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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.
So Football Manager 26 had a free weekend this past weekend, and I've been wondering whether to finally get it or just stick to FM24 like I have for the past two years. So figured I might as well try it out. And.... it kinda sucked, honestly. Pretty disappointing as a veteran of the series.
I love the series. it's given me so much joy over the years. It's a comfort game/series to me. And if you've never played a Football Manager game before, just know that it's like 95% menus and lists and spreadsheets and stats. My friends (who never played) used to joke with me that I was playing 'Spreadsheet Simulator' because that's what it looked like whenever I'd play FM. And that's the beauty of it. Think of it like a TTRPG, where you have the character sheets and maps and stories, yet the world still feels alive and the stories real.
But in FM26, they made the UI so clunky that it actively made things more difficult. The rest of the game is still nearly the same, but everything is just ever so slightly more annoying to click through. There's less information per page, which means you have to click around more, which is made more difficult by the UI being clunkier, which ends up being this self-repeating problem. It's like the game was designed with mobile in mind (which is nothing new as they've always skirted with the idea of being better for mobile, but seems like this time they took it a bit too far).
It's not like 'literally unplayable' or anything extreme like that, it's just harder to get immersed when you're constantly annoyed by things taking longer than they used to to find or load or click through. Everything is just a tiny bit slower, and every screen shows just a tiny bit less information. Doesn't sound like a lot, but when you multiply that by the thousands of times that you're clicking around looking at stats and teams and players, well it gets pretty annoying fast.
I really hope they fix it for future iterations of the game, but given their emphasis on graphics and flashy UI over speed and usability, it doesn't seem like that will be the case sadly. I'd take a text-only version of the game over this any day.
That's disappointing to hear, I figured the year off would let them polish more things. I know they touted the match engine updates, was that very noticeable?
I didn't manage to get many games under my belt in my limited time with the game, so I don't know for sure. My gut tells me it's probably a little bit better, but mostly the same. I say this because pretty much all of the tactical options (like cut inside, press more, low block, etc.) are the same as previous iterations of the game. The big thing they did for FM26's tactics is that they broke up attacking formation and defending formation, which is a nice addition. But yeah I got too frustrated with the UI to play more than a couple hours.
I too hoped that the extra time in the oven would lead to more polish, hence why I've been on the fence for so long, waiting for them to iron out a lot of the bugs and issues. Having read some of the updates, I'm sure it's much better than what it was at launch, but unfortunately my issue with it (UI feeling slow and not showing enough info) feels more fundamental than some bugs or tweaks. There are still plenty of people that play it and enjoy it, though. It just wasn't for me.
In FFXIV, I've thrown myself into the "Occult Crescent," which is part of the game's "Field Operation" mode. It feels like old-school MMOs where you shout "LFG" into region chat to get an invite to a party of randoms, then you go into the open world zone and fight minibosses and bosses.
So much of MMO groupfinding these days is through party matchmaking systems. Click a button and you get placed in a queue, to be matched with others who also clicked said button. In FFXIV, it's called Duty Finder. There's also Party Finder, which is more like a bulletin board of parties open for recruitment, but still. Click to join; don't even gotta message ahead of time. The creator can even place filters to stop the wrong classes from joining up.
Which means you're not having to actually be social to party-up. I mean, I remember waiting outside of dungeons or trying to randomly recruit in towns in UO to see if passersby wanted to party-up. And that could suck to wait around for awhile if no one came by or was interested. But...there's something nice about having to work together socially in that manner that I appreciate. I wouldn't want to have to go old-school all the time -- one-click matchmaking exists for a reason, like for older, less-popular content -- but it's nice that some parts of the game do encourage the old ways.
Same goes with instancing. Technically, the Occult Crescent is an instanced zone, but it allows up to 72 players. Which is enough to make the zone feel a bit more "lived in" than most other non-city locales in the game, since you actually see people running around doing things and fighting bosses and mobs.
Mechanically, each boss/miniboss has its own mechanics and patterns. So far, it's a lot of things I haven't seen outside of OC. And those mechanics come quick. And if you're not quick, you will die a bunch. Like me! But I am starting to understand the mechanics and getting quicker about anticipating them. Still dying a lot, but am dying less! lol...
Technically, this is all a grind for mats/currency so I can get a cool weapon. It's a slow grind as the drop rate is RNG. But it's something to do and it's fun.
