first didn't really click with it. Felt the game was a bit slow, and the story kept introducing new mechanics and characters all the time rather than just letting me get on with it. But then multiple times after putting it down I would suddenly get the urge to play it again, and again. And now I've come to appreciate that the game is constantly showing me more things and introducing me to more characters and plot points and fish and mechanics. Like the amount of content seems never-ending! The animations are great, the gameplay loop is pretty fun, and it just has this x-factor that seems to grip you every time you put it down. Like the 'one more turn' feeling from Civ, but more like 'just one more dive...'
Spiritfall (thanks @CptBluebear)
Boy do I suck at this game. I really thought I would hit the ground running (little Haste pun there, sorry) because of how good I was (strong emphasis on the 'was') at Super Smash bros like 20 years ago. I used to be like top 3 smash players in my friend group in elementary and middle school. So combine that with my love for roguelikes and I thought this game would be a piece of cake. Nope. Still need to git gud, apparently twitchy reflex-based 2d platformers/fighters are not my speed any more. I've been mostly playing slow-paced single-player strategy games for the last decade, so I shudder to think how badly I'll do if I tried to play a competitive fps again, which I also was reasonably good at when I was a teen. Ha! Will keep trying, though. Reminds me of Dead Cells a lot, both the game play and the animations/artwork.
And then when all else fails I can't resist the siren songs of my beloved Paradox games. Lately I've been on a Crusader Kings 3 kick, so I played some of that as well (desktop though, not deck). I keep falling victim to the same issues as every other time I try playing a Paradox game. I tell myself I'm going to have a nice chill game as _____. Gonna stay small, just play tall this time, no map-painting for me, no sir, no way. And then a few hours later I've quintupled in size and conquered the better part of a continent and am then stuck managing my realm, stopping civil wars between vassals that hate me (because I conquered them, lol) and peasant uprisings (gosh can't they just be happy with some damn bread and circuses) rather than doing what I love which is more conquering. This current run I started as a small count around lake Chad in Africa because I heard the Sao culture was great for playing tall and developing your lands (totally is btw, great culture), but have now found myself three generations later in control of half of West Africa with no signs of stopping soon.
Nice, glad you're enjoying Haste! You're saying the same things I've said before, the core gameplay is awesome, the roguelike mechanics are OK, the story is ??? why?
Pay careful attention to the sheer amount of dialogue boxes that are just grunts and ellipses, you can't unsee it (unless they've patched that out since I played).
Interesting. How does the co-op work? Just two people in the same world at the same time?
Well I didn’t even know there was a co-op, but I just looked it up and yeah it seems like two (or more) players just run in the same map. Basically a race.
You're very welcome! Glad you're liking it.
Thanks for the ping! I hope Spiritfall is enjoyable enough to warrant some more practice, though don't feel the need to keep going on my account haha. It certainly looked interesting.
Oh I'll definitely keep trying. I was similarly bad at Dead Cells when I first played that years back, but I still enjoyed it. Another one that is in a similar vein that I'll definitely be checking out one day in the distant future is the Rogue Prince of Persia. I'm sure after I unlock a few more upgrades it'll start feeling a bit easier.
I played exclusively Escape from Tarkov. Basically the whole december.
Tarkov is a PVE / PVP Extraction Shooter. You can either play it in PVE or in PVP mode. I play exclusively PVP. Since I have a lot of experience it doesn't feel as rewarding to me if I would play it in PVE.
I have way too many hours in this game already (over 10k). But it is still my somewhat comfort game. It has so many issues. With cheaters, server issues, game simply not working and hit reg issues and just idk everything.
Currently I have done around a thousand raids and I have reached Kappa which is basically when you finish all the side quests.
Also since the 1.0 update (15.11 -- when the game wiped). Tarkov has now a main story quest. It is not that impressive honestly. They could have done a lot more with the story quest. Like this game has so much potential but that's Tarkov for ya.
But I also finished one of the four endings. They created Terminal to "escape" Tarkov. Terminal is a cool experience. It is basically only PVE. You have to fight through different sorts of AI to get to a Boat and finish Tarkov. I really liked Terminal. But even then it has it's problems. You can only "escape" alone. It can happen that you spawn in with random people (they will try to kill you). Luckily that never happened to me but as you can see the base idea is good, great! But just everything around is not thought through it. It's like 90% effort and then they just ran out of time and just released it.
