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

I've been on a Rhythm Game kick for most of this year since its easiest thing for me with work has been kicking my ass.

Finished up the Rhythm Doctor 1.0 release. It's a one button game where it's interesting takes on every 2nd or 7th beat. Sometimes it's by managing multiple rhythms, holding a note, incorporate delays or dealing with a fictional human/pc virus that messes with the game window. Game has a light lockdown-inspired story where you're a remote nurse that needs to stay in synch with heartbeats.

I was a bit sour on where Early Access left off with the Act 5 boss level being an unforgiving and annoying sports song that would fit right into a 2000s Sonic game. Thankfully Acts 6 and 7 picked got back in form pretty quickly with a stage musical love song, a horror/anxiety level and their own Remix 10 right at the end.

Theres also a ton of custom tracks (of varying quality) and a handful of free collab tracks with other games. Some with custom mechanics.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't call this the most approachable game. Even with just one button, it can get pretty unforgiving. Especially if there's a system you struggle with. Progres/performance gates can lock you in place for a long while. And those tough songs tend to be on the longer end or stack multiple rules sets so it just ups the frustration factor for a more casual player.

But I'd say it's highly recommended for enthusiasts. The boss levels do some amazing things with conventional rhythm systems and it's constantly evolving in unexpected ways.

Then there's Bits and Bops. My kid has stumbled on Rhythm Heaven videos and this is the closest thing I could find for her outside of getting the game running on Emudeck. While the average quality in B&B is pretty high, it's still only 16 minigames. Theres also 3 games that seem impossible for me to get a Perfect on for some reason and I have no intention of hearing President Bird sqwak again in my life.

Overall it's a fun experience, especially with kids. Lots of vibrant animations with some silliness sprinkled in. I really hope they're quick to bulk up that library of songs because just over a dozen is hardly enough to keep players coming back and the workshop levels are not very good.

Put a bit of time in Rift of the Necrodancer again. On release the 3 track music/combat/style was fun, but there was a lack of interesting patterns, especially in the lower difficulties. But I think the chart makers on the workshop really ran with the tools because there are some real gems there. It seems like some of that styling has been brought into the collaboration packs.

Of those packs: Friday Night Funking, Undertale, Hatsune Miku and Valhalla have some of my favorite tracks. The other packs like Pizza Tower, Celeste and some v-tuber music are not my taste in this context. I'd also like to see more veriety in the official music. It's all been very "video gamey" music so far and a bit more of a mix could do well in this system. (Uptown Funk is in the workshop and that is a fun chart. Also the Silksong charts are shockingly good).

I'm currently part way through Unbeatable.
I like the main system. I really like the baseball minigame. I like when the story does artsy stuff and it can sometimes feel like a proper punk film along the lines of DOA, Bigger Splash/Rude Boy or Breaking Glass.

Its also a game i dread starting it because it's severely lacking in the QoL department. Unreliable save points, long and unskippable dialogue segments, some visual indicators that just lie, tedious navigation and inconsistent... everything. Like last night, the game magically moved me to save slot 2 and I needed to do the whole setup process before I could go back to menu. And when I got to my save file, it randomly threw me 2 hours and an annoying minigame back.

Spent the time since then in arcade mode and will dip into the story when have the bandwidth to put up with the all the crap you need to wade through to actually experience it.

As for the actual gameplay: It's a two track horizontal scroll that folds in from both the left and right. It can get really tricky if you're unfamiliar with a chart and there's a ton of little tricks they can introduce like invisible notes or beats that jump across tracks. I also love the mix of music and some of the soundtrack is on my current rotation.

Lastly, I'm excited for the Dead as Disco early access in a few hours. Got way more time in the demo than I reasonably should and it's an incredible power-fantasy rhythm brawler.

I've played Call of the Sea. It's a problem solving game in which you play Nora, an early 20th century american who travels alone to a polynesian island in search for her missing husband Harry, who vanished on an expedition meant to find a cure for a disease afflicting Nora herself. There, she finds remains of the expedition that preceded her as well as ruins left behind by a cult of eldritch fish god worshipers.