In Deadlock, similar experience. Still dying a lot, but dying less! And also getting more kills than before! Usually. Been playing Haze more than Vindicta. Haze is definitely more of an aggressive, frontline character, which is a far cry from the backline sniper that is Vindicta. But I think Haze is more helpful for learning when to engage/avoid/retreat.
Bought Chants of Senaar on Friday on a whim because it was on sale. Played through it over the weekend.
On the whole, I'd say it's worth the $12 sale price. There's pretty much zero replayability, but that's to be expected of a deductive puzzler like this.
The linguistic puzzles are pretty well thought out and the progression of clues you receive is mostly well-organized, and leads to a organic-feeling process of discovery. The "languages" themselves are generally pretty logical and regular in their rules, enough so that you can make inductive leaps with some confidence, but not to such an extent that it trivializes the puzzles. For example, you can infer certain features that distinguish a place name glyph from a glyph denoting a type of person, or one denoting an object from one that serves a grammatical function within a construction (such as pluralization etc).
I do have a few minor gripes, however. One is that the PC's walk speed is just the tiniest bit slow for the amount of ground you're expected to cover. That's not unusual for this sort of high-concept, artsy-fartsy game, but I feel there's just a bit too much backtracking in the expected progression path for it to not be at least a small friction point. There's an impressive sense of scale to the thing– you're essentially climbing the Tower of Babel, after all–and I can understand slowing things down in spots with interesting vistas for the player to drink in, but then don't make me cross the same forced vista at a snail's pace four times in the main progression path. Just don't. I shouldn't ever think to myself, "huh. That's interesting, now I'd really like to play the game. Please just let me play the game."
Another minor gripe is the manner in which you lock in translations. The game uses an Obra Din-style journal with illustrated items that you can associate with specific glyphs. Once you've correctly associated all the glyphs for a page with their respective illustrations, all glyphs for that page are confirmed and are then auto-translated in dialogues. That would be a fine way to go about it, except for a few problems: for one, you have to have encountered every glyph on a page in the world before that page becomes available for you to even see, let alone notate. In more than one case, I had finished with one linguistic group's region and moved on in the main path long before I ever found the specific gate to trigger the last translation page for their language. That means that the last word for those specific languages are never used anywhere else, and only exist to gate translation completion for other glyphs. To make matters worse, expressions in the game world aren't translated into the player's native syntax and grammar until all the glyphs within them are marked as completed, even if you know what they mean. So it could happen that a key expression that could elucidate the next step in progression is syntactical gobbledegook because you haven't encountered a completely unrelated glyph that's only ever used once, and thus can't complete the translation page. It would be like not being able to make sense of the word "want" because you've never encountered the word "fire" before. The logic of it is goofy, but could be overlooked as being in the nature of a video game were it not for the fact that certain side puzzles are very difficult to solve without the game acknowledging mastery of a "language." Again, not a game-breaking hurdle, but a friction point nonetheless.
The other minor gripe is that some of the illustrations of concepts represented by glyphs are only vaguely related to the concepts the glyphs represent in actual speech/expressions, and are not strictly consistent. One example that springs to mind is the image of a person looking in a hand mirror. Twice in the game world you see this same exact image used to denote "searching," while the translation journal uses it to mean "beauty." To be fair, the image is used once in the game world to denote "beauty" as well, and quite prominently too, but stricter consistency would've been nice. Again, not game-breaking, but a little annoying.
The last criticism I have is really a matter of individual preference, or maybe it's down to how I specifically played through the game. There are five "languages" in the game that require translation. The first four require a lot of exploration and experimentation to figure out, but the last one lacked challenge almost completely. Without giving too much away, the process for translating just the final script requires some understanding of the other scripts. I suspect they were trying to incentivize mastery of earlier scripts/languages, but if you've completed every translation prior to reaching the final zone like I did, the last language becomes trivially easy to decode. I get what they were going for, but as you're strongly incentivized to complete translations before reaching that zone, it all kind of falls flat (for that one zone, at least).
Still, it's a fine game with some interesting visuals and a unique approach to puzzles. I essentially 100%ed it in just under 12 hours, so I feel the $12 I spent on it was justified. I don't know whether I'd spring for the $20 MSRP, though.
I think I agree with everything you wrote.
This is the big one though; it's a common criticism. I really wish they'd done it differently.
