What have you all been playing!
Ive been grinding out binding of Isaac challenges. Yesterday I beat ultra hard which is something I never wish to put myself through again 😊 😮💨
Baldurs gate 3. I started when it came out, but then got distracted by a few games. It took like 200+ hours, but I finally got my fill of factorio. So now back to bg3-it’s very good.
I’m on my second playthrough. It’s the very first single player game I’ve ever played twice in a row, just after finishing it the first time :) I wanted to play the bad guy but couldn’t do it. I love the companions too much to be evil :)
Same- I also did back-to-back playthroughs! I enjoyed my second one more, actually, because I at least partly understood how the DnD mechanics worked by that point. (And figured out how to romance the companion that wasn’t interested the first time around, ha ha!)
Yeah same! I tried to romance Shadowheart but when she wanted to kill you-know-who, I had to fight her :( And yeah second playthrough I knew the mechanics better as well so the acts were more of a breeze than a hurricane :D
As a plus side, I noticed I missed some areas and quests, so that was nice too!
I completely missed getting Gale in my first run, so I finally got to see his story the second time around! Also accidentally skipped the Mountain Pass area (and some smaller areas) and did a big chunk of Act 3 backwards. My first playthrough was a mess, ha ha!
Are you me? I missed Gale too sort of, because the portal looked a bit dangerous or whatever. I decided to skip it, but totally forgot about returning to check it out. And I also completely skipped the mountain pass because I was under the impression I had to make a choice between that, or the Underdark…
I finished Hellblade and am feeling ready for the sequel that’s coming soon. It wasn’t a perfect game, but I really appreciate what they tried for and I think a lot of it was successful. The visual and (especially) audio design was stellar and the narrative is really interesting and touching and the presentation was mostly great. The trials were my favourite part, in particular the blind one where you have to navigate by sound and controller vibration and ignore the scary enemies. I almost wish they went all in on that sort of thing. Or if not, that they tuned the combat encounters differently. I actually quite enjoyed the combat system but there wasn’t much of a reason to fully explore its nuances.
After that, I finally started Red Dead Redemption 2, which is my current game. So far it’s mostly living up to the off-the-charts hype, though as usual I had to tweak some things to taste through mods (yes even on a first playthrough). I’m really enjoying it so far and can see myself either spending 400 hours on this game or get completely burned out (as I was by Ghost of Tsushima). Curious to see which it will be. I also sadly got the ending spoiled for me (way back) and I’m really sad about it because I can already tell the impact it would have had on me and I’m deeply sad I’m never going to get to experience that.
Which aspects of RDR2 did you change through mods?
A bunch of stuff, let’s see.
Combat package:
- 1899 Firearms
- Live Leak Ragdoll Overhaul
- Ped Damage Overhaul
- Anatomical Damage
- Realistic Accuracy
Immersion Package:
- Immersive Scenarios
- Smoking Complete
- Longer Days
- Improved Wildlife
- Dynamic Seasons
- Vestigia
- Basic Needs
- Temperature and Humidity Overhaul
- RDR2EE
- LAW
Misc:
- Online Content Unlocker
- Red Dead Offline
- Horse Lantern
- John Marston Restoration Project
- Extended John Marston Animations
- Cut Dialogue Restoration and Enhancement
Now does RDR2 need these mods? Of course not, it’s perfectly fine out of the box. But with all the great games out there I’ve yet to play (existing and upcoming), I probably will only play a game of this length once. Might as well tweak it to my tastes to get as good of an experience as I can.
EDIT: formatting
Wow thank you for taking the time to write this. I’ll definitely check these out the next time I’m playing this game.
My attitude is the same with games of this scope, by the way.
Diablo 3: Season 30 - Gave up on the new Monk build since it had very precise stats that I’m currently too lazy to works towards. I’m still progressing with my current build, so I’ll keep it for now.
Diablo 4: Season 3 - Played around with the Lunar event that started this week. It was surprisingly easy, and I got through all the rewards in a couple nights.
Vampyr - I forgot how long this game is.
Skate 3
I’m almost done with it, I only have two challenges of the Maloof DLC left. Definitely the worst one, the map is so boring…
Also, to Hell with online achievements. Servers for the game are very unstable and only a handful of people still play. Two achievements are simply impossible because it’s no longer possible to upload replays, and designing a logo requires going to a website which no longer exists.
Tbf solid games, have you tried the new map?
I finally finished Pillars of Eternity. I’ve got lots of criticisms for it, but mostly I really enjoyed it. I do wish there was less combat and that there were more opportunities to talk your way out of combat, for instance. The combat is very good, but there’s so much of it that you can easily get decision fatigue. I’m going to take a slight break from Pillars of Eternity before I start the sequel.
