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

Well, I'm I've done about 200 escape attempts in Hades and got to the credits on attempt 186. As I've been playing I've been reacquainted with why I stopped gaming to begin with. Besides the fact that games are addictive to me, there's the additional fact that other people in the house like to critique me while I am playing. It led to me having a great run going then choking as I was given tips, told what boons to choose, or how I could have done something better. I don't care that it took me so long get to the credits, I was super freaking happy to do so. Not only was I super happy to do so, I didn't want anyone fucking talking as I I rolled down the river listening to the music and wondering what was going to happen next. I haven't finished out the story lines and don't know if I will since there's always someone who's keen to tell me what happens next. If you are someone who likes to critique other's game play - KNOW YOUR AUDIENCE.

Regardless of all that, I LOVED THE GAME and would recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it yet. Supergiant Games managed to make a game that fits multiple play styles without catering to one over the other. For me I liked the story, figuring out what to do, and exploring builds. My husband put himself on godmode and enjoyed just winning. My youngest son wants to beat the hardest bits in the best times. This game catered to each of us.

Having heard that I should check out other Supergiant Games titles, I just bought Pyre since the summer sale on Steam is still going. I have no idea what to expect. It's an RPG, and though I have grown bored with RPGs, I thought I would give it a go since it says it's "story rich" and the price fits my wallet.

The other game I bought since it finally went on sale is Ori and the Will of the Wisps which I am looking forward to since I liked the original so much.

Divinity: Original Sin 2

I've been playing this with two of my friends and it's been great. We're about 40 hours in (playtime), but only about ~18 hours into the story (lots of reloading). It's our first game like this, so it has been steep a learning curve for us all, although we have played other RPGs before (ie D1/2/3, TL1/2, Path of Exile, etc). although those are ARPGs, we know how to build characters is all I'm saying. Overall I'm really enjoying it. I'm playing as a "druid", although this game doesn't really feel like it has any official builds as you can go any direction at any point. It's a lot of fun to summon my incarnate, buff him to high hell, and see him shred through enemies.

One gripe about it though, that seems to be shared across a lot of reviews I've read before playing, is that they love ground status effects. I can't tell you how many of our battles have ended in most of the map just being lit up in flames. I'll probably play through it at least once more after we finish, maybe with them, maybe not. I want to try some other builds to see how it changes things up

I'm glad I am playing it with them so I can just focus on my character and my character alone. I think having to care about all four characters at once would be too overwhelming, but that also leads to me wanting to play through it more than once as previously stated. Also, I didn't know "origin" characters (as they call them) have more quests, story, and lore behind them when I was creating a character, so I feel I missed out on that. Will definitely be trying out a team of all origin characters next playthrough.

Baldur's Gate

Tried playing this one with some of the same friends. By that point they were use to how free form DOS2 was and didn't like the limitations this game has in multiplayer. I haven't played this before, but I've been getting more into DnD lately and really want to. We'll see how it goes.

Pillars of Eternity

Decided to play this one when no friends are around to play the others, and man. This game has a lot going on. Still only a few hours into it, but I'm enjoying it so far. Not much to say other than I'm definitely not use to the RTwP gameplay. I know it's based of Baldur's Gates style, but like I said, we didn't even really get into it so it's my first time coming across this style. Lots of fun so far, but just not too deep into it yet.

Games in my backlog I have queued up to play when I finish some of these others:
Loop Hero
Planescape: Torment
PoE 2
BG 2
Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Tyranny
Icewind Dale
Shadowrun Series
many more

As you can see, a lot of these are "CRPGs" as they call them. Playing DOS2 really helped me learn how to like these kind of games. It's a genre I've always wanted to play, but every time I tried them I got overwhelmed with everything going on I would just stop. But since DOS2, it helped me realize how to play these games and get more invested into the world and characters. So I picked up a bunch during this summer sale and I'm dedicating some of my free time to play through them. Excited to see them all through!

I played some Cruelty Squad. Something I learned really quickly was that death is expensive. In my first mission, I busted in the front door, shot a couple guys, and got mowed down by their friends. Barely got started and died immediately. Then I noticed that my respawn fee is $500. I didn't have any money, so my balance is in the negative.

Alright, back into it, round 2. I slink around. I don't go in through the front door. I manage to get a couple kills that drop organs. Yes, organs. Kidneys, livers, intestines, etc. And then I die. My balance is -$1000.

