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

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 week we played Slay the Spire 2 for our podcast on roguelike games.

Overall: great sequel to one of the greatest games of all time. I think what Mega Crit has done with the new animations and art style are great, the new characters of the Regent and Necrobinder are fun and interesting, and the 4 player co-op is a lot of fun.

All my criticisms about balance and archetypes and such I think will be solved during the long 1-2 year early access period, but it’s still a fun game to play now even if almost half the content of the game is missing. I’d say if you were a fan of the first you’ll be a fan of the second no question.

Given that StS1 is our top rated game of the entire podcast so far, the sequel has big shoes to fill. For me it’s not quite at the same level as the first one, but all of that will be rounded out and polished over time. That I don’t have any doubt on.

I’m very excited to see how they do the alternate biomes for each act and how the final boss will shape out. There seems like a lot of potential to change things up substantially and that the game we are playing today could be very different on release (in a good way). Exciting times ahead!

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...

I picked up Outer Wilds again last night, having gotten pretty far the last time I played but didn't finish it before my I-feel-like-gaming mood wore off. The friend who recommended it to me started another playthrough, and that got me wanting to continue it.

Meta-ish: I really like this sort of gradual-discovery game, but I seem to have a very narrow window of difficulty between "so easy I don't feel like I've actually accomplished anything and may as well have just read the fan wiki" and "so difficult I am missing too much detail to enjoy the game at all", and that window seems to shift around over time, so it's hard to find games that really click with my brain. It's frustrating, but I can at least embrace it when it does happen, and get the nice fuzzy brain feelings from getting so immersed in something for a bit.

I'm still working my way through the calamity mod for terraria. We are at the last 5 or so bosses (according to the boss list mod we are using at least) and should be done sometime this week if we have the time.

I really have to say it is an amazing mod for terraria. It is so well made in the style of it that it feels like just 'more' terraria, even though the bosses, weapons, and damage numbers are getting ridiculous, it still is very much in line with the design and flow of vanilla terraria. Bringing bosses down has been a very good feeling where we have to consider our gear, the boss abilities, and then learning to play the boss. There also doesn't seem to be too many ways to cheese past a boss besides 'get gud', they seem to force the need to dodge through mechanics.

One criticism I can level, and it is present in base terraria, but more present in calamity's 'bigger and better' combat, is that combat happens off screen frequently. The optimal way to play bosses for me has been looking primarily at the minimap. The boss is often off screen or zooming all over the place to the point I try to locate my mouse cursor and get it vaguely pointed in the direction of the boss while I have to watch for when and where they might crash through the screen. I would rather prefer to see all I need to see on my screen more often. Honestly this might just be a product of using the very fun, but very screen spamming end game calamity weapons and mysteriously sized bosses, but it's something interesting to consider in designs of future games like this, hoping kyora doesn't get too crazy off screen for example.

But really all in all if you are a fan of terraria and have not played calamity, I highly recommend a play through with it.

Once we are done I believe the next game we are going in is back to Vintage story, I have forgotten everything, so am looking forward relearning and experiencing it again.

Hades 2 Still getting the itch, even with STS2 out. Something about the 20-30 minute run time, tight loop, and narrative structure of these games just makes me want to keep going. I'm now consistently getting to Scylla and beating her half the time, so that's nice.

Raccoin. Exactly what it is on the tin: "Raccoin: The Coin Pusher Roguelike." It's kinda cute, a lot of fun, and also just happens to be based on my absolute favorite machine in any arcade so it checks all my boxes.

I am continuing my playthrough of Planescape: Torment and, after saying I felt unchallenged by the beginning Hive part, I am totally humbled by the Lower Ward part. Like I don't remember anything about it. I must have replayed the first part multiple times to have it stuck in my head. I don't remember Fall-from-Grace or Ignus much, but did know which stats to prioritize. Still all very amazing as a one-of-a-kind work. This will never be properly turned into a movie or book (as much as reviews say they'd rather "read it in book form"), and will also not likely be remade. It's just a unicorn of its times, something that you really had to experience during its heyday.

Have been enjoying Dying Light after picking it up from the Spring Sale. I have the most hours sunk into Dead Island on my Steam account, so it would only make sense that I would enjoy the game that original devs Techland would go on to make. I could see why their vision for the Dead Island sequel was turned down as it shifts away from gory combat to parkour. At the same time, all the DNA from the original Dead Island is in this game, everything from the looting to the city scape. It's great to see an evolution of game play, but I admit I miss the original gameplay with the analog melee swings. I suppose there is Dead Island 2 to look forward to, and its price has been dropping steadily after its migration from the Epic store.

Three Fourths Home is a video game you're not supposed to enjoy as you're playing it. It's a heady, conceptual offering that you muse over while smoking a cigarette as you look at a sunset. It's well written from a conversational standpoint; this is a case where your choices don't matter to the story, but they are wholeheartedly embraced by the in-game characters, giving emotional consequence to everything you say. At the same time, the game can't help but insist upon itself, remarking at its existence with indulgent stories that take the homey premise too far. Still, we can't help but marvel at this wonder--that is, those of us who like this kind of thing. Anyone else is going to complain about having to hold down the right directional button to advance the story.

