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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.
I play this stupid game called Rocket League. It's cars that can jump and they have rocket boosters - to play soccer. It's free. It's got some ranking so you measure yourself against the global pool. And there are these alternate modes like Ice Hockey and Basketball. Very silly. I like games like Mario Kart and Twisted Metal and this fits in their realm. Stupid, fun and low commitment. Love it.
Great writeup. I felt almost the exact same way about the game. Solid basics and overall a good game, but the gap between what it is and what it could have been is sizable.
I just picked up The Great Ace Attorney Chronicles. It's one of the Ace Attorney/Phoenix Wright games; the latest one to be exact. I've gotten past the first case and just started the second (of five cases). Picked it up for Steam instead of the Switch.
I'm enjoying the old-timeyness of it (since it takes places late 1800s). But it's a bit slower to start than how I remember other PW games to be. Part of it might be because it takes place 100yrs before, there's a lot more explanation about "new" tech like photography and medical knowledge and such. Already, I've often found myself mashing the next/continue key because I'm like, "Yes, I know what that is commmmmeee on."
The dialog can be that way, too. Because the main character here, Ryunosuke Naruhodo (the ancestor of PW, or Ryuichi Naruhodo in Japanese), isn't really a lawyer to begin with. So there's additional dialog where court and investigative concepts have to be explained more than usual.
But since I love the PW series (need AAI2 please), it's worth it. Really interested to learn more about the "history" of the AA world, even though it takes places 100+ years before the rest of the series.
I've been playing this too! I introduced my non-gamer fiancee to the Ace Attorney series a while back and it really grew on her. I had already played them all up to that point but it was fun reliving them with her, and then when Spirit of Justice came out we got to experience it fresh together. We've done all of them except for Investigations and the Layton crossover (which I own, but she didn't like so we dropped).
I had the same issue with you in the first case, although now I'm early in case 3 and I think it's abated a little bit. The new gimmicks (along the lines of psyche locks, mood matrix, etc) are pretty fun too, they might be my favourite of the series. And I like the characters too. So far it's my favourite AA game among the ones that don't star Phoenix.
I've been playing pokemon unite, the tencent pokemon moba... and it's actually kinda good?
After playing all of the new Wolfenstein games I finally reached Youngblood. Played for two hours and uninstalled it. Didn't like having to save my money to get upgrades that don't really change gameplay at all and I've never been a fan of skins, which seem extra pointless in a first person shooter where I don't see my body...
After three Wolfenstein games in a row I might just be tired of the same game rehashed. So might try this again later.
Youngblood is a bit rough. I got through all of it and ultimately enjoyed the game, but I feel like they didn't do enough with the setting. It's 80's Paris! Even in an alternate timeline it should be more fun. I feel like the only 80's in the game was the collectibles.
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
I’ve had my eye on this for a while, so I was quite happy when it showed up in this month’s Humble Choice. It feels like a modern off-brand version of Castlevania: Symphony of the Night in the best way possible.
I’m a couple of hours in and it’s hitting all the right notes for me. I’m excited to keep filling in the map, finding secrets and abilities, and grinding enemies to overlevel myself because I’m genuinely terrible with the combat and need to rely on stat differences working in my favor to make it through.
I loved Bloodstained. That said, it has some pretty vicious difficulty spikes, especially when it comes to bosses. And the last quarter of the game is just long slogs through mostly featureless hallways. I think they're intended to force you to go looking for secrets and side content, because they were really painful to get through before I was too powerful for them.
Yeah, I had to grind the tutorial area for a while before I could even take on the first boss. I, like you, think that’s somewhat intended though. The shard system outright encourages extensive grinding, I think because the game has a lot of backtracking and that’s a way of making fighting the same enemies in the same areas more rewarding.
I've been meaning to get around to Bloodstained for a while too (it was even on Game Pass for a while and I didn't take advantage of that).
Another good one recently is Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth. It's not particularly long or difficult, but it's really well-done.
I loved Deedlit.
