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

Been playing Sable. I adore lonely desolate games that make you feel tiny (Outer Wilds, Death Stranding, launch No Man's Sky), and Sable is a great one. It's very clearly Breath of the Wild inspired but its climbing mechanics are limited enough that terrain is still more of a threat than an asset, and it feels less annoyingly transactional and gamey in its exploration. Do wish the korok seed equivalent collectibles weren't there though.

Started playing Kena: Bridge of Spirits last week.

It's really good. It's not doing anything that other action-platformers haven't done (think of it in the same vein as games like Jak & Daxter or Crash Bandicoot in terms of gameplay) but the presentation and storytelling around it is gorgeous.

The story is pretty dark, but not really "adult." It's addresses the dark subject matter in kid-friendly terms and the atmosphere and tone are done really well. It also does a good job of introducing concepts steadily and teaching you things without overbearing tutorials. It doesn't even give you much of a long intro-cinematic. It literally just drops you into the action to figure it out. You get brief tutorials whenever you learn a new ability but it's just a description and video clip that plays in a sidebar while you're still roaming/fighting/playing. It doesn't take you out of the game at all. I really wish more games would make this a priority.

Do not let the Pixar visuals fool you though, this game is hard. While the story content is friendly enough for young kids, even on default difficulty I think difficulty-wise it's probably more teen. I've been able to clear most of the big-bosses and difficult platforming sections on the second or third try at worst, but I'm also a pretty seasoned gamer. Some of these sections are pretty dicey and I'm surprised at myself when I do manage to survive by the skin of my teeth.

There are some shortfalls though. Some of the combat can feel a little "button mashy" and, for a platformer with a bunch of jumping and climbing, Kena doesn't feel as agile or nimble in the air as I would like. This is especially the case with the double-jump, which just doesn't feel quite right to me. On the PS5 controller I also find aiming a little challenging because it feels like the analog stick is either tuned too sensitive for fine aim or too slow to use as a camera. I wish they let you adjust camera sensitivity AND aim sensitivity separately rather than having them both tied to right-stick sensitivity. The auto-aim correction is very generous to make up for it, so it's not a big problem in gameplay. But it's also kind of obvious that the auto-aim is compensating for my fuckups, which offends my pride.

Overall I would strongly recommend. It's cute and touching and a great introduction to what I'm thinking of as "true" next gen. It's also quite short. I'm not quite done with it but I expect by the time I finish it will have been abour 8 hours. Not much longer than the Miles Morales Spider-Man game.

I've been playing Enter the Gungeon, which is a rogue-like bullet hell game. Over all, I'd say it's a very well-made game; it gives the impression of being a passion project, there are lots of little secrets, and an absurd number of guns/items which can synergize with each other to create even more options.

I don't think I'll be continuing though; I'm not very good at bullet hell games, and I find the whole rogue-like aspect really annoying the farther I progress. Almost got that boss. If I want to try again, I have to spend another hour or two playing and hope I get enough lucky drops to make it back. And the farther I get, the longer that scenario takes.

Stardew Valley made a comeback for me after @hamstergeddon's mention of it last week. I'm doing my normal seasonal seed farming, and have started growing star fruit and ancient fruit in my warehouse. I'm working on making 108/208 kegs (for alternating batches, because my greenhouse is fertilized) so I can start churning out wine. If I play my cards right I can make millions of gold per month just cranking out normal wine.

Fallout New Vegas: I'm rotating back in after a hiatus. I've got some power armor (finally), and am playing on Very Easy Story Mode. Yeah, let's call it that. I'm sitting at the main story endgame and have bumped into choices I wasn't really digging, but am now stuck with some of the same issues with any decision. I'm going to pause the main story for now and just do a bunch of missions while I still can (little hard to do things with the NCR and Legion hunting you).

Oblivion: I'm doing the DB questline right now, and am going for all of the bonuses. It's a fun questline, definitely better than Skyrim's, I think, but I think all the guilds feel better in Oblivion.

Skyrim: Same. Doing DB right now, and I'm planning on making a run to some DLC content shortly (Dawnguard first, as I've done a bunch on Solsteim already).

Diablo 2: Resurrected. I started playing the series when I was 9 and continued with D2 for many years. One of my most vivid memories from this time was coming home from school early on 9/11 and discussing with everyone what was going on.

I continue to play hardcore mode, where you only have 1 life. I find that having a greater risk of losing everything makes the game more engaging and heart pounding.

I find the graphics to be incredible and almost as if it looks identical to how it did so long ago on my 15” crt.

I do have a few complaints that I hope will be addressed in the future. The first is the creation of channels. In the original game you could make a custom channel for people to join. For example, people that wanted to just chat with other hardcore players could do so. Likewise, they had hardcore trade channels, and clan channels.

The second gripe is the removal of ultrawide support. Like many online games today, a few vocal people complained it was unfair, so blizzard added black bars.

