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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 have just started playing NFS Underground. What a nostalgia! When the main menu popped up and the music started, I was back in my teenage years! I picked Mazda MX-5 as my starter (as I always did) and now I'm 20 races in (from 111). I got tomplay thale game after watching some Fast & Furious. I play PS2 version on emulator on Steam Deck.
What a great combination that is - no hassle setting up controller, uses almost no power, goes into suspend/resume without a hitch and I can take it anywhere with me!
I have also set up NFS Underground 2 but that will wait until I get stuck in 1. And seeing myself play only on hard, I will get stuck eventually.
It's great to come back where it all started.
Recently I've been playing ex-PlayStation exclusives on my PC. I also just bought a new monitor, after using a cheap office monitor for ages, and the difference in how these games feel using it and HDR mode is massive. Plus the monitor doubles up as a nice external monitor for work when rotated.
Final Fantasy 7 Remake
Much like the Hobbit films, this isn't really a remake of Final Fantasy 7. It's part one of three separate games in lieu of a Final Fantasy 7 Remake. Again, much like the Hobbit films, it's immediately clear that they've tried to pad out the game and story in order to justify splitting it into three separate games. Despite that, I'd say that it's the fan game with the highest production values I've ever seen. But it still suffers from a lot of the issues that you'd expect from a fan game.
The story has been quite drastically changed, and in many places it seems to be for the worse, but there are also parts that are better. The Avalanche side characters have stronger backstories and relationships and I felt that these were mostly introduced well. The broader story changes, though, seem really forced and unnecessary.
The pseudo-real-time combat is actually pretty good. I'm not generally a fan of this type of action combat, but the mix between action and strategy was pretty good. I found that the difficulty of the combat spiked in a few areas in the story and then dropped again immediately afterwards, which was a little strange. Perhaps they didn't properly test the combat progression through the game. As we've learnt to expect from Final Fantasy games, the final boss (if you can call it that, because it's the final boss for the first of three parts of the story) was much easier than the earlier bosses.
I think that Square Enix should really revisit this game and change some of the direction and cuts, because if they expect to sell the second and third parts of this new trilogy, then they should understand that people will play the first game first. That will be used as a basis to decide whether they want to buy the later games. They could streamline the story a little bit, remove some of the padding, and remove all of the very poorly hidden loading screens that were clearly required for the ancient PlayStation 4 but wouldn't be required for modern consoles or computers and yet still detract from the experience.
There are also far too many side-quests in this game that you have to complete if you want to unlock skills that are very useful in combat. This was the weakest of the three games that I've played so far in the ex-PlayStation exclusive list.
Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered
Most of the time, I work building corporate software or being a dad to my two kids, but occasionally I'm Spider-Man. It's become a bit of a trope to say it because the majority of the journalists that reviewed this game said the same thing, but this game really makes you feel like Spider-Man.
Wow, this game is incredible. The quality of the cinematics, the story, the gameplay, the world, the exploration, the combat, the feeling of playing Spider-Man: across the board it's nearly perfect. I'm not usually experienced in action games, but I feel like this game helped me learn, and I've come away much more experienced. It's just so satisfying to play.
This was also the first game that I revisited once I got the new monitor to try out the HDR and path tracing and it makes the world feel new again. I don't have any criticisms of this game.
Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart
I have not played any Ratchet and Clank games before, and I didn't know anything about the universe, but that didn't seem to matter. in the very beginning of the game, they give you a little bit of backstory on the characters and what's happened, but very quickly it becomes irrelevant as the setting of the game changes.
It took me a while to realise what this kind of game was and how to play it well. At first, it seemed like it would be an adventure game akin to Banjo-Kazooie or Mario. Like those games, it does have collectathon elements but it's more of a story driven shooter. in a typical fight, you would juggle through dozens of weapons. They run out of ammunition, and then you switch to other weapons. You keep juggling them based on what's appropriate for the enemy in front of you, or whether it's close combat, large numbers of enemies. As you progress through the story, you unlock more movement-based skills, and the fast-paced combat reflects that. You have an invincibility window when you dodge and you use this constantly.
The different worlds that you visit, the atmosphere around them, the storyline, and the combat all are really good. The game looks really beautiful in HDR with path tracing.
Unfortunately, the QA testing for this seems to have been cut short compared to the previous Insomniac game that I discussed, Marvel's Spider-Man Remastered, and this is reflected in a lot of bugs that I've encountered along the way:
Other than the QA issues I rate this game very highly. It's a lot of fun to play.
What's next
I am still playing through Ratchet and Clank, and I'm playing through the DLC that's included in the remastered edition of Spider-Man. However, once I'm done with those, I have these ex-PlayStation exclusives purchased and ready to play:
FFVII Remake is an interesting one for me, because I think a second playthrough both strengthened my opinion of the gameplay itself, while laying bare all of its issues at the same time.
I'd recommend trying out hard mode: items are disabled, so there's much more strategy with materia/party makeup, and it really encourages experimentation with elemental weaknesses as well as characters you might not usually use much. It almost felt like a normal mode playthrough was just the tutorial, and hard mode is the real game. Seriously so much fun when you start to really get the hang of it.
That being said, the constant slow walking sections and other unskippable sequences kind of put me at odds with the game. I want to enjoy the combat itself, but it's constantly being interrupted. When the gameplay is more focused than ever, it draws attention to the lack of focus in other aspects of the game unfortunately.