The island is full of puzzle elements as well as plenty of writings and sketches that you can use to piece together what happened to the others. Nora keeps a nice handwritten journal with drawings and notes on puzzle elements that's filled in as you examine/encounter things. I quite liked it! The sets all look pretty decent too. There is some voice acting (including well-known industry names). These aspects of the game approximate it to Myst and other such games.

However, compared to that genre, this game is more confined by a linear narrative. Explorable areas are small and only accessible in order as the story progresses. Puzzles aren't all that basic (ie not all the garbage horror game "here's the safe code, right next to the safe") but they are still simpler than a fan of the more complex puzzle solving games would prefer, and the narrow scope of each area means the challenge is a little lacking. Most areas have a vaguely cartoonish/colorful/"styrofoam prop" aesthetic that doesn't quite fit the supposed Lovecraftian theme. As such, I liked the dark and stormy shipwreck area best, and wish the whole game had had that kind of mood.

Finally, the game was quite short. It's fully solvable in about 6 hours. I guess it doesn't overstay its welcome! Overall I'd say it was a decent game, a bit lacking but perhaps perfect for puzzle solving game beginners who don't want anything too challenging.

I've also been playing Escape from Ever After, a much longer game. This is a fantastic narrative RPG with an aesthetic that (I'm told) is reminiscent of Super Mario RPG (turn-based combat) and Paper Mario games (2D characters on 3D sets) alike. I also feel some A Hat In Time vibes from the goofy humor, although there's only limited platforming. Maybe another good reference for those who played it is South Park: The Stick of Truth, which combines similar elements.

You play as Flynt, a good-natured fairytale protagonist tasked with defeating a dragon. When he reaches the dragon's castle, however, he finds that it has been taken over by Ever After Inc, an evil real world corporation hell-bent on monetizing every fairy tale. Flynt has to join forces with the dragon (and, later, other not-quite-villains) and attempt to take out a much greater foe: Capitalism! In the course of the game, you go inside several storybooks and meet many familiar fictional characters, some of which will help you, others which must be fought. All the stories have a twist on the originals.

Party members all come with their own unique environment-traversal skill, as well as a distinct set of abilities that makes them useful in combat against specific parties of enemies. You can only use two characters at a time, but you can swap party members mid-combat, so a lot of the strategy has to do with picking the best fighters to deal with any status effects, shields, enemies stacked on top of each other Vincent Adultman style and various other shenanigans. Add to that synchronized moves, items and timing-based parries and you get a combat system that, while deceptively simple, turns each fight into a short puzzle unlocked by making the right choices and using resources wisely during the fight (or you can always grind a little, I guess, but you shouldn't have to!)

Gear is all equipped on a common pool of slots ("trinket points") and some has party-wide effects (mana is shared, for example). This is nice in a way, but also means gear can have a disproportionate impact on certain fights and that the difficulty curve may not always be injective, if you know what I mean. Despite the hub-and-spokes level graph, and the fact that new levels are unlocked one at a time, gear acquisition can be fairly non-linear. I'm well into the game and so far I only found a single boss annoying (before I found the right gear for fighting him), so I'd say this isn't too much of a problem.

In all, I'm having fun playing this. I like the characters, who are fairly distinctive, despite their sometimes being pushovers, and finding the various secrets and items. It's not a super demanding game as long as you don't have too much trouble timing the parries. Other than your party member's hilariously terrible pathfinding (which doesn't matter, as they teleport to you when you need their ability), the game is very polished. I'm looking forward to finding out what other storybooks I'll be visiting!

Previous

Finally getting around to playing Monster Train 2's new DLC; I put about 120 hours into the base game last year and it was great. I bought the DLC on release to support it and am glad to finally be getting around to it.

