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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.
I used to be the guy that hated any souls-like game. Then I picked up Elden Ring out of spite and have since invested around 800 hours. I can't get enough of it. I also used to say I'm done with giving Nintendo my money, then they announced the OoT remake and I reversed my morals faster than a blink of an eye and I bought a Switch 2. (Oh yeah, it's also getting an ER port later this year btw. I'm on the verge or preordering it because I hate money.) The $10 Breath of the Wild upgrade for the switch 2 is so worth it. 4k graphics, 120fps, and other things!
Elden Ring jump started my love for gaming for a 2nd time in my life. I used to game all the time, but somewhere down the line I just fell out of it. Then I played Elden Ring and basically have played just about everything else since then... and I'm still showing no signs of slowing down. I'm actually working towards getting a Computer Science degree specifically to have credentials to make video games professionally... So in a way Elden Ring contributed to my scholarly pursuits and that's fucking awesome.
I just started another run of Elden Ring. I also have been adverse to those types of games because I don't think I'm really that good at them. It's just so good.
I avoided souls-likes until Elden Ring too. I'm absolutely garbage at them but Elden Ring is one of my favorite games of all time. I haven't played it in a while because I've been planning on replaying it when it comes out on Switch 2. I never finished OoT back in the day and never replayed it as I got older so I am looking forward to the remake of that as well!
Not saying the upgrade is not worth it, but the Switch 2 isn't rendering BOTW at 4K and definitely not at 120 FPS, it runs at 1440P upscaled to 4K and at 60 FPS.
DLSS is excellent however and I doubt anyone can tell the difference at this point.
Cairn
Finally started Cairn based on someone's comment in one of these threads like 3-4 months ago. It's delightful. I appreciate the intersection between survival and climbing puzzle. Finding the right nooks and crannies makes for some deliberate, sometimes frustrating, but cozy-focused gameplay. I did put it down to play something more cinematic when I had a few drinks the other night, guess I pulled out Expedition 33 for that itch.
Clair Obscur E33
It's fine. I'm at level 15. It's good. I am playing it now before finishing Cairn because I am pessimistically dismissive of E33 for its allegations of AI, and there is something in the finished product concerning its depth of field, fog, and environment design that makes it hard to see almost anything. And I kind of want to get it's mileage before it's too far out of the zeitgeist.
I've had to mod it down a little just to see some clarity, but feel guilty for reducing the artists' original intention.
But I find the gameplay pretty tasty nonetheless, but for how long, we will see
Went through one of the last zachtronics games I hadn't yet played: Infinifactory.
I enjoyed it, but it's probably pretty low on my list in comparison to other zachtronics games. The 3d controls are good, and the concept and execution of the puzzles is great, but everything else felt pretty lackluster. The voice acting was pretty terrible, and the plot wasn't anything interesting. It feels a little silly to say that about a puzzle game, but I thought games like TIS-100 and Shenzhen-IO did so much to develop their setting with comparatively so little.
Lastly, and this is personal taste, but Infinifactory also just seemed very easy compared to the other games; it didn't really test the boundaries of its own rules. Would have loved to see some clever approaches required near the end-game, but it was mostly just "do the same thing, but now 5 times".
On the off chance that you're not aware, they went back and made an expansion for Opus Magnum a few months ago. It's been a while since I played Opus Magnum so the expansion has me back at the "what on earth is happening?" stage, but it's been fun working through those sorts of puzzles again.
Oh awesome! I hadn't heard about that.
It's been a while, so I'll probably need to start with some of the intro puzzles to remind myself how it works, but I remember thinking Opus Magnum was super fun.
The expansion doesn't start too difficult, I was able to dive straight into it after not having played the original for years and got through it fine. It has some new toys so the early levels are relatively simple as they introduce them.
I've been struggling to find my footing lately with any kind of gaming. But now, with the arrival of our newborn, I suddenly have this nice, long block at night while I'm watching the kid so my partner can get better sleep.
I decided to finally give Satisfactory a shot. My goodness, it's hooked me. I've never gotten past midgame in other factory games like Factorio before, but I think I'm going to be going far in Satisfactory.