Side note: I also experienced difficulty spikes at some bosses in my first playthrough, subsequent runs trying different things showed me I was just approaching it wrong or didn't understand the fight. They're not always self-explanatory, so you do kind of have to try things and hope you brought the right materia. Part of me wishes it was a bit less opaque, but also such a major release not being afraid to let players figure things out is refreshing.
Similar experience to @turbografx16, I thought Remake was pretty mid after my first playthrough but doing a second playthrough on hard mode was surprisingly a lot more fun. The combat suddenly required a lot more thought than before (which was basically just mashing buttons on normal and not learning attack telegraphs at all), and I got into a good flow of picking out weaknesses and building stagger with some party members while prepping some huge hits with others. There were still some fights that were kind of a drag (why is the worst enemy in the game a sentient domicile) but most of the fights are vastly improved when you actually need to learn the fight.
Rebirth is a lot more flexible gameplay-wise since it's open world and there's also just a ton more content, especially mini-games. I found the storytelling to be a lot better and not nearly as confusing and jarring as Remake's (they actually explain what these damn Whispers are), and having more time and space to tell the story lets them more firmly establish the new trilogy's own identity while still paying massive homage to the original. If the combat of Remake was the high point for you, it's even better in Rebirth. I think you'd enjoy it, but it does take a while to finish.
Boy, do I have news for you! The second game is way, way bigger and more full of stuff. It goes all the way up to the end of the old' CD #1 (#2 on PC
notcounting the installation disc) and everything is vast, detailed and crammed full of minigames (so many minigames) and voice acted cutscenes. It takes way longer to complete. There are good and bad things about this, I guess; it's nice to see the game world so fully realized, but it can be a little annoying at times. You might find the gameplay more interesting with a lot more materia, additional characters and chocobo stuff.I expect the third game will be similar; there's no way Wutai will be as bare as it used to be when they've been talking it up as a foreign power standing in opposition to Midgar and Shinra.
I've never played any of the other Ratchet and Clank games either, but Rift Apart was one of my favorite games on PS5. It was pretty much bug-free on console, so it's a bit sad to see that it didn't get the same love for the PC release.
The other standout game that I absolutely loved is Returnal (which I also played on PC without any major bugs).
Valheim. A few other friends and I have been playing this since the 1.0 release and have finally made it to the Northlands over the weekend. It's been a ton of fun and the new area has a lot of cool stuff to explore. Despite some previous experience we've all died many times, and while that can be frustrating it's great that the game can still provide a challenge. My only disappointment is the bug that makes certain enemy drops really hard to get but supposedly that will be fixed in the next update.
My friend group and I have played it the last two weekends. Each time we've sat down to play it for a couple of hours and ended up getting sucked in FAR longer than that -- putting off work, laundry, and chores just to squeeze out another hour or two or six.
It's so good. We're loving it.
We're about to close out the Mountains soon.
Also, after playing vanilla for a few hours, we installed the AzuCraftyBoxes and AzuAutoStore mods for (what we consider to be) essential QoL upgrades.
Ya I'm usually a puritan when it comes to mod use on the first couple runs but the game is definitely lacking in some QoL with the crafting UI. The vanilla combat, exploration and building still feels really good though.
I think any group that can survive the swamps will likely go far. The plains definitely has some more surprises though for the unwary!
I'm playing through Stellar Blade for the first time -- about to head to space elevator, for folks who have played the game before.
I knew going in that the game had some valid critiques, but wow was I unprepared for just how... uninspiring the voice work is. The English VAs just feel like they're phoning in the entire game, and it's incredibly frustrating. The combat is awesome -- a good fight has a really good flow state to it, even if some of the enemies are stupid and cheap -- and I'm really liking the world building, but the hyper focus on "LOOK HOW SEXY THE ANDROIDS ARE" and the inability for literally anyone to actually sound excited about something is a major downer.
I know that Yoko Taro (director of Nier:Automata) said that he believes Stellar Blade is a better work overall than N:A, but I'm just not seeing it (outside of being able to dress up your character in skimpy outfits. SB does win in that category). I'm a big fan of N:A and the the Nier universe, and while there are many parallels, I do appreciate where Stellar Blade is carving new ground -- I just don't think it's as good as many folks seem to think it is.
I loved SB! I dont really care for its story or anything. I think YT was just doing the usual Japanese thing of beingoverly-kind to colleagues. But i really liked some of the outfits, unlocking them felt like a real throwback to n64 games where you collect costumes for spiderman or whoever, no money involved! And to clarify, not a creep haha, i played the yellow sweater the whole game pretty much.
I just clicked with the combat, and it really got me to appreciate souls likes. For some reason the rhythm of fromsoft games just never works with me and my timings are off (except sekiro). Playing this game felt like slipping into a pair of sweatpants straight out of the dryer! I played through to the end without getting bored of the combat and looking forward to every boss.
I've been playing the new DLC for Crusader Kings 3, By God Alone. It adds proper religious governments, including the Catholic Church, and broadly overhauls how religions, religious rites, and personal faith work in the game. If you like CK3, it's a great expansion to the game. It gives you a deeper level of personal faith that either does or does not line up with your religions orthodoxy, and finding the balance between personal belief and what your religion says is right gives a whole additional layer to play, on top of the expanded peacetime ability to puppet other rules and guide their choices.
