Late thread sorry y’all.
I finished death stranding 2! 5/5 I think. Some story bits that are kind of half baked but nothing that detracted too much from the experience. Absolutely loved it.
I’m back on cyberpunk 2077 for now until silksong comes out!!!
Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2. Amazing game, just like its predecessor. Clunky movement and combat as usual though, kinda sad that it did not improve that much. Still improved though.
Just started playing through Chrono Trigger for the first time
Possibly one of the best soundtracks of all time.
Started the Thousand-Year Door remake. Just beat Hooktail.
Well, I was trying to complete my second playthrough of Metal gear solid 2. But a bad Windows 11 update seems to have corrupted something, and now my PC is crawling.
So, attempting to reinstall/repair. Thanks Microsoft :3
Other than that Metal Gear has been awesome. I finished 3 the other week and have also been playing 4 on the ps3. Not super keen on the bombardment of cutscenes so far in 4, but it’s still pretty neat.
I have really appreciated learning the mechanics of each game. I feel like this is one of the first series where I can play each game twice and learn new things about the game on each playthrough. I can tell how I’m improving and when certain fights were completed with luck or if I actually mastered them. The depth is super addicting
Not super keen on the bombardment of cutscenes so far in 4, but it’s still pretty neat.
This isn’t a spoiler but I need to warn you: the final cutscene is 40 minutes long with no break/checkpoint and you can only save your game after, not before or during. Literally everyone who goes into the game blind ends up trapped there late at night wanting to go to bed.
Thank you for the heads up! I’ll have to go check when the cutscene comes up so I don’t get caught off guard.
I ended up having to watch the MGS2 cutscene before the last boss, and one of the really long MGS3 cutscenes on youtube because I fell asleep while they were playing lol
I’m a couple decades late to Chibi-Robo and it is incredible. They’re probably not going to let me actually steal this guy’s wife in the end but it will not be for lack of trying.
Set up a new minecraft server with my boyfriend a couple of weeks back, so been playing that :3
Put over 6 hours into the Baby Steps demo, we can’t get this fucking cup up the mountain!
Started a new playthrough of Far Cry 6 since I never got to finish it when it came out. The story is a little heavy-handed but serviceable, and there is some dimensionality to the characters that helps keep things interesting, like I actually care about what’s happening. The game is also really good about not railroading you through the story, you can choose when you start story missions, and there’s three branches of storyline for most of it so you can play in whatever order you want, or just ignore it completely - I spent about 10 straight hours of gameplay just doing random side quests and looking for collectibles, it’s a huge improvement on the Far Cry 5 story/missions.
The gunplay feels really satisfying, and there’s a ton of different equipment options so you can really play whatever style you want. Stealth is really fun but not completely OP, you still have to be really deliberate and careful. You can switch between pretty much any of your weapons/gear, so you always have a ton of options, but it also feels kind of OP, especially later in the game.The difficulty options are pretty good too, it doesn’t feel like higher difficulty = everybody is a bullet sponge.
The movement and especially climbing mechanics are kind of clunky but it doesn’t take too much away from the gameplay overall. The open world is huge and there’s a lot to see and explore if that’s your thing, and it feels very lived in, it doesn’t feel like a vast expanse of nothing.
Tried VOID/BREAKER, a roguelite FPS, that released into Early Access last week. The game definitely has potential, but needs more time to cook.
You have a grappling hook, that can function like telekinesis powers and throw certain objects at enemies, or hook to specific points in the small combat arenas, although that isn’t is fun as it should be. It’s just too slow and there’s seemingly always something in the way.
Then you can also find mods for your weapons to change and upgrade it. You’re supposed to find synergies for the mods and essentially “break the game”, but most of the time it’s just to make the numbers go higher. I finished a run twice (first time is with some story elements, after that it just loops), and I think one time I got a few mods that worked well together.
The game also has destructible environments, although that’s also kinda lacking, unless you find a bunch of mods to boost it.
So in the end you’ll be going through the same three environments, that look extremely similar, fighting mostly the same enemies, that also look very similar, shooting with mostly basic guns, while lobbing a grenade or some random object at enemies every couple of seconds.
The building blocks are there, like I said, the game has potential, but it’s just not there yet.
Otherwise with Silksongreleasing in like 10 days, my Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous playthrough will have to wait a bit more. I’m not gonna stop in the middle of a run.
I’m playing Lost Records: Bloom & Rage and am desperately waiting for the story to get interesting. It is an extremely slow burn. And with some fake outs I kind of lose hope of it ever getting interesting.
And I kinda hate the dialogue system. You can basically move around while talking and look at stuff and sometimes have a limited amount of time to chime in. Which is fine from a realism standpoint but somehow it doesn’t make the dialogue feel more realistic. Pair that up with some dialogue choices requiring you to be standing on certain spots and looking at certain things makes it much too stressful for a game that should be more like a relaxing point and click adventure.
oh i lovvveeeed Lost Records (but I also adore the LiS games). I definitely recommend sticking through it’s clunkiness (I agree that the ‘stand in right place to give dialogue option X’ is a weird system tho)
I tried to watch some gameplay footage of it earlier this year as a Let’s Player I watch played it but couldn’t stand it. I concluded the game probably just wasn’t meant for me, but it’s possible it just isn’t good. It looked incredibly boring.