What feels great is that this game is forcing me to be less orderly. With games like Rimworld or Factorio, I always feel tied to highly rigid designs and it's hard for me to be creative or let things flow naturally. Satisfactory is making me get over that. I still have to keep things organized, but I'm not burdened with "EVERYTHING MUST BE PERFECT".
In my life, I've been trying to embrace my more creative, expressive, and emotional side. I've been trying to enjoy and respect imperfection. It sounds weird, but the game is helping me realize that.
Embrace the spaghet!
Satisfactory is a little more a game and a little less a job. Some production lines can get a little complex around tier 8 but most of this game is just building the factory you want to see. Resources are endless and you can't really be punished for doing anything wrong (although troubleshooting a flipping breaker can be a trip!) so it's just building to your specs. Optimization is optional. Making something quick and dirty to jumpstart the next tier can be rewarding in its own way.
I'm in a similar phase, within the gaming sphere, Satisfactory always hit the right note for me too.
I really like the way you described this! And you're right, this does feel like more of a game. Building is easier in Factorio, but you feel punished for anything less than perfection. Maybe because you can see belt capacity instantly, for a large part of the factory?
Meanwhile, in Satisfactory, it's hard for me to know if the factory is at peak efficiency. It's harder to navigate the factory. My priorities are instead building something that just feels good. I like it.
I stopped playing around the last tier or so because it started to feel a little too much like work. I did read that they added some options in the latest version to allow for more relaxed space elevator requirements, so I might come back to it and see if I can finish the game this time. I managed about 180 hours before I started to slow down though, which is pretty damn good IMO.
Bonus for anyone reading this that needs it: There was a tildes topic a while back that condenses a bunch of tips and tricks.
The space elevator is a little brutal because they're dead ends. Luckily they did introduce a slider in the latest patch. I haven't played 1.2 but it's a 10-20-30-etc percentage requirement slider if I recall. 100 or even 500 nuclear pasta is a much better proposition than a 1000.
Edit: hey I can see my post from here!
Once I learned to build platforms way up in the air and line everything up to their grid I was back to Everything Must be Perfect again. oh well. :)
At least I learned not to worry about production speeds since by the time you get a new line built that last station piece slowly trickling in will have finished.
One of the most annoying things about factorio is how the sloppy decisions you make early on completely bite you in the ass way later as you get severely limited by them. It forces you to just completely bulldoze parts of your factory and redo them from scratch. If it's bad enough, I've basically scrapped my whole game and started from scratch before, because too many changes at once completely ruin the mental model I have of how my factory works.
I guess that's part of the enjoyment for a lot of people, and I do admit that once that refactoring is done and works smoothly, it feels good... Until you run into the next bottleneck, and you get the feeling of "son of a bitch, not again".
I never quite figured out a way around that problem other than just copying other peoples designs, which saps all of the fun out of the game for me.
I finished LumineNight. It's a detective game, but I feel like it's built around its puzzles than actual deduction. Because the former are more challenging than the latter. I say "more challenging," but I still cheated my way through most of the puzzles. I didn't expect the puzzles, which is my fault for not reading the Steam store page closely enough. But I just don't care to do puzzles in my detective games. Beyond that, the story started feeling a bit unbelievable. All this takes place in a single day? And some dastardly villain has set up all these puzzles in just one day just so the MC can, for example, get a key to a room? Ehh. Also the ending got super dramatic out of nowhere. So Idk. I guess I give it a 'C.' Not a bad game. Just not the best detective game I've played. The art is really well done, though.
Picked up 007 First Light. That hurt the ol' wallet at $70. But so far it seems worth it. I'm a huge fan of the Hitman series, and I like James Bond movies, so it was a natural fit. Not super far into it yet, but I'm liking what I'm seeing and experiencing.
Itching to go back to a JRPG though. Think I'll head back to Legend of Heroes: Trails to Azure soon. Maybe even get back into FF7 Rebirth. Think last time I played it was at least a year and a half ago.
$70 seems to be the new normal. 😠I think I heard a rumor GTA VI is going to be $150? I need to fact-check that, but ugh. Anyways, glad to hear 007 is decent! For JRPG's, I always go back to Legend of Dragoon.
