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

I finally decided to check out CrossCode in anticipation of the upcoming (eventual) release of Alabaster Dawn and I’ve really been enjoying it! It doesn’t do anything terribly unique, but everything it does do, it does quite well. Great mash up of RPG mechanics, real-time combat with surprising depth that allows for more passive and hands off play but also allows for plenty of aggression and reflex-oriented approaches à la Souslike combat if desired.

Cute and smart writing with very pretty, if relatively simple and clean, visuals. Platforming and puzzle elements very reminiscent of Legend of Zelda with a surprising depth, and clever use of its top down camera to throw platforming challenges at the player. My only complaint is that sometimes hunting down a platforming path to solve a jumping puzzle is a little tedious, but that’s a drop in the bucket of what has otherwise been a really great experience.

I've been replaying Crash Team Racing Nitro Edition on switch.

CTR was one of my favorite PS1 games as a kid. Despite that, the game is still a challenge at higher difficulty levels, particularly on some of the bonus tracks.

I like the existence of the Pit Stop shop in game. Having a big range of unlockables gives me a reason to keep farming coins, and there are no money exclusive unlocks.

The downside to this is needing to be connected to network servers. I dont pay for Nintendo online, so that means no online races and I need an internet connection if I want to accumulate shop coins. But at least I can still play the game when offline.

One thing I always think about when playing these remastered games is that I really like the work thats been done on enhancing the visuals and aesthetic, but I could have done with less visual polish in exchange for just getting rid of loading times. We have the technology to eliminate loading screens, maybe the original game didnt but youre remaking the game now.

Right now I'm driving in American Truxk Simulator for the Halloween event - transporting snacks and whatnots.

American and European Truck Simulators are great games if you want to just turn off your brain. Ypu can just cruise around and enjoy the view.

I play it more like racing simulator - pedal to the metal all the way and dodge traffic, often using the shoulder line, gping on red lights and cruising at 90mph through towns. Just as Rubber Duck did in the movie Convoy - I also tjrew in some mods to be able tonuse his Mack RS712 LST. Well, technically speaking, I bought the game just to be able to cruise "New Mexico on I-40" as C. W. McCall sings in he title song.

Good games, detailed (when you see the whole scope of the game), still updated to this day, keeping players engaged through various events on Worlds of Trucks and still making DLCs for both ATS and ETS2.

I’ve been player The Witcher 3 for the first time, the remastered release on the Switch 2.

I’ve been enjoying it so far - there’s so much to do. I keep exploring side content because well, the quest popped up, what am I supposed to do, ignore it? These people need help that only a Witcher can provide.

Which does mean that I am fairly over-leveled for a lot of the quests, but that’s been preferable I think (I’m really bad at fighting multiple enemies at once, so I think I’d be hosed without being over-leveled.). I did turn on level scaling I think though, so most enemies I fight do end up around my level.

(I am finally heading off to Skellige when I play next, likely tonight or tomorrow. There are many things I am abandoning in Novigrad and Velen that I feel bad about and will come back for, but I did seemingly finish both of the “major” side quests in Novigrad (Cabaret/Carnal Sins & Now or Never).

Gwent is…surprisingly fun? I’ve only played as the Northern Realm faction though.

I’ve only encountered a couple bugs, some with NPCs not loading correctly (weird graphical issues), and some crashes, but nothing that has prevented me from progressing.

I’m really enjoying the world, though I feel like I am missing out on quite a bit of background knowledge by having not read the books or played Witcher 1 or 2.

Season 2 of WARDOGS started on the 15th and a whole slew of balance changes came with it, most importantly drastically lowering xp requirements for all classes so more people would be able to unlock fun things instead of just the sweats. Unsurprisingly, this also meant the sweats could get endgame stuff even faster than before and we were already seeing tanks and gunships at the end of day 1. On the flipside though, I've unlocked the RPG and pump shotgun while playing only very casually so I'm still having a good enough time. Stay far away from the subreddit unless you enjoy drama though, seems like half of the people that post are either bipolar or manic or both with how quickly their opinions of the developers swing.