This game has a stock market. One of the tabs in it is "parts". This is where I can sell those organs I found. Neat! After an even slower and even more cautious run, I finish the first level. I'm paid $1000 for my troubles. Considering the cost of implants and upgrades, this is a pittance. For $1000, I can't buy anything worthwhile. All the cool stuff, higher jump, grapple, armor piercing ammo, is way too expensive for this. I'm going to have to sell these organs if I ever want to get cooler stuff.

On the second mission, I am a ghoul. I'm not making money completing missions. I'm making money harvesting and selling parts. I don't know of a more reliable way to get to parts than kicking corpses, so I'm football kicking these dead motherfuckers all over the place. When I kick a corpse over a wall, I curse. Fuck, there goes my parts! Civilians got parts too, so they're not special. I'm going to get their parts. What passes for dogs in this game have parts. Give me those parts!

I've walked into a residential neighborhood, killed a lot of people, and walked out with a sack full of intestines, livers, pancreases, brains, and kidneys. I got paid $2000 for three of those kills, but I made four times as much selling parts. And look at these jump boosters I just put in my legs! I can leap right over fences now! Makes it easier to get to those hard to reach parts.

Undertale - I'm half a decade late on this one, but I'm glad to have finally gotten around to it. I was sucked in because of some music appearing in my recommendations; I liked the tunes enough to want to try out the game and experience them in their context. Not disappointed at all; what a journey!

Guilty Gear Strive - I'm a big fan of fighting games in general, and Guilty Gear has been my favourite franchise in the genre for a long time. Despite the mixed reception among veterans, I personally am really loving this newest entry. The simpler combo routes and various accessibility features (like the dash button) have really helped remove a few layers of memorization and muscle memory-building previously needed to fight at a certain level of effectiveness. I'm not a huge fan of having to park in training mode for hours to drill execution things, so I'm really glad for this.

I have been primarily focused on two games:

1. Monster Train: I'm about ready to give this game up I think... I say after playing three rounds when I first started this comment and wrote "Monster Train". I'm just stuck at Covenant 13 and have been for weeks now. I know I am doing this to myself because I am playing 100% randomly where I haven't been selecting my clans to start out with, but really this game can be some straight BS. For a period of time, I was Alt+F4'ing out as soon as I realized I would lose a battle so that I could re-start with a new config but I got tired of that real quick. I think the worst covenant modification that is afflicting me is the emberdrain when I place a unit below my Pyre room. I understand the game wants to ramp up the challenges but I actively avoid placing any unit on that floor unless I have to. The additional challenges are also pretty grating as I feel if I don't do them to get additional units, I will be left with no good clan-based unit at the end of the game. This is just frustrating and making me want to uninstall the game to keep it out of my mind space as a timekiller when I should be working.

2. RimWorld: I have no idea what provoked me to pick this up again but damn if this isn't an addictive game. The stories that emerge out of gameplay are amazing and funny. My partner asked why I was in such a bad mood yesterday and the only response I could find was, "A herd of manhunting cats wiped out my colony." So Colony 1 is gone. But Colony 2 is thriving. Colony 1's days were numbered anyways since I went with a mega-wood-structure that was just a lightning strike away from total collapse. I still haven't fiddled around with building caravans and travelling to other settlements, all my focus has been on is increasing my colony productivity. I recognize though that at some point I am going to have to add more colonists because projects can be slow with my relatively unskilled workers. However, Colony 2 is bursting with food and renewable energy. As long as they all stay alive, I should be able to make it to the next stage in the game.

I tried using many so called casual games to teach my girlfriend how to play, with little success. This week I showed her Diablo 3. She chose to play with a female wizard. Lots of fun was had at her expense, but the experiment was a total success. Diablo has such an universal appeal. Your character starts very simple with just two skills and gets progressively complex from there. That progression is great for beginners, it's a gentle curve. It helps that you don't have to control the camera on Diablo, in my experience that's the hardest part for her. I have to manage her inventory and skills though, I'm just not that patient to wait for her to navigate the menus. We played for about 2 hours. The next day she was the one who asked to play. She's doing very well for someone that literally never touched a gamepad before me. I'm proud of her.

