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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.
Mario Kart 8 is genuinely excellent. I put in untold numbers of hours on it on the Wii U -- enough to justify the purchase of that console alone!
I'm really glad that most of the Wii U's best games have found new life on the Switch -- MK8 in particular deserves far better than being lost to time on an underappreciated console.
Picked up Hades (on Switch) on a whim. While I played some FTL and Everspace, I'm not big on rouglelikes.
But wow, Hades blew me away. I actually like dying! I rarely feel frustrated because whenever I fail I get excited to experiment with a different setup - and the story progresses bit by bit each time.
Where Everspace and FTL got me annoyed and frustrated at dying, which ultimately drained the fun out of it, Hades makes me itch to try just one more time (and feel good about it).
I've spent about 50 hours in the game so far and feel like I'll be enjoying it for at least that much more. Then there's interesting content on YouTube with people disccussing setups, tips&tricks, where I spent at least a few hours watching as well.
I've put 63 runs into Hades so far, escaped twice, still love it (also the story isn't done yet!).
If you haven't looked into Supergiant's other games, they are all equally excellent. They have a truly top-caliber level of polish, from the art to the music to the gameplay mechanics and everything in between. I've bought and played every game they've made and have no regrets. Some I like more than others, but they are all superb.
13 year old game plot spoiler below
Halo 3 - I haven't played this in quite a while, but I'm on a Halo kick. This isn't my favorite Halo but it's still a great game. What I found most interesting is that my moment of catharsis in this trilogy of games isn't at stopping the Flood or Forerunners or Cortana or any of that nonsense. No, it's when the Arbiter impales the Prophet of Truth with a energy sword. I don't really care much about the stuff going on around the Master Chief and the games don't do anything to establish a character there. But I know who the Arbiter is, and that one story beat is the only thing about the Halo trilogy that I remember, narrative-wise.
My nephew talked me into giving Among Us a try and... it’s fun! It’s remarkably simple and there’s a lesson in doing simple well in there for sure! I don’t see this Game carrying a lot of attention for more than a couple of months, though since the number of, uhm, “strategies” sure seems limited.
I think you underestimate its lifespan. Among Us is a two year old game. It started to get super popular a couple months ago. It's also really accessible both by being simple to play, and by being free to play (unless you're on PC) and able to cross-play with anyone. The simplicity of the gameplay doesn't impact the strategy of the game. Other IRL social deduction games are far more mechanically simple than this, and still a staple genre of party games.
It definitely has legs. The barrier of entry is so incredibly low, and it makes an absolutely perfect game to play on Discord or whatever group-chat your particular family or friend group uses. The game itself is simple, the legs come out of playing it with people you are friends with IRL.
Oh, I’m sure it’ll stick around! I’m just talking about the crazy trend. It feels like the lifespans of these shortens? Like Fall Guys already dropping again?
To make that clear: I kinda like this, since it means new games are being played every year rather than streamers just playing like one FPS exclusively for 5 years. I hope there’s another “Among Us” type game waiting in spring 2021 and it’ll be totally different.
I was fortunate to snag a PS5, but I don't have any actual PS5 games for it, except for one that came free this month for PlayStation Plus subscribers:
It's Bugsnax! I very much wanted to enjoy this one but honestly it just isn't doing anything for me. I love Kero Kero Bonito's theme song for it, at the very least. The easy-puzzle gameplay and wacky, brightly colored design will probably appeal to my kids when they get a bit older.
I also have been enjoying Astro's Playrooom which is bundled free with every PS5. It's a nice showcase of what the DualSense controller is capable of. A reasonably fun and very cute little platformer thing.
Apart from those, I've brought over my existing PS4 game library and I've been cycling through titles to see how they look on the new hardware. Even if they don't offer any PS5-specific enhancements, a number of them were boosted for PS4 Pro, which I never had. So I'm seeing improvements across the board in varying degrees. I picked up a 4K TV earlier this year and it's nice to finally have a true 4K signal to send it.
I installed the free PS5 native update for No Man's Sky. I haven't spend a lot of time playing it, but it looks stunning so far, with increased draw distances and 4K@60Hz. It implements the DualSense haptics very well. Many words have been written about the HDR bug that makes everything look insanely bright, and it's true that was pretty awful. I've read that it may have been fixed (or at least toned down) in a recent patch but haven't played since then to confirm. Regardless, I still love this game and will be putting in a lot more time with it soon.