There's definitely some balancing that needs to happen; at the moment any archbishop can wildly change the direction of the entire Roman Rite, leading to silly, wildly ahistorical situations where suddenly the majority of chalcedonians (pre-great schism christians) are polyamorous nudists who don't believe in marriage because the archbishop of Trier was a little too experimental in his doctrine. But even with that, I'm having a good time.
Got to play Ace Combat 8: Wings of Theve a few days ahead of the standard release thanks to deluxe edition and so far I'm not regretting spending the extra cash (there's other goodies I wanted too other than just early access). This is definitely the most ambitious work from Project Aces yet, featuring the longest campaign out of all the games by a good margin as well as a built-in online mode that is fairly groundbreaking for the series, as it features both co-op and pvp modes with online lobbies, vs the super limited pvp-only blind matchmaking in previous entries.
Online
I'll cover my experience of online first since I've sunk some 10+ hours into that. The lobby itself is pretty basic but functional, and being able to see other pilots at all is nice. The menu navigation is pretty terrible because a lot of things are nested in multiple menus and there's a noticeable delay going from one menu to another. Even the devs are aware of this because there's an option to exit out of all menus by holding the back button, though that's not a great compromise.
The currently available online game modes are Co-op Assault (pve), Co-op Warfare (pvpve), Team Deathmatch (pvp), and Scramble/Emergency Sortie (special missions). Assault, Warfare, TDM, and Emergency Sortie have 8 players. The first 3 has 2 teams of 4 competing against each other for score. Emergency Sortie has all 8 on the same team working together to destroy a superweapon in the time limit. Scramble is 4 players only and puts you up against 8 AI fighters with a higher difficulty setting. Each sortie is very short, lasting no longer than 6-8 minutes (not including loading in and selecting planes), and can feel even shorter when you have experienced players just decimating every enemy in sight. It would be nice if they were a bit longer and there were more enemies to kill, but that leads to my next point.
The system for leveling up planes, ranking up your pilot, and unlocking new aircraft is a grindy one, as expected of any online game developed in the east. Leveling up planes is simple enough, you do a sortie with it and get some xp, and each level raises its stats and/or unlocks more capacity for your weapons. Every 5 levels there's a cap which you need to unlock by spending credits (in-game currency) and using blueprints for that plane, which cost 1000 credits each. Ranking up your pilot is even simpler - completing a sortie gets you 100 pilot xp, win or lose, and each new rank unlocks more aircraft for purchase. Later ranks take more xp - the next rank for me takes 2000 total and there's still some 6 ranks after that. Having really short sorties makes it easier to level up that way, but it would be more fun to just have longer ones that gave more xp. Unlocking new aircraft is a matter of getting to the rank where it's available, then having enough credits to buy it.
There's also a season pass. The vast majority of unlocks there are just cosmetics like paint jobs, decals, or clothes for your pilot, with some xp, credit boosts, and universal plane blueprints sprinkled in. You can get season pass xp from sorties and daily/weekly challenges, but the rewards are more of a nice bonus than anything else so there's no real pressure to progress it.
Overall, it's nice to be able to play co-op at all but it is pretty basic. I'm hoping It's expanded on and we get more rewarding and higher difficulty sorties soon so folks aren't just racing for kills and the lowest scorers actually feel like they contributed.
Campaign
I haven't fully finished the campaign yet since I distracted myself with online but I'm 25 missions in and it's been a great experience so far. Will avoid spoilers, but we've got all the classics - crazy superweapons that drown your screen in warnings, super cocky enemy ace pilots, allies singing your praises after you decimate whoever's firing on them, enemies shitting themselves in disbelief after you almost singlehandedly promote their entire fighting force to salvage, badass boss themes, the dreaded stealth mission (ugh I really didn't enjoy this one lol), a few setpieces of tunnels or structures with openings juuuust wide enough to fly through, fun and campy banter from your wingmen, a nice 3d topographical display for the mission briefings, and faint suspicions of some high-tech bullshit going on (belkan witchcraft?).
What's pretty new are the cutscenes between just about every mission - a lot of them are from your pilot's POV so you get to witness events from your angle rather than having some universal knowledge of all the events unfolding from the shadows. The storytelling and dialogue ranges from fine to pretty good, which is high praise for this series as the narrative was always a distant second to the gameplay (it still is but that's just because the gameplay's awesome). I like all the characters for the most part - none of them are too annoying or overdone to the point of being a caricature. It helps if you go in expecting campy action b-movie quality dialogue with very unsubtle messaging. Is it the best story Project Aces has told? That's incredibly subjective and extremely vulnerable to nostalgia bias unfortunately. It's definitely the most fleshed out one by far though, so I'll give credit where it's due.
I am annoyed that the Su-37 isn't in the base game though. I KNOW they're going to release it later in a plane DLC pack and I will buy it, but come on. Take care not to milk your fans too much.
Nuh uh, wrong comparison. Ace Combat is not b-movie, it's anime. Anime all the way. Tell me that this song is not pure anime opening material.
Please report back after finishing the game, there's some very memorable things (and I don't want to spoil you).
I've finished in pilot difficulty with and I plan to do it again in vetetan and then elite with a hotas. But alrean tell that AC8 is easily near the top (I've played all of the holy trinity (the ps2 ones) + 7 + project wingman).
