A positive thread about what you're currently playing

Like a lot of people, Nier Replicant sqrt(1.5).

Gestalt is one of my all time favorite games (and going through replicant, easily top 5) and this is exactly what a remake/remaster should be. Still kind of jank, still kind of clearly a ps3 game, but it "feels" like what I remember. Just grabbed Ending A and am "looking forward to" B-D (and apparently E). Sounds like I only need all the weapons for D instead of all the upgrades but I also see no way I could have grabbed all the resources ten years ago or whatever it was. But I definitely recall doing multiple completions because you got one Eagle (?) egg per C completion so... I dunno.

Aside from that: Brother Protagonist instead of Father protagonist is interesting. I think the overall narrative makes more sense (particularly the time skip) and I am not sure if it is a function of being a different person than when I played Gestalt or seeing these endless sidequests play out knowing "the full story" but I kind of liked that Papa Nier was a desperate man trying to save his daughter and Brother Nier is a man destroyed by violence and suffering, just like everyone else in this fucked up and beautiful world.

And Kaine... Kaine continues to be complex. Not every aspect of her character is nailed/justified and she is PROBABLY just as bullshit as Quiet in a lot of ways. But enough of her character hits so hard that it is AMAZING and while I don't think people should regret their words and deeds... its more about "regret" being a strong word and she is definitely a top 25 video game characters in my book. Said it a few times but Emil is the heart of Nier and Kaine is its Soul. Both figuratively and narratively.

New Pokemon snap! Its a super pleasant change of pace from most games that come out nowadays. You know that noise that Jeff and Brad make whenever they talk about Viva Pinata? Thats what this game is for me at this point. You can make whatever value argument you want to with it, but having this super nice thing to play after a rough day of work is worth the 60 bucks to me. Its also my GOTY so far probably, more than likely due to the relative dearth of games, but hey, I still greatly enjoy it!

Surprisingly, Marvel's Avengers. Yes, the game has many problems with the end-game content. But the core combat is fun and the abilities the chosen character gains as players max out their abilities makes the combat even more fun. Its a real shame that everything else surrounding the end-game content is so lackluster or this would've been a huge hit, instead of the struggle it is now to keep people playing long term.

Super Mario Picross and New Pokemon Snap.

Despite being one of the first picross games from Nintendo it is by FAR the most challenging I have played. Still chipping away after dozens of hours.

Pokemon Snap is just a good, easy thing to relax with. Look at the mons and their majesty!

Currently playing two games at the moment, Rayman Revolution in the mornings and Silent Hill 3 at nights.

Rayman Revolution is simply the PS2 port of Rayman 2 with some small differences. It controls well enough and still looks colourful.

Silent Hill 3 is compelling and creepy and I love the grungy art style and the excellent use of light and shadows well before Ray Tracing that seems to be all the rage. I'm playing that game on the original PS2 because atleast it has the original voice cast.

I finished Claire's route on RE2 at the weekend.

A solid 4/5

It would be a 5, totally. The game was absolutely remarkable, and really fun almost all the way through. Then I got to the Sewers, and after being so lost I needed a guide, I had to drop it a point.

Great game, just doesn't QUITE hit the mark.

Next up: Either XBC: DE on the Switch, or Thirteen Sentinels: Aegis Rim

@shiftygism said:

This one got some use before it got buried:

https://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion-30/what-are-you-playing-at-the-moment-1869824/

I started the demo of Pikmin 3 because I wasn't sure if I wanted to drop $59.99. I remember playing the original Pikmin 20 years ago or so and some of Pikmin 2 as well, but I wasn't sure how much I would enjoy it now. Well, turns out it's just as entertaining as ever. It's hard to describe what makes it so good, but in a word, it's just charming. I really love the very unique atmosphere. It's very Nintendo while having a distinctly different feeling in terms of both gameplay and tone than Mario, Zelda etc. In fact, I can't think of any other game that has gives a similar feeling. It's cute without being overly self-aware that it's cute; the creatures never smile or behave in unrealistically funny ways. Much like real animals, they don't know that they are cute - they're all just focused on surviving. The game is amoral in the way nature is - none of these "baddies" are particularly evil, they just want a snack, and I even feel a little bad killing them to use their bodies as resources to grow my little army. You get the sense that when creatures die in this world, they really die, unlike in Zelda or Mario where they just disappear in a puff of smoke and go who knows where to be regenerated later.

