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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.
I've played Angeline Era, by the same creators of the Anodyne games, all the way to the final boss. I'm certain I didn't 100% it, but... 90%? Maybe? it took 25 hours.
Let's first talk about the gameplay. Angeline Era is... RPG-adjacent? There are two core mechanics, combat and exploration. You can hold an "examine" button to explore any spot in the game, and this might uncover (hitherto invisible) items, traps and teleportation points. There is also an "overworld," and you need to use this mechanic to find level access points in it. The idea is that visual cues should be used to determine what spots to examine - nooks, dead ends, symmetry, texture changes, etc.
There are many levels, and while there are trace amounts of side-view platforming, the second big mechanic is combat. Most levels are 3/4 perspective gauntlets of areas with various monsters that can be attacked by just bumping into them - the protagonist will slash with his sword automatically - firing a very limited gun at them, or using "artifacts" with special effects. Unlike in early Zelda, you can jump. A friend told me some of this reminds him of the Ys games, and I'm sure he knows what he's talking about.
The aesthetic seems to be very deliberately like that of a PSX RPG, at least outwardly. Typically expect low poly 3D, simple textures, vertex colors and no postprocessing. All the levels are designed (not procedurally generated). There are boss fights, always in real time. But unlike what you'd see in RPGs of the time, there is no party of friendly heroes, no status effects, little in the way of an inventory and the menu is as unhelpful as they could get away with. All the mechanics seem a little different from the norm - for example, there is healing food, but you can only eat in advance of a level. Food goes bad if you don't eat it and will then damage you if eaten while spoiled. You can sleep, but that doesn't heal you - instead, you have to level up... in your dreams. You can't level up while awake.
One might think the game repetitive, but it's surprisingly compelling. The base gameplay doesn't require a lot of mental bandwidth and it can be fun to whack all of them monsters. It's also addictive to find all the levels in the overworld and clear them, given that this is a very non-linear process. The goofy low poly aesthetic isn't particularly pleasing to the eye, but at least it's easy to parse.
That brings us to the story.
Angeline Era is weird, man. At times, while playing, I thought I had a handle on it - that I now basically understood the framing. I was wrong every time. It's weird, and it gets weirder. I will avoid late game spoilers in the assumption that you will want to play the game yourself.
The protagonist, a glass cannon who wears far too little in the way of armor, is called to the land of Era by a furry angel who gives him a divine mission to Collect the Nine Bicones. The gravitas of the premise kind of falls apart almost immediately when it turns out Era is positively infested with angels. They're just chill dudes hanging around checking humans out. Why, you can even visit the crash site of their spaceship, Throne. Didn't think this was science fiction, did you? Well, it still isn't. (Or is it?) Era is also full of fairies; most of the monsters you fight apparently qualify as fairies - that being the fae, the fair folk. But there are also plenty of fairies just chilling around, chatting with you or even selling you stuff, which does bring into question the morality of your wholesale slaughter of their species.
And that's the thing, such matters will cross your mind, because Angeline Era does have a depth to it. The protagonist is christian, or thinks he is. This game will quote scripture at you and you can press a button to meditate whenever you see the shape of a christian cross (this does nothing). But fairies and locations, on the other hand, will reference actual pagan/celtic mythology. Throughout the levels, or in secret areas, there are encounters and texts that contain more clever references and thought-provoking prompts. The feeling I got was that the writer is a smart and interesting person, but also that she's taking the piss at least half of the time.
As you approach the final portion of the game in a crescendo of weirdness (you can't imagine how hard I'm trying to not spoil anything), there are a number of plot twists and a regrettably linear section I didn't particularly enjoy. With how difficult most things about this game are to pin down, I'm not quite sure how to produce a final conclusion about it. All I can say is that, at the end of the day, I did play through the whole thing (at a consistent pace) and that Steam reviews are overwhelmingly positive. It's probably a good game!
Previous
You had me at Ys!
Yeah, looking at the trailer for that, it does remind me a lot of the Ys Napishtim engine-era games (2003's Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim, 2005's Ys: The Oath in Felghana, and the 2006 Ys Origin)!
Here's the best video quality trailer for Oath that I can find. And here's (a potato quality, sorry) one for Origin, which was my introduction to the Ys series. I think you'll be able to see the resemblance that your friend was hinting at - it's got a 3/4 perspective (side perspective in some areas), frenetic monster gauntlets, jumping and light platforming, low poly vertex-shaded graphics, etc. Oh, and angelic looking beings driving much much of the plot (moreso in Origin). And similarly, there's no party (as mentioned in this version of the Oath trailer). Oh, and the two 2D games that started the series used a bump-to-attack mechanic.
I'll admit, those Ys games have kind of ruined me for the earlier 3D Zeldas of their time. They're kind of a Zelda on crack, with a super fast arcade-like game-loop. Killed monsters often drop short term buffs that last something like 10 seconds. But they're stackable, and stacking refreshes all of them. That plus fast music, a very quick basic sword strike, and an automatically recharging magic meter for special attacks mean that the game really pushes you towards an addictively fun and aggressive play style of mowing down monster after monster as quickly as you can. On top of that, they like big set-piece bosses in these games (with a boss gauntlet mode unlocked after beating the story).
Origin is $4.99 on Steam right now, Oath is $4.49, and Ark is $4.49 too. Definitely worth it at those prices in my opinion (and in that order of priority, from highest to lowest).
Thanks for the in-depth explanation! Fun fact is that I've played Origin a long time ago (the only one I played) but due to my lack of visual memory I have zero recollection of it. Without watching those trailers, I can vaguely remember that there was a circular boss fight and a girl with a hammer maybe? Plus the other protagonist. I played the girl.
I bought No Rest for the Wicked last week. It's an ARPG from the makers of Ori and the Blind Forest that's currently in Early Access. My main criticism is that the Early Access content cuts off pretty early, but overall I love the game and I'm excited for the 1.0 launch. The combat and build variety are just so much fun. Exploring the world is a blast.
It's a game that is VERY clearly inspired by Dark Souls. I'm normally at least slightly annoyed by this level of Dark Souls fetishism in game design (looking at you, Tunic), but this one of the few games I've played that has world design that I think actually comes close to that of the original Dark Souls. Very intentional with tons of interconnectivity and verticality. It also contains some very heavy-handed influence from Path of Exile and Diablo. That being said, the dev team seems to be making an active effort to give the game its own unique identity. The copy-pasted Dark Souls stat scaling system is soon to be replaced by a Final Fantasy Tactics-inspired job system, which could be very cool if implemented correctly. The whole "drop souls when you die, enemies refresh when you rest" cycle that seems to plague every modern ARPG is also not present here. There's a pretty innovative system in which the fog-of-war gradually creeps back when leave an area, slowly respawning enemies, loot and resources. It feels very natural. There's a small durability damage on death that isn't overly punishing, but it's enough to stop me from playing recklessly.