So I finally finished the campaign for the first time on veteran in cockpit-only view, and while there were some great moments in the last few missions, I think the last 3 missions were a net loss to the overall fun factor. My first complaint is that missions 28 and 30 are just way too long and the post-checkpoint fights for each are more annoying than anything. Mission 29 on the other hand was basically just an interactive cutscene and a bit of a letdown after so much buildup.
Spoilers here:
Getting to see all the other non-Sotoan squadrons show up to support you during 28 was really great, I just wish it didn't take half an hour to do so. Shadow 22's squadron is kind of bullshit though, they're practically immune to anything but SASMs, QAAMs, and machine guns due to PSM magically making them invisible to missiles which is just really annoying.The first part of 30 with shooting down the SLBMs could be several minutes shorter without missing any dialogue, 10 minutes of chasing and shooting down slow ass missiles is dull. The last part with destroying the sub in time is also really annoying due to how many hits you need to get in, and I failed it a few times because I was just dumping all my bombs instead of waiting for a new set of targets to spawn on it.
Honestly, the superweapons and aces in this game just don't hit as hard. Don't get me wrong, the first land battleship fight was excellent, but all the other land battleship fights just paled in comparison after that. The Ladons are some of the most annoying enemy design I've ever seen for a superweapon, did they really think it'd be fun to have to shoot down something that's tanky, always supersonic, and has constant jamming? The Celaeno fight's alright but I'm not a fan of the shockwave drone mechanic, plus it's just not intimidating though I guess it's not meant to be. The megafloat was literally just me flying in circles and shooting pillars, so while the enemy density is a fun initial shock it was actually a little too easy.
The best part of Shadow squadron is them singing their battle chant before engaging but aside from that they have way less personality than other enemy ace squadrons. I consider Shadow 22 to be the real final ace duel since Moon 11 is just a worse and easier Huginn/Muninn fight. He doesn't hold a candle to Mihaly, or Pasternak, or Pixy, or most of the enemy aces from previous games really. He doesn't even fly an experimental fighter since that was stolen from him for a worse fight.
I'd still put AC8 in the top 3 because of how much content there is and how good it is overall, but the enemy characters are a lot less memorable and meme-worthy compared to previous entries. I hope they can make a comeback with a Torres-level cartoon villain in the DLC, whenever that drops.
Now I guess I'll go for medals and grind the multiplayer some more. I was trying to get all S-ranks on this first playthrough but those final missions screwed that up and I'd rather not waste time on those at veteran. I'll just get them all at once when I finish it on Ace.
I really wanted to get AC8 but that price tag is just a bit steep at the moment and there's seems to be a lack of proper HOTAS support.
I did scratch the itch by finally getting to Project Wingman and the AC7 DLC.
Was initially a little disappointed at the early game of PW. The weapon selection lacked veriety. Missions were short, straightforward, had a little too much anti-ground and not engaging enough dog fighting. And theres ob lack of polish like the static briefings, no animations/cutscenes and amateur voice acting.
It's all understandable for a 3 man dev team and what they did deliver was a solid 6/10. Then there's a mission they refer to as The Furball. You break through a cloud and see a mess of aircraft and missle trails and its a complete slugfest. Probably the first time in a jet fighter where I got down to single digit ammo.
Game ramps up from there. Story becomes an earnest MGS fanfic. AOA limiter replaces your characters heart with a high pressure pump. Theres a French woman with a railgun. You get to do a Pearl Harbor and other war crimes.
The only issues is the aforementioned weapon verity and profound lack of 2 Seater Jets (I think it's a deliberate choice to keep players out of overpowered planes) and the devs somehow spilling a bottle of fanta on their keyboard, then it somehow got all over the last few missions.
Its just an all out parody of a military with the US (mainly just California) practically taking on the entire world and you get to play the greatest pilot that ever existed.
I think its a good entry into jet fighting games if you want to eventually get to the Ace Combat series. Just avoid the simplified controls and put up with half an hour of crashing into the ocean.
It was a big shock to jump back to Ace Combat 7 because you instantly know that it is a studio effort. Even with dated graphics and lacking some sensibilities from PW (multiple special weps, infinite flairs), you can see budget and experience in the product. Planes have more nuanced controls for each plane and a ton of mods. More complex flight systems (ice, air drag...). More dynamic missions/objectives. It just feels like you're getting a lot more "game" in your game.
In the end, all I did was want to jump into AC8 more. But I'll hold out a little bit. At least until all the DLC and people mod in proper HOTAS support.
PW is interesting in that it's a love letter to Ace Combat games, but just different enough to not be a clone. Lower amounts of polish and budget for writing aside, PW is basically an equal to a pre-AC7 Ace Combat game in terms of actual gameplay and controls, arguably superior even due to offering more game modes outside of the campaign and having an even higher skill ceiling with the ability to laugh at physics on demand with AoA limiter. I'm not a super hardcore player so I beat the campaign and the DLC on hard and decided I was satisfied with the amount of orange saturating my eyes at that point. Still probably the best Kickstarter project I've funded, well worth it.
For what it's worth, I'm playing fine on a T.Flight Hotas X (I'm trying to do my hard mode run with it; will probably get back to the dual sense for the ace run). But I'm not a sim player, just an AC fan.
