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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 got back into Minecraft.
Big mistake.
I started on Friday after I got home from work, "just a bit of mining and exploring" and bam, 5am. Woke up at 11 the next day, "I'll just play for a bit more, I'll just add stuff to the village" and suddenly it's 9pm. And something similar on Sunday, except until only 6pm or so. I forgot how much of a timesink it is.
It is my go-to game if I need to stay awake for long periods of time. I once had an isolated seizure in high school and had to do a sleep-deprived EEG. So, I stayed up all night to build an underwater glass base inside of a mountain. It has that same "one more thing" feeling that I get when playing Civilization.
Minecraft can be evil if it sinks its teeth into you. I'll occasionally lose all of my free time in a week to it when I check back in after a long time.
Seafarers of Catan for most of the last week - we were on vacation, and on day 1 we went into a board game shop and my kids managed to convince my wife that we should buy an expansion (which she typically doesn't like doing) and we are pretty happy thus far.
Started and finished, with 93.7% completion rate, of Blasphemous last week. Excellent Metroidvania game, great story, great artwork, fun gameplay. With the DLC there's a single replayability factor, but I'm good as most of the DLC is available in the normal playthrough and I backtracked a lot to do nearly all of it, so I don't need to play it again.
The artstyle for this game is gorgeous, one of my top 10 for any indie game. It's ignited an enduring ardour in me for weird saints, disturbing Catholic relics, and creepy Christian iconography.
If anyone was scared away by the early reviews criticizing the game's controls and difficulty spikes, the dev team took that feedback and released a series of patches that mostly cleared up the issues. It's a very fluid, fun game now.
(Though some of the side-quests and secret areas are absurdly obscure and difficult to find. Trying to 100% the game without a guide would be grueling).
I did find the keyboard controls odd, but they're remappable and I just used a controller anyway. I looked up what to do with some things on the wiki if I didn't get the reference/lore, but most of the time it was just reading and going back to areas when something triggered a memory or somewhere I couldn't get to.
I'm not sure what caused this sudden desire, but, for some reason, my random brain decided I should get back to playing chess. My father taught me how to play when I was a kid, and I spent quite a few years (well into my adolescence) desperately trying to beat him.
I even studied from an old book, which, unlike all other resources, started from openings instead of tactics. Because of that, I was quite strong in the beginning to middle game, but rarely ended with a victory.
I used to play a lot on FICS. Got to a rating of 1450, but IDK what that means. Nowadays, Lichess seems to be all the rage. It's mind-blowing what they offer while remaining entirely free and open-source. The website has more features and works well on mobile, but there's also a very serviceable Android app. I played about 30 rated matches on Lichess in the past week. Won about four. I decided this time to really learn the game and see what I can accomplish with a more structured approach, so I asked for book recommendations. Most people suggested interactive websites anyway. I ended up choosing one that was not recommended: Soviet Chess Primer. It seems very organized and complete, suitable for self-study. I'm considering writing the examples to PGN, since arranging the pieces on the board every time will probably get boring very soon.
I'm also doing the puzzles on Lichess, and deciding if I'll use Chessimo or not.
And, oh: I beat my father 25 years ago :D
I told him I'm playing again, and we're going to play regularly online while chatting over Skype. It's a good way for us to keep in touch.
Sorry, I'm not an IT person. But I can donate.
A few weeks ago I played Loop Hero. It's definitely an interesting concept, your player character somehow survives the destruction of the universe by a lich which you restore by remembering pieces of landmarks (forests, mountains, etc) and you battlle enemies spawned as a result. Despite its interesting concept I found the game terribly boring.
Been working my way through Black Mesa. I'm a bit disappointed by the gunplay with the soldiers as it seems even more about spray and pray than the original HL was, but I haven't gotten to the Xen part of the game yet, so I know that's where most of the changes are! Graphics are awesome and I'm enjoying a bit of nostalgia in the meantime.
Otherwise, way too much World of Warships (never paid a cent though...) and some Day of Defeat: Source just to spice it up a bit and find a more mature community.
A year+ late to the party, I finally caved and got Hades. I was avoiding it, I think, because I played Bastion by the same studio... And while I didn't hate it, I felt like it was vastly overrated on Metacritic. For some reason "Bastion Roguelike" was not something that got me excited, despite everyone raving about it. Even though it does kinda play like Bastion, it uses that as a sort of "raw material" and does some really cool and creative things. I'd say it compares favorably to Dead Cells (which I also enjoyed a lot): Maybe slightly less difficult (which isn't a bad thing, sometimes Dead Cells crossed the line of being too hard to the point where it wasn't fun at times) and it actually has a good plot and interesting characters. It keeps a lightning-fast pace without crossing the line of being an all-out "button-masher".