Besides two new clans (technically one returning from MT1 and one brand new), the big feature of the DLC is the new Soul Saviour game mode. That's right folks, they added a roguelike mode to this roguelike game! It's an interesting new take, very much more non-linear, and while I haven't broken the game with any of the souls yet I can feel the potential. It is also much harder than the base game, which is a nice little challenge.

I'm a longtime fan of Heroes of Might and Magic, but the latest games have been disappointing to say the least. Enter HoMM Olden Era. It's still in early access, and I've only been trying out the demo for short while, but it seems to be a promising throw back to the older, and better, games in the series.

There are some mechanics and design choices that I don't quite approve of, but I think I'll give the full game a try.

I was craving some roguelites for my Steam Deck, I ended up buying 3 (and refunded one).

Gunfire Reborn (refunded)

It was a tie between that and Roboquest, and I chose Gunfire Reborn because it looked slower, so more playable with a controller on the Steam Deck. Unfortunately, it plays terribly with a controller, and that's a deal breaker.

I guess I'll give another chance to Roboquest on the Deck.

Hell Clock

A mix between an ARPG (Diablo-like) and a roguelite (Hades-flavored). From what I've played so far, it's the game I wish Hades was. The developers nailed the ARPG gameplay loop in short 10 minutes rounds: mow down enemies, get more powerful, loot stuff, and see numbers go up until monsters become either too strong or the titular Hell Clock brings you back home.

Because that's the twist of this game: you're running out of time and need to go as far as possible before being sent back to the hub. For this reason, the maps are fairly linear (there's 0 exploration), but with several dead-end branches, which are all choices to make to trade a few seconds against money (to buy upgrades) and maybe a stat increase or a neat charm that can be gameplay-changing.

Like The Slormancer was one of my GOTY last year, I know that Hell Clock is already a strong contender for this year.

Voidigo

A fever dream amalgamation of Nuclear Throne, Enter the Gungeon, and The Binding of Isaac. On the surface it looks like yet another shooty roguelite, but there's a lot more to say about it.

This game came out to a relative general indifference, failed to meet its public, and the developers (Semiwork, who are probably well-off with their other game R.E.P.O.) decided to permanently drop the price from 20€ to 5€. Which is a shame, because you can tell it was absolutely made with love and craftsmanship, and it's definitely worth more than 5€.

So, if there's only one thing to say about this game, it's that Semiwork were absolutely committed to their design choices.

First, everything is lovingly animated, everything wobbles, moves everywhere, stumbles, digs, ... it's full of life, it's colorful, the sprites are all richly detailed, it's a feast for the eyes, and it manages to stay clear.

The weapons and powerups are wacky; the first one I got right after the tutorial was a mini-stadium full of mini-jelly people cheering for me. What did it do? No idea. One of my first weapons was a bubble launcher, and its description said something like "it stings the eyes". It seemed to be stronger than the base weapon, but I'm not sure either. You have to choose your gear from vibes, feel what works for you, and remember that for the next time. It's a design choice that works well in Gungeon and Isaac for different reasons, and I don't have yet enough playtime to say if it also works for Voidigo, but I can appreciate a top down shooter that doesn't take itself seriously.

The other strong decision is the fact that almost every user interaction is diegetic (if that's the correct term). There's the usual shop with its shopkeeper where you have to physically go get your items, stations randomly dispatched on floors to chose between upgrades or to trade your current items, the hub has dedicated spaces to invest money in meta-progression, you have to move into a precise point to save and quit or continue your game, and even the fast travel is a physical space where the whole map is drawn on the ground. That's bold, and while it sometimes feel a bit tedious or busy, it makes for a stronger identity.

The gameplay itself is good. Kill enemies to lure the floor boss, destroy enough altars across rooms to make it vulnerable, and kill it. It's Nuclear Throne on psychedelics, there's adjustable difficulty levels, and enough stuff to unlock and keep you occupied many hours. All the roguelite specs are here, it works, not much to complain about.