I played Bound recently, somewhat of a short artsy game experience?
You run / dance through different levels and get snippets of key events from the characters past.
spoilers
Something that was unexpected from the very start was starting the game as a pregnant woman on a beach. Selecting levels to play by looking through a notebook with drawings in.
Contextually it makes sense in short order as the flashback scenes at the end of each level reveal more of their past, and the seemingly traumatic breakup of their parents.
The final option in the game being to try to contact the estranged parent or choose to walk away.
I've paused my Xenosaga Episode 3 playthrough, probably because I've played way too much Xenosaga this month. I'm instead playing Fire Emblem 7. It's a game I've never beaten, and am currently in chapter 28, which means I'm a couple of maps away from being done.
Having a ton of fun, but definitely feeling the need for the modern convenience of turning back time. There are some maps where everything is going well, then suddenly whoops, mage you can't see has Bolting and one shorted full health Nino in one hit, sorry. I'm trying very hard not to save scum, but this is one example where I went, no fuck that, I'm.not doing that whole map again because of that.
People say Lyn is a bad unit in this game, and maybe she is in Hector Hard Mode, but she's a god in my run. I can throw her into a castle, enemies will have a 0 or close to 0 percent chance of hitting her, and she'll one shot anyone in return, usually with her sick crit animation.
I've been pretty obsessed with Monsters & Memories a new MMO that just hit Early Access on October 1st. It is basically a pretty faithful recreation of Everquest back around 1999-2000-era, a game I played a whole load of, but don't necessarily have a ton of nostalgia for.
But my friends have been very hyped for M&M for well over a year now and I've participated in a couple of their private server stress tests over the summer. Initially I found myself rolling my eyes a lot, because I don't see a lot of value in Everquest as a systems game, as it was pretty simple overall and had a lot of pain points that WoW in 2004 really resolved for me.
To my surprise, I'm finding myself very addicted to it. I ended-up subscribing and making my character before all my friends and I've been playing somewhat obsessively as I have time and gotten my first character to level 9.
It's painful. Things are slow. It's difficult to level. Money is always tight. Gameplay is unforgiving. You lose EXP when you die and can delevel. You often need to find a group of people to level with. It is utterly not my type of game anymore.
Yet, I cannot stop thinking about it and playing it, it is all I want to do. But maybe this is just a general headspace change for me. I'm not trying to Min/Max anything and even if the majority of the game is just combat, it's still fun to explore and find new places around the world. And even if leveling and travel is incredibly slow, it's fine, I just take it as it comes. I do not need to hurry to level or do anything, I can just exist within this world and enjoy my time with it. If I end-up only playing for a week or a month, so be it, I'm having fun now and I'm excited for the weekend to play some more with my friends.
I don't know what's come over me.
I've been playing Sovereign Tower, which is something like a visual novel with a resource allocation mechanic--you play the eponymous sovereign bound to your tower, and have to recruit knights and send them on missions. The knights are all generally well fleshed out, distinct characters, and the game is good at giving you interesting decisions on who to allocate to what, with downstream consequences.
Another interesting flavor is that the game integrates a "rewind" mechanic that makes save-scumming part of the gameplay loop; you can get different choices after a rewind because your character remembers the outcomes of previous iterations. Enjoying it so far!
I'm finishing up CONTROL Resonant - only 1 achievement left, and the New Game+ exclusive documents.
NG+ is fun so far, but I do think at least in the early game, the fights are unnecessarily drawn out by adding more waves of Hiss. Multiple times I was executing mob after mob and waves kept spawning, and I just went "okay, when does this end???". It doesn't help that I am overleveled (because I grinded the hell out of the original playthrough) so strategy went out the window, I just mash X until enemies falter and I can execute them. I could probably try to get the 60s Dominance achievement, but I want to get the 20s duration talent first.
I've been playing the whole game with +400% damage output and I think the fights are a waste of my time. Cannot imagine what it would've been on normal settings :-o
I bought three games on sale.
I used to play a game from the mid-late 00s called Blockland where you get to build stuff with LEGO™-compatible-but-legally-distinct-modular-building-bricks in multiplayer. One of the games I got now was Brickadia which very much feels like a spiritual successor.
In a world of indie games that look like they're from the Playstation 3 era but perform like they're from the Playstation 8 era it was a very impressive experience first of all. It seems to execute the thing it does very well, but the thing it does is mostly just creative freedom to build whatever you want. I think you can set up races and deathmatches, but we never got to trying that. After screwing around in very rudimentary cars we cobbled together, we peeked at some public servers containing builds with several hundreds of thousands of bricks, which doesn't seem to baffle the engine whatsoever. I immediately had a bunch of ideas of things I wanted to build. If someone showed this to me when I was a child I would have been absolutely ecstatic.
I also gave Filcher a spin. Speaking of performance versus how the game looks, that gets the fans spinning like crazy, but looks like it could be a Doom 2 mod. Nevertheless a very engrossing and fun game. I would describe it as a Thief-like, but the levels so far have been very small compared to those in Thief and Thief 2. So if you like Thief but don't necessarily like putting two hours into completing a heist without leaving a trace this could be especially interesting to you. It has a bit of a noir fiction setting with a few anachronisms suggesting some kind of alternate timeline. My main criticism is probably of the sound effects. Thief did this very well and is still a very pretty game to listen to. Other than that I found it quite difficult to go undetected and not knocking anyone out. I had no problems with this in the first few missions of Thief 2, so maybe I just don't have the patience for it anymore.
