Balatro
I finally started playing Suzerayn and it’s the perfect game for the current tumultuous times.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1207650/Suzerain/
It’s about leading a country while managing issues like immigration, nationalism and the grip of superpowers.
I can’t stress how incredibly fitting it is right now. It’s also pretty great and very well written. You do have to love reading, though, it’s all about politics after all.
Split Fiction is so cinematic and even wackier than ITT. I’m hopeful that it’ll have a way better plot conclusion, too, which was one of ITT’s weakest points.
Split Fiction’s gameplay has been great.
Actually, I think Hazelight’s greatest strength by far is presentation/artwork, especially the environment. One of my friends didn’t bother to continue with ITT because the platforming was too basic for him. It kinda feels a little like these games pander to casual gamers quite a fair bit. Like, it’s cool that if one person stays alive, the game keeps rolling on, but the short-term, Zelda-like micro-puzzles in which only concepts sometimes carry over at most from room to room make its gameplay too easy, I think. They could have done more with the
Spoiler
shoot-em-up segment! It was unfortunately just homage, by a few too many minutes.
But dang, all the landscapes are gorgeous. Love the sci-fi sides, although I think the genre-bickering has been getting a bit tropey. We’ll see…
This kind of makes me now wonder how difficult the Plucky Squire is by comparison.
Bought X4 some time ago, finally started playing. Sometimes I feel like I’m spending more times checking the controls than actually playing. I’ve only did the first few timelines, it’s a good thing they exist as they’re kinda like arcade levels and extended tutorials.
Might start the open universe journey today.
Finally dipped into No Man’s Sky this week. I didn’t bought it when it launched, so I don’t know how it was then. NMS has me hooked. The game doesn’t tell you everything and after the short tutorial, you’re pretty much left on your own.
The gameplay loop of extracting resources, scanning stuff, and getting better upgrades or unlocking new stuff does appeal to me. It’s the kind of game I put on a podcast or YouTube on in the background and just zone out for a while.
It does get repetitive, since most planets are just copy-paste versions of something you’ve seen before with different colours and patterns, with the whole infinite universe stuff and whatnot and there are still some bugs, like items disappearing from your processor.
I’m still very new to the game, but I think hello games, despite their false advertising, kinda made this one work. Even if it did took a long time to get NMS to this point.
I’m hoping they’ve learned something from this and make next game, light no fire, enjoyable from the start.
It’s been a little bit since I’ve played any games (life just got busy), but I finally found time to sink some real time into replaying Dark Souls III again. I’m not a pro player and definitely not a speedrunner but I’m about 25 hours into this playthrough (having to kill every boss but no other restrictions or rules), and I’m on Gael. Just need to kill him and Midir and I’m done, I’m pretty happy with how it’s gone. Twin princes took 5 tries, Nameless King and Friede took 2 tries, and I think every other boss was a first try this time which felt pretty awesome. I’m hoping I can do a no death run next time
I played Dark Souls 3 in 2018. I spent over an hour trying to beat the first boss, and then asked my friend for help.
He told me it’s not the first boss, just a tutorial. I had never played one of those games before or since then.
Besides what cod already said there’s also a pretty big shift from slow and methodical gameplay of the first game towards fast and furious one in the third entry.
I like the first two games for example but the third one never really clicked with me, partially because of the fast and spammy enemies that became common in DS3. If you still want to try the series but don’t mesh well with DS3 I’d suggest checking out the first game if you get a chance - you might end up like me.
The second one is also good but it has its own problems that are pretty contentious among DS players so I’d stick with the release order to be safe.
My first souls game was DS3 too. The tutorial boss probably killed me more than any other boss in that game, with one exception near the end. I really struggled with it. I finally did see that game to the end though, and eventually got really into the rest of the FromSoftware games too. When I revisited DS3 a few years ago and did a new playthrough, I was amazed how easy the tutorial boss felt. It was crazy. That’s the fun part of Dark Souls, you get so much better at the game by the end and when you go back to replay you realize just how far you came. Old challenges are like a walk in the park.