** Spoilers for Stardew Valley Below**

I know I get obsessive about games when my answer is the same across multiple weekly threads! I've been playing a lot of Stardew Valley. My goals for this save were: Befriend Linus, complete the community center w/o using JojaMart, focus on fishing, and use the beach farm (limited areas for sprinkler use). So status update:

• I maxed out Linus' hearts and we're BFFs now. I really enjoy how the game handles him. You initially think he's some down on his luck homeless guy, but he just likes living alone in the mountains and foraging for his own food. Nothing makes him as happy as picking berries does. I love that you can offer to house him on your farm and he rejects it.
• I'm very close to finishing the community center. In my previous saves the big roadblock for me was fishing. I'd get everything but the fishing collection done and just throw money at it via the JojaMart route. But this time I spent a lot of time getting decent at fishing and the fish collection was actually one of the first ones I completed.
• As mentioned above, my focus on fishing is going well. It's not a primary source of income, but I'm close to maxing out the skill. At this point I'm focused on some other in-game projects, so I'm letting the skill level up slowly/passively by using crabpots.
• Beach farm isn't so bad, actually. The beach farm's whole deal is that you can't use sprinklers anywhere but a small designated patch of dirt tucked into a corner of your farm. I ended up rushing for Iridium sprinklers fast than I usually do and that little corner, coupled with the greenhouse basically cancel out all the downsides of the beach farm.

Also I want to talk about my method of playing. I recently bought a phone mount for my xbox one controller and I've been playing it mostly via streaming from my xbox to my phone. There are some minor lag and graphical glitches here and there, but it's surprisingly stable. I think the main culprit is having to play over wifi on my phone. There's just no getting around that. Not to mention my xbox's hardwire to the network is via a pair of those "ethernet over power" adapters because I don't have any ethernet run outside of my
home office.

Finished Heat Signature in the sense that I've liberated my entire initial galaxy and have done every possible type of character trait (except heir, which I never saw). It's pretty fun if you like this sort of game. The defector missions are a nice puzzle.

Finished Deepest Sword. It's cute enough, worth every penny I paid for it (hint: it's free) don't think it's fun enough (not that I have the skills to do so) to speedrun as many others try to do.

I finally found a Stars Without Number group!

It's a wonderful sandbox sci-fi TTRPG, and so far I am having a blast with it!

My chess.com rapid rating jumped to 500! Yay! I am aware that is a ridiculous score, but screw it, it's an achievement and I am proud. This came with the realization that I'm pretty good on the basics, I just get too stressed out, blunder a lot and lose a bunch of recoverable games for nothing. So now, when get tired or too frustrated, I just play some blitz, unrated, or do something else instead.

Just started Astria Ascending. Haven't played it long enough to form an opinion, but so far, I really like the visuals (reminds me of Dragon's Crown) and the quality-of-life features.

Wargame: Red Dragon: It's an RTS, but you have no buildings and accumulate points as you play. There is a single player campaign and the ability to play against AI opponents, but that is a small part of the game and very unlike the true reason you get the game: for the multiplayer.

There is a small but dedicated community, but if you join large games it can take some time to start. Unfortunately the learning curve is very steep, and the in game chat can be quite toxic; although there is a subreddit to give you some help: to get into it I suggest trying it out with some friends or playing some 10v10 tacticals.

Once you get into it it's an incredibly fun game where you can enjoy losing almost as much as winning if you get a good fight. I've been playing it on and off for about 6 months: don't expect to win a lot until you get some time under your belt.
edit: no longer on sale

I just found out that Chicken Invaders was remade into a free to play MMO called Chicken Invaders Universe. I played it for a bit and it's pretty fun. They kept the same art assets as before. The music is great and it still has touches of humor. It's a bit of a grind to unlock stuff, but the game is fun to play so it seems okay. It feels a lot harder than before at times. It's in early access right now. I'm looking forward to the new stuff they'll be adding.

It's possible to get their Chicken Invaders Complete Set too on Steam.

I'm running a monster of the week campaign in my carpool, since I'm cursed to never get to play anything but DnD 5e fantasy (which I'm thoroughly tired of), only run it. I carpool with 2 other people for an hour and a bit to get to work, so having two players, as a meta-joke we went with the Supernatural-style road tripping monster hunter paradigm for the party.

While at first I was a hair skeptical of the concept, the execution has been surprisingly solid. The system, powered by the apocalypse, is extremely narrative driven and light on number crunching mechanics, so it's no trouble for everyone to keep up with what's going on, and I don't need to prepare written material or anything. The sessions are regular and short, which keeps up interest and reduces fatigue, and the players I have are good at generating their own content. Overall, I'd definitely recommend it for anyone in a similar commute scenario with interested people.

In terms of what they've actually done, they were investigating a rash of spontaneous combustions that turned out to be a guy with a camera that shoots fireballs who was convinced it captured people's souls, with false leads of leprechauns and fire djinn. Thinking of making odd sources of spontaneous combustion a running gag if the campaign goes on long enough, I'd have to space it out a little, but next time it'll be aliens implanting people with cheap monitoring devices with defective batteries.

Also as a joke when the players were entirely too interested in why one of the victims had no known last name (misinterpreted but minor clue) told them he was probably just attacked by a lexical wraith, which I've now made into a canon monster. Any time you had a word on the tip of your toungle? Lexical wraith. Forget what you were about to say? Lexical wraith.