I also adore the Koppaites. (isn't that fossilized poop? Oh wait, that's a "coprolite".) I like their little journals and scientific studies. I like the weird music and the detailed starry backgrounds. Overall, this seems like a game that fully commits to the whimsical yet dangerous vision for what its world should be, and does not at all feel like it's trying overly hard to be audience friendly the way other games often do. It doesn't feel like a game designed by a marketing team. The devs just seem to trust that if they do make it the way they would like it, the audience will like it too. Of course a lot of this is attributable to the unique aesthetic of the original game - this one follows suit very closely. Still, to me it's just a very enjoyable package. (It also has amazingly detailed environments - quite pleasing on the eyes.)

Since Disco Elysium: The Final Cut got patched into a working state on PS4, I've been intermittently (about once a week) putting one or two hours into the game when I don't have much to grind for in MLB The Show that night (or more accurately have run out of podcasts to listen to while playing) and while I also find this aspect a little exhausting, the depth with which this world has been realized is pretty unreal. Sometimes it approaches what I like to call the uncanny valley of speech, where characters are speaking in such a written word sort of way that the unreality of it all peeks through, but overall this alternate-Earth ZA/UM has here is mightily impressive in its depth and expansiveness. I also can't help but be reminded of the way I liked to write in creative writing and personal essay classes, so I'm sure some of my criticism comes from that dark part of the mind that says to oneself, "hey, maybe you could do this too..." before your inland empire trait dulls the notion.

Also, the game is really good at being sneaky funny, and the more characters I meet the more impressed I am by their ability to find voices that don't sound like, well, "video game voices". Some of the accents sound like put-ons to me, but I'm a dumb American from the Midwest where accents barely exist at all so what do I know? I can read a lot faster than these characters speak which makes it a little hard for me to sit through entire lines of dialogue, but the fact that I'm always trying to time my pressing forward perfectly with the end of a sentence is a testament to both the writing and the performances of that writing. I'm also glad for this game to prove I'm not the weird one for playing games with subtitles off so the dialogue isn't spoiled in voice-acted games with heavy dialogue!

Metro Last Light Redux. Picked up for like $5 on sale awhile ago and finally got some time to sit down with it. Really love the feel and graphics of this game. Has a lot of the atmosphere of STALKER, but more rounded off /polished. Like the bit of stealth and ammo conservation mixed with the tense feeling during exploration.

So, I'm back in Cyberpunk 2077 [on PC]; got "back in" with the latest patch (1.22 at the time of posting this) after "dropping off" at version 1.07. Even though the updates have been more significant for consoles, I've noticed some improvements and adjustments here and there; mainly the vehicle handling being improved, V not showing up naked when looking in the mirror at times even when I've dressed her*, the respec item not being as expensive at it was at launch, and no t-posing or t-posing while driving yet. I can't really speak on performance improvements since my desktop is pretty high-end, but I imagine that some optimizations are helping me better maintain maxed out rasterization settings with quality DLSS at 1440p for about 70 frames on average. That said, I'm only back at the start of act two, so I don't have first-hand experience with the fixes that were applied to certain quests, like with one of the main missions with Takemura not initializing (which hasn't been a problem for me on 1.07), and I don't know if a side mission were Wakako's dialogue doesn't play properly has been fixed, but the patch notes for 1.21 were extensive, so I'm 85% sure that those have been rectified.

Hopefully I'm not getting ahead of myself for saying this since I'm not exactly going though the game with a fine-tooth comb in preparation for a 10,000 word video essay or a blog post, but the current build is probably how the game should have launched. My last several hours with the game has felt less like early access and more like a typical open-world game release. Yes, some work still need to be done to bring it up to at least The Witcher 3's current level of polish, but the current build makes me feel more confident in the development side of CDPR; the management side still has a lot of good will to earn back. But what hasn't changed for me is that I still very much enjoy the game as an open-world Deus Ex. I get the GTA comparisons/expectations and it would be great if CDPR can bring in more miscellaneous life-sim interactions with future patches and DLC (preferably things that were left on the cutting room floor as free DLC), and it would be great to have some early game story expansion since... well, for those who know, you know, and hopefully barber shops/hair salons and tattoo artists will be added to the game sooner rather than later so that I don't need a save editor in order to make those aesthetic changes. But, things are looking good and I hope that the worst of this whole ordeal has happened with the hack back in February and that it's relative smooth sailing from here on in.

*I play as female V, so feel free to use whichever pronoun is applicable to how you look at the game.

Finally booted up Sonic Generations, buried deep in my backlog for so long.

With 4K upres on the X, this looks super sharp! I'm not a big fan of Sonic, never finished any of his games, but I'll definitely boot this up (very easy with Quick Resume) once in a while and run through the 2D and 3D parts. I don't even mind the 3D parts kind of playing themselves, as they serve as flashing cutscenes.

