Tabletop, DnD, board games, and minecraft. Also Animal Crossing.
Rules
Warframe has its hooks in me, man.
I'm thoroughly impressed by the balance of power fantasy gameplay, grimbright world building, and just enough spreadsheet simulator to scratch my autism. Even rank and file daily quests feel satisfying and useful. Do rebind crouch to Caps Lock, though. Your pinky may fall off otherwise.
Still slogging through my Octopath Traveler 0 playthrough; I'm a little over 90 hours in, again, because I spend an inordinate amount of time fucking around and seeing if I can go to places I'm not supposed to be able to reach yet. It has paid off more than a few times already, and I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through the main storyline. I have recruited a cat who specializes in dropping neutron bombs on unsuspecting enemies, as well as a samurai waifu that was, quite frankly, the most terrifying boss fight I've experienced in the entire game so far.
So now I'm on a "return some overdue library books" subplot, and... Say what, motherfucker???
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony, it feels a lot slower paced than the first two games but the class trials are significantly better (at least so far). I finished the second trial not too long ago;
spoiler
Still in shock at the plot twists so far, definitely wasn't expecting KAEDE to be the murderer and Shuichi to become the new protagonist, and I didn't realize Kirumi was the murderer for trial 2 until the dialogue pointed it out to me after I made too many wrong guesses. I was kind of onto Maki being the Ultimate Assassin instead of the Ultimate Child Caregiver, I felt like she didn't meet the personality of her ultimate at all. Also, the perjury mechanic is so cool
I'm playing Cairn and it's a really unique and memorable experience of a game, and it's also about climbing that I do irl at climbing gyms so it's really cool for me.
I also finally don't suck ass at Deadlock and most of my games these days are going pretty good stats wise
I set up Moonlight/Sunshine on my Switch and PC. Tested it out briefly and it seems to work all right with low input lag. There's a fork of Moonlight in Switch that runs way better than the old version. Excited to be able to play chill narrative games and stuff on a TV in another room without having to do anything complicated. Didn't even turn on overclocking for it yet for presumably better performance.
Can you link the Moonlight fork for the Switch? I did the same setup at the start of the year but the input lag was very noticiable, even with overclock, I was pretty bummed out by it, specially since I didn't want to reinstall Android on it because it is a pretty jank experience on the Switch.
https://github.com/XITRIX/Moonlight-Switch It's also on the Homebrew App store or whatever it's called.
And then Installed the latest nightly build of Sunshine.
The TV is a 768/720p plasma so maybe I can get away rendering games at a lower resolution too. Not sure if there's any effective super sampling happening here when they're rendering at 1080p on the PC and sent to a 720 screen.
Finished Silent Hill Origins this week, which was surprisingly decent although still flawed. Preferred it to SHf anyway. It felt like a clunky pastiche but at least they were trying to copy something great and succeeded some of the time (enemy designs, location designs, general atmosphere). There's an enemy in a mental hospital/sanitarium that's like a floating rusty neck brace/cage and then a twisted humanoid shadow extending from it but it's not rendered the same as usual shadows are and it definitely sparks the same primitive mental associations SH games would do. It reminded me of what a person in the night illuminated by headlights might look like maybe Travis hit and killed someone previously or worries about it as a truck driver, but it also looks like a bird cage because the residents at the facility feel trapped and invisible. Stuff like that really appeals to me. Like, I saw someone mention a personal theory in SH2 about how the boss relating to Angela has these pistons in the walls that also looks like cigarette rolling devices with the cylindrical filter going in and out of the device at the end and maybe Angela's dad rolled his own cigarettes and could tie into the flames she sees - you also get a lighter as a puzzle item in this location - (on top of the more likely interpretation of them being SA and arson representations) and it reminds how good that style of psychological horror is. Probably why it works for so many internationally since the building blocks it works with are so primitive and near-universal.