150 is a bit much even for the expectations of GTA.
The idea is, is that GTAs launch will be sufficiently large on a worldwide scale that Rockstar can basically set the price as high as they want which will decide the new standard. It has been $60 since the 90s, kept at $60 all throughout the MTX and Battle pass era, and now publishers are frothing at the mouth hoping to break that $60 level.
You see a couple of games try with $70 with decent success, but there's still the question of GTA and the potential new benchmark. If 80 or 90 dollars will sell enough copies, others will follow.
Casual gamers (not meant as a sneer) that just play FIFA or GTA may not care about the inner workings of the market and will buy it regardless. The worry by everyone else is that it will disrupt the cost of gaming writ large.
I briefly saw an article that was positing that GTA6 could be like $80-90! Yeesh...But the masses will pay for it.
...Myself included. Just so I can play it for a couple weeks and then never finish it. Just like the GTA3, Vice City, GTA4, GTA5... 😔
There was a survey recently asking about your favorite game of all time and I said Golden Sun. I immediately got out my Retroid Pocket and have been playing Golden Sun ever since. I guess I've replayed the first one so many times that I still remembered everything but now that I'm on the second one (The Lost Age), I'm surprised at how I remember NOTHING so far. Kind of funny since I replayed these two games so many times when they first came out... And the second one was my favorite of the three! I'm looking forward to playing the third again too because I think I've only played it once all the way through.
Recently discovered Vintage Story. Another blocky survival game that spawned out of Minecraft's windfall. Actually I think I discovered it years ago, but I never gave it much thought until recently. I have fond memories of Minecraft from back in 2010-2014, but any attempt to try it again has always left me very quickly bored. My problems with it has always been that the progression mechanics are quite simplistic. And while the block sizes allowed for much creativity in my young mind, it just feels too coarse now.
Vintage story looks the same in screenshots, but it plays very different. Take the progression from start to copper tools as an example.
In Minecraft (note my knowledge of Minecraft is very old, so this might be outdated or misremembered):
In Vintage Story:
What I like about vintage story is that the crafting and progression is focused on mechanics. There is still a 3x3 crafting table that must be used for some things. But it is clear that the overall vision is to gradually move crafting recipes from the 3x3 to immersive mechanics. And that is precisely what I have wanted from the genre way back then.
Okay lets talk about chiselling. I mentioned a knapping mechanic and clayforming. There is also a smithing mechanic, and the system all these use is called chiselling. Basically 1x1x1 blocks can be subdivided into individual pixels. Knapping uses this to require you to remove pixels to create the outline of the tools head. Clayforming has you adding pixels in layers to build up the clay form. Smithing has you moving pixels around with a hammer to beat an ingot into the desired shape. And with smithing you can create the chisel tool, which allows you to do this freely with nearly any solid block to create custom decorative pieces. And the absolute star of the mechanic is the fact that you can combine multiple materials into one chisel block! This allows for very granular and detailed builds for a blocky game without any mods.
And that's about as far as I have come. I am currently in the process of stocking up food for my first winter (online discussions make winter sound like a significant challenge if not properly prepared), finding more copper to advance my tech level, and building my first proper house with lots of chiselling. There are still way more differences that can be mentioned in the other areas of the game, but hopefully this small slice gives a taste. I also want to give a shoutout to the great modding community who has replaced many of the remaining 3x3 recipes with more immersive mechanics.
And I hope this doesn't come too much off as a critique of Minecraft. The simpler progression will probably stay more appealing for the wider audience.
There are quite some games coming out now based on minecraft mods, which is quite cool,
Vintage story is very much inspired by terra firma craft from what I can see, with the knapping and clay forming being very similar, and the slow deliberate progress, I've been really enjoying that one and it's nice to see that it's found another niche :)
Then there is Apico and Snacktorio by TNgineers, which are based on forestry, and buildcraft, Apico is a great bee breeding and nature conservation game that I really adore, while Snacktorio which just came out is more of a buildcraft thing where you're building factories to feed hungry void monsters.
I'm sure there are way more of them too, those are just the ones I can think of right now.
