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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.
Ive picked up Silksong again after giving up on it for a while.
Initially I was trying to get through as much of the game as I could without using guides or hearing spoilers, but eventually I got stuck at the point where you go through the Mists.
Recently I caved and looked to what I was supposed to be doing there. Now I am well into Act 2.
I really like the game, I see why it has so much praise. Its much more expansive than I initially guessed, and I feel like the game design aspects are really good in a lot of ways. How the maps are designed, how the game economy works, the slow buildup of difficulty, etc.
There are still some game issues Silksong hasnt quite solved yet. I still have the problem of hoarding valuable resources. Like there are these silkeater bugs that Ive found 2 or 3 of, but I never use them because they seem too rare to waste. I also think the shard system could use some work, because many maps are dominated by enemies that only drop beads and you never get any shards without backtracking to early maps.
Ive also seen through the guide I referenced that there is one tool called the Silkshot that you get one of 3 options, but you cant change your mind afterwards and you wouldnt know the differences between the 3 before choosing, and 1 of them doesnt even show up as an option till later. I think that was a mistake, I dont really like how that choice is implemented.
On the whole though, I think its a really great game, maybe one of my all time favorites, if it continues to stay at this quality.
This is in my opinion bad game design. Any game that does this gets a point subtraction from me.
Like, what am I supposed to do in those cases?
I suppose its to encourage repeat playthroughs. But I agree, I dont like it. Its the kind of thing that makes me feel like I need to use a guide to not screw myself over.
I've played Planet of Lana II! It's a direct sequel to Planet of Lana, the chill, fully visual puzzle platformer about a little girl living in what appears to be a post apocalyptic primitive society in a gorgeous world, whose elder sister is kidnapped by robots/aliens/?? In the second game, Lana once again takes on something bigger than she should have to when the activities of a group of violent, militarized humans with a greater degree of technological development cause a younger girl to fall terminally ill.
I appreciated that Lana retains her little robot companion, Mui, and the skills they developed in the first game - you don't have to start over, besides a short tutorial section. For those who didn't play the first game, the gameplay is heavily reliant on controlling both Lana and Mui so they can overcome various challenges cooperatively, with Mui having greater mobility and the ability to disrupt electrical systems. Lana's planet is as beautiful as ever, and the detailed animation on Lana's every limb as she runs, jumps, climbs, swings or swims is a pleasure to behold.
The game does a great job of slotting neatly into the context of the first one and greatly extending Lana's and Lana's Planets' stories with new characters and information. As an experience guided by its (visual) narrative, some might feel like it's a little on-rails; there are a few secrets for the attentive to find (like in the first game) but a lot of the detailed sets are just for taking in, and points of no return abound (you can replay an entire section later if you think you missed something). Still, Lana II is a little longer than the first one, 8 hours instead of 6 for a completionist run. There's a cliffhanger at the end, which tells me the developers hope to make a Planet of Lana III!
In other news:
Yes, I've also played Lovish! This is a charming single-screen, challenging platformer styled after NES classics, with pixel art that could have come straight from that era and plenty of chiptune music and sound effects. Gameplay consists in navigating the level, which might require collecting keys or stomping buttons, and reaching the exit door. The classic Solomon's Key immediately came to mind, but block destruction is rare here, compared to hazard avoidance. By my calculations there are a whopping 98 levels including 9 boss fights. Each level has additional objectives that increase replayability: Find a secret item, beat the level very quickly, and beat the level without killing any enemies.
Like other classic protagonists of the genre, Solomon has exactly one hitpoint within levels (or, after a certain point, two). That means you should expect to die a lot. It's very easy and quick to replay levels, though, and for the most part I felt like the learning curve was pretty good. It's understandably harder to go for the extra objectives, but you can also beat a level you don't like with no extra objectives, move on with the game and return later - whenever you like - for another attempt. Really, the biggest annoyance I'd say were attack patterns in boss fights. Some are of the "wait it out" type, and selection seems purely RNG-based, so a good boss attempt might be ruined when it decides to throw the same unbeatable attack at you five times in a row.
Core gameplay is complemented by several cool little systems. There are many references to other videogames; I bet you'll recognize some. Solomon has an item collection, Zelda-style; some items can be purchased from shops, others are found. Every time you beat a level, you enter a randomly selected little cutscene in which you encounter a random hazard or NPC. Some of these are interactive and can affect your health, coins or items. There are lots of those, with different cutscenes being available in the different areas of the game (and yes, the fact that Solomon is a jerk and a creep is addressed in multiple ways). Lovish also contains... four? hidden minigames of entirely different genres. You never know what you'll find, or when you'll find it!
