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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 really into Farming Simulator '19 this past week. I didn't realize the next version, '22, is coming out this month or I'd have just waited. But no complaints from me because I certainly got my $20 worth out of the game already (55 hours so far...I have a problem).
It's a weird game. Every part of it is frustrating and cumbersome. Physics are a mess, steering with kb/mouse is challenging (and steering wheel controllers are EXPENSIVE), simple things like placing logs in a truck are an exercise in patience, and driving up and down a field over and over is incredibly boring. But I still love it. It's relaxing and there's a sense of accomplishment when you finally get your pay for the harvest or the logs you cut down. It's also really helped me gain a better understanding and appreciation for real farming. It's harvest time (judging by some of the corn I'm still seeing in fields anyway) here in the mid-atlantic US, so I've been able to see some familiar machinery out in the wild.
I'm really looking forward to FS22's release later this month. Looks like some things have been polished up a bit and we're getting a few new features that were previously mods, so that's exciting!
I also briefly played Stardew Valley again. I came across a hermit challenge where you try to play without ever leaving your farm. First couple of days were fun as I worked on clearing out the farm and selling off all the rocks and wood, but then it got kind of boring. I was also planting any wild seeds I came across, but once you clear your farm those become really hard to come by. So I decided I'd keep with the spirit of the challenge, to be a hermit, and allow myself to go into the zone north and east of the farm. No NPCs ever appear there (except for Pam at the bus stop, but that's gated behind a community center thing). Doing that gives you access to the seasonal wild plants that you can sell or combine to make packs of wild seed. That opened things up quite a bit, but it was still kind of boring. I think it's something I'll pop into from time to time when I need to kill 15-20 minutes.
I got the EA Pass thing, which gives you a 10 hour trial of Battlefield 2042, so I was going to check out BF Portal in that for a bit, but instead......
Halo: Infinite('s free multiplayer) came out today, a little surprise a month early, so I've been doing that all night.
I'm not really a Halo guy but it's a nice streamlined multiplayer experience and I'm having fun with it. I'm getting in to the tempo of things and it's nice to have a nice small-scale competitive arena style (I consider it a child of Q3 and UT although with a very different feel) that's adrenaline pumping and fun to jump in and out of. I can't wait to see what they do with it as it goes on, and best part is it's free.
Also I did play a bit of BF Portal, playing the Bad Company 2 playlist, but I really can not get in to it at all. It just feels like playing (really good) BC2 maps in the (really bad) BF2042 engine, and.........it all just feels wrong and I can not get in to it at all. I played Battlefield 3 last night and it instantly feels way better to play right off the bat -- so it's not just a nostalgia thing, BF3 (and I must presume BC2) just feel (to me) like way better games than BF2042, even with the Portal thing.
I finished up Return of the Obra Dinn this weekend. It is a super nice game and the aesthetics of it makes it great and timeless in the sense that it will keep looking nice and distinct no matter how graphics evolve in the future. I wish more gamedevs would forgo cutting edge graphics and develop a more distinct visual look for their games. WoW did this in part, Zelda:BotW too. Neither of those had the greatest most detailed graphics at their time, but both have pleasing graphics that lasts. (Sure in WoWs case there has been plenty of updates and changes, but I think this still holds true?).
Spoilers for Return of the Obra Dinn
The main difficulty I had was identifying the Chinese topmen. In the end I managed by trial and error to pick the correct name to three of them(?), Which I was stuck on. No idea what clue I missed that would make this simpler.My biggest brain fart was not realising that the doctor was the one who sent me on the mission. So at the end I couldn't get how on earth I would pick the location for the last four survivors! After giving up and leaving the boat and reading the response it was clear what I had missed and managed to get that sorted so I could go through the bargain to resolve how the final unknown deaths had happened. All in all good fun!
Regarding the first part of your spoiler, I also had a huge amount of trouble with that part until
yep more spoilers
my friend noticed you could tell them apart by their shoes.
I just figured that out today. I was stymied on that point for ages, and was delighted to have solved it without any guessing at last.
Lately I've been really getting into Magic: The Gathering. Been playing both in paper at a local game store and online with my iPad. I've played a little bit on and off in the past. The last couple of weeks, I've went to my first Friday Night Magic to play in a limited draft and this past weekend I went out for the prerelease event for Crimson Vow. It was packed, I think all 32 seats were filled at the event. Ended up going 2-3 for the night running a Black and Blue zombie deck. Was super fun and met a lot of new folks :)
I got a XBox Game Pass subscription this week so I could try out Forza Horizons 5. I have never been happier with a purchase. The gameplay is engaging, the reward mechanics placed perfectly, and the offroad driving is the most fun I've had in a car outside of GTA Online. The story is even quite inoffensive, which isn't something I say often.
Skyrim: Anniversary Edition. I used Mod Organizer to set up a survival profile (it can have a separate .ini/saves for a profile), and have a sword and board nord build I'm using to try out survival mode (I also have SkyUI and a survival integration patch). It feels as different as when I started Breath of the Wild for the first time. I have to actually go to sleep, find stuff to eat, and am also working on getting my alchemy up so I can make potions since you don't recover health in this mode. I'm finding the lack of fast travel to be interesting, and weight isn't an issue with a follower. It feels a little more clunky in a good way, somehow.
Pillars of Eternity: I'm still digging this game. I finished the first act and the story is interesting. I'm going much faster after seeing the note about gold name tags being Kickstarter backer characters, so I'm not interacting with about half the map at this point. I'm still trying to figure out how to better balance my party's attacks, but I'm slowly getting better.
Stardew Valley: I'm switching to this one when I've got nothing else to play, still doing that beach Joja run, which is much more work than I expected. I'm trying to save up to get the greenhouse, and then will just use that to sprint across the finish.
EDIT: I'm abandoning the Survival Mode run, but I installed a mod to disable Fast Travel. I had a map mod to show me where the roads are anyway, which helps identify mountain passes and the like, but the lack of available carry makes everything so tedious, I don't feel challenged by the food, and the cold mechanic is, frankly, immersion-breaking when people are wearing less than you and don't seem bothered.
I finally abandoned my factorio save and stopped a streak that started sometime around the 1.0 release. I was doing a Krastorio2+Space Exploration run. I was about to unlock the last SE science pack but I needed to design a ship with specific requirements that I just did not find fun to do. SE in general has very interesting engineering challenges around signal automation but the moment you require more than 3-4 operators it gets very convoluted and hard to read. I will probably come back to the mod pack at some point on a different save.
Stardew Valley has taken its place. I'm on a fairly standard "discover the game as you go" run. I played before when it was released and did my typical harvest moon run where I play too hard and get most upgrades during the first year then burn out and never play again. I'm trying to relax (a bit) and focus more on the social part. I'm about to finish the first year and it is still fairly enjoyable. It probably helps that I only have time to play 1-2 days per real world day. I really miss the task list mod from factorio. I'll probably add mods if I do another playthrough.