Basically the first person on Terminal got a broken leg and there were meds but no splints. So it just feels like the dev's don't playtest their own game and it's always up to the player to test the game and the new mechanics / features which kinda suck in my opinion.
I am currently 1 level away from Prestige. Prestige is where you basically reset your whole account and do it all over again.
I hate this game but I also love it so much. It just feels there is nothing comparable to it. I used to stream this game regularly 2 years ago. And to me this game is just a comfort game. With lots and lots of nostalgia behind it. Lots of friends I met playing this game. Some of them don't play this game anymore. Actually, most of the people I know quit this game. Because every wipe and every big major update is the same shit all over again. I really understand those people.
To anyone who wants to try out the game.
~ Happy new year ₍⑅ᐢ..ᐢ₎
Have you ever gotten so deep into any other game? Or another activity? 10k hours is a lot, especially on one game!
From age 5-18 yrs old I nothing else than play ice hockey.
I went to a sports school and was in regional selection and all that stuff.
We are talking 3-4 times a week training plus every weekend there was a match during the saison.
My mom still sees it as a wasted potential that I stopped playing icehockey and I could just start playing again and it would potentially fix everything.
I can't believe they added a way to escape Tarkov in Escape from Tarkov. :-o
Do they still do the progress wipes, even after version 1.0? For a while I played Call of Duty DMZ a lot; possibly my favourite multiplayer experience of the last decade, but the wipes were frustrating. And in that game, the wipes didn't really feel necessary; they could have just added a bunch of new missions on top of the old ones and kept it going.
as far as i understand they will add seasonal wipes. Where it will trnasfer the progress over to the "permanent" character. They have talked about dlc's and some stuff in some podcast and I think they said the first one will be a scav DLC which makes sense.
Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
Only a little ways into this.
The combat system seems to have been inflated even further to Xenoblade levels of complexity, with systems on top of systems on top of systems. I kind of wish they'd just spent the effort on polishing the system they already had, because it still doesn't feel great to play moment to moment. Just being able to cancel out of attacks would have made the flow of combat feel a lot better.
The open world looks nice and runs surprisingly well even on my dated GPU (no doubt due to DLSS), but as I only found out hours later, if you actually start running around to explore as soon as the game lets you, it's all just empty space with no points of interest and barely even any enemies to fight - apparently you need to progress the main game further before it'll unlock points of interest, side quests and so on. Kind of a baffling game design decision which runs counter to how every other open world game works.
I like the card game. My initial instinct is to rush to control as much of the board as quickly as possible, but I can already see that there's enough strategic depth to it that this isn't always going to work. I also like that it's very well signposted where you need to go to find opponents, and there's none of the local rules / ante guff that weighed down Triple Triad. You can just keep playing until you find a winning strategy.
This is a pretty big game, so my aim is just to finish it sometime in 2026.
Urban Myth Dissolution Center
Mystery / horror adventure game about investigating, identifying and 'dismantling' urban legends.
There's a lot to like:
The concept of mysteries based around urban legends (and connected by a larger tinfoil hat conspiracy theory) is neat.
The characters are fun and expressive, and the chunky GBC-style pixel art looks great and is well animated.
The parts where you have to go on Twitter to conduct research perfectly capture what a hellscape social media has become. There's also a lot of optional stuff to learn about urban legends, much of which was new to me and interesting.
However, the remainder of the gameplay is where it kind of drags for me:
Much of the game is walking around and repeatedly interrogating people and checking things until you have the necessary clues to make the deduction needed to progress the plot. However:
Each time you choose a conversation/ investigation topic, you only receive a few lines before you're back in the menu and have to select a new topic, even when the new topic is just the logical continuation of the previous one. It might take going back to the menu 4-5 different times to get through a single normal conversation.
New topics will often pop up as the investigation progresses, so you'll also need to go back to people and locations to check for them.
The result is that you're constantly menuing through topics instead of focusing on the story.
