Obsessed with Pacific Drive these days. The gameplay loop of exploring and gathering resources to go back and work on your car to go out and gather more resources is really well balanced.
Really liking the transition from the start where everything is scary and dangerous to later where you understand how to interact with the anomalies, and get a feel for how dangerous they are under which circumstances.
I finished Outer Wilds a couple days ago, I really liked it a lot. I had heard everyone say to go in completely blind and I had the impression that there was going to be a major twist or change in gameplay, but the reason that’s good advice is the magic in the game is in the exploration and discovery. There are some moments that just made me feel awe and wonder. Progress is entirely in the form of understanding, so starting the game for the first time after reading up a lot about it could be like introducing yourself to mario on world 4.
The first few hours I wasn’t fully into it, but there was just so much to explore. By the time I actually needed to take a couple hours on something and smash my head against the wall, I was already hooked and was willing to take that time to make progress on my own.
Brilliant game, absolutely my favourite in terms of design. It’s incredible how many realisations you make along the way. No other game has made me sit up in bed after going to sleep and tell my partner that I think I know what to do next.
The start is wonky, though. I’ve had a few friends bounce off it because of that. And also because they didn’t feel like you were given a clear goal or motivation. Which is really interesting, to me just going to space a exploring was motivation enough, but fair that it’s not the same for everyone.
still bg3. so close to level 12 to see if my end game builds work out.
Animal Well – I picked it back up lately on the Steam Deck and fully appreciated the layering of the puzzles. Unique dark 8-bit art style with modern physics/lighting. There’s practically no text in the game and no instructions at all.
After spending way too much time walking about doing random stuff, I finally bit the bullet and joined the Stormcloaks. Yep, I’m still playing Skyrim.
I’m still playing Skyrim after 5k hours. I get it.
I haven’t had the attention span for more than short pick-up-and-play sessions lately, so I’ve been trying out Psycho Pinball for the Sega Genesis on my handheld emulation console. I’m not very good at it, but I’m having fun!
Still working my way through Monster Hunter Generations: Ultimate on Ryujinx. Old-school Monster Hunter just has something special about it, and I’m really loving my time with the game.
For this game I’ve expanded my weapon repertoire to include Great Sword, Longsword, Switch Axe, and Lance (and Prowler, of course). Weapons I’ve explored in other games and didn’t really click with are S&S, Boomstick, and Bow, so I’m not planning to use them for this playthrough.
200 hours in so far, and I’m not even out of Low Rank yet (though I am doing every normal quest, so…).
Here’s to another 1k+ hours! :D
Oh man MHGU is the good stuff. I really like the deliberately slow/methodical game feel from that time period. I was always a lance/bow sort of guy.
I picked Lance up when I played World and absolutely loved it. It’s a weird feeling to be essentially invincible in a Monster Hunter game of all things (as long as you don’t fuck up), and I am very much here for it.
But yeah, I love the slower, more methodical combat of the older games.
Next to Baldur’s Gate 2 and Icewind Dale, which will probably take several more months at least, I’ve also been playing through the Syberia series. I’m now on Syberia 3, and I must admit it’s frustrating at times. The controls are awful. As an example: I literally had to frantically rotate the mouse for several minutes to rotate a crank ever so slowly.
It’s a shame because the world of Syberia is one with real character, and even though that’s less apparent than in the previous games, it’s still there.
I have good hope that the next game, Syberia: The World Before, will be better again.
How are you liking BG2? It’s still one of my favourite games, even though I recognise nostalgia is a big part of it. Was one of my comfort game for years.
It’s great - I love both cRPGs and the Forgotten Realms (ever since the days of Eye of the Beholder and the gold box series). But it’s also a bit too much sometimes. You’ll be doing a quest, and you’re approached by an NPC starting a different quest while party members are nagging to do theirs first and as you’re standing there trying to decide what to do first, a group attacks you for yet another quest.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but I really had a moment where two events happened at the same time, while I was on another quest.
It can be a bit like that, for sure! It’s one of the spots where it shows its age I think, it was really the first western CRPG with these types of companion missions and I don’t think they had all the scripting and timings nailed down just yet.
Are you using any mods? And what’s your party composition?
No mods, but enhanced edition.
At some point in BG1 I noticed my party was all women, and I decided to make that part of my character’s personality: she will work with men too but given the choice prefers adventuring with women. So now in BG2 she’s doing that too. I have Jaheira, Hexxat, Mazzy, Neera, and Aerie. Main character is a sorcerer.
In BG1 I also said no lawful companions, and no evil, but that’s not possible now while staying all female.
