Hollow Knight in preparation for Silksong
I discovered Inscryption this week. It’s a story driven, deck builder, escape room game.
Without spoiling anything for anyone…how uh…how far are you?
I would say I finished the main game and have done a part of the post game.
If that makes sense :)
I think you’ve seen that there’s more than meets the eye, at the very least, so we can leave it at that. A friend of mine was quite sure he had almost finished it before when he was nowhere close, lol.
Skies of Arcadia Legends
I’ve barely played this version and it really makes it less of a chore compared to the Dreamcast version.
Squad
It’s hard to recommend to new players because of some big issues the game has but it’s the only game that I play 90% for the social interaction it brings.
Guilty Gear Strive just got a big balance patch and a matchmaking update, and it’s great to be back. The experience of playing the game is better than ever.
I’ve still been going through Kingdom Come: Deliverance II. It remains the best game I’ve played this year. I’m working my way through the Brushes With Death DLC, which has some interesting mission design if not the most compelling narrative. I think I’ve done all the side quests I planned to do before finishing the game, so I’ve got the last third or so of the main quest to return to after I finish the DLC. Then the second expansion comes out early next month.
I also started playing Mafia: Definitive Edition, and boy have I missed crime drama stories in video games. This one is pretty by-the-numbers when it comes to gameplay, but after 4 hours, they’ve got plenty of interesting set pieces and narrative beats. I’m very much into this. I plan to play through the next two games before picking up The Old Country.
Other than those, I’ve got a project I’m working on to set up a VPN that I control, rather than trusting an external service whose terms of service could change at any time, so that I can play old LAN games with my friends in this era of live service multiplayer games. Once I get it all sorted out and working, maybe I’ll write up a post here so others can do the same.
I’m playing split-screen Halo MCC with my brother. I’ve only got a 27" monitor to play on, so cutting the screen in half makes it very small and really brings back some of the nostalgia of playing the game back on the original xbox with a tiny little box tv lol.
With a mixture of the AlphaRing mod and an edit to the settings.json file for EasyAntiCheat, I’m still able to get achievements despite using a mod which is nice. We’re currently playing through Halo 2 on Legendary, which is less nice. Sniper Jackals are the bane of our existence.
Still working my way through this one. It’s aight. Not as good as the first one; better mechanics and QoL, but lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one. Still very enjoyable when doing main quests though and excited to finish.
But… from what I’ve seen on Twitch I, next I really want to play Abiotic Factor. Described as Half Life 1 meets Minecraft, with apparently amazing progression. Can’t wait.
lacks the amazing writing and soul of the first one
Really? The first one seemed content to just let you do mundane tasks as part of your quests, but I’ve found that this second one makes sure that there’s always something interesting along the way.
Please post your thoughts on Abiotic Factor when you get to it. It’s tied with Grounded as my favorite game of the past few years.
Sword of the Sea!
Unfortunately I haven’t been able to play much because there’s a spot in what I would call chapter 2 where the game kept crashing and dying. I tried so many things to make it work and nothing came of it.
Finally , last ditch effort, went through the process of upgrading from Mint 21.2 to Mint 22. And now it seems to be working! Yahoo!
Buuuut now I’m going somewhere this weekend and I won’t be able to play, lol. C’est la vie
Same here, but the performances are abysmal on the Deck (15-20 fps on low), and crashes on every map changes. I’m gonna wait next week to see if it goes better with the first few fixes, and then I’ll chose if I refund it or not.
Killing Floor (2009)
Proof that you don’t need good graphics for a good game. It’s gameplay still holds up after all this time and I’ve been diggin its wave based combat again lately.
I‘m gonna continue Salt & Sanctuary this weekend, which is basically 2D Dark Souls, like, heavily inspired by Dark Souls.
Other than that, I‘ve picked Outpath back up which is Minecraft graphics combined with Forager gameplay, I suppose? It‘s hard for me to describe.
Maybe I‘ll start Peak with my gf if she wants to. She‘s kinda scared cause she read it‘s hard, I have no clue, I‘m going in blind lol
3D platformer with some interesting mechanics and boss fights. Enjoying it so far. There are some mild collectathon elements, but nothing tedious. I like the art style a lot.
Abiotic Factor
High On Life
10/10 story-driven FPS game from the creators of Rick and Morty. Not excessively complicated or difficult. Your house is teleported to another planet. You have defend yourself with guns that are also talking aliens (gatlians). Not graphically intensive either so would be good for mobile gaming.
I enjoyed this. A shooter with a different feel and a vibrant palette, and genuinely funny in parts.
I also got banned from the Xbox subreddit a couple of years ago because of this game. Apparently a photo of the in-game sounding rods was inappropriate. Mate, it’s literally an unedited screenshot from an Xbox game.
Ending is a little off, but overall an enjoyable simple platformer.
Just spent the last 2 days 100% Sword of the Sea. I highly recommend giving the game a shot.
Still working on Conan: Exiles, which got an update yesterday. My thoughts remain the same: good game, excellent base-building, but there’s not really much that I haven’t already seen a hundred times in other survival games. I’ll probably drop it soon.
I finished a co-op campaign of Abiotic Factor. We started our playthrough early in its Early Access period and had been returning to it every few months as new chapters were added. The game is every bit as great as everyone says, though the ending is incredibly abrupt. I’m wondering if they had to cut a bunch of content to make the release date. I hope they expand on things in a later update or future DLC, because it’s the only major flaw in an otherwise nearly perfect game.
Also played a bit of Gloomwood, a lo-fi immersive sim which comes very close to scratching that classic Thief itch. The stealth is great, the levels are well laid out and heavily intertwined so you always have multiple routes to achieve an objective, and the AI is the perfect balance between smart and dumb for shenanigans. There’s also an incredibly satisfying backstab with the canesword, though certain enemies wear armor that makes them immune so you sadly can’t clear out entire levels while ghosting.
I do have some minor complaints. As a packrat I’m not a fan of the Resident Evil-style grid inventory with limited space, especially since the game has a research mechanic where you need to chop up mutated corpses and bring one of every single body part to a specific point on the map to unlock crafting recipes and permanent character bonuses.
A single body’s various parts are enough to take up the entire inventory, necessitating either some very fiddly inventory juggling (items switch from grid-based paper dolls to physics-enabled models as you drag them to and from the world, causing all sorts of messes) or multiple trips across the entire open world map and back. The Goatman alone took nearly half an hour of combat-less hauling to research, and its boss arena isn’t even that far from the lab.
Enemies are also persistent. Once you kill someone they stay dead for the rest of the playthrough, which on one hand speeds up the backtracking, but on the other also makes it a boring chore if you’ve been thorough. There are a few points in the story where new enemies will spawn in old areas, at least.
All that said it’s an excellent game, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good immersive sim. It’s still in Early Access, but what’s there is already incredibly satisfying despite my various gripes.