elder scrolls online has had a few pretty good patches in a row, they added 4 overland enemy difficulty levels, I stopped doing quests a while ago because self-nerfing (like not wearing armor sets) to fight super easy enemies was not that fun, difficulty level 3 of 4 on the new scale seems just right for me, regular enemies are tougher but not HP sponges, quest bosses hit pretty hard so you have to be careful, and I still have room to experiment and not chase meta big dmg play styles like you need to for dungeons, never played melee only in this game so I tried a one-bar 2-handed magicka nightblade (a magic ninja with a katana that goes invisible a lot) setup and having fun with that, have about 30-40% of the overland quests left
also went back to shadow of the tomb raider for a bit, we'll see if I stick with it this time, this one is supposed to have the most exploring and puzzles of the 3 so I like that
I've started playing Of Ash and Steel, a Gothic inspired game released last Fall. It was buggy as hell on release, but they've made some patches and I want to see if it at least doesn't fall apart at the seams.
Also still playing Opus Magnum. The machines are mesmerizing to look at.
Opus Magnum machines
Opus Magnum looks really neat. I'm planning for it to be my second Zachtronics game, after I get around to finishing Shenzhen I/O
I never thought to use the useless pieces in Opus Magnum that way to map out the collision of the element pieces. I gotta' play that DLC that released for it but it's been so long.
Playing through the dishonored series, currently finishing Knife of Dunwall and then on to the Brigmore Witches. Very solid game and honestly love playing the DLC since I never tried that. Trying out some new demos on steam as well, Burn-9 seems interesting you play as the operator for a Solid Snake style figure in a mission that's gone FUBAR. It's by the same peeps that did Citizen Sleeper so the writing seems to be good/going somewhere
Dishonored series is fucking P E A K
It really is, it's got an art direction that's timeless and the vibes of gritty gloomy streets are just immaculate. Looking forward to Dishonored 2 once I'm done with the first.
The news about the Touhou 6 remake has gotten me in the mood to play more of the original again. I wanted to give Lunatic difficulty a try since I never really did before, my best run was a Hard 1cc. So far it has just been nose to the grindstone on routing and practicing bosses. I'm working on Stage 4 but it's really tough, lots of moments where if you hesitate for even a moment you are in big trouble. Some of Patchouli's spell cards are really kicking my ass too. I'm both excited for and dreading Stage 5 because I know Sakuya is gonna be a major skill check. I might take a break at some point and try the Extra Stage too, I had routed it in the past but was never able to clear it.
Wow it took me around 30 hours to just beat regular mode, good luck! The music was the only thing keeping me going, Locked Girl has to be one of the best video game soundtracks OAT
Thanks! Even Normal is a tough challenge. My goal for now is just to make it through before running out of continues. And yeah the music is amazing! Patchy's fight is probably my favorite in the game so that plus having one of the best songs too makes it really fun to practice, even if my success rate isn't great lol
Waiting for Stellaris Nomads tomorrow.
is that tomorrow? fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck gotta wait a couple weeks anyway for all my mods to update
No Man's Sky, Gotta catch 'em all
007, did play it to the first mission but it is not for me. Now playing Gothic remake, got cheeky at the first gate and got my ass handed to me swiftly. Another go tonight.
Got a new thinkpad so I've been testing out some retro windows titles, like arma 2, lost planet, ffxi (all demos and benchmarks so far) gonna load up Diablo 1 shareware today on devilutionx.
Lost Planet 2 also has a benchmark and may be playable. It's my favorite in the series.
If you have any emulation-related questions feel free to hit me up ideally through replies here in case it also could help someone else
Subnatica below zero. Just finished FF16 and was pleasently surprised by it. It was nice to play a true to form final fantasy game again, though while the combat was fun I do miss the classic open world turned based combat.
After finishing first light i went on a 007 binge and completed a bunch of games in the series but burned out half way through 007 goldeneye reloaded
shadows of colossus, i never finished it back in the day so i'm just going for a fresh start run through. i like the lack of mook bashing and the focus being on these singular puzzle fights, nice to play with my mind half focused on other stuff.