I checked out some of the demos featured on the Realms Deep Steam sale page.
ASKE - Very Quake-like, except I hate the way it looks. Also the FOV is cranked so high that I feel like I've got fish eyes. Not terribly impressed.
Gloomwood - I remain hopeful for this one but it feels more Thief than Quake and I found it a bit boring so far.
Project Downfall - Love the look of all of this except the enemies themselves. It's a bit of a cross between Max Payne and Hotline Miami. Also ran a bit shit.
CULTIC - YES. Love the limited color palette look, loved the way the weapons felt, loved the simple intro. I am really looking forward to this.
I also played some Project Warlock. I had previously gotten up to the fourth episode before losing steam and losing my save. It's a decent corridor shooter in the Wolfenstein vein, but something about it feels wrong. Why can I look up and down when everything takes place on a flat plane?
Finally, played some Orcs Must Die! 3 coop with my SO. It's taken a bit for me to warm up to it again (I burned out on OMD!2), but we built a killbox last night that was absolutely devastating to those stupid orcs. Felt really good to see it all come together.
Anyone looking to pick up Humankind after its release on August 17?
I wishlisted it, but I want to wait and see some gameplay first.
If anyone has already played, a short look-and-feel of the game would be much appreciated.
Potato McWhiskey, an avid Civ streamer, did a live stream. That's 6.5 hours of gameplay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_3qWmazwnXk&t=7186s
He also has a tutorial series that he's releasing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8SukGtHjao
I've played up until the pre-modern era and I'm enjoying it - even though I don't know all of the ins and outs. It's a gorgeous game and it's a breath of fresh air to the Civ-like genre.
I played it, and think it's pretty good. There's definitely some rough edges (auto explore is trash,) but it's enjoyable.
Ditto. Humankind is on Xbox Game Pass for PC, so I decided to give it a try despite me generally preferring Paradox-style Grand Strategy games over Civilization-style 4X games (which Humankind was clearly heavily "inspired" by). And after about 20+ hours of play, it's been fun so far, but there are definitely some things that have annoyed me:
The UI is a bit confusing, clunky, and rather inconsistent. E.g. Esc closes some menus but not others; You can have some important action/info windows open at the same time but not others; Edge and keyboard scrolling is painfully slow with no way to change it, so you always need to mouse click+drag scroll instead; Etc.
The tooltips and descriptions are often very inadequate, with a lot of the concepts mentioned in them having no explanation, not even in the in-game Encyclopedia. E.g. WTF are "Coreligionist States"? And speaking of the Encyclopedia, it really feels like it was thrown together at the last minute due to how lacking the info in it is. E.g. You can't view the Science-tree anywhere in it, and the individual Science entries don't even mention their prerequisites; There is no mention of the terrain or adjacency bonuses that buildings benefit from; Luxury item entries don't mention their benefits or how many you need to own/control to get the bonus benefits; Etc.
And on the actual gameplay front... as you said, the auto-explore is hilariously bad, as is some of the AI pathing in combat. The AI behavior during war is kinda mediocre in general right now too, from what I have seen of it so far on Empire difficulty. The nomad stage relies way too much on random chance. And I wish there was more benefit to sticking with your original civilization pick, since switching civs feels awkward and sometimes there are no good choices left by the time you advance to the next age. But IMO the biggest issue I have encountered so far is that Vassalage is really overpowered right now, since it's way cheaper on War Support to force on a nation than conquering all their land yourself, so you can accomplish it in a single war even if the enemy is huge. The AI also doesn't ever seem to try to break vassalage either, even when they are way more powerful than their liege. They will request freedom every once in a while, but denying them over and over doesn't seem to have any consequences at the moment. So I would strongly suggest pretending Vassalage doesn't exist until they fix it... unless you want to play on easy mode.
However, for the most part all my problems with the game are pretty minor. I have put up with far worse issues in Paradox games, especially at launch. And I have no doubt all the things I mentioned here will be improved/fixed over time. So overall it's still pretty great, reasonably well polished, and has been a lot of fun to play.
insert joke about Leviathan here
This weekend I bought the entire single-player Fallout series for like 27 bucks (missed 76, Brotherhood of Steel, and Tactics). I got stuck in the "Morrowind, Oblivion, or Skyrim?" question of "Which version of the Bethesda engine do I want to experience?" (Gamebryo, refined Gamebryo, or Creation?)