Desperados 3

I am going on 40 and growing up didn't have a computer until I was a senior in high school so there are entire genre's of games that I feel like a completely missed out on as I mostly stuck to console gaming. I recently bought a decent gaming laptop and have been trying things like Civ 6, Divinity, PoE (things that have console ports but I wanted to try with M&K) which haven't really landed with me, but for some reason Desperados is really clicking. The "tactical stealth" idea is fun, the puzzle solving makes me feel equally like the smart and dumbest person in the world but never unfairly. I tried the Xbox version on gamepass but playing with a controller just didn't feel all that great.

I am about 4 missions in and hoping that it can hold my attention without too much repetitive stuff, but we'll see.

Got Soul Calibur 6 recently and having a good time with it. SC has been my favorite fighting game since I tried it on Dreamcast. I think this is the only series where I haven't skipped a single title (yes, I even went back and got Soul Blade). 6 was meant as a reboot, but I'm surprised to see how much the gameplay feels like it was built off of 5. I think this was a good call as 5 actually played quite well, it's only real problem was a lack of content. Basically, 6 is 5 with the old characters brought back, and a full game instead of half of one. Overall very happy with it.

2 is still probably my favorite, but I do enjoy the character creation they added in for 3 onwards.

Been spending time with some older games lately. Most recently I revisited Burnout 3: Takedown and hell, it's absolutely as good as I remember. At the end of the first race my heart was racing and I was grinning like an idiot. I knew that I didn't like the direction that more recent racing games have gone, but I didn't realize how far away they'd been from what I used to love. In terms of track design and driving model, Burnout 3 is damn near my dream racing game. I wish they had a little more fun with the peripheral track art elements—I mean, why even pretend we're in the real world? Just give me dinosaurs crossing the road and alien spaceships flying overhead. But, speeding through the turns, slamming into the walls, it's designed to make you think you're totally out of control while never actually being out of control. In my first race I drifted through a turn late thinking I was going to slam into the opposite wall and lose my position, but I was actually able to generously correct late and recover. It's not necessarily realistic, but it's fun as heck.

PSA: turns out Burnout 3: Takedown is backwards compatible on Xbox 360 but not the Xbox One. I misunderstood how backwards compatibility worked on these platforms and was definitely under the impression that all original Xbox games that were backwards compatible for the 360 were also for the Xbox One, but that is not the case. I don't know what the fuck they're doing over there, but the extremely hit and miss way backwards compatible stuff works these days sucks shit.

My game time has been super all over the place lately so I've been bouncing between a bunch of stuff when I get time. I'll make a list so it's easier to read lol

1. Hitman 3 - I beat the game on PC when it launched, doing some silent/master/sniper assassin missions here and there when I get the itch - I've not even come close to getting it on every mission but I like to work up to that over time. I've never had a chance to do any elusive targets for Hitman1 or Hitman2 as I bought both of those after those missions had already finished, so I'm making it my goal to do all the elusive targets for Hitman3. I've done the first 2 and now that The Iconoclast is out on Mendoza, I'll probably be doing that one this week

2. Ghost of Tsushima - I started this game a couple months back on my ps4 pro but was fortunate enough to find a PS5 since, so I picked up and continued where I left off without a hitch. I'm about 50 hours in I would say. I don't actually own any PS5 games yet, but this game on 4k/60 is definitely spectacular.

3. Apex Legends - I pick that one up from time to time to play with my buddies when they're online and the recent addition of the 3v3 arena mode was a big attraction. I've really enjoyed the new mode.

4. Chivalry 2 - I played the closed beta a few weekends back and loved it. I was a big fan of the original and they really made some meaningful improvements to it, adding additional structure and predictability to the combat which makes the game feel alot less janky and gives you a real sense of improvement. The open beta starts in a week or 2 so I'm really excited to revisit that.

I started playing The Wild at Heart. Seems pretty cute. It's a Pikmin-like. Good art, good music. Potentially dark story about a child escaping into a land of whimsy. Checks all the indie game boxes. I'm having fun with it so far. You also have a Luigi's Mansion style vacuum pack to suck up items and solve puzzles, and I'm always down for a good vacuum.

EDIT: Finished the game. Probably my favorite game of the year so far, not that that is a particularly long list or one filled with bangers. They definitely lean more into the whimsy side of the game, with any of the darker tones pretty much exclusive to the set-up of the game. It's a very breezy action puzzle game. Nothing too challenging. It doesn't over stay it's welcome. And I found the loop satisfying enough to want to get all the chests and collectables.