There are also several other systems such as a main hub city with upgradeable vendors and crafting stations, houses that you can buy and fill with both decorative and functional furniture, a robust co-op system, an "endless" sort of endgame incursion system, and an endless procedural dungeon. It really seems like they're going for breadth of content first, then depth once the core systems are established and well-tested.
Overall, I'm not sure if I'd recommend it in its current state due to the limited amount of content, but it's absolutely worth keeping an eye on. The 1.0 release is supposedly going to double the current map size, which took me about 25 hours to fully explore.
I also really am enjoying No Rest for the Wicked! The bit that stands out to me most is that its is coop really well done, which is a massive plus for me over lonely souls games.
(edited because I clearly couldn't read your comment fully)
I initially unknowingly rushed straight to the twins, killed them at level 12 or so and I thought the game was already over. Glad I went back and found the other 50% of the map! I think I'm going to wait for 1.0 to try coop, but it looks great.
Just finished Ghost of Yotei. Very satisfying single player climbing-girl game. Gorgeous graphics, fun combat.
Pokemon Pokopia
Picked this up after seeing the reviews. It's pretty good!
The core gameplay feels a bit like a very large open-zoned Animal Crossing. Rather than managing a cozy little island with 8 residents, you're the landlord to an every-expanding empire of dozens of Pokemon across a sprawling map filled with mountains, caverns and ruins all waiting to be explored, restored and/or just looted. Every second I'm playing, I feel like I'm being pulled in five directions at once with all the different things I could be doing - setting up habitats, improving existing ones, crafting items and setting up infrastructure, completing quests or just pushing outwards a little further into the massive map and maybe uncovering some cool secrets. It's a little overwhelming, but at the same time, there's no time pressure, sweaty action or any kind of fail state. None of the mainline quests are difficult to progress, and no one hassles you to do them if you want to focus on doing something else instead.
The exploration in particular is the standout for me. I love coming across ruins and having that moment of recognition where I realise what it's meant to be from the original game. More than once, I've squeezed into tiny one block gaps and thought 'there's no way the designers thought to put anything here', only to find a long secret passage leading to a neat little reward. There are gates with tantalisingly inaccessible rooms lying beyond, mysterious flooded passages and holes in soaring ceilings and hidden shrines and shortcuts all over the place, all inviting tenacious / nosy players to find a way in.
The only minor complaints that I have:
There's a loading screen between zones. It's not a long one, but you'll see it a lot since you're incentivised to move between zones pretty frequently - your storage isn't linked, and you'll often want to go to a zone to round up some Pokemon to help out in another. I really hope there's some kind of linked chest system later on to alleviate this, or at least a much larger chest.
This game has so much stuff in it that your chests will constantly be overflowing. Even if you have a system for organising by category, it's a real pain when you want to dump a bunch of stuff from your latest looting expedition and your chests just don't have the room, or if you're looking for one specific piece of furniture and can't remember which chest you put it in.
There's some live service game cruft like a daily login stamp card, daily missions, daily shop items and seasonal events. I'm not really a fan of this kind of FOMO game design, but the game gives you so much in-game currency anyway that you don't really need to do any of it.
Otherwise, it's solid enough that I'm curious how the next Animal Crossing is going to distinguish itself.
I've been playing it too and came here to rave about it! I finished the main story a couple days ago, and am now just building whatever I want. (Related: I suggest saving REALLY big projects for after completing the main story and unlocking all abilities. The last one is VERY helpful.) Mainly I'm working on fixing up part of the last area, which is absolutely my favorite.
You've hit the main notes on why I like the game. There's a lot to do and see, the game has some of the best exploration I've seen in a long while. Heck, I think I'm still missing one "human record" from the final area somehow despite all the work I'm doing, so I need to do some more serious exploring to find it. And it's always neat (and a bit jarring) to recognize landmarks and realize where we are. We can still see the basic shape of familiar towns, though some are genuinely unrecognizable... But we also have a lot of freedom on how to rebuild them. We can restore what remains, or just totally reshape the maps to our liking. (I miiiiiight build a giant faux-spaceship in Rocky Ridges...)
I will confirm now that storage sadly does not get linked in any way, so best we can do is organize it. I've seen people use frames to mark the contents of chests, and I should probably do that. And just... Set up an actual organization system rather than "put building stuff and furniture in the big Wasteland chests, oh and put anything meant for specific areas in THESE chests in said areas". Honestly, I'd love if the PCs could be used to access all chests from all areas. Would be a great homage to the item storage in older games, too.
That said, one neat thing is that all chests in the same level of a prefab house will be connected to any worktables inside it, so may be worth building yourself a dedicated workshop.
And to your last point about FOMO, I don't think the design is really like that. A lot of games have some shop or other element that changes daily just to keep things fresh for players (though today I confirmed the daily shop's rotation can include recipes you've already learned). The stamp rally and daily missions, meanwhile, were most likely implemented as ways to guarantee players will always have a way to earn coins for the shop as they gradually complete the regular missions. And the daily missions are simple enough that I usually complete them just playing normally. So far I've seen only one that would genuinely require going out of my way to complete it.
The seasonal events are the only things that really give potential FOMO vibes, but... Well, I'm an Animal Crossing fan so I'm used to those sort of events. No clue if the events will be an annual recurrence, but they seem to be hard-coded into the game. Time travelers have already confirmed a second event for the end of April.
My own big complaint: you run out of PP so fast in the post-game. That post-game skill can eat it up within a couple minutes of use. You'll want to keep a LOT of food on hand to replenish it.
But it also incentivizes me to just... Walk normally rather than using abilities to zip around the map constantly. That lets me actually see the town I'm building. The area I'm currently working on was a bunch of disjointed, disconnected areas on an isolated part of the map, so I've spent most of the time just restoring infrastructure. It's really cool to see Pokémon actively using the infrastructure I spent all that time setting up just for them, and using it myself makes me feel like I'm also part of the town.
I had an awesome moment last night when I saw the local Pokémon really moving around far from their habitats for the first time. They'd go up and down stairs to talk to other Pokémon, Murkrow just ignored doors and used windows... Taking my time to traverse the town the way a non-Ditto would, and seeing the local Pokémon moving normally, makes the town really feel alive in a way not many games accomplish.
Overall, it's definitely a really solid and well-made game. The developers put a ton of clear thought into the mechanics and how to make sure it lasts. A lot of games, once you complete the main story and side quests, have very little to do besides grinding and/or chore-like tasks. Even more sandbox-style games can run out of incentives to play after players reach a certain point in progression. I can already tell Pokopia is really designed with the long haul in mind, doing its best to give players even little things to look forward to every day.
I'm really interested in playing this game, and your review definitely adds to it. I love a game with good exploration. Probably need to wait until next month though, given all the other games I'm playing
I have been sinking some decent hours into Valve's Deadlock lately and enjoying it! Fair warning as I've found it has a steep learning curve. It combines the strategy and resource management of MOBAs with the breakneck action and gameplay mechanics + pacing swings of arena shooters. I'm playing on a setup that barely squeaks out enough FPS, but still... when the game clicks, it clicks.