I started on New Vegas, which seems to have a reputation as peak Fallout, and don't regret it. I'm currently at the REPCONN facility with the Bright Brotherhood quest and the game so far has been... unsettling, from hearing references to stretches of freeway I've travelled, walking through Primm (with Steve Bison instead of Buffalo Bill's), to the odd tranquility of the Mojave Desert. Fallout was one of those series that was hugely popular and I completely missed the boat on, but I understand the hype now.
I've been picking at the first Fallout, but had to pirate an ISO to run it in DOSBox as the GOG version doesnt like Windows's mouse acceleration. It's interesting, but I'm not used to that sort of gameplay, so I think I'll have to force myself to play for the first bits of the game and see where it goes.
I finally beat the main story of Oblivion, and the game feels radically different post Oblivion Crisis. You don't have to worry about the Oblivion gates after beating the game, so it becomes more relaxed, in a way. You just have to worry about levelled wildlife. I got a 100% chameleon outfit to play with, but don't actually intend to use it, opting instead to try to beat the Thieves Guild quest with my Dark Brotherhood armor.
Still playing Valheim with my gf and we are just done in the last biome. I still keep not recommending enough for an early access, for what you pay you get hours of fun and if you want similar farming/building game as Minecraft or Terraria give Valheim a try. The game gets repetitive but that's understandable as early access, i still keep an eye on of future updates.
Regarding Game Pass, I transferred my save for Hades from my PC to the Xbox to work on that some, but I want to talk more about Twelve Minutes a sort of adventure game premised around a time loop, where someone is breaking into your apartment and murdering you and your wife, and you have to figure out why. I thought it was pretty atmospheric, but the problems you had to solve were pretty soup canny, and the ending left a bad taste in my mouth. It is a short game though, so it's nice to be able to knock it out in an evening, so if you are on Game Pass, you can give it a try.
I've been playing Pokemon games recently: Platinum and Black 1. On Platinum I had 2 parts where I had to grind a bit to be at the opponent's level, which I consider to be poor game balancing. In Black so far that hasn't happened and I am playing with a rule of only having with me the same number of Pokémon the next gym leader / E4 member will have (so basically I've going through most of the game with only 3 pokes in my party). It just never seemed to have more mons that the opponent and I don't understand why the developers don't implement an optional setting where you define teams based on the number of Pokémon the opponent has.
But anyway, Platinum's story was totally vague and forgettable. Black's story has potential but I don't think it will be fulfilled. The story prefers to go feelings over logic. Also, at first the villains were mostly neutral (maybe even good) people but the narrative is pushing them into the bad guys box unfortunately.
Overall I like the new Pokémon introduced in Gen 5 and I've been enjoying changing my party as I go. The game starts off really enjoyable and fast paced (in a few hours I had already beat the 3rd gym), but then by gym 4 it starts to drag itself a bit. I guess I have that opinion because I don't care about the optional stuff like musicals and contests. I am now close to 20h and I've reached the city of the 8th gym. Need to do some story before I can fight it and I need to lvl up my Ice mon (the ice cream one lol) so he has a chance against the dragons in the gym.
If would not recommend Platinum because it gets way too grindy but Gen 4 did introduce changes that are still current today. For example, it split the moves into physical and special. Because of that I am no longer interested in playing any game below Diamond and Pearl. Gen 5 introduced the infinite use of TMs which is just awesome and HMs (I think) are no longer mandatory to complete the story which is also great.
One cool thing I would like to add is that there are private DNS servers you can add to your connection and still enjoy the wireless features of both Gen 4 and 5 games. I already made a few trades with a guy I befriended. GTS and Mystery Gift are functional as well.
I feel like I might be getting a bit tired of playing the franchise so I will probably not go for Black/White 2. But eventually I want to try the 3DS games. I know there will be remakes of Diamond and Pearl coming out soon but honestly I don't think they are worth it. Pokémon Legends Arceus seems like the future for the franchise even though it still feels and looks like an unpolished product
I played the racing game Warp Drive again this weekend and realized they added another 2 tracks. This is the second time in the past few months they've added new tracks. I hope this continues! They also made a number of improvements to the game such as showing you how upgrades affect your car's stats. I'm not sure why it wasn't always like that, but glad they finally added it.
Other than that, I've mostly been playing Solitaire to kill some time. Not too exciting, but I like that you can play a single game in a few minutes when you're bored.