I played and finished Ori and the Will of the Wisps. tl;dr, it's excellent, with a few issues.

The platforming is magnificent and smooth. Moving around in this world just feels good, with several propulsive moves you can string together to keep movement fast and flowing. It's so fun, in fact, that I would love it if they made a straight-forward platformer with discrete stages. The world is fun to explore, though, and I'm an absolute sucker for Metroidvanias.

I played in on the Switch, and it's a great port. The framerate was rock-steady for the most part and the world is beautiful. It did consistently take 1-2 seconds to open the map menu which detracted somewhat from the flow since in any Metroidvania I often look at the map screen several times per minute. As for the style, I will say it's very consistent with the look of the previous Ori game, which is to say it's very... glow-y. Everything glows, from Ori itself to the enemies to the pickups to projectiles to random objects in the background or foreground. While it's always beautiful, at times it seems almost too beautiful, in the sense that I would've liked more diversity in the art style. It's kinda like your Grandma's house decked out with Thomas Kincade paintings. Like, yeah they're pretty, but sometimes pretty gets a little monotonous. The same goes with the music, which is at times excellent, but could use some variation. It seems to be all ethereal pianos and strings. Basically, everything in the game is consistent with the general tone of new-age mysteriousness... if there is a general theme or moral to the game, you could probably sum it up with "Nature energy is like, powerful, man." It would be nice if there was a little more humor or banter to the proceedings. Just because you have swelling music and sad-looking characters doesn't mean you have made real emotional impact on the player. That would take stronger, more interesting characters.

Another complaint: the art style actually interfered with gameplay at several points. It was often difficult for me to tell the difference between background/foreground objects that are just there for atmosphere and platforms that you could rest on, or which objects would hurt you if you touched them. Similarly, it was sometimes hard to tell which obstacles were breakable. At one point there was a clear wind happening judging from the particles and flapping objects, but it turns out this was just flavor and it had no effect on Ori's feather glide which is otherwise affected by drafts. It's as if the level designers and artists were in different places and didn't talk to each other enough.

I got stuck several times, but this again is somewhat endemic to the Metroidvania genre, since in these type of games there are a huge number of places you can explore at any given time and usually only one or two paths that lead to new areas. Another problem is that it was occasionally hard to tell the difference between obstacles that were puzzles or platforming challenges and the kind of obstacles that just require a new ability. I had to look up a walkthrough several times to progress.

Finally, the combat is... okay. It's certainly much better than the combat in the first game, which I found to be quite frustrating. The devs made the VERY wise decision of giving Ori direct control over his attacks this time instead of having auto-targeting as in the first game - that never felt impactful. Still, compared to something like Hollow Knight the combat here is a bit lacking; it just doesn't feel as nice and chunky when you inflict or take damage the way Hollow Knight does. Perhaps that's a compromise necessary to keep the platforming action so smooth, but often I would die to enemies or environmental hazards with little idea what happened, whereas in Hollow Knight or Super Metroid I always knew exactly what I did wrong.

In sum: Play this game, it's great and gets a solid 8/10 from me. (If I spent most of this review complaining it's because complaints are more interesting to talk about.)

I bought Stellaris on the Paradox Steam sale last week because I've always wanted to play it since I heard Austin talk about it on the Beastcast years ago. I don't want to admit how much I've played in the last week. That game is downright dangerous. It's like the Civ "one more turn" thing but multiplied by 100 and because it's realtime there's no hard delineation between events, making it so accomplishing what seems like one small thing can sometimes take much longer than it feels like. "I'll just finish this one thing and then quit for the day" often turns into a couple hours, especially when those hegemonic imperialist assholes that look kind of like Faceless Void start yet another war with me.

I just finished my first full game. I didn't win but that's okay because I had no idea what I was doing for the first 150 in-game years or so of it. A single standard game of Stellaris is LONG. Way longer than something like Civ. I like what they do at the end of the game to stir things up (if you don't know, basically there are a bunch of scenarios that can occur near the end. The one I got this time is not far off from (Mass Effect spoilers) the Reapers from Mass Effect. An evil race tore a rift in the space-time continuum and invaded the galaxy with the goal of wiping everyone out. Myself along with one of the fallen empires managed to stop them. It was super cool)

Couple of older JRPGS and something newer this time:

Shadow Hearts Covenant: Played through this a few weeks ago and was really impressed with how much the combat improved from 1 to 2. I had completely forgotten this had a whole combo system, as well as a host of minor iterative improvements over just about every element of the first games design. Also, I never knew it had multiple endings; that was a great surprise.