Agree with all of that too. I really liked the game, but I reached the last part without having unlocked all of the 3rd layer I think it was. I vaguely remember that the mirror one was a page I hadn't translated. There are those model theater things that you need to feed the monkeys to get to work, and I had missed all of that, yet still got through to the end game. I went back and filled it out though. My other sort of disappointment is that there weren't that many places that the translations / languages were used. There are a couple of good set-pieces per layer, but I felt like they could have done much more. The first area was more involved, while the language aspect played second fiddle in some of the later parts.
Oh well, it's a great game, and I wish there were more like it. I semi-hesitantly recommend Heaven's Vault as it is in a similar vein. It is the game the Chants of Sennaar people say inspired them to put a language puzzle into their game. It's almost the total opposite of CoS though - while CoS has you engaging with multiple languages in order to progress, but the languages are quite limited, HV has a bigger single language, but you are able to almost completely ignore it if you only want to progress the story.
I'm maybe 10-15 hours into Cairn. Still struggling with the climbing mechanic, at times I feel it can be just as frustrating as the afternoon I spent with Baby Steps, but even worse because AFAIK the game isn't supposed to be an absurdly difficult meme of a game so the failure feels more personal. I eventually turned off all the survival mechanics because managing hunger/thirst/etc. on top of the frustrating climbing was just too much. I'm determined to finish at least one run to the top, but I'm not sure it'll give as much replay value as I was originally hoping for.
Make sure to use your pitons liberally. I did find it a bit tough too, regularly having ti restart because id burned too many resources on a section.
Alongside the liberal piton usage that countchocula suggested, make sure you are using chalk. Chalk is temporary super grip, limited number of limb placements, but you can get away with a lot more than you might think when you are chalked up. Some tougher spots on the higher parts of the mountain practically demand it, and once I started using it more I struggled less. There is a larger chalk bag you can find in the world, which gives you more uses before refill, but I missed it on my first run so definitely not necessary. Also, I understand turning the survival mechanics off, but some cooking combos can give very good and helpful buffs to your non survival stats, like Grip Strength and overall Stamina. But generally, grip is your best friend, so use chalk, keep your fingers bandaged, and rest often on pitons during longer climbs to keep your stamina in top form.
I’ve been playing the new Tomodachi Life (Nintendo Switch game) that came out last week, to the point that most days I’ve had to force myself to stop to go to bed. I thought that the sharing limitations would hurt my interest in this one (compared to the previous one), but for now at least my interest is still sky high. I’ve been especially enjoying having people I know irl as characters in-game, and then being able to tell them about silly/stupid/cute stuff their character gets up to. Nice excuse to be even more chatty than I already am, and silly to witness their characters get up to things even without it being something to chat about. I’m hoping I don’t overdose by playing too much too quickly like I do sometimes with games that I get into, would like to keep playing this in some capacity for a long while if I can (obviously not to the extent I am currently). Certainly not a game for everyone, but seemingly very much a game for me right now
World of Warcraft shut down TurtleWoW but that was my virtual home for a long time, starting I think about November 2024. I ended up with over 100 days of /played time which is perhaps too much for ~18 months of playing.. for the first time ever I cleared all the raids and even got about halfway in the custom post-Naxxramas really difficult one. But now that's all over and done with.
Started playing on another private server with most of the guild from TWoW. It's not the same. In fact it seems like kind of a scam. The vanilla world is basically left alone and it felt so empty without all the years of content that TWoW had been adding to it. Essentially making it feel like an unfinished game. It's a TBC server so the vanilla content doesn't matter, but it makes it all the more impressive what they pulled off. In the end it was a couple of custom raids plus added content to old raids, it was about half a dozen custom dungeons, some the size of Blackrock Depths, and it was a dozen custom zones, also nothing to sneeze at. There was a bit of an amateur feel to some of it but it was charming and still good to play through.
Good times and bad times were had. And it was always going to eventually be shut down but definitely going to miss it.
I played on there since 2023. I agree, it is sad to see it go. But honestly it kinda was always inevitable.
I think people need to stop trying to recreate classic wow verbatim by copying blizzard code.
It is never going to be a recipe for success, with how aggressive blizzard is with defending their IP and then doing nothing at all with it.
Instead I would hope to see that The talented developers from Turtle WoW use their skill base to just create a brand new game. It's hard, but I think they could accomplish it.
My feelings as well. I've been on Turtle for something like 7ish years now, starting just before the Pandemic; it wasn't my first Vanilla Private Server, but it was certainly my favorite. Funny enough, I don't think I played as much as you, as my hardcore WoW days are over, but I'd drop in a couple times a year for several weeks to a month or two and play. I always had fun discovering new stuff they added (even original stuff I hadn't seen in my 22 years playing the game) and absolutely agree with you; I'm not sure I can go back to a normal Vanilla server when I get the itch again.