I never finished Uncharted 4 so im playing that
I played that one recently. I thought it was a lot of fun
I’ve been playing a bunch of World of Warcraft, actually. Even without being a social player I’m having fun with it, for now. I don’t really care about getting the hottest, most recent expac so I don’t have to pay more than the subscription fee for 90% of the game.
Finished Skald: Against the Black Priory, and it was a lovely experience overall. It’s one of those games that knows exactly what it attempts to do, and is very good at limiting its scope and not biting off more than it can chew. I might have liked a bit more agency and player choice - it is very linear for an RPG - but I can see how that would have been a challenge for a small studio and could well have ended up hurting the quality of the experience. As is it’s a very enjoyable ride, full of retro charm, nostalgic music and pretty pixel art but without retro clunk like memory limitations or poor controls and UX. I liked the story and found the writing solid, with a great gloomy atmosphere and some nice cosmic horror touches. The combat and character customization could have been a touch more elaborate, but at around 20 hours the game isn’t long enough that it really becomes a problem.
I’d give it somewhere around an 8 to 8.5/10 and definitely recommend it, especially to anyone who enjoys retro RPGs. It’s quite cheap too, even at full price.
Up next will be Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. I was a little miffed that only the console versions got HDR, but I got the RenoDX mod working and the game looks beautiful. Only just started the tutorial mission though.
The plot of Mankind Divided ends oddly abruptly, which is a real
Thankfully I have been forewarned, but yeah it’s a shame. I still want to experience it as I’ve heard good things about the gameplay and the design of the hub city.
It had to be cut down during development, as I understand it, and then was just never followed up on. I’ve heard it described as two thirds of a great game, does that sound about right?
Edit: I’m guessing this was a joke reply that went over my head.
I finished replaying Silent Hill 1 and 2 with my BF since he is new to the series and I want him to experience it right. Next up is 3, and then we’re going to play the SH 2 remake. Maybe SH 4 if he wants to keep going. :)
BeamNG.Drive with the BeamMP multiplayer mod. It’s great fun rock crawling in Johnson Valley with other players, trying to wreck as little as possible… Then you always get that one idiot who yolos their truck into everyone else’s after a half-hearted attempt at speedrunning the trail.
Verrry slowly working my way through Life is Strange.
Evil West before it goes off gamepass
Got Zombie Army 4 for three bucks. Seems very much worth the investment so far.
Metroid II, the original one for Game Boy. I want to play AM2R eventually but I want to properly appreciate the work that went into it. And I’m trying my hardest to do it, so far successfully, without consulting a map.
So far I have:
- bomb
- spider ball
- spring ball
- high jump boots
- Varia suit
- wave beam (replaced the ice beam)
After more than seven hours I’m starting to go insane, but my stubbornness knows no bounds. I’ve seen every room of the game at least 20 times and probably bombed every single tile. The only place I know for a fact is new is, well, entirely submerged in lava. I’m at an impasse 😞
There is no shame in looking at a guide if you hit a point where progress without one is so frustrating that you’re not enjoying yourself anymore.
Metroid II is my least favorite of the series, but it’s still a solid entry. AMR2 is a very good fan recreation, but don’t skip on Samus Returns on the 3DS if you enjoy Metroid II
Oh I agree 100% on your point about using a guide, but I have this weird fixation on beating it as if I had gotten it on release when I was a kid. The only thing I’m allowing myself is a PDF of the manual that came with it, and no save states. I finally played and beat Super Metroid just recently with the same restrictions (on my childhood SNES and a real cartridge!) and it felt very satisfying.
As for my long-term patience, I have a second monitor and countless hours of long-form YouTube content to keep me entertained through the mundane moments.
I’ll definitely give Samus Returns a try as well. Thanks for the recommendation!