Breath of Fire 4: Never got very far in this as a kid, but I'm having a pretty good time with it now. Like SH: Covenant, it's very much an iterative sequel of BoF 3 (also on PSX), but it definitely feels like it had a smaller budget. The spritework and animation is still gorgeous, but there's less of it. Feel like palette swaps have come a bit sooner, and most bosses are polygonal, as opposed to the massive and ridiculously beautiful sprites from 3. When all is said and done, I don't think I'll like it as much as BoF3, but I can't exactly blame it for not living up to it's predecessor; Breath of Fire 3 is lowkey one of the best games on the PSX.

Dragon Quest Builders: This has been my weekend game for the last month or so, and it furthers my belief that Dragon Quest spinoffs are better than mainline Dragon Quests. As someone who really couldn't care less about Minecraft, this is doing it for me; it's a very relaxing experience. The boss battles at the end of the chapters are kind of a bummer, though. You spend hours and hours building a town in a chapter, and the boss then runs through it like a hurricane at the end. Chapter 2 ended with my town in ruins, and I just didn't have the energy to fix it all up again before moving on to the next zone. Great take on that genre, though.

I am playing Final Fantasy 9 and Final Fantasy 6. I also played some Sonic CD.

I just finished replaying Psychonauts for the first time since launch.

I really love that game. The writing is still so great, and the platforming was good enough. I had forgotten how much that game really nailed the idea of a point-and-click adventure game in 3D. I think some of the puzzle solutions are a little convoluted if you don't have that mentality, but the in game hint system is pretty effective. All in all, it's worth checking out on Gamepass.

Very much looking forward to Psychonauts 2! All the current coverage even makes me think we're gonna get a surprise launch of it during their E3 presentation.

The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki.

Or more accurately Trails to Azure the supremely high quality fan localization from The Geofront released not too long ago. Not only is it one of the better games in a great series but it and its predecessor is probably the greatest effort I've seen put into a fan project. Their work puts a lot of professionals to shame and it's all a labor of love.

I would recommend it to everyone but I would also only scare most of them away by going over what it takes to really get into Trails.

@wollywoo: I just finished this game and I have very similar thoughts too, I enjoyed the movement in Will of the Wisps, the graphics were fantastic, but I also kept losing track of Ori against the bright background. Will of the Wisps does a lot well, but it's no Hollow Knight in terms of plot, lore, combat, upgrades, replayability, etc. etc.

So I'm playing "Demolition Derby 3" (Android) now.

Started playing a couple years ago but like all games after a while the interest fades a little bit and it's been time playing other things for a while.

But unlike most games this is one of those that I always find myself coming back to and binge playing again and again it's replayability is incredible.

What I like about it most?

It's one of the VERY few "demolition derby" or "Banger racing/demolition racing" games out there that's actually very accurate/realistic in how it depicts what demolition derbies and demolition racing, are like in real life.

Most games of this type are either quite cartoonish or very extremely arcade-ish and everything from the vehicles to the scenery and tracks to the driving racing physics or crash mechanics.

Most all games of this type have HORRIBLE "soft body" crash mechanics/physics ...if they show body damage at all.

Most are very clearly created by developers who have never been in a real demolition derby in their life or any kind of banger racing demolition racing and probably haven't even seen a video of the real thing.

But this game by "Beer Money Games" really gets it right and it's apparent that these developers have either really done the research and done a great job at capturing the feel of the real thing or actually have some experience doing it in real life.

There are well over 80 vehicles and most all of them are based on real life existing vehicles. Most of them are easily recognizable and associated with their real life counterparts.

And also uses vehicles that it actually see in these types of events in real life.

Unlike many games of this type, where you're having demolition derbies with Lamborghini diablos, Bugatti Veyrons, cartoonish armored Humvees, or Abrams tanks and other such silliness ...that you'd never see in real life.... The vehicles in this game are the very things that are often found in a real events like 70s 80s and 90s or early-2000s vehicles, everyday drivers, the cars that many of us have driven in real life.

It has (all are unlicensed "generic versions"under real life counterparts) vehicles like, VW beetle, Ford crown Vic, 1980s Chevy police cars, Honda CRX 70s Chevy Silverado, old school Citroens, SAABs, Fiats, from the '70s & 80s.

It does have a few "exotics", but even they are believable for such racing. There's things like old school Porsche 911s, or a Lamborghini countach from the '70s or even a movie car like "The Wraith" (which was a Dodge prototype vehicle from the '81)

The game keeps things interesting by being having a lot of customization options from multiple different decals, a very wide variety of wheels/rims and a large number of colors that you can use for decal colors, car paint, Wheels to window tint.