Oh damn, we’ve been over this already have we not? I really suck at remembering usernames 😔
Yeah you probably need one evil lady to fill out the roster. I guess Hexxat vs Viconia is personal preference, I’m personally not a huge fan of the Beamdog companions.
Started up Final Fantasy VI T-Edition this week, very early in. Mog absolutely wrecked face on the guard boss fight, that was funny. It’ll be fun to use chars in different ways, and I don’t even know what all is different yet.
I’ve been playing a lot of Slay this week.
It’s my favorite ‘conquest’ type of game. Been playing it off and on for many years. I would call it ‘simple but deep’ in the same sort of way chess is. I dare even call it elegant. I like how it forces you to take calculated risks, lest you be overrun by the enemy. But there’s still a time and place to turtle up.
There’s an excellent free, online clone called Konkr. I highly recommend checking it out of this interests you.
Thank you for sharing. I just looked at the clock and it’s been three hours…
Look, I may have spent the past several weeks playing Path of Exile non-stop. But I’m back on SOMA now. Back to slowly walking on the ocean floor and being interrupted by monsters while I read lore notes.
It’s also time to start up TF2 again, since a new community MvM event has started on potato.tf.
I managed to find a workaround for my Easy Anti-Cheat issue so I’m back to The Division 2. Well, kinda.
I once again ended up installing the first game and spent some time alternating between the two to compare them - it’s something I do pretty much every time I’m in the mood for TD.As much as I like TD2, I refreshed my realisation that in many aspects I still prefer the first game. I actually made a simple list last night of what I like about each game and it turned out way more one sided than I thought it would.
TD1:
- Atmosphere
- Game world
- Enemy factions
- Writing
- Slightly slower pace (movement, combat. looting)
- Cosmetics (UI and items themselves)
- Dark Zone
- Exotic weapons (in regards to looks, TD2 ones are hideous)
TD2:
- Improved cover system
- Armour and weakpoint systems
There are also some things I keep going back and forth on, mainly: gunplay and skills. Which game I prefer for these elements depends on how I feel and what I’m looking for at the time. This week, the first game comes out on top as well but, again, it’s more of a temporary decision compared to everything listed above.
Anyway, this is just a simple comparison without much thought put into it. I’m sure I could get more into details of specific systems and add a ton of conditions on when one is better than the other but it was a fun time waster after finishing a day with both titles.
If only there was a way to play the first game on the updated engine…
I looked through my backlog and finally decided to play Heat Signature. It’s pretty fun, my only qualm is the lack of armor-piercing weapons and the abundance of armored guards.
This game is such a hidden gem.
I’ve not been particularly patient this week, because I’ve been playing Titanium Court. But I will claim to get away with it because they have a 20% launch sale, so I am at least adhering to part of the patient gaming ethos: don’t buy games at full price.
I will now attempt to talk about Titanium Court without actually telling you anything about it, because this is one of those games you should go into completely blind, if possible. And also because, well… this game is not particularly easy to describe. Here goes: Titanium Court answers the question “what if David Foster Wallace made a modern interpretation of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a match-3 game?”. Okay, that was a little vague maybe. How about this (and knowing I’m likely to antagonise half the internet here): Titanium Court is like Undertale for adults.
It’s a game that delights in surprising you, and I recommend giving it the chance of doing so. Whether it’s a clever joke, a surprising emotional moment, a genuinely thought provoking piece of writing or a brilliant mechanical twist, the game has a lot of them in store for you. This is in my opinion a great use of the 2-hour Steam refund window policy. You will not have seen nearly everything of the game in that time, but you will almost certainly know if you vibe with it or not.
For me, this is a frontrunner for GOTY.
What’s a match 3 game?
It’s a game where you have a grid of tiles, and if you slide one tile so that you line up 3 (or more) of the same symbol, they disappear - and you get some points, typically. Think Candy Crush, although there is multitude of other variations too.
Now, Titanium Court is a lot more than just that. It just uses the match-3 framework to riff on a sort of autobattler/tower defense roguelike gameplay loop, which works surprisingly well on a mechanical level.
That is also just the basic gameplay loop of it, however. There is a lot more to the game than that, but again all of that is best discovered first hand.
I started replaying Klonoa: Moonlight Museum, this time with its fan translation so I get the story and RetroAchievements I missed before. The developers dealt with the WonderSwan’s terrible display by turning Klonoa into a chill little puzzle platformer, a design they repeated twice on the GBA.
I recently completed Mega Bomberman’s RetroAchievement set, then poked at its superior PC Engine version, Bomberman '94. It’s good classic Bomberman. I want to start playing the fantastic fan game Power Bomberman once my new MacBook Pro Linux Mint setup is more stable.