Guys, I fucked up. 4 Xenosaga games in a row might've been a little too much and I keep getting distracted now that I'm at the finish line. Instead of continuing disc 2 of Xenosaga Episode III, I instead started and beat Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. I think it's a better game then FE7, but I think FE7 left a stronger impression on me, not sure why.

Anyway, I'm back to Xenosaga and currently going through Abel's Ark. Even though I'm emulating, I've been trying to keep the save scumming to a minimum, but one of the bosses in this dungeon finally broke me. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but it was routinely launching attacks that would crit and would one shot my entire party. So I save scummed my way through.

Order of the Sinking Star is frankly incredible. Calling it a puzzle game is as descriptive as saying a whale is “kinda big” or Megan Thee Stallion is “kinda pretty.” It is an Ur-puzzle: it says itself every puzzle is a revelation and it is right. (edit bc i couldn’t remember the name right)

A couple of games we had earmarked on Nintendo Switch 2 are all finally here.

Nintendo Switch Sports Resort —- i tried two modes out this morning (100 pin bowling, and golf). I can happily report this is MUCH improved over Switch Sports 1 on NS1. This feels much closer to Wii sports resort. i only spent 30 minutes with it, but I think people will be happy with this game and you will see this become one of the NS2’s biggest releases over the course of time.

Fatal Fury City of the Wolves. — I tried a couple of matches. My son plays in esports in high school and likes fighting games in particular. This is a more old school fighting game and feels more aligned with SF4 than it does SF6. It plays very well. The menu’s are not as clean or simple as I would like, nor is the character selection. But it is very good port on NS2.

PGA Tour 2k25 —- game my house has been playing all year for adults. The game crashes far too often and some design choices are very strange. The 3 click swing system is just bad. That said, it plays a very clean version of golf and when you get into multiplayer or tournaments it is very good. The loading times and crashing can be egregious though.

A lot.

I finished Donkey Kong (1994) a game I've owned the cartridge of for several years now. I previously made it to world 3 or so on that cartridge and hadn't gone back, but I recently decided to play it via emulation on one of my handhelds, so I restarted it. I found it completely addicting and an utterly perfect fit for what I needed it for, playing it over a couple of weeks, finishing levels either one at a time or sometimes in a small chunk. Eventually made it to the final stages, which were damn tough and which I cheated a little bit (save states), though I came into those final stages with the maximum amount of lives (99) and could have simply brute forced it anyway. Fun game. I like it a lot more than Mario vs Donkey Kong on GBA which I played a number of years ago and is quite similar.

After that, I was looking for something to play on a handheld. After messing around with the DS, then 3DS and finally settling on the PC version (via handheld emulation), I'm playing Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Trilogy. Now, I've played this a decent amount before. I played one of the DS games (can't recall which one) a long, long time ago and I had been playing the trilogy on my 3DS a handful of years ago, having made it to, I think the second game after getting stuck on Turnabout: Big Top (I struggled, because I hate circuses for some reason and just found this one so fucking boring). But I was looking for something to play again and for some reason Phoenix Wright popped into my head and I thought it was time to give it another go. I just picked-up the Steam version for less than $10 on Humble Bundle and I've been emulating it on my android based handheld, so I can have it still to carry around with me. Still like it and it's very much a chill game to play, but I haven't made it very far; I ended-up playing the first case three times on all the different platforms, so I'm just now properly getting into it after settling on the PC version.

Monsters & Memories I've been starting to lose interest in. It's basically a pretty faithful (for good and ill) recreation of Everquest circa 1999. I do like the game quite a bit, but in spite of Everquest being a big fixture of my Mid-Late teens, I have almost no nostalgia for it, because it was just such a slog. M&M is very much like that. I am enjoying the game and I've had a lot of fun grouping up with my friends on Friday night and finding a dungeon to grind in, plus the general progression hook of an MMO always gets me, but I find myself pretty damned bored between those Friday play sessions. I could be leveling my tailoring or another character or whatever, but I just have almost zero desire to go out into the world and grind all by my lonesome or attempt to find a group and sit in the same spot for an hour or three and grind the same handful of mobs over and over again. I really like what the game is doing, but again, I just don't have the nostalgia for endless grinding, corpse runs, begging for binds and SoWs, slowly upping tradeskills, etc, etc. I'll probably keep playing it for a little bit, but I've already tapered off substantially and I see myself probably completely quitting in the next week or two. I will say it's primed me for WoW: Forever, which I've been rather cynical about. I don't have a lot of faith in Blizzard or Microsoft and I'm still especially annoyed with MicroBlizz for going after my favorite private server, but Vanillla WoW has been my game for 22 years now and so I see myself probably playing Forever for at least a month, because now I'm definitely chomping at the bit for an MMO.