The art style is refreshing and fun and stands out amongst it's peers in a landscape of hopeful-futuristic or gritty modern realism. The sound design and music is at once eerie and upbeat, not to mention engrossing. What really keeps me coming back, however, is the sheer breadth of variety in playstyles:
Want to play a healer with damage? There's a flying gargoyle in Ivy who heals with vines and can burst folks down with a rapid fire machine gun. How about a slower methodical angle? There's Venator, a trap-slinging Van Helsing-esque priest who fires off fiery grenades, fends off close-range attacks with a knockback shotgun shot, and finishes off foes with pleasurable thunks of his crossbow bolts. And for those fighting game fans, there's Apollo, my current favorite. He weaves in and out of the action with ease and can parry most any ability, ultimate, magic (yes, even bullets!) in the game with skillful timing.
I am playing Deadlock too and it's amazing. I have a bizarre amount of time in my schedule to play games and not have much responsibilities and playing 2-3 games a day for the past 3 weeks or so. It's just wonderful. There's so much to explore with movement, itemization, and working with your team to fight. I have absolutely no shooting game chops, and I feel like there are plenty of occultists to play that have let me pretty smoothly get up to Archon without any tryharding. What a great time. And overall, the community has been good, except for a handful really hateful people that I just immediately mute.
Perhaps my favorite part is how alive the characters feel. I love hearing Lash and Bebop razz each other, Mina (a stuck up Dracula type vampire) uttering "I've never seen a vampire like that" when she kills Drifter (a more thrall, feral type of vampire). Or when you ping Abrams you hear "I see the detective!" and stuff like that. Valve nails these little touches that I think others overlook.
I've been trying Deadlock with some friends. Now I am not a MOBA player. I've tried League and DOTA2 in the past and I largely just don't get it. Ironically, I'll watch League Worlds even though I usually have no clue what's going on.
But with Deadlock, I'm interested in figuring this out. I still have no clue what I'm doing, but I actually want to figure it out for once. It's fun, it's fast-paced, obviously has some tactics and strategy. I'm surprised I'm enjoying it.
Is the beta open to the public yet?
Yes, and invite codes are easy to come by since it's free. Poke around the Deadlock steam community forums there are threads explaining more
The King’s Field bug bit me HARD last week after finishing the first two entries to the series, and I’ve been having a lot of fun poking around more “Fieldies” as I’ve affectionately heard them referred to online.
I tried out the Queen’s Domain demo and immediately fell in love—that’ll be a day 1 buy for me.
Also finally got around to trying out Dread Delusion. People in the space tend to say that DD is different enough that it’s not really a King’s Field-like, but I think it leans far enough into the old school vibe that it certainly scratches the itch. I’d place it squarely in the middle of a spectrum that spans from King’s Field to Skyrim. Lots of creature comforts and RPG-ification that is otherwise absent from King’s Field entries, but way less hand-holding than e.g. any Bethesda RPG. Big fan so far!
If you haven't already, check out Lunacid. I put ~30 hours into that a few weeks ago and it's a great KF-like.
Will do - thanks for the recommendation! I’ve also heard about Verho and FlyKnight as two entries that are worth looking into, but I haven’t tried either yet.
I have some time to write on the games I've been playing a bit. My current gaming habits are basically cycling a few gatcha games daily and then one co op game with a friend at night. In order of caring my current gatcha games are wuthering waves, then genshin impact, and am still dragging girls frontline 2 around.
Right now I feel like wuthering waves is the best one and I've been happily giving them my google rewards survey money for the 5 dollar a month subscription. I feel like they are pushing to continually up their quality as the game progresses still. The best way I feel demonstrates that is characters typically have a 4 hit attack string, and wuwa has given a unique 'exit' animation to each string with the latest characters, so if you stop on attack 2 vs attack 3 you will get a different exit, and not just easing back to neutral but some sort of character flare. The daily chores take about 5 minutes to complete, no overhead at all for me and I find it relaxing.
Next in order is genshin impact, I have played it a long time now so it make it a comfort food. I have a lot of characters and parts of the game are places I've been years ago. At times going back to an old feeling has that same 'going back to westfall or elwynd forest' in wow. I was growing a bit jaded with fontaine (don't like theme) and natlan (too modern, really dislike archon as motercycle person design), but the newest area is back to form for me and am enjoying it again. Still, comparing the effort they put out to WUWA's and it is hard to think they are trying that hard. I still can't believe the game does not have lip sync for the english voice over, for example. But, at the least it is consistent, and that is still ok for the price of free to me. The music in the early areas is still some of the best game music ever made IMHO and even with Yu-Peng Chen having left the newer music is still great, and they do put together some really cool vistas still.
GFL2 I am not sure why I keep playing it. I am a huge fan of tactical games, xcom 2 is one of my all time favorites, and I love games like Final fantasy tactics, fire emblem, and triangle strategy. GFL2 on the surface does so many things correctly from the game design pov. The UI is clear and snappy, the animations look good but are quick and in general it's very well assembled. On the other han, I don't even know wtf is going on with the plot if there even is one, the levels don't feel like places but blank rooms, and I personally don't like the aesthetic of the bad guys. In the end the game has been super generous with pulls and you can autoplay it in the background easily, so I've kept it up. A part of me feels like the game is like just on the cusp of being something great with some changes, however with the chinese version being well ahead of global you can see that they are mostly phoning it in and won't be doing that, but I just can't bring myself to drop it for some reason, I want to will it into a game I want to play somehow.
Finally onto the real games, I'm currently playing through terraria calamity mod with my friend. We just came off a stint of Icarus, which got boring very quickly. Icarus has great sound design, the storms are also amazing, but that is about all it had going for it. The release of a new terraria patch got us looking at it again, and while calamity is still on 1.4 (tmod loader still 1.4), we hadn't gotten around to this. Previously we had completed a 1.4 play through and a throium mod in 1.3 playthrough.
The calamity mod is actually fantastic, all of the new elements we have gotten to so far (we are post golem on hard mode currently) integrate into terraria perfectly, it's really just more terraria and doesn't feel out of place at all. This has really gotten me thinking about why I like terraria vs some other survival games for longer periods of time. I believe it comes down to the game throwing so many new things and challenges in front of you rather than relying on freeform entertainment. There is a cycle of finding a boss, dying a few times, then reluctantly deciding we have to dig out an arena to win. If that doesn't work then it is a revisit to our gear setups to see if we need to upgrade or try some other setups. Then the boss comes down and out pours a new set of items to look at along with the possibility of combining those with old trinkets along with new ore or some other zone changing in some way through the world. It is a really addicting cycle and I feel like the survival ones like valhiem that do this kind of thing really grab me. The other component is it does not force a pace on me, if I want to make a nice looking house or just dig things up then I can do that too.
A key mod we are using is magic storage. I think without it or some form of craft from the box I would throw the game in the garbage. This is kind of a hot topic for me with survival games, especially since my friend and I are hoarders, I just want to drill in and break down and take everything, throw it in a box, and forget about it. IDK why I want to, but this is just what I need to do. I DO NOT want to memorize recipe list, organize everything so I can find it, and pick off the 5 things, then do my craft. My brain does not like to do this sort of short term recipe loading and starts to find it unpleasant. If I can just type into a list and find what is missing, go out and get it, then craft, I'm pretty hapy.