I really wish there would be some kind of game based on one of those huge Skyblock progression packs, it's always been something that is just really fun to tinker with, and see all those things that you have built up from basically nothing :)
Played more Destiny 2 and ran some dungeons and raids with my old clan members, good times and much shit talking were had, as well as the abuse of a certain glitch that is letting players do enough damage to basically one-shot any boss. Classic Bungie stuff, now we just need Telesto to break the game for the last time.
I didn't play these last week but they're getting major updates tomorrow so they're worth shouting out:
Frostpunk 2's Breach of Trust expansion releases tomorrow and it's a standalone scenario ala Fall of Winterhome from the first game, but instead of a failing generator this colony is centered around a dormant volcano they were using for geothermal energy that has suddenly decided to be very not dormant. Will provide updates on the political hijinks and casual crimes against humanity I get up to next week.
Warhammer 40k: Darktide releases it's next class, Skitarii, tomorrow. The playerbase has been frothing at the mouth for this to happen for over a year already so they are understandably very excited, and the pre-release content they've shown us does look great so I am looking forward to expressing the full wrath of the Omnissiah on Tertium. The hard part will be coming up with a suitably fitting but funny name for my cogboy.
I played the new class for a bit on release, it's pretty fun so far. I need to get to level cap so I can start playing around with a proper build though.
What did you end up naming your character? I'm pretty boring so all my characters are named 'streblo'. Say hi if you ever see me in game, I mostly play Auric.
XXI-PCT-Delirium (for some reason they won't let you start names with an actual number), in honor of the machine gun in Destiny 2 with the same name. I was also considering AAP07-BALTEUS and G1-Michigan but I'm not sure how many people would get an Armored Core reference.
Almost finished Mina the Hollower. It's a game I really wanted to like because of how thematically brilliant it is but I just have little desire to return to it. After Queensbury Crypt (1st dungeon), the game goes from Soulslike to a Zelda-like. But it's when you reach the final dungeon that the game's difficulty ramps the hell up, even with capped stats and nearly all trinkets unlocked.
I also picked up Melvor Idle and all its expansions. It's an idle game based heavily on RuneScape, and to my surprise was also published by Jagex. As for what I think of it? The menus are very convoluted, some skills had to be rejigged in order to not make them completely useless. For example, Firemaking gives some global XP buffs and a very viable way to farm coal without mining, whilst Agility gives a lot of passive stat buffs depending on the obstacle course you build.
Other skills have been reworked for the worse. Prayer functions completely differently to how it does in RS. Rather than gain Prayer XP from burying bones, you instead earn Prayer Points from burials and earn XP by spending these prayer points on their respective combat buffs, but the amount of XP gained is based on damage dealt and is so minuscule that it genuinely makes Prayer more of a slog to train than it is in OSRS.
Melvor just overall feels like the most confusing idle game I've played. And I'm gonna predict it takes somewhere between Cookie Clicker and NGU Idle amounts of time to fully complete.
I'm sharing your feelings on Mina the Hollower's final area. The boss in particular is a significant skill check, and one I ceased enjoying. I spent some time gathering collectables, but it stopped being fun before it made me able to beat the boss, so I stopped playing.
That's good to know between you and Bullmaestro. I've had Mina the Hollower on my wishlist, but I've been taking a wait-and-see approach to actually getting it because I remember some obnoxious difficulty spikes on Shovel Knight, particularly near the final area somewhere between here and the crushing block sequence that followed shortly. It was one of those things where I just ended up pulling up a YouTube video of those last two levels and the boss fight to see what was coming up and then decided right there that that was good enough and I was done with the game.
I love a good 2D Zelda-like, and a like a challenge, but I don't enjoy pain.
There are extensive options to tweak the challenge that I never looked at, so it's possible to customize it to suit your own desired playstyle. I just have a thing for experiencing a game the way the devs intended it to be played, and it wasn't so good that I wanted to customize it to keep going.
Just finished up 007 First Light and had a good look at the whole thing.
More favorite details: the occasional one-liners after a fistfight, and how Bond apologizes when you bump into people or excusing himself when you move through a crowd. One quick line but that kind of detail really helps sell the immersion and the world without making the character too talkative nor spoiling puzzle solutions outright.