The story itself is also kind of nuts, with many of the mysteries involving incredibly convoluted schemes that no one in their right minds would attempt. A lot of the time, 'a ghost did it' would actually be the more satisfying answer.
Would have preferred a bit more polish in those areas.
Your Turn to Die
Indie death game adventure / courtroom game.
On one hand, it's clearly an indie passion project made largely by one person. There are no voices, it's obviously made in RPG Maker (with all of its familiar menus and sound effects) and the art is pretty rough - particularly the backgrounds, which have a very low fidelity vibe that gives me flashbacks to playing early Sierra games like Space Quest I.
On the other, the writing, the gameplay and even the music is great. It might be a stretch to call it a mashup of Zero Escape, Danganronpa and Ace Attorney, but all of those influences are visible in the combination of old school point and click adventure, role-based social deduction (much like Raging Loop) and 'discussion'-style courtroom system where you can draw out statements from each participant and pit them against each other. It's very ambitious and for the most part, they pull it off.
I particularly liked how opaque the many decisions constantly being thrown at the player are. Often they'll seem important, but it's rarely obvious what the 'right' move is (or if there even is one), and eventually you just go with your gut or what you think the protagonist would do.
A couple of points to note:
The game is still missing the final chapter, so you might want to hold off until it's complete if you want to play the whole thing at once. Based on the author's social media, it's still being actively worked on as at late 2025.
If you can read Japanese, you can just play the free version available on the author's booth page. The main story content is the same as the steam version, but there's no English translation.
Everyone who likes exploring falls for that, I think. I'd explored some 80% of the Kalm area before I met Chadley at the farm. Urgh. I think if it had been a western game it would have quickly been fixed with a patch.
It's definitely better than all the minigames, except perhaps chocobo racing. But since each opponent has a specific strategy, it ends up being more of a puzzle than a card game, in the vein of Inscryption (find the "solution" for each opponent). I beat everyone by sticking to a small number of strategies, very few deck redesigns and never even used half of the cards (which is also something you can do in Inscryption...)
Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor
In the realm of survivorslike "do the same very little thing over and over again so that numbers can go up" games, this is among the more polished and well-constructed.
It's got all the lanes of permanent metaprogression you could want: stat boots you can buy; gear drops that you can individually level up; weapon, class, and stage masteries that give bonus multipliers; 300 different achievements.
The bullet heaven genre is admittedly waning in its appeal for me on its own. I'm not super compelled to sit down and pick something like this up when I want to game.
HOWEVER
I've been playing it while walking on my treadmill, and it is like a cheat code for not noticing that I'm exercising. I can do two runs in the game and barely notice that an hour has gone by. It's great. Don't know if I'll end up 100%ing this one, but for right now it's doing a fantastic job of making time pass while I'm doing something mildly strenuous without me realizing it.
Voidtrain
My indecisive multiplayer group chose this, as we really loved Raft and the two games are very similar.
Sadly, Voidtrain is a subpar version of Raft in pretty much every way.
It's got some cool ideas and a cool setting that are mostly squandered by interminable repetition and asset reuse. Like, every station you stop at has a fire fight with the same enemies in the same arena. There are little sidequests you can do where you have to grapple away from your train and follow a chain of rocks, which seems really cool initially, but they always take you to the same place. where you do the same thing.
It feels like they had the skeleton of a decent game and just polished that up to a 1.0 release rather than fully developing something more robust.
We're having fun with it because it's fun to play games with your friends, but it's unfortunately not the Raft-alike we were hoping for.
What's your setup for gaming on the treadmill?
I’ve got a TV mounted on the wall in front of the treadmill with a Fire Stick running Moonlight which streams the game from my PC. I use an Amazon Luna controller to play.
I can only play games that require limited or non-time-sensitive input without throwing off my balance, so turn-based stuff or bullet heavens are perfect.
Yesterday I did an hour at 4 MPH and an 8 degree incline. It’s a pretty decent workout that doesn’t feel as long as it is since the game distracts me. It’s also WAY healthier for me than sitting on the couch for the same hour.