Two big ones for me recently, finished Dredge and Spider-Man 2.

Spider-Man 2, I think the overall story in the first one was stronger, but still enjoyed this to the point that I clear all the content it had to offer and would spend time swinging / gliding around New York.

Beyond Citadel

This is an FPS I got from Digiphile's boomer shooter bundle. It is also pretty uncomfortable and can't really be discussed without bringing up the sheer amount of gore mixed with anime girl horniness, though there are censor options for the gore and image gallery at least. It's also a single indie dev project and a sequel, so they're living out their best life at least.

Gameplay-wise, the game features 3 buttons for reloading ammo: insert magazine, remove magazine, and cock the gun. It's less complicated than it sounds.

• For magazine-based weapons, unload the magazine first to preserve and reuse it before reloading. Just reloading will toss away the mag and waste it, though that's the benefit of having spare mags during combat. Not having any spare mags means being forced to unload and reload properly. Generally doesn't need to be cocked besides the anti-material rifle needing 2 taps to chamber a new bullet.

• For weapons like the pump-action shotgun and the lever-action rifle, the reload button can be mashed to fill them to full, but the guns need to be cocked between each shot. There's also the slamfire technique where the cock button is held down while continuously firing.

The weapons have their niches of course, but I played on hard so most of my experience was tactical corner peeking which made the lever-action rifle and shotguns my MVPS. Of the three tactical mods, I preferred the riot shield the most because of the blocking factor and how it just uses stamina whereas the slow-mo and grappling hook require an O2 canister per use. For the stats system, I prioritized 1) HP/Stamina regen, 2) Max HP/Stam/Food meters for survivability, followed by 3) Inventory Space as needed to sell excess canisters for economy and 4) Movement speed which is always good in an FPS. The rest are just QoL stuff (extra lives cap/extra armor life, reduced chance of gun jams, reduced recoil). There is a weapon durability system which causes the gun jams and mostly just forces switching around weapons or buying a replacement gun since repair points are just rare drops.

As far as performance and bugs goes, I was running this at 50-ish FPS (Bazzite Linux) and the only major bug I've had was a 99% durability anti-material rifle being perma-jammed and needing to buy a new one. After finishing the game, I decided to follow the steps to enable the cheats menu, but that started to make the game crash a lot (starting from the moment I tried to teleport back to the prologue area) until I set the resolution scaling to 50% for some reason.

I suppose the background lore is worth mentioning. After 99.999% of humans got smited by angels, the demons took pity on the remaining humans and decided to give them hope by turning themselves into cyborgs to masquerade as mechanical angels while the actual angels are labeled as demons.

Staffer Case: A Supernatural Mystery Adventure

This is a mystery VN I picked up from a fanatical bundle. I don't particularly recommend it, but its demo includes the first two cases out of five so you can judge for yourself. It's a setting with magic in the 1960s and people with unique powers are called Staffers while magical items are called Staff and have a unique ability and specific trigger for it.

Mostly the issues I have with it are:

• Translation/writing quality. There's just something off about the way everyone speaks and I just can't register anyone as an actual character because of it. It's hard to explain because I haven't run into something like this before, but the best description I can come up with is everyone having a dullness to them.

• Way too much evidence. The evidence is a lot of documents and having to point out which specific line contains the contradiction and having to combine it with another specific line on another document. This is not helped by the game going between way too obvious or way too obtuse about what you need to present and always having 2 photos of each crime scene, one for traces left behind and one for memories. There's a hint button, but all it does is highlight which document(s) need to be presented and not which statement which gets infuriating when a document contains contradicting lines.

• Asking for evidence every five seconds. Tying into the above, everyone has the memory and intelligence of a goldfish and needs that evidence spoonfed to them every few seconds to explain things so they can continue breathing instead of halting the investigation to a standstill. It's a mystery genre thing and the smart characters have to be "smart", but the average IQ of everyone is rapidly dropping.

• The suspect is usually obvious. Each case has 3 witnesses/suspects and a profile is given with their powers included at the start. Same for cases involving Staff.

The one good thing I will point to is the cases having multiple endings, though that boils down to Note deciding whether he's satisfied with the case's resolution or if there's more to uncover. The side-ends are pretty short and it gives you the choice of going back to the branching path or the title screen afterwards.

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!

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,

Edit: ha, and of course the first run after I post this I manage it! I'd like to thank playing conservatively, hunters being OP, the mini-me passive on two cats, and having that egg that occasionally spawns fetuses give me two Brain Drains, especially since

I did setup basic eugenics, I've got one room each for Melee, Ranged, and Int. Looking forward to all new powerful cats to continue the rampage 😎

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.