I think the better Thief-like I've played in recent years is Neon Struct (which I'd describe as Thief, but set in someone's cyberpunk Minecraft build), but I quite like the setting of this one.
The third game was Terra Nil. I'd played some very early, free builds of this game and really liked it back then. It's a strategy game, leaning towards puzzly game mechanics more than realistic simulation, where you restore barren wastelands, turning them thriving ecosystems for plant and animal life using different solar punk-ish devices. Animals will start popping up as your terraforming produces meadows, plains, forests and rivers for them to live in. Once you have a working ecosystem you have two new problems: you need to document animals living in ideal conditions. Different animals have different needs for living spaces, food sources and so on so you have to make sure to have access to that. Then you have to dismantle and recycle your machines, and leave the area. One interesting thing is that you need to do controlled burns to get a forest.
I like the initial setup and leaving without a trace part, but producing ideal conditions for the animals was both somewhat tedious and IMO kind of antithetical to the idea that you've restored an ecosystem. If I did, it should balance itself, right? In nature the adaptation of animals to the environment or the other way around is usually a two-way street as far as I know. Either way, a fun and relaxing game overall so far.
I did find the animal environment seeding the worst part of Terra Nil. The construction and broad environment building was great, as was winding everything down, but the animal part felt like you had to manage it too closely as compared to the rest of the game.
I eventually found that you can relocate animals at a small cost. Felt like a huge fuck you to the bear I moved away across the river far from the other bears, but the game finally registered that one bear as happy :D
I discovered a game called High on Life which is a funny 3D shooter with the same voice actor from Rick and Morty (Morty’s voice). Hilarious stuff for me, as a fan of the show. Just a light hearted fun game.
I’ve also started a fresh run through Need for Speed: Unbound, without the add ons and all the free cars and crap. I wanted the vanilla experience. I’m choosing cars I didn’t play before and taking my time making cool customizations and wraps. I upped the difficulty level too so it’s actually important to decide what to spend the in game money on, as it is not as free flowing in some other racing games. Gotta choose wisely and there is significant risk if your wanted level is really high and your car is weak. You lose $ if you’re busted. It gets easier mid-game when you have enough for some good upgrades and the cars are fast enough to escape the cops a little easier. Did I mention the soundtrack is sick?
I also found High on Life to be a lot of fun. A lot of moments had me just roaring with laughter. I think some of the funniest writing comes in the form of Gene texting you things while he lays up on your couch. Whoever was behind the keyboard to write those bits of traveling ambience made it worth every penny.
To be honest, I am not a big Rick and Morty fan, and Justin roiland being a big part of the voice cast was a little Hit or Miss for me, I usually used other cast of guns anyway, which features Tim Robinson, JB Smoove, Michael Crusack (pim from smiling friends), and besty sidaro.
I really want to play high on life 2, but my 2060 RTX does not want to optimize it, so I have to wait until I upgrade, pretty sad
Yes, the text messages are hilarious, both from Gene and from the sister. I hit a wall fighting the boss that splits in 3, so I have to see what I do now. Maybe go back to explore previous levels now that I have the jetpack, to find chests and buy upgrades?
I didn't know there was a 2nd game! I'll add it to my list and wait for a sale on the PS5. I got this first one just recently for very little $$$. The 2nd one is about $53 now, so I'll wait until it goes down.
I remember that boss, it definitely was a tad difficult. 3 different attack styles that are fought individually and then all at once at the end, iirc.
Stay in the air, keep moving, and shoot! Some more upgrades probably couldn't hurt though.
Thanks for the tips!
I got really into Unbound when it released a few years ago, fell in love with the campaign in a big way. There is something so satisfying to the loop of the game, trying to earn enough money to both invest toward your car and pay for the buyin for the qualifier each week. Learning my car's handling to the point of feeling like Baby Driver during chase sequences with the cops was beyond satisfying. Car customization was also a lot of fun, I got absorbed in making each car distinct and stylized. I ended up getting pretty deep in, but fucked myself when i overextended my primary car up to S class. instead of leaving it as A+ where it was unstoppable, I put the money I should have used towards a new super car and got all the S-class parts and got it to a high enough rating in theory, but in practice the baseline was subpar enough that even a single slip up costing me any speed or acceleration at all would cost me the race. I love that the game forced me to live with this consequence, but at the same time it killed the playthrough so maybe a rollback to some degree would have been appreciated. I've been itching to start a new playthrough, so I picked up the ultimate edition on sale recently.
Agree that the soundtrack is banging, particular standouts in my memory are the Pixies cover, "Check The Lock," and a French(I think) rap song I cant recall the name of.
My first play-through when the game came out was a learning experience. I didn't push my first car that far, but spent a lot of money I regretted later. I also sold any car I didn't want, which I also regretted as you don't really get much for selling. I'm leaving the starter car at A this time as I don't love it too much. I picked one of the cars you win as the A+ car and so far so good (Mustang Foxbody - which I never played with before). I'm on week 1 after the first qualifier or so. I'm also trying to make each car distinct. I am really happy with both the starter car and this A+ one so far.