I haven’t had a whole lot of time to play games this week as I live in Minneapolis and yeah…
I was also watching AGDQ, so lots of watching others play games instead of playing anything, myself.
I am going to be learning to play 40k Kill Team this week as I really miss playing miniatures games (I used to play X-Wing: The Miniatures Game competitively) and I’m excited for that, so I also picked up Rogue Trader as I’ve had it on my wishlist since release and I’m finally in the mood to play another cRPG. I’m only an hour in, so I don’t have much to say except it’s fun getting more into 40k lore, I’ve only known some surface level stuff until recently.
While I've given a little time to continuing GTA 4, the game I've been giving most of my time to this year has been Baba is You (2019). Baba is You is a cute little 2D puzzle game where you manipulate rules, represented by movable tiles with words on them, in order to allow the player to reach a specified goal. It's a deceptively simple game with many puzzles having more than one solution. Highly recommend if you're into puzzle games!
Yeah, I played a lot of that.*
When I say I played a lot, I mean I beat the water area and then gave up
Yeah I don't blame you lol. The game really is deceptively difficult
I got pretty far in Baba Is You pre-pandemic, almost clearing all the worlds, and then I stopped playing games for a while during COVID. I want to go back and finish it but I'm very sure I've forgotten some of the more esoteric applications of the rules. Fantastic game though!
I started Doom: The Dark Ages recently. God bless that game for letting you pilot a skyscraper-sized mech and ride a cyborg dragon. Both events within an hour of each other. My only regret is how poorly it runs on my PC.
There's something I appreciate about the current series (since 2016) of Doom games. For better or worse, each sequel fundamentally changes the core gameplay mechanics. The developers could have taken the easy path, and just made more campaigns in the same style; instead, each game has its own identity, and demands a different tactical approach.
It is for this exact reason that I loved Doom (2016) and hated Doom Eternal, and why I've yet to play The Dark Ages because I thought it might be just like the last one. I'm glad to know that it is not, and maybe now I can give it a shot. I've had it installed for ages and it's taking up a lot of space.
I'm in the same camp, where Doom (2016) was perfect in the level of attention you have to pay to your munitions/health/armor.
Doom Eternal felt like you needed to be on adderall to even follow what you need to do at which moment to just get by.
And for the most part, of what I've seen of the streams and videos, Doom The Dark Ages seems to be different, but still needs this adderall level of attention to get by. So I would worry if I were you.
Yes exactly this was my main problem with the game as well. And I'm certainly no stranger to fast-paced FPS games. That's a bit disheartening to hear. I guess there's nothing left but to give it a try.
Curious to know your thoughts, don't leave us hanging (whenever you get around to it)
I have been replaying the Assassins Creed Ezio trilogy to prepare myself to play assassins creed Shadows.
The Ezio games were a big part of my childhood so I wanted to revisit them before playing through the most recent game so I can compare them.
Assassins creed 2 was fantastic. The combat is a little undercooked and sometimes the parkour doesnt really do what I want it to do but its fun running around on rooftops and I am enjoying the plot.
Assassins Creed Brotherhood comes in amd now we get chain kills. I am loving this new mechanic, suddenly I feel like a real unstoppable badass.
I am looking forward to what comes next in these games.
I started playing Famicom Detective Club, specifically part 2 The Girl Who Stands Behind (part one does not seem to be translated anywhere), with the SNES version, I know there's a remake for the Switch, but the older version graphics look more appealing to me with the advantage that I can play it on my phone, also I don't own a Switch.
The gameplay is a bit dated and does not require more than asking and reading, barely picking any clues from the crime scene or answering questions, but the writing keeps it interesting enough which basically makes it an interactive detective novel.
A huge advantage of these types of games is that I can save and re-take the game quickly at any point, which is the only kind of game I enjoy lately, I was also playing Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney which is amazing.
Update: I finished The Girl Who Stands Behind and I love it, like I said before about the gameplay, it can be repetitive, and it should be considered an interactive graphic novel, without spoilers, is great how much it got my attention simply by using dialog, the interesting thing about this detective story is that you are a normal person, don't carry a gun, no need to act thought, don't have a forensics department, some people even doubt you are a detective, all the investigation happens with one simple premise, getting information by questioning and following logical conclusions.