Another positive thing about the game is the fact that the upgrades whether it be engines tires or accessories, they actually affect the performance of the vehicle in a realistic ways.

Plus the vehicles themselves pretty accurately reflect the performance that their counterpart vehicles produce in real life.

In my opinion, it has the perfect Ballance between realism (without being so realistic it's unplayable, like the "realistic" setting in "BeamNG Drive" where one moderate crash completely disables the vehicle for example) and "arcade", to make it seem real yet very fun.

To sum it up, it's the closest thing in mobile platform to a game like "Wreckfest".

It's early days but I think Gears 2 is better than Gears 1. Not sure I can tell you why, though. I feel like the campaign's paced better and maybe it's just tighter in other areas. I don't feel Marcus is as chunky. He moves a bit freer, you know?

Unskippable cutscenes, though. C'mon.

Mopping up the Platinum on Ghost of Tsushima. It's the only game I've ever REALLY gone for the Plat on.

It's a bit boring, doing all the busy work, but it's a chill, relaxed world to explore, and I'm so overpowered by now that I cut through Mongols like a knife cutting a cake.

All I have left is to mop up all the side quests (Tales), and find 20 each of the Artefacts and Records. I predict I have maybe...7-10 hours left, if I'm being conservative? It's been a terrific game. Weird difficulty spike near the beginning though. I'm going to make a blog post about my time with a game, going for the plat, and how its changed how I feel about the game overall.

Aside from that, when I finish this, I'm going to play FE: Three Houses in the Dimitri route. I got up to the fishing tournament, about 11 hours in, and lost a bit of steam for it. I hear it's good enough to carry on though!

Astral Chain, because I keep saying that I like the Switch but I haven't been using it enough, and I figured that getting back into Astral Chain is a pretty good reason to use my Switch more often, and maybe take the 2080 Ti out of my desktop in order to incentivize using my consoles more often.

Two games lately. I just finished Garage; Bad Trip. An uneven but really kind of fun top down shooter. The story, deliberately a bit cheesy, follows the trials and tribulations of a drug dealer as he begins his sentence (of sorts) of being a janitor in a parking Garage. Zombies, a mad scientist and a love interest soon follow. The action is top down, using a gamut of range weapons and some melee to deal with it all. The action leans a bit more puzzle than horde or mob based. Especially true of how you approach the bosses in the game.

And now I am playing Ion Fury, based on the old 3D Realms engine. I personally love how all the graphics are turned up to 11, yet when you approach an object or some source lighting, it all goes flat. Weapons are fine, pretty much like playing Duke Nukem 3D if all game development could only be based on it's engine. And the story, such as it is, well, better. It was so banal that I was surprised when she said the 'F' word rather assertively during a rather hard (for me, on the ultra-violence difficulty) mid game arena fight. I'm around halfway through the game, with no complaints.

These games, along with Dusk, Amid Evil, and Hellpoint, have kept my gaming going with my 1080ti video card (plenty for those), while I await the distant future when I can get a decent RTX card.

Picked up Chivalry 2 a couple of days ago after watching the Nextlander guys stream it and looking at some reviews. It helped that it's 40 bones new instead of 60 or 70. After the requisite hour or two of getting my ass kicked while I learned and got used to the combat, I really started to enjoy myself a lot. I play more single-player and cooperative games than I do competitive ones, partly because they have a tendency to just stress me out when I or my team are losing badly, but this game avoids that for a number of reasons. First, there appears to be no stat tracking, so you can't obsess over your W/L or K/D ratio even if you wanted to. Second, there are enough players to a team that if you're losing you know it's really not all your fault; there are thirty other players who are losing it with you. Finally, it very much doesn't take itself too seriously. E.g., some of the battle cries are ridiculous--my favorite is "For that guy we like!" All in all, it's the kind of low-stakes competitive multiplayer nonsense I can appreciate.

I've been playing 13 Sentinels now for two days, and boy it is really fantastic. Jan hyped it SO much (although I skipped his breakdown of the story during GOTY for obvious reasons) and somehow it has completely lived up to my expectations. The story really has me locked in, and I love the way it teases it out. Just super impressed across the board so far.

Playing Murder By Numbers. I'm really digging the fashion sense in this game. I like it so much that I wish recurring characters would change wardrobe between cases. I generally find nonagrams to be quite relaxing to solve so that's another plus. The intro movie they patched in is genuinely great.