Edit: forgot that point: you're strongly encouraged to stomp the enemies. It makes them more vulnerable for a second, and the first character has a bonus explosion for combo-stomping. Make the gameplay a bit more hectic, and is a fun "risk vs. reward" mechanic.

Voidigo is genuinely a "hidden gem". A gem that's a bit rough, maybe a bit tacky, but it's not often that I think I didn't pay enough for a game.

I spent my weekend playing Riftbound in many TCG shops around NYC! The new release is on Friday and I'm on a work trip in Florida so I had to get all my games in early unfortunately. The new Legends are pretty interesting, and I think the Ambush mechanic might be a bit too strong but we'll see! I'm trying to build a Pyke deck so we'll see what I can open.

Spoilers ahead for Vampire Crawlers

I've also started playing Ocean's Heart as part of the May Backlog Burner event and so far I'm not really liking it. As much as this one is meant to play like a spiritual successor to 2D Zelda, the controls feel confusing, the amount of knockback on slashing certain enemies with your sword is excessive and the game is very bad at telling you where to go next.

SAROS

I devoted my whole weekend to diving in this game and getting as much done as I could. I went into the game blind, did not watch any videos about the game. First off, the gameplay is incredibly addicting… INCREDIBLY addicting. I think about it in my sleep. To me it feels like a mix of DOOM Eternal and returnal. They kept enough elements from returnal that it feels familiar but they have also added new things to make it feel fresh and unique. I have about 25 hours in the game and I have beat the game multiple times. I was able to get the true ending.

I personally enjoy the storytelling that HM employs but I’m not going to say they are masters of storytelling. Just like returnal, the storytelling is not linear and you are given bits and pieces as you progress through the game. It is another game that plays around with time and leaves you asking wtf is going on half the time.

I do think it is more difficult than returnal but it is easy to get a hold of. If you liked returnal then you will definitely like Saros. I’m not sure how well it did in the sales area but I do hope they add some more content to the game.

I forgot to mention just how beautiful this game is. Fantastic job by the devs, the game is a joy to look at. The world building and use of color is incredible.

Been playing a bunch of stuff!

Final Fantasy VII Rebirth

I was expecting this to take me all year to finish, but the game grew on me as I went and I ended up getting invested enough to play it as my main game in the evenings until I finished it. All up, it took me 101 hours to complete the main story, the world report and all of the sub-quests, but I passed on the more insane stuff like aceing all the minigames and clearing all the combat challenges.

• I was generally on board with all of the story changes and additional worldbuilding in this instalment except

• Also loved all the additional characterisation - everything from the large changes like the more deft handling of Cait Sith (just not having the giant moogle out at all times makes him feel like much less of a joke character) to the little touches like Yuffie singing to herself.

  The only disappointment here was Vincent, who doesn't get anywhere close to the ground-up rework that Yuffie did in Intergrade and this game. He ends up as just some weirdo who decides to tag along with your party, just like in the original.

• As is often pointed out, there are too many mini-games, but none of them feel straight up bad to play in the way that many did in the original (Junon parade in the PC version... yikes) and some of them had me laughing out loud at how absurd they were while Cloud plays it completely straight (the tin can one in particular is great). Other than the card game, the chocobo racing and the piano were a lot of fun.

• The music is outstanding. In addition to all the arranges of the original game's music, there's also a bunch of great new music, including the incredible Stamp the dog theme which is a real earworm (and has its own battle remix!)

• Although I still think the combat is a bit janky and some characters feel way more responsive than others (Tifa, Red and Yuffie are great while Aerith and Barret are pretty awful, particularly with how the enemies now aggro hard to them when you're in control), the cooperative move gauge is a nice idea and incentivises you to switch around, giving each fight a bit more variety and making it feel almost like a TV show where the camera is shifting between the characters each doing their thing. The 'limit level' system could probably have used some more tutorialising as it's not intuitive and works differently from the first game, but the game isn't so difficult that building it is necessary.

Looking forward to seeing part 3.