I wish I could play the first Famicom Detective Club, if someone knows where to find a patched English ROM, please let me know.
I believe someone did a Lua script for the first game which just overlays the translation rather than patching the ROM.
It's a bit of effort to set up and I can't vouch for how well it works (I just played in Japanese), but I enjoyed both of these games!
Thanks, I saw this repo too, but I couldn't find the Japanese ROM either.
Not much news. Still playing Trackmania, (as mentioned in prev comments I strictly play alone and never in competition). Slo-o-owly getting better, got Silver medals on the most of ToD (Track of the Day) tracks, and now I'm trying to get PB (personal best, better time) on each ToD track starting from 2020 again. Still love it! Finally, tech clicked for me, but still struggling with ice surface.
Apart from it started playing Fields of Mistria (another game inspired by Stardew Valley) and I super love it! Devs removed or replaced most of the points of struggle that I had while playing Stardew Valley (even issues that I not consciously aware about) and made really cozy and comfort game.
I tried to play Stardew Valley like 3 or 5 times, and I'm just unable to go further 3rd year - too many tasks, too many planning, and hard to play in short sessions. Fields of Mistria is different I definitely can recommend it as alternative. There a lot of good familiar points to SV, but also a lot of differences that makes game interesting.
Apart from it have plans to continue to play Claire Obscura: E33, and Stellar Blade NG+ (finished main game and started new to get all quests and outfits). But unfortunately I do not have enough free space on the drive for these games and erm "policies" do not allow to install apps on external drive. So, these games have to wait a bit.
Continuing the grind on Rogue Trader and having a lot of fun. I'm nearly done with Chapter 2, based on my quest log. I really enjoy how it's sort of a "Monster-of-the-week" type adventure, there is a consistent narrative through line but the individual adventures are just classic scifi "show up onto the planet and get caught up in shenanigans". The build variety and power/synergy continues to be a blast, and finding all new ways to make my dudes more and more useful and powerful is so much fun.
As a small gripe, I don't really enjoy the space naval combat. The mechanics themselves are alright, but it just feels so slow, especially since you only ever get the one ship. I did manage to get a second ship through some specific (and DLC-gated) events, but it's just another NPC that you don't control directly. It also feels much harder to find upgrades and equipment for your ship compared to your party. Overall it's a neat idea but I think could do with some fleshing out (or, if I'm dreaming, the option to skip entirely).
The writing continues to be great, and very 40k, if you love the setting you'll get a consistent kick from the interactions. There nothing mind-blowing about any of the tropes or twists, but it feels very comfortable and fun as a sci-fi adventure.
Blaster Master Zero for the 3DS
I tried to play the NES-version when I was a child and never got into it. I thought the intro was cool and that the vehicle looked rad, but I had more beginner-friendly games to play and I never really went back to it.
This one felt very accessible, and was kind of easy so I breezed through it.
My favorite part was the feeling of adventure that the game has. I was also impressed by the worldbuilding and the design of the characters and bosses.
I have a couple of negative things to say, but I want to point out first that it was an enjoyable experience on the whole.
The dungeons are way too easy due to the extremely powerful weapons you get. But when you take damage, your weapon is downgraded, and it can suddenly become very hard instead. This lead me to play defensively with the best weapon which makes most of the game a cakewalk, including many bosses, which probably can be interesting otherwise.
As for the dungeons, the graphics and music is just kind of boring. The environments feel generic, even though they try to set the tone with unique decorations for each area in the game.
But let's talk about the overworld for a bit. It's awesome, and is what really drives home the sense of adventure. The vehicle gets so many cool power-ups along the way. It really feels like you're exploring when you go back to previous areas with new movement capabilities.
Oh, and big thumbs up for the spectacle. Especially towards the end of the game. The characters form a strong bond kind of out of nowhere, which feels a bit jarring, but when it's time for the finale it's so exciting that you don't really care about the lack of character development. The true ending is just great.
One thing I found a bit underwhelming was the lack of 3DS-specific functionality. There's no 3D-support, and the lower screen isn't utilized at all. I like the 3DS a lot so I was a bit sad that these things were missing.