I'll probably give it a go anyway, but I may try out a Wrath server. I do like Wrath, though I prefer Vanilla so much more. But we'll see what happens, I may actually be all done with WoW for the first time in two decades.
Been slow on games but:
Hades II: I'm using God Mode so I don't have to sweat too much. Without spoilers as it's a bit newer, I took and got to the end of the third overworld stage and it was fun. Even the underworld wasn't as fun for some reason, but I was laughing and grinning the whole time. I just got to the final bossfight on the underworld route, as well, with 48% resistance. I can fairly consistently get past Scylla, and Hecate's fight is nothing to me now, so I think I'm doing pretty good.
Starfield: Terran Armada: Been pretty low energy, and even with my hard-won level 10 Starborn powers the combat in this gets tricky and intense so I'm going slow. I'm level 101, so I'm fighting enemies up to 135, basically using powers the whole time in combat (mostly Phase Time) It's tricky, but also feels necessary since the enemies are a bit smarter than I expected. It feels more like Superhot than Fallout, which I'm sort of enjoying. I also have a Hornets Nest Coachman, which is pretty great for lower-level enemies, and a Magsniper, which I'm using to work over the bigger enemies. Once I finish this DLC and the bounty hunter collection, I'll probably go back and explore the new game mechanics with my "younger" character, who is barely starting the MSQ.
Balatro: I'm trying to dust off my Balatro skills slowly, but keep getting stuck, and can't really understand progression past where I am. But I'm mostly just playing a game here and there for something quiet and chill.
Check out balatro university on YouTube. He does a gold stake run video nearly every day and talks through all his decision making. Dude has done the completionist++ challenge without losing a match. Definitely gave me a better idea of how to value the different jokers and strategies.
I specifically try to avoid creators like Balatro University because I don't want to watch a prescriptive approach to a game. Various game subreddits (STS, Balatro) tend to have weird arguments about how "This is the way to play!"
That said, Balatro 101 has been pretty great on a deeper understanding of the basics, and confirming what I know so I can take some load off the early game and build better going forward.
Interesting. I've never found his content to be narrow in its approach. In fact he shows how any joker and strategy can be viable. To each their own though.
My point was more that his content is more open than I expected.
Ahh ok sorry I misread. I thought balatro 101 was another creator you were referencing but then I remembered he did a series with that title.
Where are you at in Balatro? Any particular thing you're struggling with?
Scaling, mostly. I can't break green stake on red deck because I can't get any builds online by the time the stakes jump too high. I tend to do builds on higher stakes with the Abandoned Deck, using a lot of "Ride the Bus." Usually if I get something online it's money based (Bull + Bootstraps tends to be a favorite combo, or Golden Egg + Buccaneer).
It's definitely a skill issue, on my Android and PC installs I have a fully unlocked profile and still struggle.
Recently played and finished Stacking nice little puzzle game from Double Fine in which you're the smallest of a Russian Doll set. By "stacking" into larger dolls you can use their abilities to solve puzzles in each of the stages.
Solutions are largely silly, but thankfully not to the point of obscure 80s/90s point and click adventure games.
This was one of the first games I bought for my pc when I was younger, havent replayed it but it definitely stuck with me. Glad to hear it holds up! I vaugely remember there being themes of labor exploitation that I didn't fully grapple with back then as a preteen, but now Im curious how I would interpret the game in an older set of eyes. Did you find anything of substance thematically during your time, or is this a case of foggy nostalgia glasses?
It's one I've had sat in my steam backlog for longer than I should've really. To the point I can't actually remember by which means I purchased it anymore.
The plot that drives the need to visit each stage, is rescuing family members who are being forced to work for "The Baron" a Victorian esc pro child labour villain. So well remembered on the narrative themeing.
I started Sekiro, I like it so far, it's very polished and the gameplay is fun and refreshingly different from other Fromsoft games.
I'm still completely hooked by Slay the Spire 2. I'm not sure if the game is easier or if I'm getting better, but I'm on a 4 games winning streak right now, bringing everyone up to A10. My last run yesterday I kinda count it as a victory, it was my first A10 run with Silent and I died on the second act 3 boss.
I absolutely loved the first game and I love the second one even more. Everything is better, it's amazing!