So I moved on to replaying Planescape: Torment instead. I last played it about 12 years ago, and there’s a good amount of it I’ve forgotten since then, but at the time I felt it was the best writing I’d seen in games to date. As poorly aged as it was then, even on the enhanced edition now, it’s perhaps aged even worse now, so I’m not sure if I’ll finish replaying it this time, but we’ll see. At least it’s not particularly long.
My friends and I are continuing our co-op playthrough of Quake II since we don’t live in a timeline where we’ve got a plethora of modern FPS games to play instead; not the traditional campaign variety, at the very least. The indie scene is mostly replicating Doom/Quake 1 sorts of games, and Quake II is surprisingly much more modern in its design…at least when you use the compass built in to the remaster.
EDIT: Changed my mind. Moved on to Pillars 2. There are already a lot of great improvements.
I had to start Pillars 1 multiple times until it clicked for me and I was able to finish it. It’s a good foundation that Pillars 2 very much improved on. A feature in 2 I absolutely love and wish more party-based games would include is the (albeit rudimentary) editor for the party behavior.
I often struggle controlling multiple units at once so that editor was a godsend for me! Too bad it’s the only game I can think of that has something like this. :(It exists in at least the enhanced editions of Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, and I’m told the first Dragon Age had this too. Though to be honest, even with the ability to script AI behavior, I’ll likely end up just setting tons of conditions for auto-pausing like I usually do in RTWP games so that I can decide what to do for each character whenever some condition in the battle changes.
I know the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and 2 allow you to choose from different scripts and there’s a few On/Off buttons, but nothing like the PoE editor where you could do things like “If 3 enemies stand around you, use this spell” or “If enemy is threatening an ally, use this ability on ally, but only if $resource is higher than x and only once every 30 seconds.”
Gotcha. Is that in the game, or would I have to modify it externally?
The editor is in the game, no external tools needed.
I’ll give it a look. Thanks.
CLeM
really neat puzzle game
Could you elaborate? I love me some good puzzle games. Some recommendations:
English Country Tune Stephen’s Sausage Roll Recursed Toki Tori The Witness
The original NES version of Legend of Zelda! I want to (slowly) work through the whole Zelda chronology, barring like, the CDi ones. I’ve had the NES Zelda games on my 3DS for ages but I always found them difficult to play and pretty bad at telegraphing where I was actually supposed to go.
This time around, I just bit the bullet and used a walkthrough, and collected a whole bunch of power-ups before the first dungeon. And now a couple dungeons in, I’m actually having a lot of fun with it! I even kind of like how completely open it is. I stumbled across the eighth dungeon, took one look at the four-headed bullet-spitting plant thing, and turned right around. But it’s cool that I can go there pretty much from the start!
I also played the original Zelda via emulation, but the physical game came with a map that makes the game much more feasible to get through on your own. Once I had that, I was golden.
I was wondering if the original came with a map! The in-game grid thing is comically unhelpful.
Yup. I think this is it, but you might find better scans elsewhere. It doesn’t tell you everything, but it shows you most of the map and labels the first handful of dungeons. Even knowing where the first dungeon is is such a huge help, because then you get a new checkpoint when you die, and once you beat the dungeon, you get an extra heart container.
This is really fascinating, I think it contextualises so much of how the game was meant to be played. (I’m being lazy and using the Zelda Dungeon walkthrough). It’s so interesting to me when these early games kind of offload crucial information into the manual - like with some of those items, you might never know they even exist in the game without it!
Last week Snowrunner had an update that moved my truck into storage and held it hostage. After paying the extortion fee ($3) for the tire DLC I got it out, apparently one of the default rims was accidentally marked as dlc? Really weird bug.
Also I started playing Dark Souls II, which is very good but I’m also pretty bad at it
Steadily trying to 100% Bejeweled 3, but have definitely been slowed down as today I discovered the joy that is rollercoaster tycoon deluxe and played for about 6 hours in one sitting!
Monster Hunter World
Stardew Valley
Dark Age of Camelot (Eden free server)
A bit more Diablo 4, which got a time-limited event this week, but it’s not really anything. Just activate shrines and kill monsters for an hour to unlock some cosmetics. Fine by itself, but nothing that’s going to make someone play more of the game.
I finally finished Doom 64 after playing it on and off for the last few months. It’s alright, but I wasn’t hooked like I was with Doom 1 and 2 or Quake 1 and 2.
Some Final Fantasy 2 (Pixel Remaster), but this one is pretty weird (compared to the other early FF games). You don’t have the normal leveling system, but all your characters can do anything, but they gain proficiency with whatever weapon they use, if they use magic, what specific spell, if they defended, etc. It’s alright, although I prefer normal classes or jobs.
