18
votes
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.
So I just started playing Final Fantasy IX.
I'm still fairly early in the game, but I can definitely see why there are so many people who view this game as the best of the series. The plot is delivered at a very pleasurable pace, the world is inviting, and the mechanics and styling feel like it's part of the "old" final fantasy. If modern FF is science fiction with magic, FFIX is steampunk. I especially like that abilities are learned from equipment; it adds another layer of gameplay as you continue through your journey.
I am playing the PC version with Moguri Mod, and if you like this game you should really consider playing this way because it is full of so many improvements. The best part is that all the backgrounds have been AI upscaled. It has the unintended side-effect of making them look like they were painted instead of CGI, and that is a minor improvement IMHO. Overall it's extremely impressive how they took this 20 year old game and made it look great on modern displays. It's kind of amazing how the 2D and 3D elements still blend in at this new level of detail.
I have enjoyed many entries in the series since IX (I really enjoyed XIII despite almost no one else doing so and had fun with X and XII), but I do think it is the last Final Fantasy game that felt like the Final Fantasy series as I knew it growing up with it. After not really liking VII (I know) and VIII, I was worried I had kind of lost one of my favorite series to 2D -> 3D transition. But IX was a good reminder of what the series was and can be.
VIII is my personal favorite, though honestly it's mostly because it was my entry point to the series. I just loved the world building and the focus on the story. I feel it has the best writing of the entire series. It feels like one of the only games out there outside of visual novels that has a character betray you and you can understand why.
VIII definitely gets a bum rap because of some bad design choices. The story and characters are indeed pretty well thought out.
I never got to the end of 8, having left off just as I started the final disc, but by that point I was fairly spun around on the story. The gameplay itself was good, but I'd be surprised to find out they managed to unjumble the story in the end.
Unfortunately this only works with the Steam version of the game, as it's impossible to mod the Xbox Game Pass version where FFIX is free with a subscription. They're rolling out mod support on that platform but it'll probably be a long while before FFIX is opened up to modding.
I'm probably about to sell my unplayed copy of FF9 along with the rest of my PS1 collection... sigh. I don't know if I'll ever get around to playing it. Have a little bit of extra fun for me!
This is my favourite Final Fantasy and probably in my top 4 games all time. I first played it when I was 12 and still have fond memories of the story. Explore as much as possible and don't rush through the main story.
Nonstop Hades.
I spent a while trying to beat it on heat 32 but it's real tough; I've gotten to the final boss but couldn't best his upgraded form. Now I'm just filling out prophecies to get to the epilogue; maybe I'll try heat 32 again next weekend.
I loved Hades. I'd love for there to be a sequel.
Hopefully it ends up coming to PS4 - would love to play it on a console since I don't have a gaming PC.
I bought a new 32" 1440 monitor (a first for me) and decided to actually give Fallout 4 (PC) a proper shot. I played about two or three hours when it first came out and never got into it. This time around, I am quite obsessed with it. Very solid (albeit buggy) game that is graphically beautiful even in 2020 on the proper setup.
Finished the (first?) campaign story of Battletech. The game lets you continue on and explore the rest of the galaxy, so I'm doing that. The storyline was focused on only about 20% of the visible starmap, so I'm assuming there's more that I can encounter, including maybe another storyline.
In Eternal Card Game, I've found that moving up or down in the Master tier is very slow (well, the up direction is, anyway :P), so I've decided I don't want to spend my time trying to get much higher than my initial placement. I've turned my attention from Throne mode (where I have Master rank) to Expedition mode. I'll try to get Master there, as well.
Fired up Cities: Skylines for the first time in a while. Not much to say here. I just find it a relaxing way to spend liesure time. I feel like I could improve some things (like traffic congestion) if I would only just raze some buildings, but I just can't bring myself to ruin the lives of those specific digital citizens.
I read the thread last week and discovered AltspaceVR. That has been a pleasant surprise. I bought a headset back when COVID broke thinking I could jump into Rec Room and VRChat to hang out with people if I wanted. That turned out to be a bad idea. Those two seem to be overrun with adolescents being obnoxious. I've been pleasantly surprised with Altspace so far. I run a developer meetup that hasn't been able to meet in person for a while now, and I'm considering running an event inside Altspace since it has offered such a nice experience.
Here's what else I've been playing:
Tell Me Why
I really enjoyed playing Life Is Strange, and my daughter who was probably 13 at the time was entranced by the story. The second game didn't quite grab me like the first, but this game gives me the same feeling as the first game. It's a grounded young adult drama with some supernatural elements and a bunch of believable charming characters.