I enjoyed Lovish enough to 100% it, having collected every single extra challenge crown, moon and item and ending the game with 999 coins. This took 15 hours.
Previous
Hit a real difficulty wall on MewGenics, Act 3 right-side mission objective,
spoilers
the antenna to put at the end of time that scrambled a spell whenever one is cast. I just can't get through, I've gotten close a couple times, twice killer mother but then the heralds she summoned on turn 10 murder me. I didn't realize before this challenge how important abilities are to success! It's kind of sapped my momentum, and I think I have to go back to the drawing board. May try actually doing the eugenics part of the game and make Melee, Ranged, and Spell cat rooms, we'll see.
Picked Diablo IV: Vessel of Hatred back up after finding out the new season was well underway and to prep for Lord of Hatred's release over the next month. Had to make a new character to take part, but decided to start with VoH this time around, because I was given the option to for some reason despite not fully finishing the original campaign. My first character was a Spiritborn but I went with a Mage this time around, going with a burn build.
Based on my experience going through half of the Vessel of Hatred campaign, it feels a lot different. Enemies swarm the absolute shit out of you, to the point where this is the first time I've genuinely amassed huge killstreaks from running through a dungeon, even approaching a near-1000 one in an instance. But the difficulty feels a lot lower than base Diablo IV.
In Old School RuneScape, I completed the Dorgeshuun quest line, excluding Land of the Goblins which I plan to do next. Revisiting it felt surprisingly nostalgic, especially when I hardly remembered it the first time around. All I really remember about RuneScape lore was that it became something of a poorly written clusterfuck by the early-2010s when the main devs decided that killing off Guthix, sparking a new God War with the Sixth Age, pandering to crap forum suggestions with contrived updates like the Queen Black Dragon and Kalphite King, adding action bar combat, loading their game with microtransactions, and then rebranding the main game "RuneScape 3" was their way to go. Yes, they're slowly fixing a lot of this stuff and yes, I may revisit RS3 soon for Havenhythe, but I don't see how it'll even remotely hold a candle to the world built around OSRS.
The difference in quality between the two games really shows when you look at RS3's world map and it looks incredibly blurry, like much of it had a Gaussian filter put over it, whereas the OSRS one is clean, incredibly clear, very detailed, and about 150% larger...
WoW: Midnight. I finished up the main campaign and am working my way through all the side quests, going after some achievements, doing some light raiding via LFR (Looking For Raid), etc.
I'm kind of overwhelmed by sheer amount of systems, combinable items, and currencies this game has. That's always been a problem WoW had, but I feel like it's even worse than it was when I last played WoW (very early Shadowlands). I'm also finding the player housing to be incredibly cumbersome and unfun to use. But tokens you need to upgrade gear are rewarded from doing quests/events related to it, so I have to do it I guess?
I'm having fun with the expansion overall though. The Prey system (basically a PVE bounty system) is a lot of fun and challenging at higher levels. Delves are similarly fun and challenging at higher tiers. And just in general there are a lot of really nice QoL changes WoW has made that's making the game more fun for someone like me who has no interest in sweat-tier raiding or Mythics or any of that stuff.
Still working my way through some palette cleansers before diving into my next long game (which is looking like Divinity: Original Sin).
Right now, I'm about halfway through Islets, a kid of cozy metroidvania. Gameplay reminds me a little of Ori and the Blind Forest. I think the upgrade approach is interesting -- there are specific abilities you unlock in a certain order, but you can improve things like health/damage/ammo by collecting upgrades, upon which you have a choice of 3 options to upgrade. That said, the upgrades feel a little marginal and I don't notice a huge difference. I had my first difficulty with a boss last night and kept dying mostly due to my bad timing with attacks and dodges.
I've finished LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga. I haven't played one of these in a long time, and I didn't like this one as much as I liked the original but that might be me getting older. I did think the narratives were incredibly rushed, though, and sometimes the gameplay skipped over parts I actually wanted to play through.
I beat Lost in Random the other week. I liked this one a lot. Very cool gameplay loop, though the deck building aspect could've used some work. I never found a use for some cards, so I prioritized cards that did lots of damage or increased my rolls/drew more cards and that seemed like a fine approach. It seems like the sequel abandoned everything interesting about the game and went with a Hades knockoff for some reason, so I won't bother with it.
Also beat Super Monkey Ball: Banana Mania a couple weeks ago. I liked this though I got extremely frustrated with one particular world. It took me like 3-4 hours to beat those ten levels, and like half as long to beat the entire last 20 levels that came after it.