Apart from that, I'm playing The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim yet again. Seriously, I picked this one up on launch day 9 years ago and somehow I still continue to discover new things. I previously played through the Dawnguard DLC as a vampire hunter but never pursued the alternate path of becoming a vampire lord. It's wickedly fun. What surprised me though was when I stumbled into the huge "Lost to the Ages" questline that I had no idea even existed. I haven't noticed any real differences playing the game on PS5, except that load times are significantly reduced. I'll take it! Love this game.
Unfortunately I can't enjoy most of my PS4 catalog at present because there wasn't room on the PS5's internal storage to transfer everything. A year or two ago I installed a 2TB SSD in the PS4. Since the new console replaces the old, I'm gonna salvage that drive and stick it in a USB enclosure so I can keep all my legacy games on there. Can't happen for another couple weeks though, since I put that enclosure on my Christmas wish list, haha. We'll see what happens.
Pizza Frenzy. Bought it in Steam sale. Excellent casual game, I spent so much time on it in old days. Doing another run.
I finished up Outlanders. I ended up really liking it, though I still feel it was not quite balanced right. The early levels were really hard and the later levels were pretty easy. They will likely release more levels in the future, so I will check it out again then. Oddly, though, after finishing a level, rather than wanting to jump right into the next one, I mostly wanted to stop playing for a day. It was kind of a lot of work making sure everyone was fed and housed! But it was also fun enough that I did keep going back to it.
In the meantime I tried out Pinball Wizard. It's a cute idea. You are a wizard who is also a pinball. Each level is a pinball board themed after a dungeon or level in a tower. Unfortunately, the cuteness gets in the way of the physics. Something just feels not-quite-right in terms of pinball physics. It's fun as a casual game, but I was hoping for something a little bit more.
My quarantine gave me
a lot ofnearly unlimited game time, so here are the quick hits of what I tackled over the past week:Celeste
I firmly believe that over-hyping a game is a bad thing, because it can cause people to go in with such high expectations that they are inevitably let down. As such, I'll limit my praise for this game to be the following: this was my second time through it and I loved it even more than my first playthrough. There is a good chance I will play through it again in the coming weeks. Its platforming is second to none, and the culminating chapter in the game (the main one, not the extensions) feels so, SO good to play through.
Borderlands 3
I'm a little mad about this one. I bought it a while ago but have been waiting for it to be fully Linux compatible, and the Glorious Eggroll fork of Proton finally made that happen! I couldn't get it to work though and assumed that was a compatibility issue, when instead it was because I accidentally tripped the game's DRM and it locked me out. I ended up uninstalling it on my Linux computer and begrudingingly installing it on my Windows box before realizing that was the issue, but it's staying on Windows because I'm not about to attempt the 120 GB download for a third time to get it back on Linux.
Game-wise, it's Borderlands. They do a really great job of mixing the fun of Shooting Things with the fun of Making Numbers Go Up. I've definitely aged out of the series's story and humor, so I pretty much tune that out and just enjoy the gameplay. My husband and I are playing co-op, and it's been really great getting some "together time" with him given that I've been soft-quarantining from him for a while now.
Book of Demons
This was... odd? It's actually hard to explain. It's kind of like if Diablo were a real-time board game. It feels similar to "clicker" games in execution, but is far more richly made than that label usually implies. I played it for two and a half hours and ended up abandoning my run. It's not that the game was necessarily bad; it just didn't stick enough for me to keep going.
Impulsion
This is a first-person speedrunny-platformer where you shoot orbs from a gun that either speed you up or slow you down. The mechanics are really solid, but its level design is less inspired. I enjoyed my time with it but don't have the patience for some of the game's worse challenges. With better levels, I actually think this would be an incredible hidden gem.
Windlands
Impulsion got me in the mood for first-person speedrunny-platforming, so I tried out this -- a first-person speedrunny-grappling hook game. I did not like it. The character was VERY momentum-based, to the point where learning to move felt very clumsy. It seems like the game that could be amazing if I spent the time to get good at it, but I ended up moving on from it.