Get on it! It was one of the most fulfilling games I’d played in a long time, and it’s got gameplay addicting enough to make you want to 100% it - which is a very long journey.
I just finished Outer Wilds. It is now definitely somewhere very high on the list of my favorite games.
I had seen it mentioned positively from time to time these past few years, but I never really happened to look it up. Now when there were news again, I got interested and thought "space exploring with nice visual theme? sounds fun" and then started playing. Honestly I was probably sold at the moment I actually saw the game's logo on Steam. And am I happy I managed to survive until now without reading any more (not even Steam's description) about it!
It was quite a ride. Now excuse me, I'll be playing the soundtrack on loop for the next eternity.
Anyway, if you haven't played it, and are interested in space exploring and puzzles and roasting marshmallows on a campfire, just go and play it.
This week I tried out Detonation Racing. It's a racing game that appears to have been designed by and aimed at 12 year old boys. Not that there's anything wrong with that. The premise is that you're racing on a track rigged with explosives. Depending on the type of race, you may have the ability to set off the explosives at certain times, as do your opponents, or they all may be rigged to go off automatically as you pass them. The goal is to fight your way to the front of the pack and win the race without getting blown up. The premise is silly, but fun. The graphics are mediocre, and the non-racing parts of the game a bit annoying. It also suffers from the problem a few of the other racing games I've played suffer from, which is that there are only 3 or 4 tracks, so it gets pretty repetitive pretty quickly. They have some interesting race modes to spice it up a little, like an elimination race where the person in last place is eliminated from the race every 30 seconds. So the goal is to just never be last until you're the last one left. But it could use a few more tracks and some better graphics in my opinion.
I thought you were just making a jest at the whole "explosions" thing, but even beyond that, wow, you were right. In particular, the writing feels like it's trying way, way too hard to be funny.
Anywho, it's worth mentioning that if you enjoyed the premise of this game, you'll probably like the game almost certainly inspired1 it; i.e., Split Second. It's a 2010 game with basically the same idea of being on a track that has a bad habit of exploding, but compared to this it's got much better graphics and more tracks. It's got better writing too, but to be honest, that's likely in part because it has less writing, since the "story" is just a paper-thin "it's a TV show" plot that's only there as an excuse for blowing things up.
I've stated it here before, but S/S has been my favorite game of all time for years. That's not to say it's flawless – it absolutely isn't – moreso that I just really like spectacle games, and it's the best I've found of that sort so far. Truth be told, I find it to really be a shame that DR just doesn't seem as good, because I've wanted another game in this vein for over a decade now.
1. Looking at gameplay footage, it looks like Destruction Racing actually took a few setpieces straight from Split Second, including the helicopter dropping bombs & shipping containers being swapped from side-to-side across the track. I'd be genuinely amazed if DR wasn't inspired by it.
Oh neat! Thanks for that! Yeah, looking at the footage on Steam, it does seem heavily “inspired” by Split Second (to put it as politely as possible).
Split/Second was so good! For the longest time it wasn’t available on digital storefronts, so it was one of the few games I kept a disc copy of. Hearing you gush about it makes me think I’m due for a reinstall…
Right? I still have my disc as well after all these years. Half the reason I own an XB1 is because it had back-compat for S/S and I wanted to be able to play it on there w/out worrying about red-rings. Plus the console version still has online play, and last I saw there were still folks playing, albeit it was available on Game Pass at the time.
And yeah, this has got me thinking about playing some more too. Thankfully I never uninstalled it haha, so I'm good to go.
I went to the house where one of my cousins live and apparently he (well, not literally) got a PS2 and quite a few games, so that's what we played.
Before anything else, a few remarks about the PS2 itself
(Note that I don't remember what he said when I asked how he got the PS2 and the games so some of this might be inaccurate if anything in the chain is not true to the originals):
The controllers are not wireless.
The 'mode' button in the middle is not a 'PS' button and there is only a menu if you don't put a CD in. The menu has some saves apparently dating back from 2000, which is cool and definitely helps when it comes to picturing someone from 15 years in the past playing this.