I finally reorganized my home office, including cleaning-up, selling a bunch of stuff, hanging my art works and moving my desk across the room. This compelled me to start using my Desktop PC a lot more, where I had been previously using my laptop quite a lot around the house. However, this saw me in a bit of a frenzy to start upgrading it. It wasn't exactly a slouch, but it's always been kind of a mid-budget rig, which is what I've always shot for since I started building computers in the 90's. But I got this compulsion to make the best of what I could on my current platform, that being AM4, so I upgraded my CPU from a Ryzen 5 5600 to a Ryzen 7 5800x3D, in addition to a new case and because I had a new case, I upgraded the motherboard to a proper ATX-sized board over my previous ITX-sized board. I was mulling over a GPU upgrade from my 6700XT, but I'm a 1080p gamer anyway and deliberately chose the resolution so I wouldn't have to spend heaps of money on a GPU back when I upgraded last in 2023. Anyway, in order to prove to myself that my PC was a fine and capable gaming machine, I bought a new game that I know can be pretty tough on PCs, that being Stalker 2 and it's still the same game I fell in love with back when I picked-up the original on release. I have a vivid memory of going into Best Buy on release day, finding STALKER and being surprised it was only $40; a brand new game I'd been looking forward to and priced like a budget title.

One of my favorite things about the game is the fact that the enemies do not have perfect knowledge of the player. Yesterday, I had a little mission to go collect something or other that some bandits stole; they were camped out in some sort of small factory. I approached in the evening and was immediately spotted by two of the bandits, but I managed to kill them with shots to the head via my silenced pistol; though they had already fired a little bit at me and revealed my presence to their buddy's.

But after I shot these guys, I quickly clicked off my own headlamp (enemies will see it) and sneaked around the opposite side of the building. Through some cracks in the wall, I could see a couple of enemies advancing on my previous position, though I couldn't quite get a solid shot off at them. I ended-up sneaking around the building a little more, climbed up to the roof where I had previously killed one of the initial guys and peered down. I saw the enemy I had just seen, scouting my last location and finding nothing, then turning around and looking around the general area, but he never saw me on the roof when I shot him in the dome with my silenced pistol.

I then dropped down to the second level of the factory and got the drop on two other enemies...sort-of. One of them had their back to me and the other was facing that guy, so the guy who was facing me saw me first and brought his weapon up to attack, so I shot the guy in the head who had his back to me and then pumped the other guy full of bullets immediately after and that was that.

I just love how they had seen me initially, shot at me and then completely lost me after killing the guys who spotted me. Makes the game feel so much more alive and interesting when it doesn't feel like the NPCs are perfect little murder bots.

I'm 10 hours into Nocturne (2026), an indie game that was in development for several years. At its core a 16-bit JRPG, with 3/4 sprite-based perspective, a rich NPC-inhabited world, a narrative, an inventory, equipment, chests, save points and enemies. Except all the combat is rhythm-based (4 or 5 lanes note matching) with an attack and counterattack mechanic. It plays a bit like Everhood!

The aesthetic, on the other hand, it's more like CrossCode - colorful, detailed pixel art, with very expressive dialogue close-ups of the characters. It helps that the premises are not entirely dissimilar. In the beginning, protagonist Karma wakes up in what we learn is the reception area for the for-profit VR afterlife, Maya. They have passed away, and their consciousness has been uploaded (not a new idea!) They set out to find their brother Spencer, who died before they did, only to find out that more than a thousand years have passed since their death, no one has been uploaded during that time, and Maya is falling apart.