Also playing a lot of Loop Hero. I still can't quite wrap my head around the concept but I am inexplicably getting better and making progress. Something about it makes it hard to stop playing sometimes. This would've been one of the greatest games ever made in the early 90's.

I just finished the Portal 2 "Portal Stories: Mel" mod on PC [no spoilers]. I can't believe how much effort went into this mod, and it's entirely free. The level design and humor wasn't quite up to snuff, but still thoroughly enjoyed a brief revisit to one of my all-time favorite games series.

I'm replaying Red Dead Redemption now. The only issue is 30 fps, but it feels "cinematic" like watching an old western film. I remember playing this when I was a kid and basically skipping all the cutscenes lol. I appreciate the dialogue a lot more as an adult.

Also enjoy the more "arcade-y," for lack of a better term, approach in this game, like how you can call your horse from anywhere and it will run up to you. In addition, animations are quicker than in RDR2 and you can just fly through a mission if you want. Gun shop isn't too complex, just pick up a dozen weapons and go. It's really nice revisiting this game as well.

HuniePop 2, for real this time since I finally worked up the nerve to do so.

Matching three is more stressful than in the first game, but the mechanics are made so that they're technically fair by giving you more allowed moves and telling you which girls prefer which tokens, so that part of the game is still engaging. And the new characters seem as eccentric if not more eccentric than the original cast, which is how I ended up vouching for the first game. But, I am disappointed that this game don't respond well to using a stylus or touch controls. I exclusively played the first game on my Surface 3, so it would have been great to play HP2 with just the tablet portion of my Surface Book 2 and a stylus, but needing a mouse and keyboard kinda ruined that fantasy. Still, it's an overall net positive. One neutral thought is that can't un-hear 2B since Kira Buckland came back as Lola, so it is quite the juxtaposition between hearing her being flirty verses hearing her being stoic. And another neutral thought is that I don't really care about the eroge portion in this series anymore. I'm cultured enough to buy the games, but not enough to be aroused by them.

So, fun game, even if it's not as touch screen friendly as the first (maybe Windows 11 can improve upon that), and anyone who wants to say that this is a travelogue posting on a very disreputable website can fuck right off.

I started a new run of State of Decay 2 with an all-new community on a higher difficulty (since using old community people often trivializes the game because you can bring in any weapons/items you want from old runs than can fit in your inventory). The new updates they did to the game make it a lot more interesting. Now it's way higher riskier to go to some areas because of the new plague territory mechanic, which makes the first bit of the game a lot trickier to navigate when you barely have weapons. I never used crossbows in my first run of the game because on normal, weapons and ammo were easy to find. In this run I'm barely finding any weapons so I've ended up using crossbows a ton. It's been quite fun.

The only warning I need to make is that the update does seem to have made the game run a bit heavier on the CPU than it used to. My poor old i5 3570k in my PC used to run the game fine but now it struggles. The CPU load while the game is running is pretty much pegged at 100% usage now, which wasn't the case before the update. The framerate is fine but any time anything CPU-intensive happens (like a plague heart dying and the game having to adjust all of the surrounding area, or when driving very fast) the game does hitch a bit. So yeah, just a heads up for those with older PCs.

I'm not really playing it since I'm still invested in Fallout 76. But after four fucking years, Square finally fixed the PC version of Nier Automata.

Picked up Wingspan on the Switch. Apparently it's an adaptation of an actual board game. I didn't really know anything about it when I bought it. But it's pretty fun. I like card games and nice pictures of birds and it's both of those things.

Decided to give A Plague Tale a go and it has definitely surprised me. It has a lot more to it than you might expect. The blatant rat racism is unacceptable though.

Chivalry 2 is chaos. I know there's depth there but man, it's like crabs in a bucket. A smooth, bloody bucket.

I am now 35+ hours into Yakuza 0, and it basically rules. To get the negatives out of the way first, I think there are issues with pacing in the main story and I sometimes have issues with the combat, especially when there are multiple enemies with weapons that can immediately stun you. But generally I really like how visceral and satisfying the combat is, it's obviously got some great storytelling, both in the serious main quest and in the goofball side stories, and I've become quite addicted to the management aspect of the game. This was my first time really sinking my teeth into the Yakuza series, and honestly it's been a breath of fresh air. I'd kinda fallen out of love with Japanese games - honestly can't remember the last non-Nintendo game from Japan that I could say I loved - but I'm so glad I finally decided to give this franchise a chance. Makes me excited to go back and watch all of Beast from the East when I'm done.