Love SOTC
Werewolf: The Apocalypse - Earthblood : Solid buy if you get it for $5 or less. I knew going in that it was supposed to be mediocre, but I what I didn't know was it's relation to the Vampire: The Masquerade series, so that was a fun rabbit-hole to explore.
The gameplay is very sloppy but mostly decent fun, split between very bland stealth segments and gigantic hulking werewolf action segments that kind of remind me of the combat in games like Prototype, if people remember that game (you're a super-hero / bio-horror in an open-world setting).
The premise of the story is great, in that you're a band of werewolf eco-terrorists who ... do werewolf eco-terrorism. The game was either unwilling or unable to fully actualize this vision in the actual plot. Might have been publisher squeamishness, might have been EU arts funding stipulation.
Most of the other characters you have relationships with have models that look multiple console-generations older than the protagonist (who to the game's credit looks pretty good in human and werewolf forms), and this makes some of the attempts at emotional cut-scenes very funny. One of the main allies you have looks like she was purchased from the Unity asset store and they forgot to add anything to her model.
Environments look great though, shout-out to the environmental artist. The first area is my favorite: pacific northwestern forest at night with a full moon looking gorgeous, realistically rendered but with some stylization in its presentation to give it a more mystical vibe, but then inter-cut with scenes of a devastating logging operation, oil-rigs visible off the coast, hastily build roads carving through to facilitate the continued extraction.
It's alright.
vtm/werewolf/mages are some of the most fun ttrpg's to play with people you know and trust and perhaps the worst to play with randos in all of gaming. i did like earthblood well enough though, i agree with the plot compromises and gameplay clunk but like you say it was a decent romp for what it is, the background lore is a lot of fun, and the game world is pretty.
still going on that punch build elden ring run. made it to the capital, went through under around all over that MF, found the star fists (goodbye spiked caestus!), found the nomads, beat the shit out of Morgott & Mogh (capital version), god i love this fucking game
Preparing for steam nextfest this upcoming week by looking through early release demos. I'll update here with what was enjoyable and also post in next week's thread. Drop games as replies if you have the time and found something interesting.
Update:
SPRAWL Zero is a high-intensity fps that's centered around constantly having to pick up (from a distance with your gravity hand) weapons/physics objects and chucking them at enemies.
ROLLA is you playing katamari except you're a giant flesh ball that has to roll over humans to increase your flesh mass to destroy the city. Getting shot/flame-throwered/air-strikes decreases your mass until you die. Has leaderboards and seems like a good quick mindless arcade romp
Kaido Genkai is an anime-aesthetic open world racing game with realisticish physics set in a fictional Japanese countryside village. Missions vary from simple races, timed deliveries, and even some environmental retrieval missions. Seems cool- still need to play some more to better form an opinion.
BioEden is habitat/world restoration settlement sim where you're creating environments for extinct fantasy creatures inside a biodome and terraforming/recycling resources from the dilapidated outside world to support it
Normal Golf Game is a golf game designed by someone who thought QWOP was too easy. I actually think this is phenomenal.
Burn-9: A metal gear-like where you play as the operator directing the agent where to go in the mission while taking calls from various other people during the mission. Short demo and potentially very cool.
Rivage is a first-person environmental story puzzle game set on a space station. You have to dig through documents, learn how to operate various sections of the base, and piece together what has happened to progress through the game. I've just unlocked room 3 of ??? before needing to hop off, but this one has me extremely intrigued so far.
Things I'm trying next (will write if I enjoy them):
Played a little Warframe, played a little Crosscode, nothing major. Most of my gaming time went to painting my lizardmen to get ready for a game of AoS Spearhead. Ended up playing two games, 1 win 1 draw, not too bad for supposedly the worst army.
this past week ive played outward, no rest for the wicked, and now dragonwilds.
dragonwilds has been fun because we're playing on a server, and its just been me and another person hyping each other up on our homemaking. y'all, our cottage looks SO CUTE now 🥰
started to give project zomboid a try and now im kinda mad i didnt give it a fair shot earlier. its quite the good survival game