The french rap song is: Autobahn by SCH
I still have a handful of these songs on my "driving" playlist. The 2 you mentioned and these other 2 are my favourites:
Wicked by Milkblood
Siri by Oki
I have the ultimate edition too, but I went in and deleted all the add-on content because:
Any tips for losing the cops faster/easier?
I hate getting busted, so I splurged on the extra armour on the 3 active cars I use.
It's been a few years, but I remember going offroad being a high risk high reward way of ditching cops, as well as weaving through oncoming traffic. Cops tend to wreck themselves in the latter especially which really helps lose wanted levels faster. And for offroading, even the more city tuned cars can still get away with some wild shit in the mud. Combine those with a lot of tight turns or 180s on highways or down side streets and I found I was able to get away from most chases fairly easily until later on when they start throwing helicopters at you, which can be avoided using tunnels but definitely complicate going offroad if they are locked in. I think there are a few late game upgrades that help reduce the time it takes to lose them as well? Or maybe harder for them to spot you.
Antivirus Survivors 2003 Professional is a bullet heaven game heavily inspired by Vampire Survivors where you play as a cursor on a Windows XP inspired desktop fighting off hordes of viruses. It absolutely nails the Y2K computer aesthetic in every way, but there are some nitpicks I have with this game.
Firstly, movement feels clunky. While I understand that implementing mouse movement would be very difficult in a Survivors-like where you want to limit movespeed, instead we got a system where we can only move the cursor in 8 cardinal directions and need to use the left mouse button or Shift key to click. And when you have to double-click, it just feels unsatisfying.
Secondly, the levelling and progression systems, whilst good homages to the early 2000's, just drag the game's pacing down a lot, whether it's:
Downloading more ram can give a bunch of XP if it succeeds. I agree that the pacing is different from others of its type. Did you know you can hold down the interaction button to speed up the installers and limewire animations? It makes them more palatable.
I just finished Gothic II, a game I've been meaning to finish for years now. Did a fresh playthrough and it had me under its spell pretty quickly. I think it's excellent; it's a real success in terms of immersion and a genuine feeling of growing stronger, only made possible by its unrelenting difficulty. The original game has been stuck in my head ever since I first played it years ago, and I think the sequel improves in almost every measurable way. It still enchanted me all these years later, so I'd really recommend it if it interests you. Just know to expect a slow start. A real slow start.
I also finished Castlevania: Curse of Darkness with the first character, going to dive in with the unlockable character(s) next. This one is a hack-and-slash with creature raising elements and very dramatic cutscenes. Mostly entertaining, but enemy variety and encounter design in general are still lacking unfortunately. Best to play in short sessions so the repetitive level design doesn't get too grating, but when it works it's quite fun, and I could see it being a great game to have on a handheld. There's a number of different weapon types, simple combos that get you thinking strategically, a rudimentary crafting system, plus the ability to raise creatures based on the weapons you're using. It won't hold a candle to other notable PS2 action games, but there is enough here that I could see this being a lesser childhood favorite of mine if I had it at the time.
Next up is Gothic 3, and I'm also thinking of checking out the Witcher 3 remaster. Lot of threes I guess.
Gothic 2 was my first Gothic game, back when it released and it was an utter revelation for me at the time.
I've played all the Gothic series now (and a good amount of Risen, some of Elex) and always meant to go back to it, but for whatever stupid reason, I feel compelled to finish the first game initially, which I always peter out on. I need to just jump in and get back to 2, because it's easily my favorite, even though I've only played it once.
The original Gothic starts out pretty open-ended with the different factions and such, but it gets more and more linear as it goes along. The dev team had way more ambition than they could realize, and a lot of stuff had to get cut or stripped back so it could actually release. The feeling of being on the back foot starts to turn around as you get more powerful, which is really satisfying at first, but combat becomes a bit mindless as it goes on. I still love the whole game, but it definitely is at its best in the first chapter when everything still kicks your ass. Still worth a play, even if just to appreciate the returning characters and continuity in the second game I think!
Yeah, trying to get in with one of the factions is where I last lost steam with it. But also because my Steam Deck config got a little janky and I struggled to it back to where it was.
So I finished my replay of Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel. 85hrs over a month. That is the fastest (going by dates of start/end) that I've ever played a LoH title. Because I played it like a part time job!
Anyway, that means I've moved on to Trails of Cold Steel II, which is naturally the sequel to the first title. Like a full-on story continuation, not a Final Fantasy-type numbering convention. This is a "partial replay." I started this on my Vita when it came out, then did my typical thing with JRPGs where I put it down to take a break and then never went back to it. Don't remember how far I got then, but I'm about 10hrs in now.
Having played both Trails from Azure and Trails to Zero (the "Crossbell arc," which is the name of the polity the games take place in) earlier this year, it's neat to see how the storylines in each arc influence each other. Crossbell happens during CS1 and the beginning parts of CS2, which neighbors the country of Erebonia, where CS takes place (I think there are four main games in the "Erebonia arc").
And as I've probably said before when talking about these games, I really enjoy this world being continuous and deep. While the storylines are separate and don't require a player to play both arcs (I played CS1/CS2 before the Crossbell games because the latter hadn't been released in the West yet, even though they were released before the CS games) and so are the vast majority of characters, playing Azure and Zero gives one perspective on an event, while CS1/CS2 give another perspective on those same events. You kinda get to see both sides of this overall conflict between these nations. Which is driven by the various conflicts within each nation, which is what each arc is really looking at. Basically nothing happens in a vacuum and I really enjoy that fact in these LoH "Trails" games. It feels real. Because that's exactly what we see in real life. Seemingly local problems can reverberate beyond borders and all that.