My main problem in the game is, that it’s not always really clear where you need to go. About 30 minutes after you start, basically half of the world is open to you (technically even more), and you got like 10 places where you can go. You get some general objectives, but are not really told where to start with them. E.g. at one point you’re told to speak with Josef, as if everyone knows the guy, but nobody even says in which town he lives. So you’ll just wander around, talk to anyone who’ll listen, until you find him (or use the internet). The first game also didn’t really tell you where to go, but the world was a lot smaller and where you could go was a lot more limited.
I’ve also played a bunch of demos from the Steam Next Fest, that’s currently going on, but because it’s a lot I’ll split it into a separate comment. The Next Fest is only running for another day, so if you want to check out some demos, you don’t have too much time at this point.
Summerhouse is a builder in the same vein as Townscaper, The Block or Dorfromantik without the scores. You just build a house with whatever parts you want, until you’re satisfied. Not really my type of game, so I’ll pass on this.
Gatekeeper is an isometric rogue-like, similar to Risk of Rain. You do the typical stuff like killing enemies and upgrading your character, nothing you haven’t seen yet. It could be alright, but the demo was a bit samey. I only did one run, but the different levels were all pretty small and looked the same. Maybe things change a bit if you make it further, but I don’t know. I’ll have to look a bit into it, once it’s released.
Mullet Mad Jack is a retro shooter with extremely flashy visuals (I think I heard it described as maximalist). Because of a dystopian cyberpunk setting, where social media controls everything, you only live for 10s unless you kill enemies, so the viewers give you likes for extra time. Then you just run through levels, kick or shoot robots and try to save the girl. I found it extremely unappealing and will not be back for the full release.
Kingsgrave is a top-down, light survival or metroidvania type game, where you control the recently resurrected king and try to rebuild your kingdom. You collect materials, which let you unlock more abilities, so you can get to more parts of the world. This one didn’t really grip me, but if I stumble over it again once it’s release I might check it out again.
Hexarium is like Mini Metro or similar games, where you connect buildings of the same colors to get points. I might have just been dumb, but it seemed like the game didn’t really work properly yet, because I had some seemingly impossible combinations. Like I get a starting point, that’s on the very edge of the map, so I can’t really build anything or points straight into water, where you’re severely limited with what you can build.
Copy Cat is a play-as-a-cat game. In the beginning you’re only inside a house and I don’t know if it’ll open up later. The cat comments on everything (with floating text in the world) as if it’s a human and can understand English. The gameplay was also a bit clunky and I don’t think I’ll be back for more.
Black Dragon Mage is a Survivors-like (dunno what else to call it). It has manual skills and aiming, and as you level up you get more abilities and upgrade existing ones. It was kinda boring, so I’ll stick with the games I already have.
Artifact Seeker: Legend of Aurorium is another Survivors-like, better than Black Dragon Mage. It has the typical Chinese Mobile game look to it (don’t really know how to describe it). One interesting feature is, after each stage you go to a world map and choose where to go next, à la Slay the Spire. You can choose between combat stages or text events where you can get upgrades. This one is a maybe, but I have a bunch of other games like this already bought, that I have to try at least. before I’ll buy more.
Duck Detective: The Secret Salami is a point-and-click adventure game, with isometric 3D environments and 2D cut-out characters, like Paper Mario. In the demo, which is really short, you find clues in single rooms, to solve Mad Libs style puzzles to solve them. So far it’s a tiny step up from something like Frog Detective, but I don’t know if it gets more complex later. Another one I’ll keep an eye on for me.
Pepper Grinder is a 2D platformer, where you play as a girl with a drill arm. You can destroy some parts of the environment, but I guess it’s mainly about burrowing through sand, which is like swimming through water in other games, collecting coins, finding secrets, the normal stuff. It’s level based, which caught me a bit by surprise, because seemingly all 2D platformers these days are metroidvanias. Not sure about this one yet, maybe later down the line, when I’m more in the mood for a game like this.
Finally, News Tower, a building and management game about a newspaper publisher in the 1930s. You slowly build your tower, get more workers for you, either reporters, typesetters, and whatever else you need, send them to work on stories, so you can print something on Sundays. Could be neat, but not something I’m especially interested in.
Middle Earth: Shadow of War: Good old open world action fun. Kill countless mobs, gather countless collectables. A bit annoyed that subtitles are only implemented on some voice acting. Slightly indisposed that the protagonist (Talion) looks too much like an unkempt Ron Desantis.
Just started up Cyberpunk 2077, which I’m really enjoying so far! I’m playing it on Steam Deck, so some of the UI elements are really teeny-tiny, which is probably my biggest complaint.
En Garde!
Short, but fun. Sometimes a little frustrating, but I’ve played too many games recently which either take themselves too seriously or randomly try to hit “poignant” emotional beats.
This is just straight up swashbuckling cartoony fun that I totally need right now.