Another 'issue' I have in survival games is coming back with a load of stuff and dashing around to put it in all the correct cabinets. I always end up making a dump box when I just can't handle it anymore and throw it all in that to sort later. What is nice is some games that design around that. In bellwright you can make a storage that bans all items, so the villagers will put them in the categorized stockpiles, and in necesse the same technique works there as well. I even recall in the starbound fracken u mod there was an item netowkr you could build that you could dump it into a bin an sort it all out as well. Honestly I really like when this feature is a part of the game and you can construct some sort of item sorting and storage devices instead of just dividing it all up in chests.
Alright let me end off there but as usually engaging with terraria really gets me thinking on game design and I'll still hold to I think its an almost perfectly designed game that everyone should play at one point or another.
I finished Resident Evil 9 and I like the game. But I think I need to be unreasonably critical as fan of the series.
To get the product detsils out the way: beat it in just over 11hours on the Classic difficulty and I think that's with all exploration. In that time I had a single crash and I can't recall any bugs or breaks. It ran flawlessly on Arch Linux through proton, looked pretty good on a 3080 and overall, I'm happy with getting this game at full price.
Only major negative as a product is the lack of the arcade mode post-game. I really like the expanded RE4R combat sandbox and it was not used nearly enough.
On that note, the game constantly left me wanting more. That's better than the game being a drag, but there's maybe 5 gameplay encounters that felt fulfilling to finish. Most of the time the Grace puzzles/stealth segments felt way too streamlined and the Leon combat arenas feel like a step down after the hectic sprawling fights of RE4R. The attention being split between two very different play styles basically stopped either from really excelling.
Theres also one exceptionally brain dead character decision that is so aggregious, it's almost immersion breaking. My guess is that the story team had to swap a puzzle for plot point without really thinking about what that puzzle was.
And my biggest complaint is with the series in general lately. It's a sense that games are way too predictable because they can't help but play by their own rules. I think the scariest part of any Resident Evil game is from early part in this game where (minor spoiler) the normal zombie killing strategy just doesn't work and you're left scrambling. But it barely lasts a few hours because they very quickly load you up with everything you need and if you play competently, you should be good to the end. Throw in constant tutorial guides and ample warnings and it feels like the game was designed to pull its punches.
None of these are deal breakers and there was plenty to enjoy. For me the highlight was the characters. I joked that I like Grace because she reacts like a reasonable person would to zombies. But by the end of the game, she has a significant evolution next to Leon who is really having a bad day.
The enemies have some incredibly over-the-top animations and sound effects while the main villains are incredible in their style, writing and delivery. And Raccoon City is an amazing location. Daylight combat is not common in the series but it's unnerving when the contrast has every building looking like a black hole.
Overall, the game is a competent entry in the series. Not on the level of 2R, 4R or 7 and it might be better value for most people to wait for all the DLC. But it was fun to indulge in some nostalgia for a weekend and I'm hoping we get an announcement for Code Veronica remakes soon (or even Dino Crisis2. I would kill for a proper Dino Crisis 2 remake in RE Engine)
Somebody here tipped me off on Esoteric Ebb recently, and though we're only an hour or so in, my wife and I are loving it.
We played Disco Elysium together and loved every drunken, despicable minute of it, so this is right up our alley. While it's a new release and not likely to get the voice over treatment that Disco received, I do find myself missing the excellent voice cast of that game.
She crochets while I read the script aloud, and while that works for us for a time, I'm pooped 45 minutes in. Oh well - this is the price of quality time away from a child, I guess ;)
One of the owners at my local game store I play D&D at was really excited about the new WoW expansion, Midnight. I wish I could say it took a lot of convincing, but in about 30 minutes he had two of us hyped up enough to buy the expansion and dive back into the game.
Now I've been playing Classic for years now, but this is my first attempt to play Retail WoW since Shadowlands and a lot has changed. Some things of note and my thoughts:
Neva released a little DLC recently. 3 or 4 bucks CAD for a couple hours of gameplay. I enjoyed it, but it's really weird to think about if it was worth the money. On one hand it's a very small amount. On the other, I am getting tremendous replay value out of other games for other relatively small sums.
I played the Pepper Grinder demo (it was kinda hyped at the time) but the gameplay didn't really gel with me.
Neva is so beautiful.
Arc Raiders... I picked up the game almost as soon as it launched. I really wanted to like this game. The idea of running around exploring and scavenging, leveling up, sounded fun. I just couldn't stand this game. I don't understand how it's so popular to be honest. Having to interact with all these people is exhausting. I guess some (lots?) of people love interacting with other players and dying and losing their gear? It's more stressful than work! Honestly. My actual real life job is far less stressful than this game. I don't get it. I guess it's just not for me. I am annoyed I spent so much $ on it.
Interesting, I didn't know there was such a thing as aggression-based match making.
I started Half-Life: Alyx last week after finishing HL2 and the Episodes. Though I should say restarted, given I played a good portion of it about two years ago.
I am very much enjoying it, but it does have the problem of being a VR title, which means I can't just jump-in/jump-out of it willy nilly as I could with a game on my laptop or my Steam Deck. And since VR is always a bit of a faff, I'm usually playing it for maybe 30 minutes after my kids are in bed, if I can summon the motivation to be moving around like an idiot. I also find it's got some janky issues like textures often just not loading and necessitating a complete restart of the game, which is obnoxious.
But I do like what I've played so far. I couldn't say how far I am yet, but I've just discovered the Vortegaunt and am about to proceed to the area immediately after him.
For my jump-in/jump-out game, I've been playing Battle Brothers on my Steam Deck. I've put about 50-hours into this game over the years and still have pretty much no idea what I'm doing, but I am very much enjoying it. I'm just playing on Easy and figuring out the systems and rhythm of the game, trying to figure out where I should be going and what I should be doing as I approach day 30 with my team. Thinking I probably need to be a little less protective of my Bros when they die (especially new hires), but I'm also bad at leveling them up, so I have no idea if I'm doing it right.
Also continuing to dabble here and there in Civ 6 when I'm bored of everything else and just want to poke at my tablet in bed.
Should Battle Brothers start to bore you, they also released their new game Menace into early access. Entirely different setting, being a milsim in space, but with systems just as thorough as Battle Brothers. Though perhaps a little less difficult.
I've been finding myself much more entertained by the polish as opposed to the slightly janky Battle Brothers.
Interesting, I've heard a lot about it on the podcasts I listen to, but didn't realize it was by the same developers. I'll have to give it a look. Any idea how it works on Steam Deck?
Per Battle Brothers, it's exactly why I'm playing on Easy, Non-Ironman. Stuff can just jump out and kill you and unless you have prior knowledge, there's not much to be done. Just before bed last night, I had some vampires attack me and kill everyone; had no idea vampires even existed or how to fight them. It was amusing, rather than frustrating, but that's because again, I'm playing on Easy and saving regularly.