I’m very slowly working my way through my fifth Baldurs’s Gate 3 run since it went from early access to release. Decided I want to do all the origin characters and make decisions as they would.
I’ve already done Gale, evil Dark Urge and now Shadowheart (spoilers below)
Tap for spoiler
In the beginning, I didn’t have Shadowheart save Lae’zel from the tieflings when she’s captured because to me she would want to be as far away from the githyanki as possible. I chose to romance Karlach because I never had before, and in my headcanon Karlach swayed Shadowheart from choosing Shar. Romanced the emperor and am going to try siding with him on a play through because I never have before lol
I find something I missed on every single play through, and so far there is enough unique content in the origin runs to keep them interesting. Not sure which origin character I will try next but I am really enjoying playing as Shadowheart.
Edit - I loved Cyberpunk 2077! At some point I want to replay as male V.
I know people love Fem V but I find Male V underrated and even prefer his delivery in some scenes, particularly
spoiler
some of the stuff in Mikoshi right at the ending.
I’ve tried this, too, and they always self-destruct. Their character growth when you don’t play as them is so tied to them reacting to the player character’s influence that taking that influence away tends to prevent them from growing.
With Shadowheart in particular,
spoiler
Nightsong made a convincing argument that I shouldn’t follow Shar anymore but I saw no reason why I should just go along with the vanilla thing that she immediately switches to being a cleric for the opposite deity and I spent Act 3 bumbling ineffectually through a couple questlines with no clear ideology to lean on, plus a history that had previously skewed quite evil and thus left me without the alliances a more moral character would have developed by now.
The two exceptions to that rule have been Karlach who right out the gate has got her shit shockingly together for this cast and, hilariously, Astarion who absolutely thrives as his worst self. Those are the only two Origins I’ve managed to beat without betraying the RP of it all.
That’s fair. I’ve also noticed dialogue in places that assumes you are not the origin character you are playing, or ignores when specific characters are not in your party.
Tap for spoiler
When you recruit Minsc as Shadowheart, there is a place in the dialogue tree where you refer to yourself in third person.
There was a line suggesting I ask Lae’zel about a githyaki slate in Act 1 when I chose to kill her instead of join her earlier in the game.
I wonder if the difference is because Karlach was a later addition to the game as an origin character.
I started and finished Herdling all in one go. Nice, relaxed game with a beautiful atmosphere. The mechanics are relatively simple but with the game being so short, they don’t overstay their welcome. There was also a link at the end of the credits sequence which lead to a promotion where you can send the publisher a self-addressed envelope and they send you… something back. I did that, so I’m curious what it will be. Expecting stickers though.
I’ve also been playing some Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. 24 hours in and only scratching the surface, so classic CRPG I guess. The game strikes quite a good balance between story/reading, combat and space exploration.
Panic has been doing those SASE with most of the games they publish, I think it’s fun!
Still working on Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version, emulated on Xenia Canary). I’m currently halfway through Chapter 12 out of 14 on Path of the Warrior, so I’m almost at the point where I can see the finish line. Still unsure whether I can beat it as I’ve heard the final stretch is pure hell.
I have never played a game that made me feel quite like this, I have to be honest. It’s one of the best and one of the worst games I’ve ever played simultaneously. If this was released today it would be absolutely lambasted for its blatantly untested, horrifically balanced and absurdly unfun encounters.
And it’s such a shame and a waste because the pieces are all there for a spectacular tour de force of an action game and you can see that side of it shine through from time to time. Whenever the game clicks and is good, it’s fucking incredible. Lightning fast, blood and limbs flying everywhere, incredible animations and brutal execution moves as you’re zipping through combat and weaving through combos. They really had the fundamentals here for something special, and the first half of the game is mostly good - albeit still with some complete garbage like Gigadeath sprinkled in.
From around the halfway point on though it’s become perhaps the most infuriating game I’ve ever played. Some of the gameplay design is just completely incomprehensible and encounters devolve into being spammed with projectiles from offsceen while you’re showered in constant explosions that deafen you and make you unable to see shit while you’re stunlocked to death unless you ignore using your combos and instead just abuse i-frames. Boss fights like the Double Armadillo I just finished feel like a straight up “fuck you” from Itagaki. Time and again I finish a fight and say “who the fuck thought this was a good idea?” out loud.
And the worst part is I’m developing such a Stockholm Syndrome I’m already looking at Ninja Gaiden 2 Black prices.
Coral Island
Last week I played through Ryse: Son of Rome, and I was pleasantly surprised in how much I enjoyed it, especially for a rather QTE heavy game.
Right now I’m working through Fobia: St. Dinfna Hotel, and man there is so much backtracking for puzzles and lockboxes and whatnot. But it’s been fun, and basically feels like a first person Resident Evil game, at least atmosphere wise.