The console is pretty small
the R2 and L2 buttons don't stick out from the console a little.
The memory card has a great Eight Megabytes of storing area. I have no idea how this was enough.
Occasionally, a "matrix" logo appears in the logging screen, which of course plays that sound.
Also, there was a Sonic (multiple games) CD which I wanted to try out, but unfortunately it didn't register when I put it in, which is unfortunate given I wanted to play it and I remember someone here recommending that to me.
Anyway, to the games played:
Metal Slug (1) (from a 10th anniversary (that would be 2006, which popped up in the intro, which is neat) 'anthology' CD that had the games of the franchise up to that point)
Very (stereo?)typical shoot-em-up game, 16 bit (just the tech of the time really), very hard because you can't take a hit, took at least 5 dozen continues, which reminds me of the original Sonic game put inside Sonic generations, I assume these continues wouldn't be lying around freely for you to use, but maybe they were given how the prisoners taken are always registered at 0 when I finish the levels, which I assume is the game recognizing you didn't play the intended way if it isn't just the CD being irregular. Also, ball makes the countdown go faster.
However, I now kind of realize why these games were made to be like this, using all the continues (which, unlike Sonic's continues do not take you to the beginning of a stage) meant I (and a 6 year old girl that lives there) finished the game in probably under an hour, so they had to make this something that would actually take enough time to finish to be something you actually spend some time on it, especially given at this point the only way to know things about a game without playing it was thru hearsay, actually (maybe digitally) going to a place where people would talk about the game like a convention or website or seeing an ad for the game, which seems vanishing rare but idk and seeing the covers in a games's CD, which compared to gaming channels and modern fandoms might as well be nothing IMO.
About the game's stages and mechanics instead of how things were fundamentally different 25 years ago, the bosses were all quite hard and took a dozen or so resets each. The most amusing looking boss for me was the shirtless one rocking 6-packs. I feel like was the most mobile of the bosses and the hardest to hit, despite only being the second one. The last or second-to last boss had a pretty powerful missile rain attack, which wasn't impossible but required to stop to defend against it (also reminds me of Omega Flowey from Undertale). The "massive tank" boss that required you to shoot downward or shoots it's mines back at it was tied for hardest to hit.
It took some time for me to realize crouching allowed you to go down stairs if need be, which is a bit strange, but wiki says the game was made for arcades so I guess it made some sense? It also took me time to realize most bosses's areas were wider than just the screen. The "metal slug" (in-game usable tank) honestly didn't feel that powerful (also felt hard to aim tbh), mostly just well armored. I guess otherwise it would have been a bit OP. The power-ups were fine.
Super Mario 64
Firstly, it appears the character I'm playing as is Luigi. That's a bit annoying honestly, and definitely probably not true to the CD.
The Lakitu Camera-man only let's you pick from a few positions and distances as opposed to letting you pan 360 around Mario. Did not expect that. Lakitu being a camera-man is definitely a good explanation for it in-game though.
I had to try doing backwards long jumps on stairs. Unfortunately it's pretty hard and I couldn't do it. The controls are all pretty intuitive, which definitely shows that this game deserves to be rated highly. Unlike the previous game I played, this one does have hours worth of content, which means I ended up switching games before finishing any of the levels because me and my cousin would be playing the games together and Mario 64 is a single player game. (He wasn't at home beforehand.) Also, finding the door in the castle that wasn't locked was a bit hard.
Naruto Shipbudden Ultimate Ninja 5
Apparently there was a story mode in the game but we just played free battle. My cousin knew far more about the game than I did at the beginning so he let me play the game by myself to figure it out a little while he had lunch. Unfortunately I didn't realize this and I only figured out there was a place to see the combos your character could make after he was done and I was losing to him so I didn't really learn much of anything. Eventually I did get the hang of the controls, and began to like Naruto himself because he has a fairly long range attack. 2 of the more powerful attacks involved pressing up or down followed by ball, although this takes Chakra which is recharged by pressing down and they can be dodged im a few different ways. The game used triangle as a "back" button which is quite unorthodox IMO.