But to wrap things up: fun game with some really cool stuff going on. A bit too easy, but makes it up in soul.
Toram Online is a very interesting MMORPG and I'm not sure if I like it or not. On one hand, it's a uniquely charming game with a somewhat decent story, a great soundtrack and is somehow both mobile-focused and actually having some depth to its gameplay. That's where my positives for it kinda end. It's very grindy, relies heavily on gaining hundreds of levels and doing dailies for progression and graphically it looks incredibly dated like an late PS1 game. Toram also aesthetically looks so similar to Final Fantasy XI and XIV to the point where I'm surprised Square Enix haven't sued for copyright infringement. There is genuinely a short humanoid race of people who look damn-near identical to the Tarutaru from FFXI or Lalafell from FFXIV. Even Josh Strife Hayes pointed out so many aesthetic similarities between this game and the Final Fantasy MMOs in his video review of the game.
I take some of my previous gripes about Vampire Survivors back. Ever since unlocking Hurry mode, the complaint about having to play a constant 30 mins through a stage has subsided. I still feel like progression through the game is confusing. It also feels like the game is 50,000 times better to play with a gamepad. Some weapons shoot forwards and it's better to have the more precise turning of a thumbstick than the 8 directions of WASD movement.
Old School RuneScape has been going rather slow for me. My current goal is to reach 62 Woodcutting and complete Sins of the Father to unlock Darkmeyer and be potentially ready for Blood Moon Rises when that releases. So far, I have one woodcutting level to go before I achieve the final minimum level requirement, and have completed In Search Of The Myreque and In Aid Of The Myreque but I have three more quests. Darkness of Hallowvale and A Taste of Hope seem super tedious by comparison.
Guild Wars Reforged disappointed me in the 20 minutes (thus far) I've played of it. Not because I effectively had to create another account because Steam licence keys are incompatible with existing ArenaNet accounts, but because for £17.99 this game basically looks the same as I remember Guild Wars Factions looking back in 2006 and I expected far more of a visual and QoL upgrade compared to what they actually packaged. The bundle doesn't even include Eye of the North or the Bonus Mission Pack, which you'd kinda expect from a 20th anniversary remaster.
Mind you, I hated Factions when I first played through it, but people have always told me that's the weakest of the three Guild Wars campaigns, and that Prophecies and Nightfall are so much better. My only experience so far with Reforged and playing through the Prophecies campaign has been doing a few quests, almost dying to a level 1 enemy because it turns out necromancer/warrior hybrids suck, and hitting a roadblock with a quest where I have to find an NPC in a location not even marked on my map in order to open a gate and progress. I mean I know excessive handholding is a thing in modern games, but if you're telling me to go somewhere that isn't even listed anywhere on my map without any quest markers (maybe because I haven't properly explored the zone), don't be surprised when I get confused and bored.
Still playing Danganronpa v3: Killing Harmony. I think I'm like a chapter and a half from the end (only know this because I'm using a guide). It's gotten a little better, I think. More characters I don't care for have been murdered. Which is a plus? But while I don't hate the remaining characters (well, Kokichi Oma can fuck off right about now), I don't really care for them much either. The MC, Shiuchi Saihara, aggravates me. He's a wet noodle. But at least other characters also pick up on that and kinda call him out too. And there is a story beat that revolves around him being that way. So that's some of that for-the-story reasoning I've been looking for as to why these characters are the way they are.
Though I'm not sure I'm liking the direction the story is going/has gone. I think I've seen the big reveal that kinda signals I'm on the downslope of the game, but I'm like "Hmm, OK..."
After I finish v3, which I'm hoping I'll do before the end of the week, I might try to give some of the associated media, like the anime shows, a try. Because I feel like I'm missing context across the whole series, but particularly with v3. So maybe that'll help me appreciate it more. Along with just finishing the game.
I don't normally force myself to play games that I don't really care for, unless I'm playing something with friends. But as far as lore and universe-building, Danganronpa seems to do a good job of it. I am interested in learning more about these killing games and how the world got to this place and how it keeps happening over and over.
