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

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

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.

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:

• There is now a 1 button rotation option: Initially, every fiber of my being shrieked in nerd rage about this, but then I used it and I'm over it. I poured nearly two decades into this game learning rotations and stuff and I've earned the right to play it on easy mode, god dammit. I'm especially liking it as a tank because it's just the single button, so it's easier for me to focus on self-heals while questing and cooldowns when tanking.
• Flying has changed substantially since the Dragon expansion. It's a bit more stylistic and I really hated it at first, but it's growing on me. It basically forces the flight to be more realistic with your mount no longer able to do immediately stops or 180's on a dime. But also, they do include an option to switch flying style to the classic form.
• They've evidently done away with the problem of meeting people IRL, finding out they play WoW, and not being able to play with them because of server or faction differences. The three of us from the gamestore all play together frequently and we're all on different servers and factions. LOVE THIS. Also glad to see the lore has moved away from a Horde v Alliance angle. Because it hasn't made much practical sense since the game introduced Azeroth-wide threats (so...Wrath?).
• Just in general I initially hated all of their UI changes (of which there are many), but once I got used to them I realized how much better the UI is
• The story of Midnight so far is very interesting. They remade the entire Blood Elf chunk of the map, which hadn't seen any love since Burning Crusade. It's honestly beautiful and packed full of detail. And lore-wise (mild spoiler ahead), they're finally exploring the "is the light benevolent?" question first raised during Legion. AND I LOVE IT.
• They added player housing! Which is really neat, but not something I'm interested in spending a ton of time on just yet. I'd like to wrap up the storyline and do some completionist things before I get into all that. But from what I saw, it's very cool!

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.

Finally got around to buying Neva, Consume Me, Caravan Sandwitch, and Pepper Grinder which were all on sale... only to be derailed by the newest season of R6: Siege and Arc Raiders.

I will say, online communities are wearing on me. Teamkills and racist chats while playing ranked in R6 or getting killed in Arc Raiders despite being incredibly passive (I've literally never shot first) is really just annoying. I kind of get it for Arc Raiders and it's partially my fault for leaving solo vs groups settings on, but when you're soloing, run towards a group to try to help, wave at them, emote don't shoot, and then casually run by, only to get shot in the back and lose all your gear, it's kind of depressing even if you know it could be coming.

Just finished Ghost of Yotei. Very satisfying single player climbing-girl game. Gorgeous graphics, fun combat.

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!