Death Stranding

This is my second attempt at giving this game the old college try. In terms of Kojima tolerance, I've previously played MGS 1-4 (can't say I love these other than 3) and Zone of the Enders 1-2 (I do love these). I'm about 6 hours in at this point.

• Playing with a controller on a TV is a massive improvement over keyboard and mouse (as per my first attempt). The control scheme is kind of monstrous because you can do so much (much like MGS) and having the controller makes it a bit easier to develop that muscle memory.

• The UI is one of the worst I've ever had the displeasure of using. It feels like every menu prioritises looking cool and futuristic over readability, with all of the text being tiny and common functions being hidden away in multiple layers of submenus. Given how important it is to load out and set up routes, I wish they'd just put in a nice clean paper doll RPG equipment screen where you can assign luggage / resources directly to where you want it or send it to a single storage.

• The volume of talking in this game is absurd even for Kojima. It's not just the story cutscenes (of which there are of course many), but even rando NPCs will queue in line on the terminal to talk at you. Having three people lecture you in a row (often on stuff that could have just been put into the codex in the menu) and then getting a constant stream of tutorial chatter while NPCs send you follow up emails is just exhausting and makes the constant calls from Chadley in FF7 feel like light maintenance.

• The actual walking simulator part is quite fun and thinking about where you're going to tread next quickly becomes second nature and even kind of relaxing. There are genuinely cool moments like when you're hiking up a hill and the sun peeks out over the crest with a big cinematic lens flare, and it's unclear whether that was by design or something that just happened. If they'd cut everything from this game except the loadouts and walking, I could see it being a lot more compelling.

  The stealth / combat parts, on the other hand, feel clunky and I'm struggling to grasp how to approach them in an enjoyable way. MULES are all right in that at worst, you can scope them out and eliminate them or easily run away, but BT encounters are particularly frustrating as they're invisible and they can fly, so half the time you aren't even sure if they have a line of sight on you and it feels completely arbitrary whether they spot you or not.

I've been told that it gets better with more unlocks, so might put in a bit more time here and there when I'm in the mood.

Return to Shironagasu Island

Mystery/horror VN about a private detective sent to investigate an island in the Aleutians where the super wealthy gather.

The fun characters (the protagonist's super awkward assistant is a standout), fast paced story, creepy horror atmosphere and great voice acting from an A-list of famous Japanese voice actors (I was genuinely surprised they could afford this cast given the rest of the production values for the game are clearly indie level) are all enjoyable, but there are a fair few rough edges too:

• Investigation is of the old school 'check everything multiple times until you can progress' design, and there's often no hint as to what the game wants you to do or even what is clickable.

• You can easily get killed by making the wrong choice, but there's no auto save. If you forget to save frequently, be prepared to slog back through all the investigation sections to get back to where you were.

• In some sections where there's a need to act quickly, there'll be a timer bar that counts down in real time. This does add some tension, but in practice it doesn't work well in a VN where the player needs to spend time reading each text box to understand what's happening.

• The main story is fine on its own, but the bonus scenario unlocked after it (which is quite substantial - maybe half the length of the main game) is a complete change in tone and goes a bit over the line in sexualising the underaged female characters. Might have been effort better spent on polishing up the main game.

Hopefully the upcoming sequel The Distant Circular World improves on those points.

PARANORMASIGHT: The Mermaid's Curse

Mystery VN about the 'curse of immortality' said to afflict those who consume the flesh of mermaids.

It's hard not to compare this to the first game because they're so similar in presentation. Reasonable people could probably disagree about which is better, although I think I prefer the first one.

• The first game has a darker tone, with the highlight being all the standoffs where you were trying to work out and avoid the other guy's curse while setting up the conditions to activate your own. This second game still has a bit of that, but most of the time you aren't in any danger and it probably wouldn't be fair to call it a horror game at all.