I haven't given it a proper go, but it works. The game isn't too difficult to control since it's turn based although it emulates KBM and doesn't have proper Steam Deck controls yet so you'll be using the touchpads to mouse around.
According to Steam it's "Playable" and that's not too far off the mark with this game. Performance is fine, controls are so so.
It's different in MENACE because it's operation based. One operation has between three to five missions and you know what type of enemy you're fighting. Then before starting a mission you'll select your loadout and squad leaders and deploy. There's an Intelligence meta stat you can upgrade to see more information about the enemy before starting the mission scalable to the point you know the specific enemy types. Even so, I've had missions where I advanced a little too far and a rocket buggy from downtown near wiped one of my squads. Nothing you can't recover from, but painful nonetheless. Nothing like Battle Brothers though, where the wrong engagement can end your run entirely.
I’ve been playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and enjoying it a lot. Aesthetically the game absolutely nails the feeling of the original movies… the pacing, music, cutscene writing and cinematography are spot-on. Indy looks and sounds exactly like he should — kudos to Troy Baker for his pitch perfect voice work, you’d swear they went back in time and cast young Harrison Ford for the role.
I don’t think I’m very far into the game yet, but I try to avoid spoilers about that. I’m probably a bit more than halfway through the second major world location after the intro scene and college. So far I think the main plot is pretty ridiculous but it’s a transparent setup for a grand globe-hopping adventure so I’ll go with it. I’m enjoying the cast of characters and the way they subvert some of the more problematic tendencies of Indiana Jones stories, without undermining him or feeling out of place in his world. I think it’s a real balancing act to honor the best parts of Raiders of the Lost Ark and its kin, while keeping the worst parts in check for 21st century gamers. So far I’d say it’s doing that well.
The game’s adherence to 1st person skeuomorphism can get tedious. Want to see where you are? Get out your map. Want to heal? Bandage yourself. Want to unlock skill tree progression? Read books. I don’t like how much of my time is spent eating bread and fruit. The controls are a bit clunky, particularly running, jumping, and climbing down from high places. Bare-knuckle brawling is fun in 1st person perspective though, it’s extremely satisfying to beat up hordes of nazis and fascists. There’s a solid improvised weapon mechanic in the game which is fun though many of the weapons are all basically the same. I love that you can shoot a gun or flip it around for melee use. Baddies stumble around after taking a big hit, sometimes collapsing through destructible furniture or slipping off ledges. Indy’s quick with quips, making fights fun and chaotic.
I’d hoped for better stealth mechanics. You can hide but it’s not always easy to tell if you’re hidden. I’d like some of the “sixth sense” type abilities other games give you to see where enemies are and what’s in their line of sight. Sneaking around is my usual go-to for games like this but it doesn’t really seem viable here. Rushing in and beating everybody up has ended up being the more satisfying path.
I love that the puzzles take some real thinking (some more than others). I wouldn’t say they’re hard but they’re quite a bit less dumbed-down than what you’d find in an Uncharted or modern Tomb Raider game. I appreciate that this game doesn’t shy away from slow, exploratory moments. The environments are beautiful, with lots of things to discover. I enjoy hearing NPCs speaking in locale-appropriate languages, and it’s a nice touch that you can help some of them in little unmarked side quests. On the exploration side, most of the big buildings and catacombs suffer from improbable architecture, designed as labyrinthine video game spaces rather than plausible real-world places. Which I find annoying and immersion-breaking.
What else to say about this game? It’s not perfect but I’m having fun with it, as an Indy fan who grew up with the movies (and the Fate of Atlantis point-and-click adventure). At this point in the game I think I’ll give it a 7/10.
Edit: Oh I meant to say something about disguises, which are genuinely annoying. Each disguise comes with its own main weapon. Meaning if you’re not wearing the regular Indy outfit you can’t use your revolver… for some reason. And disguises are scarce. I’m trying to get into a location that requires a nazi uniform, but I have to go to a specific place to get it. Even though I’ve beaten up dozens of uniformed nazis in the area, I can’t just take one of theirs — even though Indy does exactly that in The Last Crusade… but I digress. I guess I’m spoiled by the way disguises work in Hitman. These limitations feel arbitrary, and frustrating.
Glad you're liking it. The game was a solid 9/10 for me and I agree with you on the disguises. The only thing I looked up was their location as I hated how they gated progression and the Nazi disguise location you're talking about is not obvious compared to the Vatican.
Anywho, if you're not using the whip when beating everyone up you're missing out. The story is crazy, but so is finding a mythical religious symbol that melts Nazi faces or pulling a heart out of someone's chest, so I actually think the story holds up with any of the original three movies. Enjoy!
I recently picked up Fire Emblem: Awakening at a local game store and I can see why it was such a pivotal point in the franchise, contributing to a resurgence so to speak.
I will admit I haven't played many Fire Emblems, and have yet to find the time to actually complete one, but the majority of my past experience lies in Path of Radiance (which I should really get back to).
In many ways, Awakening makes me miss the more quirky and charming past of Nintendo, and I am definitely re-finding my love for the 3DS for the millionth time. Graphically the game is quite amazing, especially for a title released so close to the consoles launch. 'Support' dialogue is much deeper than recent releases, albeit a little silly — more importantly the story is actually quite gripping and well crafted.
I think my only potential gripe is the pair-up mechanic introduced in this FE, allowing you to place two units on the same tile (with one being in the front / taking the damage). It is balanced quite well, and there are plentiful unique matchups to be made, but I think it reduces the potential of strategic placement of units which is more important in Path of Radiance. It does make it a bit easier to play risky/offensively if you so wish, but I think it waters down the tactical aspect of previous games (I'd like to emphasize I am nitpicking here, its still very fun and still very firmly a tactics jrpg)
Just today I beat Inscryption on my Steam Deck and I loved it to bits. I went in completely blind and oh the places this game goes... Totally unexpected and absolutely incredible, some of my best moments in gaming.
I've been bouncing around recently, revisiting old games I liked and then set down, and mostly rediscovering why I set them down. Oxygen Not Included, Terraria, Subnautica, and Minecraft all take more building than I want to do at this point. If I was playing multiplayer it could be fun, but alone it just feels like too much scavenging and building for too little excitement. Project Zomboid and The Long Dark continue to be a nice balance, where I'm tweaking an existing building to meet my needs, but I'm not having to shape the entire world to meet my whims.
Outside of the sandbox space, I continue to spend time with both Mewgenics and Slay the Spire 2. Each are good for an hour or so, but neither one is really holding my interest that deeply. One of them may become an ongoing play, but I'm not convinced.
Been playing too many games lately, can barely keep them straight. So much good stuff releasing this month.
