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

Skyrim is monopolizing my free time these days. I imagine it's quite different when you've bought the vanilla game when it first came out vs when you've bought a special release later (mine was the Legendary Edition, with the three DLCs), but I had a hard time tracking the main story until I read about the different headers for the quests. I'm not trying to rush, but an issue I have with open-world games is a lack of focus, and I stumbled into a couple of Dragonborn quest lines that I simply cannot even begin to work on because I'm too weak.

The main reason I'm finally doing it is a streamer I watch was arguing with his chat about what made Skyrim good enough that people are still playing it ten years later. His point is that it's simply a well-made game with an interesting world, and I've definitely found that to be the case. I find myself taking side quests on the way to story locations simply because they seem interesting or entertaining.

Black Mesa.

I think that after more than two decades, maybe Half Life is starting to show its age in a significant way. I've been a fan of Half Life for more than half my own life, but this new coat of paint they've put on it, while really nice, is also a pretty glaring anachronism.

The level design, the gameplay loops, and the shooting mechanics felt older this time through than they ever had before.

I'm a fan of Street Fighter V's latest season; I hadn't played in a long while, so I came back to the game learning a new (for me) character: Sakura. While it's frustrating at times to go through the old annoyances of not knowing how to answer specific situations with a new toolset, the process of discovery is itself really fun! This game is saddled with half a decade's worth of DLC, but I think I can easily recommend the Championship Edition when it's on sale ~$22 would get you the game and all the DLC characters and most of the costumes since launch; you just wouldn't get the latest season's characters, is all. That's still 40ish characters; a pretty huge roster, imo.

I mentioned elsewhere that I was playing the new Nier Replicant remake. I don't have much to say about it yet, honestly, but that's mostly just because I've only finished the first 'half' of the game so far. It's nice that Western players are finally getting to play the 'definitive' version of the game with Nier as a brother instead of a father. Although there aren't supposed to be many differences between Replicant and Gestalt, I can see how it's going to make some of the more emotional themes of the story hit harder later on. Also, when the character grows up it's a much better transition; you go from an innocent-looking little boy to a fierce-looking teenager; it's a lot better than having a man just suddenly decide to change their fashion sense for no apparent reason.

As for the differences between the remake and the original, the visuals don't look too dramatically different. The character models got the most revamping, but instead of being a simple increase in poly count it seems like they've ever-so-slightly tweaked the designs; cheeks seem a little more full, and the characters look more plump. I'm rather torn about the new music; there are some points where they've made some notable improvements that make the overall package better, but there are also some changes that I think were completely unnecessary; for one song, I thought that by adding additional backing they ruined the beauty of the original's quiet simplicity. But more than anything, I'm kind of upset that it's actually too similar to the original; if they were going to make a new soundtrack, I would rather have some more drastic changes.

The only other thing I really have to say about it is that the first 'half' of the game is far slower than I remembered it - though to be fair, that's probably mostly because I tried to finish all of the unnecessary sidequests this time.

I started doing some terraforming and rearranging of buildings on Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This is my second island, started about five weeks ago. There was no nature day event this year, so I'm not sure how (if?) I'll be able to get the hedge DIY. Maybe the same way I can get other DIYs?

Well, I finally burned out on Slay the Spire just in time for the new Binding of Isaac: Rebirth DLC, Repentance. I didn't play much of Afterbirth+ due to difficult-to-pin-down balance issues. It's hard to have fun when most of the game becomes dodging the same enemy patterns for 40 minutes, only to die to attrition.

Repentance seems to have entirely fixed that. The item pools feel a lot more balanced, they're not just an endless supply of useless novelties and health upgrades, angel deals don't feel like a waste of a waste of opportunity anymore, and enemies kill you more quickly. I haven't gotten too deep into the actual new content, but I haven't stayed spoiler-free either. I'm excited to experience it for myself.

I'm going through remaining side quests in Kingdom Come: Deliverance , having finished the main story line about a week ago. My expectations were relatively low regarding (non-DLC) side quests, but I was very pleasantly surprised (bordering on "blown away") by one of the side quests (titled "The Madonna of Sasau"). I'll try not to spoil much about this, but, speaking generally, it was relatively lengthy, with many pre-captured cutscenes, some several minutes in length. The final sequence of cutscenes (linked by several multi-choices) actually took maybe 30 minutes -- but not in a bad way! The quest had a story arc of its own, and more deeply explored religious themes (than the main game), touching on the tension between belief and unbelief, religious life and secular life, and factions thereof. The in-game choices available seem to cover the spectrum between believer and unbeliever, so you can tailor your character to respond and react to the events and NPCs according to your particular inclinations and beliefs as a player (or the opposite, if you want). The end of the overall quest was dramatic and moving. Overall, I enjoyed it. The depth and quality of this quest only strengthens my already-high opinion of this game.