Finished Wolfenstein Old Blood and it honestly didn't find it to be as good as New Order. It felt shorter and the Nazi zombie angle is a little tired for me. There's enough nazi occultism tropes to go around to not have to resort to the undead.

Wolfenstein II is up next.

I finally went and bought Nier Replicant after finding it at a decent price. NieR Automata is one of, if not my favorite game of all time and I’ve heard many people who have played both games say that Replicant is better so I’ve been hyped to play it, but after playing it for about 20 hours or so, I’m kinda disappointed in the plot and characters so far. The protagonist, his sister, and the book all seem kinda generic, and the plot seems cool but I don’t see why some people say it’s better than Automata, that seemed to be more interesting to me. I actually like the gameplay in Replicant more than Automata though, so it has that going for it so far.

Overall it seems pretty good but no where near as good as Automata.

Dragon Quest 11

I was on the fence about this one because I've had awesome experiences with DQ (9 was one of the best games I've ever played) and terrible (I got the 7 remake and it was so boring, I quit halfway through). 11 is good so far: not quite as good as I remember 9 being, but the story keeps moving along nicely, the strategy is interesting and the JRPG "obligatory tropes" are certainly there but not in an overly grating way. It's been a delight so far and I'm glad I got it.

Griftlands

Just finished the story mode for the 3 main characters on this one. The writing/dialog/story for all three characters was phenomenal. Especially the last character. The card game / Spire-clone was good enough not to take away anything from the story, but it didn't really motivate me to keep playing after the story modes were finished... Which is probably good, really, because Spire was a borderline addiction: Griftlands was a nice, memorable experience that I would recommend to any Spire/Roguelite fan.

I hit 35 hours in Pathfinder: Kingmaker this weekend, and decided to start over. I'd been using several cheats (from the Bag Of Tricks mod on the Nexus) while I figured out how to play the game (I have very little tabletop experience, and as I understand things the game has a very faithful adaptation of the mechanics) and I finally feel up to playing it for real.

I'm enjoying it, even through the lens of cheats. Some things I've observed:

• Wizards (and other prepared spell friends) are not nearly as OP as everyone likes to claim. This is mostly due to the quantity of combat encounters. My wizard ran out of spells quickly if I used them as a pure spellcaster. I honestly found the cantrips to be very useful though, as one of the "early" game quest lines involves trolls. The Wizard spellbook contains an acid cantrip which was my primary way of finishing off trolls. Don't mock me for forgetting I had torches and instead tediously acid splashing one troll after another :)
  • The Grease spell is, in Turn Based mode, literally unstoppable. I now understand its reputation. Slightly less useful in Real Time With Pause though, as my melee members tend to run straight into it and get themselves slipped up.
  • Being honest, I think having more encounters is a decent-to-okay way to balance out Wizards and friends. They have a limit mechanic built in, so it's only reasonable that it gets used. If I had to guess at why they are so overpowered during pen and paper play, I'd think that combat gets tedious quickly when you're manually keeping track of things (glancing at my message log during combat, and oh boy that's a lot of arithmetic). The GM therefore does fewer encounters, giving a buff to the spellcasters as they don't need to worry about depleting spell slots.
• Now that I'm restarting, I'm trying to put a bit more effort into planning out my characters. This is difficult to do inside the game. As far as I can tell, they don't expose all the lists of feats, spells, etc. within the game. My planning process is therefore entirely outside the game, which I think is a missed opportunity. I'd really like if they had a character planner / build designer within the game, it would make things so smooth.
  • Creating / leveling up characters is a ton of fun though. There are so many possibilities for growth, and as a noob to the ruleset, I'm constantly finding new paths to a decent build.
• Kingdom management was kind of tedious. That said, this is one of the things I was cheating on: I had a mod that reduced the amount of time that events require for completion. The end result of this is that I had fully explored the first region and was clicking "Skip Day" in the management interface to get to more events. Lesson learned - the time requirement is there for a reason, and this particular cheat lessened the game's experience. I'm looking forward to needing to balance out time for exploration and time for events. Regardless of if Owlcat nailed the balance there, it should be a lot more interesting with the need to consider time.
• Kingdom building part 2. I don't like that you can only have 1 settlement per region. A brief overview of what's there and how I would fix it:
  • Currently, there is a mobile-game-tier "city builder" where you get squares to place buildings. Different buildings have different contribution to your Kingdom Stats (which you need to grow). There are adjacency bonuses, etc., between different buildings that increase the stats they give you.
  • As a settlement ranks up (Village -> Town -> City) the settlement gains more building slots (10 -> 20 -> 30). This growth is limited in that you need 3 Villages per Town, and 3 Towns per City. According to the internet you end up with a max of 2 Cities at the end of the game.
  • This is a very tedious and not-believable system. I would far prefer it if you could have many settlements in a region with a drastically reduced number of buildings per settlement. Let a Village support 1 building, a Town support 2-3, and a City support 5 or so. Adjust the number of Villages per Town, and of Towns per City, and you'll get a very similar Kingdom Stat mechanic in a much more believable way. You can also get rid of the grid-style city building stuff, which would honestly be an improvement.