Marathon - Still enjoying it. I think they've done a very good job on the balance and it keeps even lower level stuff for me enjoyable. I do wish fewer missions were "in one run" as helps you feel like you're still making progress even if you get camped out at an extract if you can say "well at least part X of a mission is done", but I get that's a tricky balance to strike.

Retroid Pocket 3 Plus Game Native - I got a RP3+ awhile ago and boy is it a FINNICKY device. After having it stuck in a boot loop years ago I shelved it. Finally got it back out, found some documentation on how to fix that (still have plenty of other oddities but it's useable), and did all this because of Game native. The point of game native is to allow you to run Steam games locally inside a container on your Android device, so I can now play games like Gravity Circuits which are low demand without any internet connection. I've still got a few bugs here or there to iron out, but this should help me plow through some of my lower demand backlog as it's much much much easier to carry than the steam deck.

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.

Still playing Death Stranding 2, my intense need to build every stretch of highway or monorail as I connect more parts of the map is really ruining the pacing of the story for myself, haha. Those special moments during story orders where the music kicks in are also notably less impactful when you're in a vehicle, so I've decided to avoid using vehicles for story orders altogether to maximize the vibes. Writing's still mediocre, but the ideas and execution are top-notch.

Also hopped back on Warhammer 40,000: Darktide to try out the new Expeditions game mode, and learn the Arbites class while I'm at it. The new game mode itself is different, it plays like a weird version of Deep Rock Galactic where you're meant to get in, get as much stuff as you're comfortable with, and get out while fending off a horde, and you're actively trying to avoid enemies due to limited supplies and a time limit. It's not bad, but I don't really want to play it more than the regular game mode. Arbites on the other hand has been a joy to play with. The durability of the class is incredible, the unique weapons feel great, all of the abilities feel strong, and the dog is actually really helpful. Plus, the voice I picked for mine is such an asshole and it makes for hilarious bits of dialogue mid-mission.

I got a 32:9 Ultrawide and the two I've been enjoying so far are Beam NG Drive and Arma Reforger. I really just got Arma because the helicopter flight looked cool. So I am basically just using it as a flight sim in the sandbox mode. I have played a few multiplayer games but it takes a while to get up to the point you can get a heli in those games. I've enjoyed Beam for a long time but with the new screen it is so much better.

I've also rejoined my playthrough on Divinity Original Sin II. Despite having about 250 hours in multiple playthroughs throughout the years, Arx is the furthest I've gotten. I've decided I'm going to finish this before picking up Baldur's Gate.

I still haven't finished Elden Ring and was so disappointed that you need a mod to get ultrawide working, and you have to be offline in order to not trip the anti-cheat with it.

I'd really like to find an immersive first person RPG with native ultrawide support. I started playing Borderlands 2 again when I saw it supported ultrawide natively, but I like the more Skyrim-ish vibes rather than future/dystopia sort of thing.

I upgraded to a PS5 Pro and a big (well for my desk, 32" is big) 4k 120 screen. Things are looking good I must say.

I started with Monster Hunter Wilds on the Pro. Have basically finished that. As much as you can. I have a comfy set I can beat everything with, so now there's nothing to do but wait for Master Rank to come along and invalidate my 800 hours of "work".

Then I moved on to Khazan. I bounced off this when it first came out, but trying again now it's very much clicked. Hopefully I don't hit an impassible wall, I'm not very good at games (though, Monster Hunter and all Souls are my favourite games, I have around 1,500 hours in Elden Ring alone, not counting Demon's, DS1, DS2, and DS3).

I love the art style in Khazan, and the story has me hooked too. There are two parallel stories so far as I can tell, maybe they will converge, maybe they won't. I want to find out :)

Does a gamified, clearly Pokemon-inspired Japanese learning game count!? I've been playing Wagotabi on my Steam Deck at night before bed. I picked it up on pure whim in mid-February. It's apparently also available on mobile. "Learn enough Japanese to go to Japan"* has been my more achievable pipe dream than "get into hobby video game dev" even though the extent of my efforts has been a single 5-week summer class I took back in 2023 and a bit of kanji memorization through Wanikani / Remembering the Kanji.

I'm maybe 4-5 hours in - hard to tell because I apparently left my Steam Deck on and it padded out my playtime hours. It's definitely pleasant enough as a gamified learning side tool, as in I'm drawing on what little I remember from my one Japanese class, but now I'm getting to a point where I'm struggling to keep up with the kanji. They write out the furigana in dialogue, but the quizzes/fill in the blank prompts will just give you the kanji with no furigana hint on what the heck these squiggles mean via the reading. Which then prompted me to re-download Anki so I can try to beat the kanji into my brain instead of picking up the Deck at night and thinking... what the hell do these mean again?

*I'm aware that you don't need to speak a lick of Japanese to be a tourist in Japan; practically everyone I know has visited by now. I just think it'd be nice!

Been playing Marathon. It's my first extraction game, but I've been having a good time