In terms of gameplay, it's one of those "new-school" adventure games pioneered by Telltale. You have direct control over characters, and you're looking for key objects and solving puzzles to advance a story. And it's way more fun than it sounds when you type it out like that. 😆
Observation
This is another new-school adventure game with more of a sci-fi flair. It's unique in that you play as a space station's computer interacting with a human on the ship – unlocking doors, fixing broken systems, and reporting anomalies. It's a cool twist on the genre. I'm not super far, but it seems to have a bit of a 2001: A Space Odyssey vibe.
Beat Saber
This is one of the most fun games I've played in a long while. I doubt there's anyone with the ability to play it who isn't at least aware of it, but, in case you're not aware, imagine crossing DDR with Fruit Ninja and you'll have an idea what this is. It's got a great track-list out of the box, but the community produces amazing custom tracks all the time. Just an incredible game and a really good workout that you'll want to do.
Ghostrunner
Got to play a demo of this, and I was shocked at how much fun it was. This is like Mirror's Edge in a cyberpunk world, but they took out the clunky gun combat and replace it with a sword that integrates much better with the game's locomotion. I'm shocked it's debuting at $30, but at the same time, I'm afraid it must be really short. I can't imagine they would sell a game with such excellent production that is also a meaty experience at that price. It's on my radar though. It's out later this month.
Oh, Observation is a neat game!
It's made by the same small team as Stories Untold which is a sort of collection of related sf/horror shorts. If you enjoy Observation, I can definitely recommend Stories Untold too. It's a little shorter, but I think it's even better in some regards.
Still playing CK3 every few day. Current run i started as one of the Jimena kings and murdered my way to power, then i cheesed the decision to unite the thrones of spain and so my kingdom was essentially the empire of hispania. The game is a bit boring now because of the limited flavour and i have no risk of being overthrown or conquered, so now im just chasing a few achievements .
Another week, another me playing Switch, exclusively.
I tried Super Mario 35. It's Mario battle royale, alright! Somehow it didn't click with me as much as Tetris 99 did, even though it's fun. I guess "competitive" Mario is too much of a stretch, people just sending you ghost gumbas seems weird, it doesn't quite feel right.
I played through Super Mario Galaxy in the Mario 3D All Stars package. It's certainly the most polished out of the three and I love the gravity-bending mechanics. But it still has some of that... Wii era style which comes across as a little too save. I don't know, it's weird. It certainly has the content, it certainly has variety. Hmm. 3D All Stars certainly has been an interesting ride. I certainly still haven't burned out on Mario and if that's the case now, I probably never will. This is complaining on a very high level, these are still some of the best games ever made.
I also tried the Pikmin 3 demo in anticipation. I never played a Pikmin game before and I'm looking forward to this so much, it's crazy. The demo was everything I wished it would be and I now can't wait. I hope I can talk my girlfriend into playing the whole campaign in coop.
I also installed the Overwatch free week on the Switch. It reminded me of how well gyro controls work for shooters, even though they could probably tweak it a little more. Why do they never let you hold a button to block gyro input and reposition the controller, like if you lift a mouse to do a 360° turn in a PC FPS? That seems so obvious yet I never see it done. As for Overwatch itself... it is TF2 with a new coat of paint, isn't it? I never was too curious to check it out and just supsected from the trailers but holy hell Torbjörn is just an engineer, right? Mercy is a Medic. With all the different equipment in TF2, you can probably construct an equivalent for every single character (except maybe spy?). It's certainly blatant but I don't really mind, it's a flavor of FPS that deserves becoming a genre. Probably won't buy the full version, though.
I also dusted off Animal Crossing: New Horizons after like 2 months. It's fall, so maybe I can finally finish my Japanese Garden project due to bonsai blueprints becoming available.
Haha, looks like we're in sync! I've also been playing Mario 35, Mario Galaxy, came back to Animal Crossing, and downloaded the Pikmin demo (haven't played yet).
Currently at 15 hours playtime in Super Mario 35... honestly I thought it would be closer to 5, but I'm currently around level 60, so I guess it makes sense. I found it great for a bit of mindless fun while watching TV or whatever. I've never been the biggest fan of the 2D Mario games, so the battle royale mechanics have made it hold my interest a bit longer. My main problem right now is that it's starting to feel a bit stale. The strategy in this game seems to be focused on repeating 1-1 and 1-2 many times, at least at the start, and I'm not good enough to reach the late game (best I've gotten was 3rd place). The gameplay has become pretty repetitive to me, so I'm not planning on playing too much more at this point.
Started Super Mario Galaxy last weekend after beating 64 and Sunshine, and it's been a blast! It was my first Mario game when I was a kid, so it's brought back some nice memories. My favourite parts of 64 and Sunshine were the linear platforming levels, and my main complaint was that there weren't enough of them. Galaxy, on the other hand, is almost entirely linear, but it's nice that they kept at least a tiny bit of the "multiple missions on the same level" from the previous games. Currently at around 60 stars, definitely planning on getting 100%!