Verlet Swing
The hankering for a grappling hook game continued, so I tried out this, and I can say that I like it a lot more than Windlands. Movement feels very good in the game, and the levels feel very well-designed.
EDIT: I played so many games this week I legitimately forgot one of my biggest timesinks:
Tomb Raider (2013)
I'm about to 100% the game. I wouldn't normally, but quarantine gave me that kind of time. The reboot is excellent and does a good job of capturing how the original games felt while updating things to match more current sensibilities (as much as I love them, the originals are almost unplayably clunky by modern standards). The only thing I wish for is an option or a mod that reduces camera bobbing. This is my third attempt to play it since release, and the only time I've made it more than an hour in. Both other times I had to stop due to motion sickness, and this time I was able to rough it out and get used to it, but every so often I can feel the nausea start to work its way in and I have to stop playing. A more stable camera would do SO much to make things more comfortable. I hope the sequels are better about this.
I played through Tomb Raider 2013 twice very early in quarantine (it was actually a free download for a bit). I quite enjoyed the game—there was a ton of fun stuff to do, and only some of it felt like errands (the different sections all had you collecting different things; some were fun, some were tedious).
I'd never played a Tomb Raider game prior so I can't really speak to whether or not it's "true to" the franchise or reinvents things or whatever. I really enjoyed attempting to be stealthy and wish the game didn't at times force you to have big direct battles.
I played the game on my Mac and was sad to find that my MBP isn't up to the task of running the sequels.
Oh hey, PCGW has a mod that can address the camera sway.
Well, that's egg on my face! I promise I did search for one -- apparently not very well from the looks of it though!
Thanks for this. It's going to make my final few hours with the game much more bearable.
EDIT: I might have spoke too soon. Ran the mod through VirusTotal before installing it and it looks rather suspect.
For what it's worth the download from sicklebrick itself also brings up a malicious site warning. So yeah, might want to steer clear of that one.
See: https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?url=http:%2F%2Fsicklebrick.com%2Fwp-downloads%2Fsicklebrick.com_yamatai_patch_release_4.rar
Yeah. And honestly, even before scanning it, my enthusiasm for it waned when I read the following in its description:
Ys VIII
Since I spent the past week away from my PC, I picked up this game shortly before leaving while it was on sale on the Nintendo eShop. I had been recommended Ys in the past, being told that the soundtrack is amazing and gameplay addicting.
I'm about 7 hours into it and have been pleasantly surprised. The initial hour or two took me having to override my anime trope meter, which often prevents me from playing mechanically sound games because the story or the characters are overly simplistic and filled with fan service. While this game does have those elements in it, the gameplay has hooked me early on that I have been able to maintain momentum in playing.
To those who haven't played Ys, it is essentially an ARPG like Kingdom Hearts. You press a button to attack and additional special moves you can use as you acquire and level those up. There is a timing element with blocking, attacking, and dodging. Your party consists of three different players who each have a specialty in dealing with different enemies, a-la rock-paper-scissors. You swap out to the character that has the type advantage over the monster you are currently fighting.
Additionally, there is a progression in building a village where you gain more advancement in things like crafting and available side quests by exploring the map. As you get more people, previously locked areas of the game open up so you can keep exploring already passed through areas. Areas contain monsters, fishing, crafting materials, and chests, so you are always doing something when you enter an area. It seems like you are always acquiring crafting materials in whatever you are doing.
All of this to a really good soundtrack.
So the gameplay loop has me hooked and ready to pick up at any time. The game is also available on Steam and PS4 so if the enhancements that come with those consoles are appealing to you, you can find it there.
Going back and trying to beat Darkest Dungeon again. For some reason, this is one of the strategy games I keep coming back to and I've just never beaten it. I'm looking forward to the sequel: I hope they make the late game more approachable and easy to manage.
Playing shapez.io with my son in the web version, too. It's great and I paid for the full version, it's just easier to play with him on the web/Chromebook. If you like Factorio, I'd recommend taking a look.
I recently picked up Colony Survival. It was fun, but I've reached the point where I'm not sure if it'll hold my interest for much longer. It's been rare that I'll buy a game at full price, and this was one of them. After playing it, it seems decent enough but probably I could've waited until the next sale.