I gave up on Sifu after 4 hours. I thought the aging mechanic was really cool but I was really awful at blocking specifically and found myself getting insanely frustrated by the places where I died. Interesting game, not for me.
I started up Divinity: Original Sin for the first time and am barely exploring outside the first city and I've already sunk about 10 hours into the game. I'm enjoying learning the mechanics and especially using the environments for creative approaches to combat.
This week I completed a co-op play-through of Subnautica, which is a game I had a vague interest in but never really committed to until my friend found a co-op mod. I played a lot of the "open world survival craftathon" type games pre-pandemic, but got super burned out on them and haven't really touched one since.
I have to say, Subnautica kind of re-ignited the flame for me, even though the survival and crafting stuff was probably the worst parts of the game for me! It's more of a thing nowadays, but a fixed, designed world for one of these games is a bit of a novelty to me, and I loved exploring all the weird biomes and things they put in the world (avoiding spoilers here).
Part of what burned me out on these types of games before was a lack of endings - I've found I prefer my sandboxes to have just a little bit of structure insofar as having a "goal", and I felt the plotting here gave a good momentum to things.
Unfortunately, the actual crafting sucks! The UI for finding and pinning recipes is awful (why is there no search option! why do I have to find the item in this unsearchable list to un-pin it!), finding resources sucks because resources aren't veined like the are in, say, a Minecraft, meaning finding multiples is a big semi-random search, and you have to make every sub-part of a recipe individually, which means waiting out a long-ass animation for each little bit!
The survival stuff kind of sucks too, specifically Food and Water. Oxygen works great as a mechanic, since it functions as a sort of wall to pass in order to be able to go deeper but also encourages learning the terrain to optimize routes, but food and water are just boring meters. Having three survival bars sucks, because survival bars suck as a mechanic unless you layer other fun things on top. I remember reading about some survival game (maybe Valheim?) where instead of food purely being a "thing you need to live", different foods give you different buffs, and this seemed like The Way Things Should Be. Reasons to explore different food options! A reason to be excited to find food! And here, on an alien planet, would be perfect for that kind of mechanic. Alas.
I had other issues, but despite how much these things bugged me I still had a good time off the strength of the world exploration. Maybe I just need to play exploration games? Maybe I just miss Abzu? But now I'm eyeing up some of the Subnautica likes that have come out since and (hopefully) improved on the formula (especially Abiotic Factor)!
(I'm also trying to talk my friends into playing Factorio, a game which is very different from Subnautica despite technically being the same genre, but absolutely hits the spot for me. I also have never fully beaten it!)
A couple of things:
I did pick up on that, but I guess the issue I ran into was that I would find one or two of something, spend 5 minutes, find another one or two, ect.ect.
My friend did point out that I am very Factorio brained in that I wanted to be able to, say, load up a locker with materials and have them convert over time instead of manually doing each one, haha.
I didn't know that! I do wonder if that would make things too simple...
I'm a huge Outer Wilds fan, love it and love the DLC. Absolutely similar vibes for exploration.
I've been back to dabbling in Abiotic Factor continuing my run, which I left off at the Reactors. I spent maybe another ten hours or so in it in the last two weeks, steadily working my way through the area and now I'm finally towards the end of it and exploring the next Portal World, which I made some progress in. I've grown a little bored of the game again, however and the only thing that's really keeping me going is that my oldest Son enjoys watching me play, so I usually only play when he asks me to.
Otherwise, what I've been absolutely hooked on is Pillars of Eternity; they finally added the turn based mode to it, which I've been waiting literal years for. I had previously played about 42-hours between a couple of characters and enjoyed it well enough, but never really felt super compelled by it. But, in the past two weeks, I've somehow put nearly 14-hours in (which is quite a lot for me at this point in my life) with a new character and I'm just constantly eager to go back to it and thinking about the game a lot. I only just now unlocked Defiance Bay, which I'm steadily making my way towards.
The turn based combat really changes the game up for me. I've played plenty of real time games in the past, such as Neverwinter Nights, KOTOR, Baldur's Gate, etc, but they never really hit for me in the same way. I tends to feel like I'm just playing an RTS game, because I just highlight all my characters and send them to attack and don't think about it much beyond that. Turn based mode really gets my juices flowing and I end-up thinking about each combat encounter and how I'll approach them; where I'll position people and what skills I might use as their turns come-up. Something I really like about how they've done the combat in it this time around is that people get turns based on their weapons and initiative level, but not in that D&D-style where a higher Initiative just means you get to act first in combat. Initiative means you will get to act more in combat.