Started the month playing Pokemon FireRed. Pokemon has long been one of my favorite series, though I admit that the newer games on the switch have been a disappointment for me aside from Arceus. The 3rd gen is also one of my favorites, mostly due to the robust rom hacking scene. That being said, it's been a while since I played vanilla FireRed, and wasn't really planning on getting it on the switch since it's just as easy to emulate, but my siblings suggested we all get a copy and play through the game together... so I caved. I'm kinda stalled right now due to some of the other games I've been playing, but I can't overstate how refreshing it has been playing through this game again. You can enter buildings! Talking to NPCs leads to some (not always) entertaining dialogue, and sometimes cool items. I've been reminded by how much I hate the forced exp share, and how much easier it is to get to know each of my team members as I rotate them around to level up lower leveled pokemon. And while the puzzles and exploration were never that difficult (much more so as a small child), there's actually a reason to do so again. Yes, I can get through Mt Moon without getting lost as an adult, but the side diversions are entertaining with often cool items hidden at the end. I missed the resource management too.
Slay the Spire 2 was what knocked me off of FireRed. The first game is probably one of my most played games of all time, I'm not even sure how many hours since I own it on so many systems. I don't normally play early access games, since I get frustrated when I reach the end of the available content and want to continue. But I decided to give it a shot, since the game is already mostly complete from a feature standpoint. I know it needs further balancing and an Act 4, but so far it's been everything I could ever ask for. Its the first game but more. The two new characters are really fun, and I love the new cards they added for the old ones. The new bits of lore from the epochs are really fun, and the ancients are a fun improvement from the boss relics of the previous game. I can see myself coming back to this game for a long time, which is a good thing because this weekend I started playing...
Monster Hunter Stories 3. Right now this is my favorite game on the list, and I already adore the previous two. Monster tamers are my favorite genre, and this game will go down as one of the best, I think. I've only reached the second area, but I can't stop exploring to find more rare monsties, fun fights, and habitat restoration. Nearly everything is an improvement on the first two games, especially the combat system and exploration. It even has a decent story, which wasn't something I particularly cared about, but is a nice bonus. I do have a few small things I would like to see improve - I wish that I could remove Ratha from the party (again), and I'm disappointed to see that there's still monsters that are not obtainable but still fightable in game (Tetsucabra when?). I would also like to be able to remove my companions from the party, as I think that's the purest form of the battle system. I do hear there's not much of a post game compared to the previous games, and I'm hoping that this will be updated by further title updates like capcom usually does. There's several monsters I would like to see added to the game if that's the case. But still, even if nothing changes, an early candidate for my game of the year.
My wife and I have been playing Fire Red and Leaf Green together. While I grew up with the games, she completely missed them so she never played them when they were new. I, however, have played the Kanto story so much I more or less knew it like the back of my hand, even 25-30 years later. (I'm old now ;_;)
What was interesting was seeing her interacting with this game as someone who knew only the modern pokemon releases on the Switch. The game series has come a LONG way since Gen 1 and I honestly think that the Gen 3 was the right choice for people to revisit. True Gen 1 (Red/Blue) is really REALLY janky. It feels like its held together with chewing gum and bailing wire. Most people have heard of MissingNo, but over the many years people have discovered a myriad of ways of tricking the game to do things it isn't supposed to. For example: Did you know you could get Mew without a gameshark or event trade? Fire Red and Leaf Green gives a lot of fixes to those rough edges as well as the astetically pleasing Gen 3 face lift. I highly recommend it if you are curious about earlier generation pokemon games.
That being said, it has its general design rough edges as well:
No EXP share makes leveling more of a chore There are people who love this format, but I think that its just busywork for the sake of feeling effort. Modern pokemon games have their issues, but I don't think EXP share is one of them. Honestly it's a non factor with the ease in which you get leveling candy in those games and that makes EXP Share basically irrelevant.
Gen 1 was super stingy with items. Sure, it makes sense that Rare Candies are infact rare, but TMs shouldn't be as stingy. If I were to make a change, I would say that you get the first one for free in whatever way you acquire it, but then you can spend money to buy it. It just makes everything a chore if you want to build some sort of competitive team and you really like earthquake but you only get the one.
"Dungeon" environments are an ordeal. On one hand, I like the struggle, but on the other are a slog. Mt Moon, Rock Tunnel and Victory Road are absolutely painful. They are more of a test of patience than anything else. If you dont know, like my wife, you are anxious about how much farther you need to go. If you do know? It's rough. Repels help, but then you miss out on EXP.
Thank goodness for VS Seeker in Gen 3. Without it, you are just slogging against wild pokemon and thats not fun for anyone. Show up to the elite 4 below Lorelei's level? You originally had to go back to punching onyx in Victory Road. Now you can go and beat up on trainers, getting more XP and also money. 10/10, would recommend
Flow in this game is an interesting relic of the past RPG designs. Yes, there aren't any floating quest markers or objective lists for you to follow, but the you have to get that info from SOMEWHERE and if you miss the one person that says you have to go back up to Cerulean and head east to the Rock Tunnel, then you're going to have a really hard time understanding what in the world you need to do. It's a challenge that I understand why modern games design left it behind.
On a final note, I chose to do my Fire Red playthrough as a Nuzlocke, since my wife didn't know what she was getting in to and I knew she would be slower. I'll have some thoughts about that next week as I'm preparing for the Elite 4, and I'm hoping this game would be my first officially completed Nuzlocke. Wish me luck!
I have uninstalled GTA 5 after Rockstar launcher finally got too much invasive. I will never finish the game because this software keeps getting into the gaming itself and I'm over coping with this shit. The game isn't worth it anyway, I like predecessors more.
Well, with free evening before me I started playing Planet of Lana. I have pribably never played a game.more beautiful as this one is. The art graphics look great! And given there is great music alongside with it, the game is quite an experience. While the characters speak unknown (made up?) languange and actually doesn't speak that much, you can understand the emtions and situation clearly.
It is puzzle-platformer. Puzzles are not hard nor completely easy, but I'd say they are on the easier side. The game wraps up after 4-5 hours of gameplay, but it gives out quite an epic journey in this short time.
Bought it in sale for 2€, which is too cheap for sjch a good game. 20€ full price is quite expensive on the other hand. I'd say 5€ in sale i adequate, as would be 10€ normal price.
If you like games with very nice visual art graphics and great music and games that have soul, get Planet of Lana.
It's a made up language. I'm just starting the recently released sequel, having played the original back then. It's more of the same so far, a pretty puzzle platformer in a planet's technological ruins, but from the review play times I get the feeling it's going to be longer. So if you want more Lana...
I have started Borderlands 2, so I have something to play for a few months already. I will very likely buy Planet if Lana 2, though. The first one was just beautiful and I definitely want more.
This week for our podcast on roguelike/lite games we played the mobile game tactics puzzler Hoplite
Hoplite always seemed to pop up randomly when doing research on rogue games, particularly in the early dawn of the 2012ish renaissance of the genre. Along with 868-Hack there seemed to have been this big burst of roguelikes being released for app stores on mobile, spawning out of the 7DRL design competitions for the year.
I was excited to finally try Hoplite for the podcast as a result, and turns out it’s quite fun! It’s probably the smallest scope game we’ve played, so ranking it alongside huge productions like Returnal or Caves of Qud is tough, but we all had a decently fun time with it.