I'm in Deadlock testing, Valve's new Over-the-Shoulder Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA). I've always wanted to get into a MOBA, but I've continuously felt like I'm too far behind to catch up and be a team asset in a game with complex maps, complex objectives, too many characters, abilities, and synergies, and heavy reliance, adaptability, and cooperation within a team. So I wanted to get in early on the next MOBA, grow with it, and learn to be a decent teammate.
I'm enjoying the game, but I still feel ages behind. I'm torn on throwing in the towel and cutting my losses, as I don't love the continual feeling that I'm letting down my small team.
I've been sucked into Arc Raiders over the holiday break, and I can't stop playing it. It scratches so many of my itches: I love hard Sci-Fi, I love that it's very based on audio cues, and even though I normally hate voice chat in games, I've had so many good interactions with other players.
My kids play Fortnite a ton, and I've never liked it. I had no idea what an extraction shooter was before Arc Raiders was recommended to me, but it just feels like a grown up version of Fortnite to me. I don't get much time to play videogames, and it's always fun to just jump in for a quick run. If anyone shares the same interests, I highly recommend this game.
prob *cues?
You are indeed correct. Thank you for the correction.
Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
Got it in the Steam Winter Sale and played the campaign over the holidays. It has a lot of aesthetic similarities to Gears of War. A squad of dudes with big bulky armor fighting hordes of monsters. It's really impressive how many enemies they have running around on screen, and you can rip through. You get a melee weapon (knife/sword/chainsword/warhammer) that pairs with a pistol, and a primary weapon (machine gun/shotgun-like/sniper rifle). They also have enemy executions that reminded me of DOOM 2016 (but they were apparently also in the first Space Marine game from 2011 that I haven't played).
I played on normal difficulty, and I felt like I never truly got the hang of parrying telegraphed attacks or dealing with ranged attackers properly while getting swarmed. I might play it again the future and try to hone some of those skills. There are a couple of different game modes I could try but I'll probably just stick with campaign.
Roughly the first half you fight Tyranids (bug-like aliens the Zerg from StarCraft are based on) and the second half you fight Chaos Marines (like Space marines but evil and magical?). I liked fighting the Tyranids a lot more. Chaos Marines look very similar to your Ultramarine bros, down to the blue armor, so I had to do a few double-takes. Some of them also teleport around, which adds to the confusion (maybe that's thematically appropriate...).
It ran kind of stuttery on my laptop at times but I was able to ignore it enough. The audio was borked if I used bluetooth headphones, so I also played with speakers and a lot of fan noise - another throwback for me to Gears on the 360 with the noisy disc drive.
I guess I should write something about the story. It was...meh. I don't know the 40k universe that well (nor the story for Space Marine 1) and after being dropped into one faction I don't feel I know it much better. I certainly achieved some military objectives, saw some cool visual spectacle moments, and proved to my allies that I'm the real deal. But I still kind of have the feeling that nothing really mattered.
The story for Space Marine 2 is largely fan service for fans of the first game. Titus is still an incorruptible badass that's just terrible at communication, Gadriel is a subversion of Leandros, Leandros is still, well, Leandros, and we get to see an animated Marneus Calgar being an absolute unit, not to mention that one dreadnought that really hates Magnus. It's good B-movie popcorn action that serves its purpose of making Titus relevant again and little else.
As for the whole parrying and blocking, it's VERY weapon dependent, especially in Operations when you can choose your loadout and unlock higher quality weapons. It's awkward to do in the campaign but if you pick the right weapons and/or class you can parry like crazy and massacre everything around you in melee while taking little to no damage.
It's the kind of franchise that doesn't really allow for decisive victories. You can have stories where if you lose, some other faction takes over the galaxy (or whatever), but if you win, it has to return to the status quo, so the eternal war can continue.
Did you play with a controller? I first played with mouse + keyboard, and was completely unable to do any meaningful parrying (I even struggled to get through the tutorial). With controller, the game was actually playable on above easy difficulty.
Yep, played with a controller. I did try out mouse and keyboard for a minute but I did switch back right after figuring out the parry button haha.
Minecraft on the tildes minecraft server of course. It's great, you should join us 🤓
I had to look up a walkthrough to figure out how to win the final battle. Turned out it's not that hard, but also not at all intuitive, at least to me.