For example, I often start combats off with my Warrior firing off his heavy crossbow. This usually does heavy damage to whatever he hits, but my Warrior is often then stuck there until his turn comes around again and he can switch to his sword and board. Contrast this with someone like my Rogue, who is using light weapons, always gets the first action, but also gets to usually act two more times before my Warrior gets another action. I love this, because against heavily armored enemies (who usually will smack my Rogue down in a few hits if I let them), my Rogue can swing around and just stab the crap out of them repeatedly before they even get a chance. And often, hitting enemies with Daze's and the like, you can pretty much lock them down into never being able to act before you kill them.
Couple this with the fact that now positioning is a lot easier and matters more to me. I'm able to lock down a doorway and force enemies to fight my Warrior while everyone hits them from the backline and any enemies that want to attack anyone else have to go all the way around the room, if that's even an option. This is, of course, still a thing in real time, but it feels so much more impactful now.
Of course, the flipside of this is that I also get a little fatigued from the combat, personally. Especially exploring a dungeon or wilderness area, it can become kind of grueling, because you're stepping into fights very frequently and they can take five minutes per, depending on what the enemies are and how many of them there are. So I find myself taking more frequent breaks just to break off the combat. I do believe I can switch over to Real Time if I want, just to get through a lot of this, but I haven't actually tried that yet.
Anyway, still loving it and can't wait to get back to it.
Yeah I'm playing Pathfinder Kingmaker right now, which is a game with both Turn Based and RTWP, and I generally strongly prefer the turn based mode, but it has to be said that the game's pacing is designed for RTWP where fights are much faster. So there are just a ton of trash fights. Thankfully there it's easy to switch so I just turn TB on for bosses and big fights and such. I think I remember hearing that when they added TB to Pillars 2 last year they made it a per-playthrough thing which if true kind of sounds like it would be a slog.
Yeah, I'm not sure how they did it in PoE2; I do own it, but always wanted to get through the first game first before I went there.
That said, I've read that they learned some things from that implementation and fixed stuff for the first PoE, which seems to be the case. You can definitely switch between Real Time or Turn Based on the fly (at least, going into the menu to switch it on and off), plus for turn based you can speed up or slow down the pace of the combat to make things a little snappier. I may experiment with the real time as my party levels up and maybe I start fighting more trash.
I've been playing Double Fine's Keeper. I learned from Dan Floyd's Best Game Animation of 2025 video that we're supposed to be boycotting Microsoft, and I would definitely have considered joining in, but unfortunately by then I had already purchased this (during the spring sale).
Typically I play every Double Fine game (sooner or later). If you're familiar with them, you might know that they are fairly polished and stylistically consistent but they often choose deliberately simple or stylized art, with elements such as faux paper craft, cartoonish characters, etc. Without looking into it, I personally see Keeper as a massive, massive flex by Lee Petty and their entire art department. The game is gorgeous, with extremely intricate 3D sets rendered in clashing, psychadelic colors, excellent animation and camera work. Terrifying corruption monsters with all of the tentacles and spider legs give way to chunks of rock floating on cotton candy clouds or cities inhabited by clockwork creatures.
You go through all of this as a sentient lighthouse with legs (because of course you do) and her very smart bird companion. What are we trying to accomplish? I'm not fully sure yet. I can tell that there's world building behind all of this, but Keeper doesn't waste your time with something as crass as words. There is no inventory or dialogue, and everything that happens is fully immersive and conveyed through animation. The lighthouse seems to be at odds with the eldritch darkness, which makes sense. I'm sure I will find out what happens soon enough, since I suspect this is not a super long game. I'm thinking maybe 6 hours?
There are platforming elements as the lighthouse's capabilities change over time, and puzzle solving elements thanks to our bird companion's help, but I would hesitate to call this a puzzle-platformer. The world of Keeper feels very rich, but our traversal of it is also a carefully curated experience. You can shine your light on the many cute/odd insects, plants and mechanisms, all of which are animated for you, but exploration is limited, not only because the lighthouse's movement isn't super fluid by default, but also because you never really control the camera (the right analog stick is instead reserved for aiming your light). Fixed camera angles or automated cameras are very good at telling you where you should go - there isn't even a hint of incompetence in any aspect of this game's development - but if you try to defy them and go down a different path - even paths that don't seem all that obstructed - you invariably run into an invisible wall. Keep your hands inside the ride at all times!