• If the first game is a police procedural with a lot of detective fieldwork, the second game is a historical investigation. Although you could mostly get by with skimming the files in the first game, the second game packs huge amounts of important exposition into them and there are a few sections where all you're doing is reading file after file like its Wikipedia, which completely tanks the pacing. There's also one critical scene in the game which is conveyed entirely through one such text file, which might have been for budget reasons (both games are clearly made on a shoestring budget by Square Enix standards) but kind of reduces its dramatic impact.

• This second game has a much more obnoxious set of steps needed to see the 'true ending'. Even with the hints, I got stuck on this part for a good while because the solution is so out of left field. In contrast, the true ending in the first game just required you to actually have paid attention to the plot.

Still, pretty fun as long as you're into Japanese folklore and down for reading big slabs of lore.

Yet Another Killing Game

Mystery / horror VN about three girls who are trapped in a house and told that they can only leave after someone dies.

Short but entertaining.

• Notwithstanding the setup, the focus is more on delving into the layers of mystery behind the game and the house rather than the actual strategy of the death game - and there are a lot of layers.

• Although you'll die and have to replay sections a lot, this game has a remarkably good set quality of life features which make that painless (for the player anyhow). On top of being able to skip read text, you can also skip investigation parts entirely and rewind the text at any time, including to before choices, which is a great feature that saves you the bother of saving at each choice.

Trials of Innocence

It's Ace Attorney.

• Everything from the premise to the game system is slavishly recreated here, which is fine for me since I love Ace Attorney and Capcom isn't exactly rushing to make more of those. There are a couple of tweaks here and there like being able to directly access any part of the testimony from a menu instead of going through it line by line, but overall the characters, gameplay and vibe feel very familiar.

• I'm playing in English as the original language is Chinese, but the localisation could use some work as a lot of the dialogue feels unnatural and there are a few typos here and there. Nothing that'll prevent you from understanding the case, but it does somewhat dampen the charm of the writing.

Staffer Case

Mystery VN about police detectives with superpowers who investigate superpower-related crime.

• The premise is kind of like Rain Code in that you play as a detective without superpowers assisted by colleagues with useful skills like psychometry, but the actual gameplay is closer to Ace Attorney. As the story progresses, the game poses questions which you use your evidence file to answer. Each piece of evidence is usually a document or photo filled with statements or points of interest, so you'll have to pick out the specific statement / area which is relevant, and sometimes you'll also need to contrast two statements from different sources to establish a connection or contradiction or refute / support a statement.

  It's pretty laid back in that there's no penalty for guessing wrong, but due to the information density of each clue, try to brute force a solution is inefficient and the player is encouraged to still apply some brain power.

  My only real complaint is that sometimes the question you're supposed to be answering is not set out on the deduction screen at all, and you have to sort of infer it by going back into the log and checking what the characters were discussing immediately beforehand.

• Although you can sometimes spot the twist coming a mile away in the cases themselves, the overarching story is surprisingly good, with a lot of space devoted to fleshing out the setting where people (and sometimes objects) with dangerous superpowers are heavily regulated - arguably persecuted - and how this plays out for society.

• Weirdly, although this is a Korean game, it only has Japanese voice acting. The acting itself is quite good though, and the English localisation also seems pretty decent (if a bit too keen on forced British-isms).

I've put a dozen hours into the latest hyped co-op horde shooter, Far Far West, and so far it's been a fun time with a friend. It's got the first person responsive arcade movement and shooting of Deep Rock Galactic and the open map and mission design of Helldivers 2 where you can wander and complete side objectives as you please, with the only fixed order requirements being a main objective, boss fight, and extraction fight. The art style is a simple, cartoony 3D one that's not painful to look at, and the theme of robot cowboys fighting a skeleton army's unique and humorous enough to stand out a bit.

There's a decent spread of primary and secondary weapons that all feel very different, as well as a good selection of spells that have some interesting synergies with each other. There's a good 6 maps already available and they all look distinct enough, though the maps are fixed and only the objectives are randomized each time. Build variety, aside from choosing weapons and spells, comes from Jokers, which are modifiers for your character and weapons. Each can equip their own jokers with a slot limit, with higher rarity jokers taking up more slots. Jokers can also be found or earned mid-mission, though those only last for the mission duration.

