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

I have finally fi ished the Outer Worlds and its DLCs. Really solid gane, if you ask me. It is very Fallout-y in a way of various skills and how you can implement them in your gameplay. For example, I didn't put nearly any points into any fighting skills, be it melee or any guns. I went the speech/technical way. Mild spoiler - I even talked down final boss of the game, which was kinda anticlimactic, but fitting to the story.

There are not that many weaponsandnthey repeat in three tiers. There are many unique and also one if a kind ones though.

I love how there are many people you can talk to and quest givers amd relatives have rich dialogues, both in length and also in options to choose from, many of which being one-time only - this means you have four to choose and once you pick, you can't ever go back to the dialogue tree again and try other ones (besides lading the game). Sometines this makes for different outcome but even when it doesn't, it still behaves this way.

The world is kinda alien-ish, developers went haywire on that. Visuals are very good, even though I played at medium on Steam Deck, it gets you properly into the alien world the game takes place in. Planets/places vary a lot, making every stop on your journey a unique one.

The story isn't exactly bad, but nothing to write home about. The good thing is you can approach it in two ways, kinda good/bad scenario. I always (twice) picked the good one (in my eyes).

This game is kinde shuned upon by many players, but I don't see why. It is solid game. And DLCs are very good, very fitting unto the game world.

I've been playing Shadow Generations this week. A friend gave me a code for Sonic x Shadow Generations on Steam that he didn't want (not the same friend who gifted me High on Life - people have been really generous this year!)

It's a competent platformer with polished 3D visuals. It's very similar to Sonic Generations, if you've played that - the same engine, I imagine - but instead of playing as Sonic the hedgehog you're playing as Shadow the edgelord, so you have Shadow's abilities, levels and story.

The platforming is designed around the Sonic franchise's classic "gotta go fast" tenet. Split-second decision making (or prior knowledge) can be used for optimizing your path through a level and routing around entire slower sections, with Shadow's performance (time) being graded at the end. Each level also contains three optional collectible keys that can be used for opening chests that can be found in the hub area (there are nearly 100 of these, sometimes behind little platforming puzzles) that contain concept art, music or background information from the franchise. Main game levels are padded with short "challenge" levels which typically require killing or collecting a certain amount of a certain thing or using a specific skill. Honestly, they're alright. The feeling of going through either kind of level and doing the platforming "correctly," chaining multiple moves and blasting through a whole bunch of enemies, is great. Levels are designed well enough; it "feels" like Sonic (I'm not a 3D Sonic fan, so I've mainly enjoyed the original 2D ones back in the day, plus Sonic Mania).

One thing I dislike about the gameplay is how often it relies on unpredictable, abrupt camera swerves and perspective changes. Sometimes Shadow is running to the side, others he's running away from the screen, then there are bits that are automated, and it may be hard to tell what's going to happen unless you've already attempted and failed a level. If you're going for the collectibles you may have to kill yourself/restart from checkpoint because the unpredictability makes you miss a split-second cue. I remember being irritated by this in Sonic Generations as well (which I played back when it was released). Also, boss levels are by far the weakest in terms of gameplay; they're riddled with cutscenes and require different unpreditable mechanics at different times (Shadow has many abilities) so the game resorts to just telling you exactly which buttons to press at all times, which makes them far too easy and pointless.

I don't want to offend any Sonic or Shadow fans but at least without the benefit of rose-colored glasses, I find the entire plot to be inane garbage I wouldn't have enjoyed even as a teenager, additionally contrived (I imagine) due to how they're trying to cram in references to other games and drop cameos for several characters I don't know who are literally pointless besides hanging out and feeding you random NPC lines. I don't care for any of it and I wish I could have skipped every cutscene (I think they're all unskippable). Just give me the levels!

Even if you are not very good at it you should be able to complete this game in less than 9 hours.

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