Gta San Andreas
Apparently there's an Easter egg that enables multi-player in the game. Neat but I can't help but feel it doesn't belong. The mode is made so that the 2 players are in the same screen, which means we have to stick together and so I followed my cousin around. Honestly I didn't really enjoy it, I just didn't know what to do.
Crash bandicoot: Crash of the Titans
What I found most obvious was that friendly fire is apparently enabled, although you don't damage eachother. You can also take over some of the larger character and control them, which I found strange but I guess the title makes it clear that's one of the main gimmicks. There are neat missions you can take up in the levels. Apparently the main "score" in the game are these blue obs you get from mostly punching things or enemies, and when you get enough of them you unlock or upgrade a combo. It's a pretty neat game, and has fairly vivid colors to go along with it.
This was so much more than any other system at the time by such a wide margin that it’s almost crazy. For comparison, a Dreamcast VMU had 100KB and the original memory card released for the GameCube was 512KB. While the GameCube did eventually get an official memory card with 8MB capacity, it actually broke some games!
Game saves very rarely need to store much data at all.
While it's been a while, I believe that for Metal Slug, the "Prisoners Freed" depends on the continue. You need to beat the level flawlessly to get those extra points.
You might enjoy a quick look at the demoscene, which involved making as high quality of a video as people could manage with something like a 4kb or 64kb program.
And then there are boot sector games. Written in 512 Bytes.
I've been spending most of my time on other projects, but I had spent a bit of time playing the new port of Skyward Sword.
This is not a game I would have ever bought because I played the Wii version and really disliked it. I wouldn't have called it bad, but the actual practice of playing the game was irritating because of the controls and how irritating Fi was. It was a game that held your hand so much it felt like they were trying to make "Baby's First Zelda".
So my Fiance bought it and because I was technically on vacation, I started playing it. And to be fair, Nintendo have made a number of improvements that made it more bearable. Fi doesn't come out nearly as often as I remember her. The most important thing is that they created a control scheme that is not reliant on motion controls. But honestly, the control scheme is still really bad.
You have to hold a shoulder button just to turn the camera, because by default the right stick controls the sword, which you have to swipe as if you are emulating the motion controls. And that makes combat feel absolutely terrible - it constantly misses when I intend to do a strike, and it's hard to control the angle of attack (which you need to be able to do for practically every enemy in this game). Because of that, I find myself trying to repeat whenever I do horizontal or vertical slashes, and that causes link to do a special attack that uses stamina, which causes the stamina meter to run out, which means you can't defend yourself at all. And then there are the stupid issues like how using tools is counter-intuitive, so you end up not being able to use the things you need in time before whatever target you need to hit disappears or attacks you.
When it comes to the rest of the game, everything else is fairly well designed, but there has been occasions where the game switches from holding your hand to expecting you to find things that are hidden in really obscure places. The game makes switches very distinctive and noticeable, but at times they are hidden in places that need you to manipulate the camera (which isn't very cooperative, like I mentioned earlier) in really odd ways. They do tend to have little hints, but those hints tend to blend into the background - it reminds me of oldschool point-and-click adventure games with their pixel hunting.
I don't find the pixel hunting thing to be a big problem - it's not the first time I've had this issue with a Zelda game. But I thought it was a good illustration of exactly how the control issue absolutely ruins the potential of this game. Everything else is fills the expectations of what you would want from a Zelda game, but it's all marred by how you interact with it.
Edit: So somewhere around what I assume is the latter part of the middle of the game, there is a dungeon that requires you to look at the ceiling to find a switch that is through a hole that you can't otherwise access. After making it seem like that hole was just decoration - you can't go through it, or even over it from the top (it is arbitrarily chained off), it seems really unreasonable to expect you to find this. But because this game is part of the modern era of Nintendo, all you have to do is ask Fi for a hint and she will basically tell you the solution. That felt really bad.