I more or less stopped playing Everspace . I guess I got bored of the game loop, and the pseudo storyline elements weren't interesting enough to me. There's supposed to be an Everspace 2 coming out, but I don't think I'll get it, based on my experience with ES1.

I'm trying to take full advantage of my Game Pass membership by playing random games. I'm fully engrossed in Monster Train right now. For someone who doesn't really play card games, this one just has me hooked. I crave runs where I get a stack/flow that is really flowing between rounds. I haven't really started working my way up the covenants yet, instead, I'm focused on how the different classes interact with each other. Overall, I would suggest people play Monster Train at least once.

I've gotten really into Free Enterprise, a mod for the old SNES Final Fantasy 4 that turns it into a randomized open-world game. Random characters, random items in different chests, and you have to figure out ways to use what you get to beat the game as quickly as possible - completing objectives until you're awarded the crystal, a key item that lets you fight the final boss.

It's a total labor of love with a lot of cute touches - the final boss turns into it's "true form" when you use the crystal, which they've changed to be one of 500 different sprites from other games, community members, etc.

There's an ongoing tournament for it where they have casters cover races live on twitch, and the discord community for it is super welcoming and helpful. Hoping to compete in the next tournament in the fall.

I've been playing "Bro Force" this last couple of weeks and it's absolutely brilliant!

I’m committing more time to Rivals Of Aether. The smash clone in pixel form. I actually enjoy it the more I dig into it. The controls are pretty tight and responsive. Probably feels most similar to Smash Bros Melee. The characters are unique and are not gimmicky in my opinion.

Of course it’s not smash but it’s a great game for what it’s bringing. The online play is pretty good too.

Well, a little while ago, a friend recommended that I play the Portal series, and I had a great time with that, since I really enjoyed the story and style, my friend recommended that I continue into Black Mesa and Half-Life 2.

I've only played Black Mesa for a few hours, so this is still subject to change, but I'm having a good time with it. It's definitely darker and scarier than Portal, but I'm still enjoying it. I've also noticed that it's more difficult than most games I've played, where you can't just blast your way through every area. It reminds me of Diablo 2.

I've also played a fair amount of D2. I've been trying to get my Zealot through Hell, but it's very very challenging. The monsters are just damage dealing tanks, so it's a slog to get through some areas, especially when there are physical immunes. If I can finish with my Zealot, it'll only be the second time I've beaten the game in my, maybe 10 years, of playing it. I think D2 is a masterpiece. It's hard to point out places where the game is bad (although it might just be rose-colored glasses in my case). The classes are interesting, the story is fun, and beating the game feels like a real accomplishment. Especially when the remaster comes out, I'd recommend y'all play it.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.
~Archwizard

WoW: Shadowlands. Hadn't played it in almost a week because I've been busy with work and too tired out to even play computer games, let alone get on with all the stuff I actually need to do.

I'm nearly at the point of quitting because I just find progression so frustrating and the community incredibly toxic. Blizzard won't do anything to police player behaviour, so it really is a cesspit.

Right now my only real reason to play is Mythic+ and I rolled a mage alt specifically to do that because mages are hot shit and are a meta class right now. Raiding is not very rewarding and the guild I'm in had been quite hostile towards me on the first and only time I raided with them. They hadn't invited me into another raid group since. I also don't like PvP and how elitist the community surrounding it is. Battlegrounds are also a no-go because of the 15+ minute queue times. They're practically dead here on the European servers.

Mage is currently 199 ilvl.

So I log in and hope to pug a key between +8 or +10 so I can start getting that Keystone Challenger ball rolling...

After about 30 rejections, I join a +11 Sanguine Depths group. We make it to first boss with plenty of time and we kill it with me topping the meters against more geared players, pumping around 3.4k on the boss and 12k on trash pulls. I turn to party chat realising I had missed messages and find that two players had been flaming me during the first boss fight, to the point of throwing homophobic and ableist slurs at me. All because I didn't pop Time Warp.

Tank and healer leave because they don't want to play with a "boosted r****d" - as they called me.

The duo's behaviour towards me was so abhorrent that I actually tracked down their guild officer from a guild ad posted online, added him on Discord and showed him the logs. Kinda hoping for a /gkick there. But I also think the guy couldn't give two craps about how his guild members behave.