I can't really commit to a game since getting the Plat on Tsushima. I've started a handful of games, but nothing's really stuck. So far, I've tried the openings of:

-FF7 on PS1 (I know)

Starts off kinda strong, but I dunno. I wanna experience it again, as I haven't played it in over 15 years, but I don't want to ruin my memory of it?

-Dragon Quest XI DE on PC (GamePass)

Again, seems to start okay, but...I dunno. It's a Dragon Quest game and they kinda suck. I've tried 3/4 of them now, and always drop off at about....10 hours in. I like the aesthetic, but the gameplay is kinda wanting.

-Metal Gear Solid 5 (PC)

I'm sure this will be great, but I heard there's a lot of senseless grinding. Maybe I'll just watch MG Scanlon

-Warcraft 3 (PC) (The original, 2001 version, not the soulless remake)

It's good, but going back is basic as FUCK. It's like playing DOTA 2 but the Fisher Price version. I remember it being amazing, and the story being ownage, so I'm willing to give this one a go.

-Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire (Game Pass)

It just seems kinda crap. Almost every character is automated, and the base difficulty is too easy, and the harder difficulty is too hard. Maybe I'm not spotting it, but I liked what PF:KM did where it gave you lots of sliders for difficulty variety. Also, I don't have a fucking clue what's going on in the ship combat. I just charge towards them and board them. Every time. I also think managing resources for your ship is tedious as fuck.

-Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (Vanilla/no DLC)

-A great game, but the vanilla version is just left wanting as hell. The variety of items/builds is honestly just too low, and it feels at any one time, I have maybe a 5% chance to win a run, cause my items are crap.

All these games seem great, but I don't know if I'll stick with them. It's also too hot to sit in front of a computer all day. This heat is oppresive.

Skyrim [Switch.]

Well, this game is OK. I haven't played Elder Scrolls since Oblivion on Xbox 360. From what I remember of reviews when it came out, this game was always a big leap over that one, but playing it now, it seems very, very close to what I remember of Oblivion, although the combat is somewhat improved. It's fun to explore. However, the world seems kind of... empty, and mostly devoid of character or personality. It's fairly generic fantasy stuff. Compared to Breath of the Wild, which was full of delightfully quirky characters and colorful places, Skyrim seems stiff and lifeless. The combat doesn't seem to have much in the way of tactics - so far I mostly just swing my sword at stuff until it dies. Even fighting the dragons is kind of boring - I just keep shooting them with arrows until they're dead and it's not challenging at all. It's also not great looking compared to the impressive vistas in BOTW. Not sure if I will keep playing it or not.

Played the Yuffie FF7R DLC and overall it ruled just as much as the base game. Great animations, fun characters, 10/10 soundtrack.

Started playing RE Village and I really don't have the stomach for horror any more. RE2 worked nicely since it's more action than horror, and I did finish 7, but scary sounds in dark areas just work too well on me. I will press on though, just to see how much they manage to mess up Ethan's life.

due to severe lack of decent new games in 2021. I decided to make my own fun. Decided to go back through the Final Fantasy 13 games, only played half of the first one on X360 when it first came out. I'm playing on PC with HD texture mods. Looks great and I'm enjoying my time with it.

Also I'm learning Dead by Daylight, mostly fun because I'm playing with my IRL friends that live 3 hours away and dont see them very often.

@theonewhoplays: after that first opening sequence, there really isnt much more in the realm of "horror" honestly. I feel the same way, but i pushed on, and once you get the shotgun it really does become for of an action game as far as actual danger goes. Stick to it, i dont think youll regret it if you liked 2!

I played through Going Under. It's a goofy rougelite about how working at a giant corporation sucks. So very much up my ally. It's a little janky in a couple of spots, but I enjoyed my time with it a lot.

@wollywoo: It feels like the scope of Skyrim is rarely approached by other studios, so I'm glad to hear that we've had enough releases in the ten years since Skyrim that people are no longer satisfied with that world. I've been playing it recently in VR (which I would not recommend given how many hours it took me to get it working), and the world is incredibly detailed to a level that I did not appreciate playing it on a screen. If Breath of the Wild or Red Dead Redemption 2 has people expecting that Bethesda focus on the systems in their next games, I cannot imagine the "living" worlds we'll see in the future. Very exciting!

Have been playing through DQXI and enjoying it quite a bit, almost in spite of myself. I'm coming up on what I presume is the end of the game and in terms of the writing and character work the whole game past the first ~10 hours has been an absolute heap of wasted potential where if they just spent a few more minutes on each plot point then moments would hit so much harder. And even with that, I've kept playing and have kept having a good time because the game is just JRPG fan comfort food with an overflowing amount of almost weaponised charm and I guess that's what I need right now!