At first I was thinking the game would be way too easy, but the difficulty scales well towards your goal of the 16th floor of the dungeon to rescue the Golden Fleece and then either end the run and tally up your high score, or keep pushing further to see how far you can go.
Alongside the effectively infinite main dungeon crawl, there’s like 10,000+ 3-floor miniature dungeon puzzles to work through. You’re given a static loadout to play with, which also makes for another sort of tutorial in a way. Very challenging!
Overall: a fun game for $4 to have on my iphone. Playing a couple turns when in line at the grocery store or on the bus works very well for this form factor.
This one kept popping up for me too as I was looking at rogue-likes. I downloaded it just now after reading your comment. Seems fun, and like you said, easy to hop(lite) on and off thanks to it being turn-based. Thanks for the recommendation!
Cleared Hot was on sale and I picked it up.
Had a blast playing it. Can tell it's still in early access though, but it's mainly just UI things I had an issue with. Like I got stuck in the "training" area because I didn't know how to exit it. Turns out you have to click "Quit to Menu" which didn't feel intuitive.
But I used to play a similar flash game about a top-down helicopter back in the days of AddictingGames.com and Newgrounds. And I think this is based on that one.
Anyways, it's fun.
Picked up Everspace 2, finally. I tried to get into it some months earlier but now I realized that it's been designed for a console controller so that's how it should be played. Before, I tried furiously to play it with my HOTAS and that just wasn't fun.
Now it's pretty fun. Like scifi Skyrim in 6dof.
I have gotten the ending of Act 3 of Hollow Knight: Silksong and I really can't stop thinking about it. Mind you, the game frustrated me a lot at times. Spending a week of game sessions on and off fighting Savage Beastfly only to unlock a niche crest and not progress made me stop playing for two months.
When I got back and finished Act 2, the game took a major step up both audiovisually and gameplay wise. Hornet has her full movement options in-battle so you feel in-control of most situations. I loved Act 2.
From what I'd heard, Act 3 was a pretty big difficulty bump and basically a gauntlet, so I was concerned. In the end, Act 3 was easier than Groal the Great. Not only that, it had some of the funnest boss fights in the game with once again great music and environments. It also did something I liked in games like Final Fantasy 6 and Dragon Quest 11 did where an event changes the world so the first thing you want to do is just check up on everyone.
I was a pretty fair weather Hollow Knight fan, but I loved Silksong. Definitely enough to check out the DLC which I didn't feel like I needed to with the original.
And the DLC should be coming sometime soonish, as the latest patch was pretty transparently preparing for it.
That reminds me, I got about 9 hours into watching a 12-hour playthrough of Silksong a few months back and never finished it.
I guess I'm the opposite - I really like what I saw of Hollow Knight (didn't actually play it but watched all the content that was released), but while Silksong has its charm, I'd found it kinda underwhelming so far. I can't tell if the GotY hype it got was mostly copium from fans or not.
I will say that the experience of watching someone else play Silksong is not an adequate analogue for playing it yourself. The movement is so satisfyingly smooth and beautifully animated that I really feel good every moment that I successfully pull off some feat of agility. It feels good to play, and that's something you can't get from watching it.
That's the thing, I kinda expected as much so I'm watching it with that in mind. Maybe it's just the Youtuber I've watched, because the video's 75% gone and I think they just got to the start of Act 3. So far, it didn't look like it feels good to play, as weird as that sounds. By comparison, I remember stuff like Ori and the Blind Forest or Hyper Light Drifter looking like they felt awesome to control, and they did, but if I had only seen videos of gameplay before all the abilities were unlocked, maybe I might not have thought so.
Still marathon. Still enjoying it. The way they’ve done the quest system keeps runs interesting and the free kits are the right level of “ok” while rook runs can quickly replenish lost stuff
I've been playing
Cat Goes Fishing. My daughter wanted it, but since her interest in games is always social, I ended up playing too. Thank goodness for steam family.
The game is very pleasant and low-key to play. It holds interest pretty well for such a seemingly simple concept. It's also got an interesting progression in terms of quests and leveling up capabilities. The art is lovely. 10/10 would recommend.
I finally managed to beat Desert 3 on Megabonk. Juge Anubis is debatably an easier fight than Bark Vader because there's less crap to dodge and less crap that will knock you back when deactivating shrines in each intermission phase. But the real difficulty is in even getting to this boss encounter in the first place. Desert is a much worse stage than Forest with Scorpions that have larger collision boxes and will geniuinely flood the map during swarm phases if you have any sizeable increases to difficulty percentage.
Also managed to unlock Chaos Tome (activate all shrines in a tier 3 run without leaving the shrine radius once, which is much harder said than done), this time with a Robinette Forest run where I scaled so hard that I practically 2-shot the boss and forced it into just one intermission phase, and managed to get top 1500 on the leaderboards with ~110k kills.
Other than that, my time has gone into Old School RuneScape, where my focus has been to unlock the Piety prayer, which for me involved completing One Small Favour, Holy Grail, Murder Mystery, King's Ransom, then the training waves miniquest at the end. The most tedious quest was easily the first one...
My next goal is to (eventually) return to Monkey Madness and get that quest done. The last time I attempted it, I quit out of frustration because I couldn't figure out the timing to even leave the Ape Atoll prison, even though the game operates on a tick-based system where game ticks are every 0.6 seconds. This isn't trying to pull off some frame-perfect trick, it's more like a 36 frame timing assuming a 60fps framerate. It's just that the gorilla guards have some bullshit patrol mechanics.
That was an annoying part of the quest as well, I remember putting it down twice over an afternoon. Similar to failing in the underground pass...
I am currently working through the elven quest line :)
I found the cave more annoying when I played it years ago on my now-RS3 account. But then again, I did it without protection prayers.
A colleague at work has been trying to recruit people to play Old School RuneScape with him. I knew little about the game, but he want into a lot of detail about it and did a bit of a show and tell on Discord after playing a different game. Looks overwhelming to be honest. I can't see myself picking this up. I wonder if it's more of a "you had to be there" kind of game, where knowing the history makes the experience that much richer. My friend used the word "grinding" multiple times. "Grinding" and "farming" are no longer things I want to do in any game. I did my share of that in games when I was younger. Now I have such limited time that just the thought of grinding and farming sounds too much like work and is an instant turn-off. That said, I was amazed at what he was showing me in terms of how huge the world is, how nice the community is, and how they even have entire game-shows in-game (something like Survivor). I see it more of a world where you do things and have fun rather than a regular "video game".
It's a very grindy game. Getting a single skill to 99 can take well over a hundred hours, even using the most efficient training methods and pathway.
Some skills such as Agility, Slayer and Runecrafting are notoriously slow. Even the best Agility training method which is Hallowed Sepulchre's 5th floor, which is quite click-intensive and unlocked at 92 Agility, gives just 90k experience per hour. For perspective, you would need 6,517,178 XP to go from 92 to 99, and that would take over 72 hours alone.