For an early access launch, there's a good amount of fun to be had for 20 bucks. Definitely better with friends as these kinds of games tend to be but good enough to stand on its own solo.

After finishing Subnautica, my gaming group has decided to dive into Factorio, a game I adore... even though I've never completed it! I tend to lose steam around early robots, not necessarily because of the robots, but because at that point original base materials start running out, issues with design becomes very apparent, and I think to myself "well, maybe I'll restart and plan more". A dangerous spiral!

This run has been going better in that respect - splitting across multiple players means that we have several satellite bases handling raw material production. We've also been extra vigilant about dealing with biters, to the point where we haven't actually been attacked by them yet! We just hit Chemical Science, so we'll see if I'm able to keep my head on straight and not get lost in the refactoring sauce.

I've also dived back into playing Hunt: Showdown, which I hadn't played since launch. What a great game! I have an understanding that a lot has changed since launch and some of the "magic" of the basic game has been lost - it maybe doesn't feel as "dangerous" as it once did, but in the current gaming climate it still stands out I think.

You've got that extraction shooter loop but here's it's very minimalist - no crafting, no weird market stuff - to make room for gameplay that has a lot of room for player expression. You can stealth, you can trap, you can go loud and big - there's almost an immersive sim quality to it, and that is certainly my bag. The sound design is incredible, and there's been very few times where I've been killed that feel "unfair".

I do wish the UI was better, or even good. It's this weird PC/Console hybrid where everything is hidden in sub-menus, it's bad enough that I could see people getting put off the game because of it. Why is weapon XP hidden in a "more actions" menu!

Found a demo for one called Aground that hooked me deep. Setting is "crashed on an island with nothing, better grab some wood" but let's just say what kind of ship crashed and how is a big part of the plot. But forget the plot, because the game loops are so tight and satisfying that I found myself glued to it for hours. After finishing the demo, I am trying to restrain myself from buying the full gabe until after I catch up on household chores and paperwork.

Very late to the party, but I finally started playing Ghost of Tsushima. I had picked it up for PS4 a few years ago, but only played about an hour and stopped - didn't really grab me at the time, there were better things to play etc. Now I got the PS5 upgrade and am almost at the end of the game, going for almost full completion (not sure if I'll want to go for the Platinum, depends on what I have left after finishing the bulk of the game).

I'm enjoying it playing on Medium. Thought about bumping the difficulty up, but realized I'm enjoying the cinematic combat very much and a higher difficulty would change that a bit. This is probably the aspect of the game I enjoy the most - I'm taking all the fights I can and always starting with a standoff if possible. Going in stealthily and quietly is okay as well, but it feels like the system is a bit wonky (as most stealth is in games).

Apart from the combat, the other aspects are also okay. I really enjoy the diegetic aspects - having wind act as a waypoint guide, the yellow birds showing side objectives and of course the foxes. But overall I think the world is a bit too big and samey. Some of the Tales (the game's word for quests) really made me feel some feels though, which honestly I wasn't expecting.

Overall a good-but-not-great game. Beautiful to look at and spent time with.

P.S. I'll probably get Ghost of Yotei in the future.

Been entertained with Pragmata since the 29th of last month. Today a friend asked me to give some feedback. I’ll just copy-paste it here:

The TLDR is that it’s an amazing, fun, and unique experience, and I highly recommend it to pretty everyone. It’s a neat little action-adventure game.

I don’t think that many people would describe it this way, but to me Pragmata is a mashup of Hollow Knight’s progression and equipment system, with Metroid Prime’s ambience and exploration, with a rather unique extra layer of combat mechanics (the “hacking”), that I’ve never really seen in any other game before.

To be honest with you, I actually felt completely indifferent about the game right up until launch, even though it was the talk of the town.