Spoilers within
Started off really strong with the cold open, playable training montage and the first 2 missions up to Slovakia, but it kind of sputters and just abruptly ends. Also I feel the final gadget slot is weirdly unlocked very late in the game.
Meet the antagonist of the game, he stabs Moneypenny, Q comes and stabilizes her wounds while giving you an 11th hour superpower with the prototype watch. You catch up and do the multi-phase final boss fight:
No last dialog nor chat with Moneypenny and Q who you have been talking to all game, nor any post-game dialog with any of the MI6 staff including side characters like the accountant and the propaganda guy, no news clips or staff chatter about what happened to Webb the company. At least a post-game roam around MI6 would've been nice.
Did not like the levels after Vietnam getting more linear, straightforward and more platformer when it started off strong as Hitman Lite. Also the Webb building mission where the game turns into a whole lot of platforming and puzzle solving with no enemies around felt like the Library in Halo, just went on forever when you've thought it would already move the plot forward with a cutscene.
All in all, still like what's there as a whole package even if it feels frontloaded. Given IOI are kings of post-launch content I'm curious what they do with the Tac-Sim.
Thanks for that note about Bond apologizing--that's the small detail that turned me off to GTA5 immediately. I'd accidentally bump into someone, but instead of apologizing, my character would be antagonistic and people would react similarly. "I'm walkin' here!" (or whatever they said; it's been many years.) That completely ruined my immersion in the game. I would never behave like that and I would never want to pretend to be someone who did. I'm still put off by this game's price without getting to try it first, but I've only heard good things about it. I hope I get to try it.
I’m nine hours into The Adventures of Elliot: The Millennium Tales and I’m loving it!
I've been playing Octopath Traveller II for some weeks now, slowly making progress, and 60 hours in I'm still really enamoured with the game, I love the graphics, which reminds me of how it felt playing rpgs in the 90s, The music is awesome, and I really enjoy most of the characters. The battle system is also fun with a mix between the bravely series, and a bit of persona combat in there. I'll probably be going on with this for quite a while still :)
Retrowave 2
Let's face it: gameplay is totally overrated. If you want to turn your brain off and enjoy consequence-free cyberpunk highway driving, play no-traffic mode of this game and put on the cinematic camera--yes, the same one as from GTAIII that floats behind your rear fender before awkwardly following you at strange angles, only this time there's no distractions and the radio is non-stop retrowave. Total vibes, or Miami Vice: The Game: The Movie: The Game.
Forty Times a Sunset
This free demo you can play is notable for two things:
It's written in Mandarin Chinese, so no English support, sorry. But if you are as big a fan of The Little Prince as the Chinese are (and they are huuuuuuuuge fans), you can follow the story and figure out the puzzles yourself (hint: try on every costume).
Breakneck
I've never tried hard drugs. I've never done cocaine or heroin. But I know what it's like to sample extremely addictive substances and still remain 100% safe without any risk of addiction. That's because I've played Breakneck, the mobile game-cum-pc game that threatens to become a crippling addiction but keeps your wallet safe by having zero micro-transactions.
I wrote about this game before during the Backlog Bingo event, and now that I've had more of a chance to play it, it's rather diabolical how engineered it is to keep you addicted. Failure is met by true consequences; unlike other racing games that allow you to start over again quickly, Breakneck rubs your face in your shame, stretching out the maximum medical amount of time required to get you craving another dopamine hit. True progress can not be made without spending currency on powerups. Daily bonuses keep you coming back for more.
I recommend this game if you want to experience how predatory companies engineer their games to steal your money, but without any risk to you and your wallet (beyond the initial cost, that is). Just think: here, you can experience the same thing some poor whale did ten years ago, but without spending hundreds of dollars.
Cryptmaster
It's as though a single video game was created by reverse-engineering all of my nerd preferences. This game has:
Cryptmaster is not a perfect game. But it is absolutely the perfect game for me. 11/10, no notes, Game of the Year, every year, this is it, my unabashed IGN-endorsed Mixtape review.