On the Xbox Series X, I played:
Back 4 Blood - this was a beta and I hopped into it solo. I liked Left 4 Dead. Quite a bit actually. But Back 4 Blood, while feeling like Left 4 Dead, just didn't feel good to me. It basically made me feel like it was Left 4 Dead with additional steps. Instead of just picking a character that you resonate with, you picked a character based on their stats/perks. Then there are loadouts and cards to play that affect how the level plays. The text on all these details was overwhelming and too small. This game just felt too technical for the simplistic beauty that was drop in multiplayer for L4D. I know they are going their own way for the genre, but this caused me to go from "I'm excited to purchase B4B" to "I might pick this up on a Steam sale and play with my friends one weekend a long time for now."
Battlefield 2042 Playtest - I probably shouldn't talk about this too much since I told EA I wouldn't but I don't think I will say more than what has already been talked about ad nauseum in other parts of the internet. And I'm on an account that can't be traced back to my EA account, so yay. Anyways, it's basically Battlefield 4 but newer. Which has me excited. I only played a handful of sessions as I was playing on Xbox and I think I am just over playing twitch shooters on a controller. The game felt okay overall with the knowledge that visual and performance tweaks are going to occur later on down the line. If you were the type of person to be pissed off when a game is basically decided by who can play vehicles better, you might want to avoid this for awhile. Just like in BF4, the conquest battles were ultimately decided on who could pilot helicopters better.
Dangit. I promised myself I would never pre-order another Battlefield after getting BF1 (I waited a bit after release to get BFV). But now your comment almost makes me want to break that promise, because I consider BF4 the high point of the franchise, and have been eagerly awaiting the next instalment that is set in modern or near future times, and BF2042 fits the bill.
I was questioning whether I'd be willing to pay full price for BF2042 (or any game, really), but if I watch enough post-release gameplay vids on Twitch and Youtube to assuage my fears, I may well indeed buy it at full price. It would be a first for me since switching (from being a years-long Playstation player) to PC.
Yeah, BF4 was by far my favorite Battlefield I have played.
Don't preorder it just yet. There were quite a few random performance issues and texture pop-in that I encountered on the Series X that it is enough for me to wait for reviews and day 1 user impressions. If anything, you could probably get a month of EA Play Premier for a month and give it a shot then. If the impressions look good, then I will probably take the 25th off from work to play.
I think what I'm excited about is the shenanigans with the Portal and creating some wacky custom games.
Battlefield 2042 Open Beta Trailer
Struggling to resist not pre-ordering to get in on the beta ...
BF3 too, if I got one of the attack helicopters, it was over for the enemy (mwahaha)
You monster, you made me rage quit so many times!
But for real, kudos to all the good vehicle players out there. I'm no good with them so I just try my best to counter with a missile as best as I can.
Thank you for doing your part by recognizing a constant vehicle threat, and deploying to deal with it.
I'm hot garbage with the jets but give me a heli and it's game over, man, GAME OVER :)
Mini Motorways
The spiritual successor to Mini Metro. Each level is the perfect length time sink to attempt beating a few high scores during slow spells at the office.
Oh man, I so wanted to play that game, but by the time I had something that could actually play it the servers were basically dead, and the game basically blocks you from progressing by yourself since you need to have a party to get any meaningful quantity of EXP.
I have no idea how that game is still running today; the last time I logged in it was a ghost town, and that was years ago.
Thanks for the offer, but I honestly have found myself playing games fairly infrequently lately, so I don't think it would be fair to drag other people down. Technically I am in the middle of playing PSO2, but it's been ages since I last played and I think I'm stuck in the New Genesis opening sequence. :P
I was actually playing it for a while before the big update, so I honestly don't have enough to say about the new changes except that I like how it has made vertical movement a little nicer.
There's a few things I really like about the game. Mechanically, I like it because it plays like an arcade game. Yes, strength is still determined by ever-increasing numbers, but it's also reliant on skill. You can finish a long complicated mission relatively unscathed if you're skilled, but the same character without skill will probably need to eat through a bunch of resources to get through it.
One of the things I appreciate the most about it is that it really respects your time; while there are certain timed events, some of them coming at specific real-world times, they constantly repeat so you have plenty of chances to join. The core game has surprisingly little locked away for any reason, even based on your character's level! The most notable locked content they have monetized, and that's mainly limited to cosmetic things.
But most importantly, I can play through everything singleplayer if I want to, or take some time and talk with other players if I choose.
Overlord. One and two.
The most satisfying thing in the world. Defeat enemies.
Have 30 minions tear apart the room looking for treasure at the touch of a button. Then bring it to you.