Gaming

I finished Fatal Frame 2 Crimson Butterfly (Project Zero in some regions). It was better than Maiden of Blackwater, but still overall pretty 'meh'. Back to Monster Hunter Stories 3.

I finished my latest Baldur's Gate 3 run, where I used mods to increase the party size and level cap (among others), but it wasn't pretty. For some reason, after getting to Act 3 and rescuing Minsc, the game just didn't want to exist anymore. It would constantly drop frames, until it got to 2, which is obviously unplayable.

Apparently one of the latest hotfixes, which released in February messed something up and caused some major problems in Act 3 for some people. For me, this happened mainly when I had more than X party members, but only while running around. As I said, this started after getting Minsc, so for a while the game was fine with a party of 11 people, then the frame drops started. For a bit it worked with 8 people, but the more I played in Act 3, the more people I had to leave behind. At the end, even the default 4 almost were too much.

Weirdly enough, in combat everything was fine, no matter how many people there were, so I'd just get to the big fights, go back to camp, get everyone, and go back. Still, some parts were absolute torture, and I was thinking about pausing the run and waiting for a patch. However, since I was close to the end, and didn't know when and if a patch would release, I just powered through and finished the game. Of course, when I made it to the epilogue and the game crashed one final time, Steam downloaded the hotfix that had been released a couple of minutes earlier.

Anyway, I'm starting another run, this time relatively normal, and going Dark Urge for the first time.

Encased. Had it for a long while, but it's an abandoned effort of a defunct company aka the money ran out towards the end of development, so they rushed for an early release, but failed to stay afloat. Anyway..

An isometric RPG where you're the new employee arriving on an extraterrestrial rendition of the Zone. And it's called the Dome! Welcome, Stalker!
You got character creation with attributes, skills and perks, you got flinging bolts into anomalies and you got the monolith with zombie stalkers running around hearing voices. What's not to love?
Probably the end game. But I wouldn't know since I didn't get that far yet.

Also, the narrator's voice is that default early LLM voice YouTubers are using for their short alien stories. So, geh.

Finally finished Mother 3 and loved it. Relaxing now by playing a bunch of short arcade style games like River Raid and Kangaroo.

Coal LLC has been good over the past couple days without internet since I don't care about steam save backups for that game.

I also recently installed my Oblivion GOTY copy from the 2000s on my potato desktop. Got through creating an argonian named Jabber and got part way through the escape route before stopping. Hopefully in a few months I can upgrade my desktop so I can play without the minor FPS issues and resulting gameplay jitters I have to deal with. Also bummed I couldn't use the Unlock console command to go in and kill the other prisoner.

Otherwise, I have not been playing many other games outside the odd game of Rhythm Heaven Fever and Megamix or how I scummed my way through most of a 20 turn of mario party 5.

Just started Withering Rooms today, a very unique horror roguelike with a great story, some superb world building and some janky ass combat.

Only 2-3 hours in but I am really liking what I see so far.

Started a new fallout new vegas run this time no fast travel or guns to really make myself explore and stick to melee and unarmed.

Low key addicted to Slay the Spire 2 at the moment.. Celeste is on the up and coming list so is sintopia when it releases.

Just started Esoteric Ebb. Disco Elysium goes Dungeons and Dragons. Quite entertaining.

We've beaten half the time trials in Diddy Kong Racing. We have the other half to beat, have to beat the four bosses a second time, and then we should have the space races unlocked

This week I started Witch Spring R and I'm really liking it.

I've also finally gave up and bought Monster Hunter Wilds. This one I'm kinda disappointed by. The combat feels really good, ignoring the new additions, but everything else feels off. The new quest-less system for hunts feels terrible to me, for example. I do prefer it to Rise, but it has the same flaws as World plus new ones.

Still Sekiro, clearing stuff before the ending I found "the trad souls fight" and it's tough-ish but I'm having a blast with it.

I just polished off South Park: The Fractured But Whole. I'm a huge South Park fan, was a day 1 buyer of the Stick of Truth, and went out of my way (on my honeymoon of all things) to buy this game the day it came out. We got home a couple weeks later, I played it for a couple days, got stuck not too far into it, and abandoned it.

Sometime over the past year or so, I saw it in the Nintendo Switch store for cheap, and thought I'd give it a go again. Picked it back up about a week and a half ago on our Switch 2, and just went crazy with it. It's as good as Stick of Truth, it's just a bit more of a slow burn at the beginning. Wouldn't recommend it on the Switch 2 though, it really chugged in a lot of spots. Not sure if that was the game or the console's fault.