Overall, I'm very positive on the game. It's a slow burn, but in a good way. Otherwise I wouldn't be restarting after 35 hours.

Cyberpunk 2077 and watch dogs 2 on Google stadia, and final fantasy 14. Cyberpunk is still buggy and I’ve had my fair share of npc nonsense, but the story and the writing is top notch. That cdpr story writing is still present and it’s just awesome how everything has tied together in the short amount of time that I’ve played. Does it deserve some, if not all of the hate it gets? Yeah probably, but it’s still a really good game. Watch dogs 2 is a pretty good game, even with the whole hacker edgelord motif, it’s entertaining at the very least and the graphics are absolutely beautiful. Final fantasy 14 is probably one of the best mmos and best final fantasy games ever created and I’ve only scratched the surface after beating the ARR story.

Played a few.

Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 (Switch) - Pretty good so far. I have finished the THPS2 tour 100% but hit a roadblock with the first game. The objectives are a lot harder in THPS1 and the level design isn't all that great. I also have no nostalgia for the first game, since the first THPS game I played was 2. I forgot what an amazing soundtrack THPS2 had.

Banjo Kazooie (XCloud) - Never played BK before, so I decided to fire this up. I completed Mumbo's Mountain 100% and nearly all of Treasure Trove Cove. This is going to be a very unpopular opinion. I don't know if it's an issue with Banjo Kazooie in general, the Xbox Live port of the game or how the game controls via cloud gaming, but this game's controls suck and it feels like Banjo's moveset is seriously limited. Gruntilda's Lair is also one of the most confusing hubworlds I've seen. I fail to understand why this game achieved critical acclaim. Was it just the British humour and the fourth-wall breaking?

Final Fantasy XIV (PC) - Decided to get back into it after some big WoW streamers started streaming the game. Got my DRG to level 47. Haven't managed to play it much due to PC issues. I worry it's going to overheat because my graphics card and processor seem to be hitting some very high temps while I play it (CPU peaked at 78 celsius and GPU peaked around 83.) I've had this rig since 2015 and it's pretty outdated at this point. I ordered it from a German PC manufacturer that seems to be defunct now and the build quality of what I received was quite poor, regardless of how cheap it was (around 650€.) The motherboard is misaligned with the back plate meaning it's hard to connect cables in, the graphics card seems like it was almost wedged into the PCI-E slot and won't come out, and the case itself is difficult to clean.

I think a new PC will be in order soon, but I'm not looking forward to scrapping my current one.

Lumines Remastered (Switch) - I'm conflicted about this game. If there was an option to veto songs from the game's main Challenge Mode, I'd rate it much higher. Shake Ya Body has to be the most downright annoying song ever put into a video game and having to listen to it for almost four full minutes as the fifth song in a Challenge Mode run is a real downer.

I started playing Littlewood. I've been sitting on it for a bit, and wanted to see how it goes. It's a great little game. It's sort of like Stardew Valley, except you're building the entire town. You get blueprints, place houses and furniture, farm crops, and explore various areas to get new items, and it looks like there are a lot of areas (I only have the first two so far). Unlike Stardew, time only progresses as you do certain options, and you can save at any time, not just when you go to bed, so it's an experience you can simply quit and come back to at any time.

I'm still slowly chipping away at TES games. Skyrim's been the one I play most of the time, but I'm still doing Morrowind (OpenMW) and Oblivion. I keep finding new things to do in Skyrim, and don't plan on finishing doing any major storylines until I'm at a much higher level (just hit 23).

minecraft: Starting programming an opencomputers robot with lua that will build things for me. It's really exciting.