Consequently, I can’t remember when or where I was, and what I watched, that convinced me to give it a try.

Thankfully, they have a demo, which I tried, and immediately convinced me to buy the game.

I’m very thankful that I did. The marketing for this game would have never caught my attention if I hadn’t watched someone commenting about it on YouTube. I generally ignore games with this kind of art style. I’m just more drawn to cartoony stuff.

What makes the game so much fun for me is a combination of things:

First, there’s the combat. It’s just very satisfying. In that sense, it’s really like Hollow Knight for me. The better I get at the combat, and the more powerful upgrades and equipment I get, the more I just feel like a total badass.

It’s the most fun in those occasional moments where I am surrounded by enemies at all sides, and somehow manage to both shoot, hack, and dodge, all at the same time, like some sort of ninja, or like Goku using Ultra Instinct. I sometimes find myself sitting on the chair, pausing the game, and going: “Wow. Did I really just do this?”

The second one is the exploration. There’s a lot to find if you comb the levels as thoroughly as I do, and it’s also all useful, literally all of it. Alongside that exploration aspect, much of the story is told through lore drops that you can find here and there, much like scanning objects in Metroid Prime would hint at the events that took place prior to the game.

Then there’s the excellent pacing. There is an ever-present sense of isolation and danger, and you feel relief whenever you discover a new “save station” (which is not at all what this game has, but something equivalent to that).

It’s also amazing that this runs so well on the Switch 2. It looks really impressive. I can tell where they cut corners from the PS5 or PC versions, but they still did a good job.

Also, and this is very important to me: It’s a short game that I think might be 100%-able. I’m at like 12 hours? I can’t remember for sure, but somewhere past 11. I think that I’m halfway at the end, and that I’ll be able to collect all collectables and complete all… completables. You know how much I love that, to play (and complete) a game that I paid money for, a game that doesn’t overstay its welcome.

Started playing XCOM 2 WOTC again. It's nice and relaxing. I try to play it straight, but I do reload if something goes majorly wrong or I missclick into something unrecoverable. I think XCOM 2 is still pretty much peek tactical combat it is a very good game imo.

It’s been a while since I’ve commented! I’ve had a very busy few weeks, so haven’t been gaming as much as usual, but I’ve gotten some gaming time in.

I’m a few hours into Vampire Crawlers and liking it. It’s pretty simple, but enjoyable if you also like the same sort of loop you get with Vampire Survivors. Cards go brrrr, it’s a fun time.

Mostly, I’ve been playing Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred. I picked it up on release, which also gave me Vessel of Hatred, which I hadn’t played yet. I played through vessel on a paladin and the story and fights were… okay at best. I mean, it’s more Diablo, which is good, but it didn’t grip me that much. However, I played Lord of Hatred on warlock and that expansion was incredible.

The story was awesome, the location was awesome, the boss fights were cool as fuck (with the final fight being one of the best boss fights I’ve played in a game), and I’m loving the reworks to the skill trees. It’s been a 10/10 experience so far.

I’m level 67 or something with warlock and I’ve never really played the end game in D4, so I’m excited to level up more and see what it’s about. That said, I’m a little bugged that a magic class can’t use staves, so I’m considering leveling up a sorcerer as well, idk.

I know D4 has some level of group content for dungeons, though I don’t suspect it will fill the Destiny shaped hole in my heart that I still have.

Along that line, if anybody has recommendations for good group content games in the year of our lord 2026, I’m all ears. Overwatch with friends is fun, but doesn’t have progression. WoW classic is too grindy for me these days, WoW retail might as well be single player, etc. I suspect I probably won’t find anything that ever feels quite the same, though. I haven’t been keeping up with the multiplayer gaming scene for a few months, so I just didn’t know if there’s a new hotness. I know in some regards it’s just going to be finding a game I can get friends to play with me, rather than the game itself being the magic, but still, I miss the level of cooperation and puzzle solving D2 had.