Anyway, I got like 7 more games to get through in this damned series. Wish me luck.
Just absolutely blazed through Silver Pines. It's truly excellent. It's got the best bits of classic horror survival like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, with a modern UI and excellent gameplay. You really feel the growth in the character's abilities as the game goes along, and it stays remarkably grounded, with pivotal tools to unlock new areas being mundane things like a lever for getting manhole covers up or a crowbar to deal with boards. Just a very solid game through and through. It took 15-ish hours to beat on the second-hardest difficulty, and I'm very happy with it. I don't think that being longer would have been good for it. It told the story it should, and then stopped. Game design and balance were top notch. Even as I grew in power I never felt like I was invincible, and it was far too easy to get comfortable, start using ammo on smaller fry, and then be struggling to be well supplied for the boss fights. A+, absolutely loved it.
I've been playing Nine Sols. The gameplay is good. It's like a 2D sci-fi/classical Chinese version of Sekiro, which is cool.
Some of the QoL features (conversation speed/pointlessness) aren't great. I currently seem to be completely stuck, so I'm running around trying to figure out what I haven't done. I'm finding things, but the map isn't very helpful and with such a labyrinthine map, it's annoying that it only labels the bonfires (what they'd be in Dark Souls), some of the NPCs (vendors aren't displayed), and basically nothing else other than the general floorplan and elevators/transports, so it's hard to figure out what I haven't done.
I usually don’t play many games. But, when I do, I usually play with my son (older) Madden or Golf, or with niece & Nephew (young) (Mario Kart or Zelda).
We have been playing Super Mega Baseball 3, this is a great game and reminding me of older PS2/N64 era baseball games. Very customizable to make it more sim or more arcade.
We have also been playing Dynasty Warriors 3 Remastered on NS2. WOW!, great job of updating this old game. Really good and fun for fans of the original or newer players who played Hyrule Warriors. This is more simplistic, which I personally like. But the strategy and weapon tree’s remain.
Last Epoch
The latest season just came out, so I decided to try a Beastmaster Druid build. And I dropped a neat unique very early that spawns all my thorn totems at once when I leap, so for now I'm half-crows master, half-totem spammer, and it seems to work well. If (when) I hit a wall in endgame, I'll probably find a close build to copy.
Though I already have 200 hours of playtime overall, and even if I limit myself to 1 character per season and try something new each time, the campaign is such a chore...
Dragonkin - The Banished
Another ARPG, currently on sale for like 14€. Non-seasonal, not really revolutionary, and kinda bland in its setting. Its distinguishing feature is that you don't progress through a skill tree, but you loot skills and perks that you have to freely arrange on a hex grid to maximize synergies. But so far, all my character's skills are some variations of sparks: small homing sparks, medium sparks that slowly move, big sparks that go boom around you, chaining sparks... in the end you can just spam whatever skill is the most efficient and not really care about resources.
I'll see if the gameplay becomes more interesting.
I've been playing Old School RuneScape, but I don't do much active playing. I've mainly been bank standing doing some skilling and flipping items to maintain active membership through Bonds (an item that can be purchased for real world money and then sold to someone in game for in game currency that grants membership [access to paid content] for 2 weeks or more if you redeem multiple Bonds at once). With Jagex nuking bots bond prices have dropped significantly. I had played a couple of times earlier in the year with a Bond, and now it is more sustainable with my current stats and not wanting to put in a ton of effort grinding things out actively. A bond price of ~11.5-12m is way more affordable than ~14-15+m when I was playing before
I've done a few quests this go around, and that part is very enjoyable. My friend jokingly said it would take me weeks-months to do some of the younger quests at my pace, but it works for me as dad so I'll take it. I'm also starting to unlock content that I either had only done briefly years ago or never touched. Last night I finally unlocked bird house runs so I can start adding those in to train my Hunter slowly.
I've been playing All The Mods 10 To The Skies and I'm rapidly losing interest.
After finishing up the 2D-HD Dragon Quest games, I felt it was time to finally play the final fantasy games I had never touched via the Pixel Perfect remaster.
Currently working on 6, but I really liked all of them for different reasons. For being one of the weaker entries imo, 1 & 2 were both pretty good in their own way and I can see where the inspiration for skill-ups came from in FF11.
The main draw other than the art style is the QoL that are present to make the grinding and exploration less painful. You can set exp/gil/AP to up to 4x in order to quickly get up to level it you get trounced by a boss. Plus you can use auto-battle which also speeds up combat and I used this a lot if I didn't need to micro-manage around a mechanic.
Comes with some of the original art, a music player of the recomposed & original music, bestiary, and auto-saves. The nice other draw is a consistent UI and design language to make transitioning between games to be near-seemless which I also appreciated.
Playing it on Switch, I got a used physical copy off eBay for $19. So, while they're re-releases, I'd recommend them because of all the conveniences. Only downside is anything that was bonus content isn't included, so GBA versions of some may be better. I did only as much side stuff as I needed to progress the story and in more than 1 game didn't even get Bahamut lol