Some methods are slow purely due to dated game design decisions, but can be sped up by engine exploits. Fishing is a very good example of a skill which is very slow unless you use click-intensive tick manipulation methods.
In spite of all that, it sounds like there are many dedicated folks who love it and have a community around it. My friend pointed out some of the things you mentioned too, like the sheer amount of XP and time. He wants to play with friends specifically because those things are more fun if you have a friend to chat with as you're doing all that grinding. Unfortunately I will not be joining him, though I do appreciate his excitement of the game and can respect his dedication to it.
Magic the Gathering! It ramped up for me since January as I managed to get a group going at work. We play over lunch 2-3 times a week. It’s tight and we rarely finish commander games as some folks are still new to the game. I love the enthusiasm of newer players to learn and discover the game and the cards.
I have been playing the pre-constructed Tricky Terrain commander deck. Sticking mostly to pre-constructed decks to keep things fair for the newer players.
I recently picked up Astro Bot again and finished the base game, collecting all 300 bots. I think I've posted about this game before in one of these weekly game threads but I'm here for an update :). I highly recommend this game if you're looking for a Nintendo-y 3D platformer outside their consoles. This game reminds me a lot of Super Mario Odyssey and Super Mario Galaxy. The world designs are amazing, there's a lot to explore in each one to not only collect all the bots available in a level, but also the puzzle pieces and secret finishes. The level design tends to lean more towards Odyssey here with actual gameplay feeling a bit more like Galaxy to me. Similar to Galaxy, Astro's powerups are limited to certain levels and the levels are very clearly designed around these powerups. Game progression is also very satisfying. If you're a casual gamer, going through the main story is easy and shouldn't have you respawning over and over again. However, if you do wish to venture out, the extra levels are nice and do offer a nice step up in terms of difficulty. If you really wish to step out, there are a series of levels called the "secret symbol" levels, which are 4 separate series of levels with designs based around the PS symbols cross, circle, square and triangle. These levels are really difficult and don't have checkpoints like all the other levels. They're fairly short, one pass levels but getting through them really takes some time.
Anyways, highly recommend this game if you want a fun Nintendo-y 3D platformer on your PS5!
I've been partway through a let's play of this on Youtube for months as well, and I totally get why it got the acclaim it received. I find it really interesting that, as someone who knows maybe 50-66% of the references, it never doesn't feel like a playground for corporate mascots (as opposed to how you can suspend disbelief with Nintendo), but it's still totally charming, funny, and fun.
Yeah the cameos of the various Playstation franchise characters are subtle and not too in your face. It's less an advertisement of what they have and more a celebration of what they have. It does highlight some franchises that haven't had a release in a while but that's unavoidable haha.
I've had the pleasure of playing Far: Lone Sails again, a neat and short side-scroller about traversing a desolate, apocalyptic wasteland in a "home-made" tank and braving extreme climatic change in a world devoid of people. It's grim, but the pleasure of the journey comes from the joy of incremental progress that you can only view as it passes you, focusing all your attention on the here and now of stoking the fire in your engine and hoisting the sail. With no zombies or aliens to fight, this game is an introspective gaze into the fine line between independence and loneliness and a stark warning against an oncoming environmental collapse that remains a fun journey to undertake.
Also a replay for me is Letter Quest: Grimm's Journey, a 100% game for me that passed by too quickly. It's Scrabble retooled as a very shallow RPG campaign, and as any fan of leveling up will be familiar with, this game makes great use of grinding, though it's really not necessary. This is to say it's great fun to replace random trash mob fights with spelling brain teasers that allow for linear progress through a campaign. The implementation is not deep at all, but it scratching an incredible itch that hasn't been seen much of since.
I don't play enough spelling games, but Letter Quest inspired me to try out The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia. It's simply fantastic, a unique game that combines bullet hell gameplay with spelling and high difficulty. It would be my next passion playthrough, but the weird controls that require you to type letters and use your arrow keys at the same time is causing my hands to hurt; there's a WASD + Shift key setup, but I'll need to replay it from the start to retrain myself.
Shameful admission: another replay of mine this week is Planescape: Torment, a game I picked up from the huge CRPG Humble Bundle pack. I've enjoyed playing it for the first time in years, but I haven't been enjoying it and don't know if I will continue. The thing is, I still remember everything, there's no discovery. It's great to view this game from an analytical standpoint and marvel at how it is put together, but the joy isn't there. I still love this game, but at this point, it's the experience of playing it before, not the current experience of replaying it now.
Don't neglect to play the sequel Changing Tides! I believe you would enjoy it too.
I've been playing a ton of roguelites lately and wanted to mix it up after running a bunch of Slay The Spire 1/2, so I set up Super Mario 64 in Ghostship
I remember SM64 was the first decompiled, maintained, multi-system N64 port but I never got around to getting a known build running. Then randomly this comes out (I don't follow the Harbour Master 64 project beyond releases), and it's perfect. I got the 8bitdo 64 controller, as well, and have been having a great time with the N64 muscle memory. I nearly beat SM64 on the 3DS at one point but never picked it back up again, so it's nice to go back through it.
I set up Spaghetti Kart, the Mario Kart 64 game, as well, to see about going through it, too, and have been having fun with it, as well. This controller really does make a bit of a difference, I think, at least on game feel and not having to think differently for inputs.
I've been playing UNBEATABLE, and even though I've only finished the first three chapters so far, I'm already kind of obsessed with it.
The biggest thing for me is that it feels nostalgic in this really weird dreamlike way. Not nostalgic because it reminds me of another game exactly, but more like it feels familiar emotionally, like I've been there somehow. Beat especially gives me that feeling. I feel connected to her while also feeling just as lost and new to the world as she is.
It's not the most polished game ever, and the writing so far isn't some mindblowing masterpiece or anything, but that's weirdly part of why I like it so much. It feels human. More real than a lot of bigger, “better-made” AAA games.
The visual style is also ridiculously good. The Paper Mario-ish flat look mixed with anime and pop-punk aesthetics is basically perfect for me. The animation and UI are super stylish too. Sometimes there's almost too much going on, but when you get into the rhythm of it all, it just adds so much energy.
I'm also not really a rhythm game person, so I appreciate that the controls are simple, even if the songs can still get surprisingly hard. And the music is absolutely carrying the game for me in the best possible way. A few tracks are just okay, especially some of the more ambient ones, but most of the soundtrack is incredible. Some of these songs are so full of emotion that I genuinely don't even know how to explain why they hit as hard as they do.
Character-wise, I wouldn't say they're super deep yet, but they are very easy to like. Beat and Treble especially feel really relatable to me. Their personalities feel natural, and the group dynamic just feels like actually hanging out with friends. That matters a lot.
My only real concern right now is that the story might end up being a little bland or predictable, or maybe not as deep as I'm hoping. But at the same time, everything about the game feels like it was made with so much love and attention that I'm willing to trust it for now.
So yeah, early impressions only, but I'm loving it. It feels emotional, stylish, sincere, and totally unique in a way I really wasn't expecting.