I also went back to Animal Crossing: New Horizons after 3 months, mostly to take part in some of the Halloween events, and to check out the new features I missed, like diving and island backups. It's good to be back, such a comfy game! When it launched, I played way too much, and basically got bored of it after 150 hours. This time I'm gonna try to take it a bit slower. I'm also glad that villagers don't leave anymore if you don't play, once I found that out I was a lot more motivated to come back to the game.
I'd like to properly design and terraform my island this time, that's something I didn't really get to. I was always overwhelmed by the task, but after reading some advice, I think I'm going to draw a quick, general design, and then start with one part of my island and branch out from there. Incrementally seems like the way to go.
I didn't play the Pikmin 3 Deluxe Demo yet, but I'm excited to - I've never played a Pikmin game and know very little aside from watching a few trailers, but its gameplay seems like an interesting concept.
Haven't played Overwatch in a while, but IIRC in the control settings you can bind a button to recentre the gyro (like in Splatoon), which should accomplish the same thing.
I guess you are me, then. Terraforming your island is such a crazy amount of work and it really makes the general pointlessness of the game sink in. I have a sudden urge to go back and do it, though. Maybe there's almost something zen in how I'm just doing this for myself (certainly no streaming that shit on twitch or posting it on instagram). It's like those Buddhist monks drawing mandalas out of sand for weeks and then sweep it away the moment they're finished.
It's subtle but I don't think it's quite the same thing! Splatoon has the same issue. Centering moves your view to the center (which might not actually be where you want to look) and then you have to readjust it in a second step. Just letting you reposition your hand while disabling gyro input for a second would let you just reset your hand movement while not moving in game.
Maybe there's a complication that prevents this from working but I'd love to play a game that implements it. It seems like a solution that basically moves gyro input on a line with mouse input. Note that disabling gyro input per button would also allow holding the cursor perfectly still, which is otherwise hard with free hand gyro controls. I'm 90% convinced it would be the perfect solution and that's what makes it so frustrating to never see it tried!
I'm a casual racing game fan. More interested in the anti-grav Wipeout style racer than a Gran Turismo sim style. But every now and then, I get the desire to play a standard four wheel racer and last week I played a bunch of those to try to find my favorite.
Need for Speed: Payback and Need for Speed: Heat - I'm lumping these together because they feel very similar. Same developer, only two (?) years apart. Compared to the other games I played, these were rather arcade-y. I'm either a natural at NFS (a series I haven't touched since the 90's) or they're just very forgiving. I felt like I couldn't slide off the road, and, barring getting hung up on the corner of a bridge or building, I came in 1st place every time. I spent a bit more time with Heat because I enjoyed it more for its open world, but I didn't really enjoy the day/night split. During the day, you race officially and earn money. At night, you do street races and earn rep. Rep gets you better parts and cars, which you need money to purchase. But street racing comes with cops, and I found the cops extremely unforgiving. I couldn't complete more than two races before I had attracted a fleet of cops chasing me everywhere. Once they bust you, they more or less empty your wallet. You also only get a fraction of the rep you've earned if you get busted. I just got very tired of trying to escape the cops.
Forza Motorsport 7 - On the arcade-sim spectrum, this one's back over on the sim side. Didn't spend a ton of time with it because I'm not really a sim person, but it is gorgeous.
Forza Horizon 4 - This is the one I stuck with and spent the most time playing. Big open world, diverse selection of events, falls in a bit of a midpoint between sim and arcade, looks beautiful. I don't get 1st place in every race, and this game doesn't really seem to mind. I obviously got better rewards the better I did, but there are so many races and things to do around the world that I didn't feel like I had to 1st place every single race. I've got something like 50 cars unlocked, and it feels like they're all different. I can tell an obvious difference between a AWD and RWD. I can tell an obvious difference between a rally car and a lambo. It's a lot of fun.
Side note: I'm sort of using Horizon 4 as a test of Microsoft's play anywhere efforts and that stuff is really cool. I have Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which grants me access to Horizon 4 on console, PC, and cloud. I started the game on console and made some progress on it.
Then I played it via cloud streaming. I'm using an old Galaxy S7 connected to wifi and paired to an Xbox controller. Cloud streaming takes a bit of time to get started, but I've been impressed by it. It just works. It's like I've got a handheld Xbox. One place where I thought I found a hiccup was while playing Motorsport 7 because I kept hearing my acceleration drop, but then I noticed my brake lights were turning on without hitting the brake too. It turns out I had some pretty aggressive training wheels turned on. Otherwise, I've only really noticed some minor streaming graphic glitches. Granted, I am on wifi and I'm sitting right next to my AP, but I'm pleased. This is cool.