Skyrim. I just beat the main story with a high elf mage character, using bound weapons to check those skill trees out. I wanted to play with bound weapons and defense spells (Oakflesh, Ironflesh, etc), and found that once you limp up the steep starting curve, it's really fun.
I'm finally getting bored of Skyrim a bit, so I'm turning my attention back to Oblivion. I was going to close all the gates when I thought there were 16 of them, but it turns out there are 60, not 16 like I'd somehow originally thought, and have instead pivoted to playing like my first Skyrim run: Do the stories (Main, Thieves, Mages, DB, etc). I did the same in Morrowind, and actually need to get back to that playthrough as well.
I picked up Hedon again, because the sequel comes out in August. The puzzles are actually pretty difficult, which was why I accidentally walked away from it initially. Despite being built on GZDoom, the platforming and movement in general actually feel pretty good, and I was reminded of that coming back to it.
Update:
Jupiter Hell. I've been waiting for the release since I backed it (I don't play EA games because I typically find I get bored of them before they release), and this game is better than I could've ever hoped it would've turned out. I checked in on it periodically, but the finished result is great. It captures the Doom vibe the dev wanted with DRL perfectly, looks great, and feels great.
Update 2: Finally got around to Portal Reloaded, as well, and... I'm amazed at the variety the game has. I'm not sure how far I am, but I got to the second lazer puzzle and it's really breaking my brain. Most of the puzzles aren't incredibly difficult, I've found I'll keep at them, then have a eureka moment and crack the whole thing, which is my favorite way to play a game.
Oh hey, a Hedon sequel?? I didn't know that I was coming. I ought to finish that too!
Yeah. Zan mentioned doing it this year, I think, and I was looking wistfully at my Steam library for an escape from Elder Scrolls games when I saw the announcement.
EDIT: It's an addon, and the price of Hedon will go up to account for it, sort of like how Shovel Knight did it.
3 games, whew.
Picked up Pokémon Y again after 7 years (wow, so long?) of not having played it, together with my cousin.
Continuing Bravely Default. Tbh I find it kinda boring in terms of characters and plot, and the aesthetic isn't doing it for my either, but the gameplay is nice. Mostly playing this though because someone on reddit loves it and wants to hear my thoughts on it, and my cousin also decided to pick it up.
Retrying Drakengard after having dropped it 1-2 years ago or so. I have the strangest relationship with Yoko Taro's games, on the one hand as an "experience" they're quite interesting and good, but I really hate everything he and his games stand for (save for Automata's ending message) thematically wise, so I always feel really conflicted with these. I enjoy his aesthetics and the way he builds atmosphere, but the underlying parts always piss me off. Oh well, I'm planning on playing through 1-3 anyways just for the good parts and then I'll just do something else.
I just picked up Baba is You this week after I heard good things about it on Tildes. It's a cute game that makes you think out of the box. But I think after 3 hours of play time my interest has waned. Glad there's tons more content for those that are more into it than me, but I can't see myself getting much deeper into it.
Next up to try is Outer Wilds.
I've gotten back into World of Warcraft a bit - my sister loves it, so I primarily play to spend time with her, and our other friends who also play. The current expansion is straight up bad, except for the dungeons and raids which are good. It is increasingly difficult to support Blizzard in any way for a variety of reasons; I happen to know several people involved in WoW development, and they're all good people, and that's what I keep telling myself as I keep paying the subscription.
We have been playing a fair amount of Catan: Cities and Knights. It's my two oldest kids favourite game, and we're solidly in summertime game mode. I am trying to get them to branch out to some of the other games that are on our very deep shelf; we've played Horrified a couple of times, which is a fun little monster hunting game based on classic movie monsters, and we've played Clue a fair amount, which is actually a pretty fun game.
I'm still not playing any team sports (thanks, 'rona), but I've been playing a ton of disc golf. I'm not good, but I sure have spent a lot of money on discs.
Playing Day of Defeat: Source yet again. I'm sure most of you haven't even heard of this old fogey game :)