The gameplay is pretty good. Admittedly, it's not an easy rhythm game, but thankfully the developers have provided a cozy 6 distinct difficulty levels and you can change them at any time if you're in trouble. The soundtrack is fantastic! It's what one might call a successful example of a Good JRPG Soundtrack. Every monster and boss fight has their own melody (with unlockable variants, I understand) and they are lively and memorable. There's plenty of equipment with distinct buffs (or debuffs for That Kind Of Player) that can unlock different strategies for getting through each fight.

For reasons I won't get too deeply into (avoiding spoilers!) the context of the narrative reminds me a little of Otherland, by Tad Williams. Almost immediately, at the beginning of the story, a child called Kimothy latches on to Karma and starts following them around, purportedly as a guide at first, then as a friend as Karma warms up to him (Kimothy is so ridiculously adorable I'm always waiting for something horrible to happen to him, because, you know). But little bits of dialogue between the protagonists or with NPCs gave me some food for thought - Kimothy (and everyone else) have been around for a millennium. Does that mean people in Maya can't evolve? Or is Kimothy not really a child? Which is most terrifying? I'm really hoping for them to get into the nitty gritty of the philosophical implications of all of this.

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Gave Banjo-Kazooie a second chance. First time around, I gave up quickly on it because I was playing the Rare Replay version via Xbox Cloud Gaming and had to deal with some horrendous input lag. Second time around was on NSO.

I dunno why it got rave reviews and is considered up there with Super Mario 64 as one of the best 3D platformers of the 90's. The game controls like crap on both versions in almost every aspect, from the camera down to some of the worst swimming controls I've experienced. When you save and quit, the game also forces you to watch a lengthy Game Over cutscene. Rare also littered the start with craploads of tutorials that just bog the experience down.

What ultimately made me give up was several failed attempts of trying to pick up the Blue Jinjo on Treasure Trove Cove, and me retrospectively feeling like an idiot as I write this because it turns out you can kill Snacker the Shark.

Also recently played the Melvor Idle 2 demo. From what I played, it's just a slight graphical upgrade over the first game with a different interface and nowhere near as much additional depth as advertised. Being unable to actually move the window in Windowed Mode also completely and utterly blows. Malcs needs to cook for a lot longer before releasing this one, because otherwise it'll end up as underwhelming as Cities Skylines 2.

I also reached level 22 on MapleStory: Classic World and kinda burned out already. I hit a serious quest drought with the only ones still outstanding being ones I can't farm because every map is still heavily overcrowded with players. This is the state MSCW is in right now, and the only people playing are those who were willing to pay $60 for a Founder's package to get 2 weeks early access. Grand Launch is on Wednesday and the game will be unplayable.

I think Nexon should have launched the game with multiple worlds and more content to ease overcrowding (at the very least, the original versions of Orbis, El Nath, Ludibrium, Zipangu and New Leaf City should have been in launch.)

I'm doing my annual replay of Mad Max. It's an older game from 2015, but it's aged extremely well.

For those unfamiliar with it, the story is completely different from Fury Road, but the world and themes are unmistakably Mad Max - a blasted waste where even the oceans have dried up. I consider it an AU to the movie.

For me, it's the absolute peak of open world exploration. Driving to POIs in a custom car you build up from scratch and punching your way through the wasteland is just pure bliss. The dialogue is top notch, the graphics are snappy and responsive, and the combat is extremely well done. It's very similar to the Arkham games (same publisher, different developer), so you get that whole "counterattack / free flow" sensation going on. Easy to learn, difficult to master.

Star Wars Galactic Racer. Like a loooot of it. I play it on my desktop PC primarily since its 60+ fps and while at launch the steam deck version was barely hovering at 30fps, with the newest SteamOS updates and my same settings it can go as high as 50fps, which makes a night and day difference and makes it much more comfortable to play.
Rougelikes/lites are typically not my style but for this genre it just makes sense and clicks with me. This also led to me starting out SW Outlaws too and that took me a little longer to come around to, but ive been liking the world theyve made so far.

I'm dipping my toe into Stellar Blade.