Second group is a +7 HoA. We make it near the second boss and tank disconnects. After 10 minutes he's not back, the run is clearly over.

Third group after another dozen rejections is a +9 HoA and we just barely time the key with 5 seconds left on the clock. It's frankly a miracle that we even timed it because the group had no idea what they were doing, which is really bad for a mid level key. The shaman healer is spamming Healing Wave even though the slow/efficient heal doesn't do anywhere near enough output to keep people alive in M+, and so people drop like flies. The DPS don't aim boss aoe on trash during second boss so we nearly wipe on that encounter, the tank doesn't know how to kite adds when Loyal Beasts is up and gets 2-shotted, and on the penultimate miniboss the group is divided between clearing adds and trying to burst the miniboss down before he leeches and heals up to full - which goes about as well as expected.

Oh, did I forget to mention that half our group didn't block beams on the final boss and we almost wiped on that?

And they still have the cheek to flame me post-run like they have a gigantic superiority complex.

I recently got another full time job after being made redundant and so I haven't had time for the game. And it's this hiatus that made me realise that it's actually refreshing to not have abuse thrown at you over a god damn game.

FutureGrind

Someone recommended this to me a while back (I think it was @Deimos, but if not, sorry for the unnecessary ping!), and I just got around to playing it now.

The game involves a linear set of colored rails that you ride with a sort of futuristic bicycle at a constant speed. Each wheel of the bike has a different color, and you can only land on rails with the wheel that matches that rail color, so the game is about jumping and spinning quickly to not die.

When I first started playing, I liked what the game COULD be but didn’t enjoy playing it too much because I was BAD at it. Like, real bad. The game doesn’t really have a learning curve so much as it has an execution curve, and my execution was not up to minimum standards. I kept with it though, and I was able to beat the game! My skills developed to the point that I would now say they are “passable”.

The reason I stuck with the game was the fact that it is genuinely pretty satisfying to get through a track. The game’s enjoyment comes from developing mastery, so it’s all about trying and failing over and over again until you finally execute things perfectly and nail what you were going for. That kept me engaged, despite the fact that I was undeniably and repeated failing for the most part.

Also the game is well-polished and does enough to tweak the formula to not get stale. There are different bikes that get introduced, all with different properties, that change how you have to play. My favorite is a bike with one giant wheel and one tiny one, as it brings a fun, lopsided balance to the feel of the game. Another has one wheel that can’t touch anything, and its main wheel changes colors after each rail.

All told, I thoroughly enjoyed the game, though it will probably be too short for anyone who can execute better than I can. It took me a little over 3 hours to beat the main story (I’m now in the harder post-game content). Also, if anyone is interested in the game, there’s a chance you already own it but might not know it. It was included in the massive itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality that came out last year, so if you were one of the people who supported that, then it’s already yours!

rocket league rumble mode. so silly. Match takes maybe 10 minutes so its low commitment. drive a car around to bonk a ball into a goal. vrmmmmm, jump! boost! smash demolition goooooooaall!!! explosion

I have surprised myself by rather enjoying gun-porn-looter-shooter Tom Clancy's The Division 2. The story is absolute nonsense, the characters flat and boring, the constant reminders to spend more money frustrating - but the settings are pretty fun (just did a level which was set in a museum of American history which involved shootouts in the Wild West and Vietnam), the gun stuff is... well, it's less tiring than Borderlands 3 but the real killer for me is online co-op. I love co-op games and they're pretty rare. My friend who I play with generally only has a few hours a week to spare for gaming so the easy drop-in-and-start-shooting factor is important. As is the fact we don't have to spend too long on inventory management and other associated dicking about.

For £25 it's going to give me quite a lot of hours of fun.

I've been playing The Division 2 with my friends. At level 21 our major complaint is that the game is too easy up until now. Even bosses are quickly defeated and there's not an epic feeling of accomplishment. After level 30 we're supposed to be able to choose mission difficulty so maybe it gets better.

Other than that it's a pretty cool shooter.

I may be a little bit behind the times, but I just started Pokemon Shield this weekend. Mostly running around the Wild Area doing the dynamax wells. I can see how it might get repetitive eventually, but for now it's still hilarious battling with these huge pokemon.

Going through the Mega Man X games again in order to immersive myself for my MMZ/MMZX replay, currently at X5. So far I've been finding these games way harder than I remember them being, I kinda feel like an old guy now since I used to be much better at them.

On the side I'm also playing Virtue's Last Reward which is really interesting.