This doesn't bother me. I enjoy a good quasi-walking simulator. If it doesn't bother you, either, then I recommend Keeper, for however much money you think it's worth (waiting for a sale is always an option!) If you play it, let me know what your favorite alien plant or creature was!
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Minos is the only new thing to hit my pile. Orcs must die esque where you build a maze for enemies and try to kill them all.
I despise that TDs with set tracks have become the norm (i have too many thoughts on this subject) and so i'm happy to see something focusing on mazing. Not sure if it'll continue to hold up but i'm happy with it so far.
Oh mean, I've been tearing through games this month something fierce.
I beat Great Ace Attorney Chronicles: Resolve (or TGAA2) as part of my full playthrough of every AA game (including the Layton crossover and Ghost Trick). What a turn around! When starting TGAA, I was initially frustrated and annoyed that I had to leave Phoenix, Maya and Edgeworth again. But the two TGAA games slowly won me over, and now TGAA2 is my favourite game in the franchise.
Immediately after finishing this game, I entered my post-AA depression because of a lack of new AA content. So I started looking for alternatives and bought Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane. Holy anime, Batman! But I really liked it, even if it never hits the same heights as AA. I like being able to use D&D spell logic in a court of law. A big difference between this game and AA is that you get a lot of useless evidence. That can be good in that it really makes you think, but it can also be frustrating when you're staring at pages of gathered rubbish and have no idea what to do
I also beat Tales of Aragorn: An Elven Marriage. Eh. It's not as good as Loren, the prequel.
Currently playing a Pokemon Fire Red romhack, Pokemon Odyssey. I'm not the biggest fan of double battles, but I like the exploration and the story, even if it's a bit edgy sometimes.
If you're interested in more AA-style games, I highly recommend of the Devil. It takes place in a cyberpunk world (actual cyberpunk, not just window dressing) and Morgan is quite... unique as a protagonist within the genre. It's very stylish and rife with casino imagery within the rebuttal UI as Morgan loves to gamble. Episode 0 is the free demo and it's an episodic game with 2 of 5 full scale cases released so far.
Other AA-style games I've played
Murders on the Yangtze River: 1900s China with the overarching story being about Shen trying to find the full truth behind his brother's death. There's a "it's clearly translated" quality to it, but I do remember liking it. The game is pretty conscious of letting the player succeed by offering a 2-hint system (the hint and then giving the answer with no judgement), and each chapter has a gimmick pop up, though anything too far from the main mechanics is freely skippable.
Aviary Attorney: 1840s France with animal people. Aside from that, it's other draw is that investigations are time-limited which makes it possible to not have the decisive evidence needed for trial. Win or lose, the story continues on and there's 3 separate finales depending on how the second to last case ended. I haven't played this since 2018 apparently so I don't quite remember it, but I do have it marked in my library as "would recommend".
Nina Aquila: Legal Eagle: Made in RPGMaker. It's lower budget as expected because of that, but it tries to make up for it in being very anime and earnest about it, and each chapter aside from the tutorial case has its own unique minigame. I've posted about it before, but my main conclusion is to play at a deep discount/if you already own it from a bundle. Having played Case 4 since then, I don't quite recommend that particular one because the main duo spend the case angry at each other because plot drama, the beat-em-up minigame in this one being iffy, and the general vibe that there really isn't a finish line for the overarching story in sight.
It's interesting for me to see someone else' opinion of Tyrion Cuthbert. Personally I thought the original cases before the story rewrite/rework were better (posted my own thoughts before), but it is hard to find another AA-game of its quality regardless.
Thanks for the recs, I'll try the demo for of the Devil! Reading your review, it certainly does seem that the previous version was more cohesive. Since the updated version is the only one I played, it didn't really bother me very much. There was a lot of anime bullahit, but I'm mostly numb to a lot.of the tropes. The sex jokes were dumb, but hey, everyone's an adult, so at least it cleared that (incredibly low) bar!
I genuinely enjoyed and tried to follow the lore of the world. I liked both Tyrion and Celeste and enjoyed their little love story. I certainly had issues, like how telegraphed the antagonist is. And, I dunno, I like playing a commoner making fantasy nobles eat shit at court. I'm a big fan of this style of game, and it's a bit sad theres not that many high quality clones of it!