It's big and beautiful and has a satisfying combat system. Looking forward to improving my parrying and dodge skills. I suuuuuck right now.

But there's enough challenge and gear to unlock to have me locked in.

Game is crazy for gooners though, it's like 90% outfits on Nexus mods

Fear the Spotlight

A bite-size horror game that can be played in an afternoon, a bit like "Silent Hill for kids". The game is quite easy, it's more like a walking sim with mostly simple puzzles, and sometimes a patrolling enemy that you must hide from. When I say "Silent Hill for kids" I literally mean it: there's almost no blood, no jumpscares, no on-screen violence (only described through notes), and just a few creepy moments. I played with my 10 years old watching me and we both enjoyed the experience.

I have finished Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave. All four Part 1s, one of the Part 2s (they're identical), and Part 3 on Hard/Classic.

Man, I loved it. To get the criticism out of the way, it gets too easy excluding your very first route and Part 2, there's a bit too much busy work for my liking and I hate that it's both 30 fps and the environments are pretty ugly. But, filling out the world map is addictive, I like the story and worldbuilding a lot, and the battle maps actually have some fun gimmicks this time! There was a "miasma" mechanic that on some tiles doubled your crit at the cost of setting your avoid to 0, but what meant is that one of my unit's crit chance was 100%, so that was fun to break.

Part 2 is also just plain classic Fire Emblem, back to back difficult SRPG gameplay with a quintillion wyvern reinforcements.

I do view with exhaustion the fact that Fire Emblem will now have this constant struggle between classic-style and new-style Fire Emblem as with the Zelda, where the classic-style Fire Emblems (Fates: Conquest, Engage) only appeal to long-term Fire Emblem fans, and the modern ones (Three Houses, Fortune's Weave) which integrate new gameplay elements for mass appeal.

This is happening to too many fandoms I'm in at the moment and the discourse is exhausting. I get some people are disconnected from that and, lucky you, but it is tiring for the rest of us.

I've been continuing to play Old School RuneScape, mainly on the side and in the background. Doing some merching to keep up a bond and slowly work through some quests. I don't have a ton of time to play, so I'll usually check the wiki if I get stuck on a quest. The recently released Raids 4 has up ended the economy a bit, so a lot of my stable flips that I was doing are no longer stable and I ended up losing a bit of GP as some items shot down in price.
OSRS continues to be a good Dad game, and I'll probably only be taking a break from playing during our upcoming vacation.

I also had a bit of time to play some more Pikmin with my sons watching. It's still an incredibly enjoyable game, and my boys got a kick out of it. I play a bit slower as they'll ask me to go look at something or what is going on a long. I've made it to the final boss and have 29/30 parts.
I actually forgot how difficult the final boss can be, and I'm also running into a bit of latency from my controller that adds that little bit extra difficulty as well. The first go of it I lost a lot of Pikmin and reset the day. The second time I was also losing more than I wanted and realized it was already bedtime, so I'll come back to beat it eventually. I had the facepalm moment when I remembered after getting the kids in bed that I'm using an emulator and I can just set a save state right before the boss, so I don't need to take the minutes to set everything back up again.

I picked up a survival crafting game called The Last Caretaker, knowing very little about it. It's still in early access, and definitely contains some rough edges, but the core loop of it feels really good. You play as a robot sailing the ocean and salvaging stuff, and that sounds like a game you've played a thousand times. This ine is different. The sailing feels like actual sailing, and maintaining and expanding your boat feels great. In choppy seas, the ship rocks as you walk, and you do feel the fear of going overboard. You can set the tiller and the throttle and then step away from the wheel if you need to; the ship doesn't stop because you let go of the wheel. It feels ponderous. Parallel parking a boat isn't an instantaneous affair, so it feels less like a boat-themed video game and more like you're moving something with a lot of mass. It's not perfect, but it feels good to play. And being a robot means that you're always keeping an eye on your battery. You, like everything else, need juice to survive. But when you need to keep the lights, the recycler, and the fabricator running on top of your own needs you can start to feel the squeeze. There can be downsides from having a unified resource that does everything, but when it's power it makes sense and feels good.