This week we played Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue Rescue Team for our podcast on roguelike games.
Overall I was surprised at the mixed reactions. Our special guest was already a lifelong fan of the game, and two of us hosts liked it a lot. One host was “meh” on it, and one absolutely hated it. They still finished the 20 hour story, but almost took personal offense to the happy, cheery kids theme and writing.
The game isn’t without its criticisms for JRPG menu loops, repeated dialogue that almost questions your attention span, and plot narrative that kind of loses focuses several times. But I’ll be damned if I didn’t get worked up seeing a crying Bulbasaur picture every time it popped up.
As men in our 30s, it’s not surprising that we all weren’t blown away by a simplistic story intended for 10 year olds, but it was kind of funny to hear just how bent out of shape one of my cohosts was by it. Kudos to him for finishing the game but I figured he would’ve thrown in the towel an hour in to playing it.
We’ve played a few other JRPG rogue games between One Way Heroics, Shiren the Wanderer, and Azure Dreams. They were all interesting in some respects but never really blew our socks off. I really liked Blue Rescue Team, though, possibly because of the nostalgia factor of Pokemon, but it was also significantly less punishing than the other games.
The ending felt appropriately epic, the post-story dungeons and legendaries to hunt are interesting, and I’m actually kind of hyped to play Explorers of Sky and Shiren 6 now, even if half of my cohosts are totally checked out on Mystery Dungeon games. Maybe we need to take a palette cleanser and play House of Necrosis first before coming back to Pokemon…
Moonlighter was a fun rougelike, if you're interested in running a shop in addition to fighting monsters.
Moonlighter’s gameplay has always been an interesting concept to me. I’ll add your recommendation to our request list!
Oh my goodness. Azure Dreams, specifically the GBC version, was amongst my very favourite games growing up. I adored that game and it gave me a taste for traditional roguelikes which has lingered with me for life.
I've not replayed it in adulthood and think I probably ought not to, so as to leave it feeling incredible in my memories.
We briefly talked about the Azure Dreams GBC game in a music episode we did last summer. We did an actual deep drive episode on PS1 Azure Dreams as well Such a wacky game that totally deserves a remaster.
I think I came across Minishoot' Adventures during the Steam winter sale, and when I saw there was a demo, I downloaded it just because. I gave it a go for about three hours about a week ago, found it quite good, and then immediately bought the full game for about $9 on sale (side note: I miss demos! I wish more games offered them, Steam's refund window isn't always the best fit). It's a charming indie twin-stick shooter kinda inspired by Zelda - it actually has dungeons - and I believe it was made by just two people. I do wish I had played on the hardest difficulty from the start (I tend to like shmups and have something like 500+ hours on Enter the Gungeon, but I don't actually play a lot of these games and I don't like bullet hell); I beat it on normal after 15-ish hours with a little less challenge than I would have liked. I've gone right back in to beat it on hard mode though, so I guess that should say something.
If you are interested, two things to note are that this game emphasizes positioning rather than timing (the dodge doesn't have I-frames, which is useful to know in advance of fighting bosses), and I had to manually copy my save from the demo into the folder for the full game to carry over my progress.
Recommended!
Animal Crossing New Horizons got the 3.0 update. As someone who likes decorating in games, I have been very happy about that aspect... But also a bit disappointed there isn't more to the update.
The new content is very limited compared to the 2.0 update. The new furniture sets are definitely not complete on their own, and meant to be used with other existing sets. No new wallpapers or floors outside the crossover stuff. No new rugs. We still don't have a basic, plain armchair. Or old furniture series like the Modern and Regal series.
Also just very little new content outside of decorating. Tourists walking around the island makes it feel more alive, but that's the biggest change. I would have loved to finally have the Nook's store upgrade, or maybe add some minigames like New Leaf had on the resort island. Have the tourists make requests, maybe. Ask for recommendations on places to go. Give them the ability to send us letters when they leave. Add some new fish and/or bugs. Bring back custom museum exhibits.
Just... something people can do outside of decorating the hotel, since we can only decorate two rooms a day.