Finally, I installed the PC version and played it. Looks awesome, plays very smoothly, and it pulled down the same save game as the console and cloud.
Overall, I've been super impressed. This is awesome. For $15/month, I can play a lot of full games on up to three different platforms with very few caveats.
You know what racing game I miss? The StarWars PodRacer game. (Yes, I realize I'm dating myself here.) I haven't played Wipeout, but your description sounds similar.
They are very similar. You can still get Star Wars Episode 1: Racer on GOG and Steam.
For more modern analogs, I love BallisticNG and I like Redout. Both are a little closer to Wipeout than Episode 1: Racer. GRIP also has an anti-grav racer mode, but I haven't played with it much.
Thanks! I will check these out!
I'm not entirely sure how but I've fallen into genshin impact as a little casual thing to do. I have other games in my backlog that I want to get to, but part of the reason I chose genshin is I wanted something that I could play while listening to music (I listen to a lot of DJs on twitch now) and a lot of my backlog is indie games where sound design is important and I didn't want to mess up my experience of those games (if the music can even be turned off - in some cases it's not possible). And now I'm at a point where I can't easily jump into something else, lol. There isn't anything particularly 'wow' with this game, but it'll hold me over until cyberpunk or something else I'm looking forward to playing. Although I'm of mixed mind on cyberpunk now because of all the news coming out about crunch. 😩
Picked up 7 Days to Die again. The 19.1 patch is quite nice relative to the 17 series, gameplay has tightened up a bit.
Gameplay feels better, graphics overhaul is nice, performance is better... I'm still rocking a GTX 970 which used to struggle with low settings (other than ultra draw distance), and now handles medium/high better than ever before. I'll probably roll with it longer than I had with previous patches.
I've been doing a single player game (no blood moon but harder zombies...makes for nice role-play immersion), but could setup a Tildes server if there's any interest.
Hades and Bastion. I also just picked up Return of the Obra Dinn but haven't had a chance to really play it.
Oh wow, enjoy Return of the Obra Dinn! Settle in with it for an evening. It's a really unique and engaging game.
That's what I've heard! My friend and I are excited to sit down and play it over some weekend soon.
I've been wanting to play this for a while but I have not been able to get into a headspace where I can enjoy this kind of game. I hope my mini-vacation helps.
I played The Mind with a friend last night and I just love that game. First time playing just two people but it worked just as well. There's just something amazing about a game so simple that if you try to explain it to people they don't really get it...until they try it. How this game was pitched I would love to know.
I love that game. It's beautifully constructed, and I love the concept and feel of playing it. I've never played it two player, and we rarely play at home because my oldest daughter detests it, but I might try to convince my wife to give it a shot.
You can also use the same cards from this to play "No Thanks (rules pdf)" which is also a cute game.
Cool, thanks! I will suggest this next game night.
I come before you to once again talk about Elite Dangerous.
One of the goals I've had for a while was to buy an Imperial Clipper , and I'm pretty close to having the reputation to do so. In the meanwhile, I've purchased an Alliance Crusader, and kitted it out for a three person adventure. I mostly play solo, but my brother and a close friend also play sometimes; that same friend has a very nicely outfitted Federal Corvette that we've gone bounty hunting in, but he wanted to have an opportunity to fly fighters - if you own the ship, you have to be the pilot of the ship, so he couldn't switch. So I sank about 125M credits into a fairly decent Crusader, and I think that this weekend we will take it out for its first spin and do some bounty hunting.
Other than that I've mostly been doing trade missions and trading, so I was mostly playing while watching the Expanse, and if there have ever been two great tastes that taste great together it's Elite Dangerous and The Expanse.
I honestly considered just restarting the series and watching it again immediately while also playing.
I finally got around to playing Blood (the Fresh Supply re-release) the other day - I remember playing at least part of a friend's copy years ago, but my memory definitely didn't do it justice. The art and music is fantastic, the gameplay is as fun as and feels like the other Build games (I've somehow managed to play Duke 3D and Shadow Warrior, but never made it to Blood), and all the references to horror movies are a nice bonus that definitely went over my head the first time I played it.
It was one of Monolith's first games. They had so many great ideas and were always so good at using new technologies. It just makes me upset whenever I remember they were bought by WB.
Same here, although I definitely liked Shadow of Mordor - granted it's been a few years since I played it, and I haven't tried the second one yet.
Condemned was pretty cool too, but I don't know if that was before or after WB bought them...
Played and finished Manifold Garden over the last couple days.
It definitely draws a lot of inspiration from Antichamber. I'd say that it generally looks better but the puzzles/mechanics aren't quite as rich or interesting, though while it loses the highs of an Antichamber or Stephen's Sausage Roll, it also avoids the lows of feeling like any of the solutions devolve into absurdity or tedium.
It scratches that itch, but kind of left me wanting more.