I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 for my son and he loves it. Any ideas how to play it with him when there’s no obvious two player mode? I love the idea of great games but I lack the motivation to get into them when there’re just a little bit of a learning curve.
Could be kinda fun to take turns at poker or five finger fillet 😎
You could buy yourself a copy of red dead online and you guys could play together that way.
Been playing Brotato on the Steamdeck, a match made in heaven. Low battery use, the graphics work well on the small screen, can play with a single stick and no buttons for much of the game.
I love the variety of playstyles and replayability you get from all the classes. For example last night's challenge was to win at difficulty 5 with the Beast Master. Normally Brotato is all about the weapons but with this class you are not allowed to have any weapons. Instead you have to rely entirely on pets and other sources of damage and survivability.
Have just started playing Double Dragon Gaiden: Rise Of The Dragons, and am having a blast. It embodies the phrase "old, yet new" with old-school punishing gameplay complemented by modern QoL features that include adjustable difficulty and a progression system. Its more or less targeted at people like me who love beat'em ups but suck at them; pros can probably beat this in an afternoon, but I'm taking my time with it and enjoying it. It seems to be the confluence of several different inspirations that likely include Scott Pilgrim, Marvel vs Capcom, and recent roguelikes.
Something that is totally new (to me) is the introduction of rooms (with walls! and doors!) that you can explore for powerups; probably boring to diehards, but a new flavor for me. But the real meat and potatoes is the Special K.O. system that incentivizes aggressive play with more cash rewards that lead to more tokens/more unlockables/more continues. That, and several tag partner and other fighting mechanics make this a well-constructed new entry to the genre.
To boot, there are lots of unlockables including playable characters; some of them seem to be (nerfed) mini-bosses, meaning that there should be some choices that skew the balance to being super easy (maybe?). As well, the game takes steps to show that many of the enemies are female, making for a equal opportunity slug fest that pays to mind to the Poison controversies of old.
Just started, so these are just my initial thoughts. Feel like having a run in which I turn down the difficulty all the way, just for kicks.
Kulebra and the Souls of Limbo
The epilogue chapter for this game released this week! Previously it had the indie game sin of basically ending on Act 1 and things feeling unresolved when the credits rolled. Now it ties up some of the loose ends in a grander resolution, though it falters by having the major action take place before the lower-stakes action which abruptly fizzles out with the side character gaining her character development to face the future, followed by the realization that that's all after being sent back to the world with no other objectives. There were a few more new sidequests too, so it added about 2-ish hours to the 9-ish hour base game.
I guess for context, the game is about a silent protagonist skeletal snake going throughout limbo and helping souls out which leads to them moving on. The closest gameplay comparison I can come up with is a mix of Paper Mario (without the RPG combat, but more stealth/running away segments and pop quizes for the bosses) in so far as overworld controls and chapter structure, and Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for there being a Day/Dusk/Night cycle "timeloop" (the souls resetting their memories after a day unless something with a big impact makes them remember) and a notebook to keep track of people/objectives/sidequests. I got this for $4 from the Humble store, so I can't really complain, but I also hadn't really thought about it at all after finishing it until the steam news section displayed the update. It's not bad, I was sold from the Next Fest demo it had, but I guess I consider it more like something to fill a free afternoon after playing through it.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Splintered Fate
A Hades-like, but turtles. I didn't have a good impression from the Next Fest demo it had, but the game went <$5 in a recent sale so I picked it up. It is exactly as grind-heavy as I expected: tons of meta-currency needed for every little thing like basic stats with multiple levels for them to purchase and bullet sponge bosses which require said upgrades. I lucked out my first run by getting a legendary duo that restores HP on basic attacks with Mikey which basically enabled face-tanking. After that point though, it just feels like a slough to get through. Multi-hits and stage hazards just instantly shred through the turtles' hp (I sincerely hope this isn't a case of high FPS increasing damage ticks because there isn't a frame rate option nor do I know how to 3rd party that for Bazzite). Since hard mode Karai has tons of area poison, my current runs are ending there and I get about 500 Dragon Coins and 350 Dreamer Coins a run to spend before jumping back into the fray. I suppose the smart thing to do is not take the boss challenges or the Pact of Punishment-equivalent portals that appear during the run, but they're also required for higher tiers on the skill tree. It is TMNT though, so for now, I'm still putting this as my mindless podcast game in the hopes that there'll be something worthwhile after the grind.
Mikey feels the best to play, though I'm also partial to Don for his i-frames tool and range despite most online comments considering him the worst on the tiers.