I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria with a group of friends. It’s pretty janky at times, but the vibe is pretty fun and we’re all LotR nerds to some degree, so it’s been fun arguing about where the devs were lore friendly and where they colored outside the lines. It’s also nice to play a survival crafting game like this that has no PvP so the balancing can be entirely based on PvE play, which means the grind isn’t anywhere near the level of Ark or Conan. I’d say it’s a more janky little brother of Grounded with a LotR coat of paint and some pretty cool level design.
I finished my second run of Baldur’s Gate 3 with the Ghost Recon team. I made sure to finish up some major side quests I passed the first time around, and to avoid spoilers, let’s just say that my team was so effective that I got the Interfectorem Draconis achievement in one turn. This was still only on balanced difficulty, but now that I’ve played through the entire game with this team, I’m confident it would work on tactician.
I also started and finished Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty this past weekend. BG3 really illustrates you how much more freedom that game gives you compared to most AAA RPGs. Cyberpunk definitely accounts for different builds in a variety of ways, but they’re all predetermined options for you that the game explicitly allowed for, as opposed to BG3’s more systemic approach that allows you to be more creative. So it reminded me how Cyberpunk is a pretty decent RPG, but in a world where we get basically no FPS campaigns anymore, it’s just about all we’ve got on that front, and it does a better than decent job of scratching that itch. There was one mission I didn’t care for, and of the two mandatory boss fights, they mostly entailed sprinting around the room in circles until the boss gives you an opportunity to return fire. Other than those complaints though, it was solid. The story was good, the missions were fun, the presentation was excellent; I’d recommend it if you want more Cyberpunk.
I picked up Dungeons of Aether as a second-screen game while podcasts are on. I expected this to be more of a roguelike, but it’s not really. I can’t say how much procedural generation there is, because I haven’t failed a mission yet, but I’m more inclined to just call it a strategy game that uses dice. I’m totally fine with that; it’s just not what I expected. The game is pretty fun so far.
I’m mostly playing Guild Wars 2, enjoying saving the world from demonic invasion in what has so far been a pretty great expansion IMO and I am a bit of a hoor for some of the new cosmetics.
When I need a break from the rough grind, I jump into a super duper rough grind by firing up ol Leaf Blower Revolution. Idle game my ass, I’m clicking more than 5 cookie clicker players combined! There are still leaves everywhere!
Magic the Gathering: Arena grabbed my attention again after our friend group picked up the cards again. When I dont play modern stuff I’ll boot up my PS2 and play Monster Hunter 2 (DOS) online. Some smart folks brought back a private server for the old PS2 era games. Great Community (MHOLDSCHOOL Discord, also hosts of the Server) and a change of pace.
I finally finished my second run of BG3 myself for a grand total of about 200 hours. I haven’t played a single game that much probably since Oblivion 15 years ago, and I racked those hours up over a much longer period of time. It’s difficult to comprehend, no less express, how monumental an achievement this game is. The only thing that stopped me immediately rolling another character is the memory of the final gauntlet of major battles in act 3 (including the one who sings their own boss theme, which I didn’t do the first time). I’m not following any build guides or anything, so it’s been a pretty stressful week of game time and I’m ready to relax a bit.
On that note, I started playing Omno. It’s fine. Nothing really stands out: not a big fan of the art style, the score is pleasant but not as noteworthy or impactful as something like the score in Gris, and the gameplay is simple and tight. I think I’d have lost interest if I wasn’t playing immediately after 200 hours of BG3. But since I am, it happens to be hitting the right notes.
Risk of Rain Returns was released last week, and I’m having fun with that. It looks fantastic and plays well, for the most part. Some parts feel a bit clunky, since you can only shoot forwards and have to wait for the animation to finish before you can turn around. However, the developers said in the first hotfix patch logs, that they’ll implement controls to specifically shoot left or right, so that will be less of an issue, once that’s implemented. The current behavior definitely made me avoid some characters, just because it’s kind of a pain in frantic fights, where you’re getting swarmed by enemies.
So far I beat the game once, on the default difficulty, with the Loader, but I’m still unlocking stuff, learning, getting used to everything, but mostly just sucking.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker just doesn’t want to end, and it’s starting to get really tedious. After three story chapters back-to-back, and me thinking it might finally pick up the pace, the game throws you a curveball and has like 1–2 years of in-game downtime. Nothing happens, except for the occasional side quest, that takes like five minutes to complete. Who thought that’s a good idea? Yesterday, I finally made it to the next chapter, so I might be able to finish it this week (for real this time).
So many weird design choices, along with a lot of bugs, make it really hard to recommend this game to anyone. I still want to play the sequel, eventually (I wanna be a swarm that eats everything, even though it’s supposed to suck), but some of the things I’ve read don’t really sound appealing.
Jagged Alliance 3 - Maybe I was too harsh with this game, but the whole experience felt decidedly “budget.” I get that a $45 game today is more like a $30 game of only a few years ago, or a $20 game before that, though everything felt rough around the edges: writing, the sparse weapon and enemy types, the unexciting stock-looking art.
Iron Oath - It’s like a hybrid between Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers. You manage a mercenary company by hiring and equipping them, then directing them across an overworld map as in-game days pass. Then you dive into dungeons, progressing from room to room very much like DD, and when there is combat, it’s turn-based tactics with pre-deployment on a grid. I played this game nonstop for two days before I tore myself away and got my ass back to work lol. My primary issue is lack of content and lack of combat variety, I’m only halfway through the main campaign but after 100+ battles, they start to feel kinda samey.
Despot’s Dystopian Army Builder - This is made in the same universe as the creator’s prior game, Despot’s Game. If you are familiar with these titles, please tell me if/why you like them, because I don’t understand their appeal. These look like games, they sound like games, they present themselves like games, but these are not games, these feel as if they were made by someone who has only ever seen other people play video games and never played them personally.
Dicey dungeons is a blast! I have such a hard time with the engineer, I’m sure there’s a trick but haven’t quite sussed it out.
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 again after a long hiatus after my raid static disbanded. Only a little bit into the new expac but it’s been great! I think the new daily system has done a good job of getting me to come back with a clear list of things to do and compelling rewards.
I’ve also been playing Peglin, trying to work through the cruciball. Really fun/frustrating/satisfying game.
I also love peglin! The first few crucible levels are really fun and I enjoyed going through them. Omg though once you get to the last few it becomes a total slog. I still was able to get through all 15 on 1 character but I have no interest in trying to go that far on the others
You aren’t kidding, I have spent the last five days banging my head against cruciball 11 with the vanilla Peglin. Feels like a lot of rng and less about choices as it goes on.
KF1 was a huge part of my childhood, and I actually went back recently and started grabbing HoE achievements for the first time. Looking forward to 3 as well. :D
The PS1 original was good, but it had some noticeable flaws. The book writing skill was more or less useless, side quests were often too well hidden from view (which was especially bad when most of them were time-limited), the accessories that gave you items were a bit in-your-face, there was no in-game mini-map, the invisible random encounters and lack of fast travel didn’t age well, and the voice acting… What were they thinking when they released this…
The remake fixes most of what went wrong in the original game, including re-casting the English voice actors, and even adds some new content (like fishing) that wasn’t in the original. I’m enjoying it a lot.
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I’ve been playing Lord of the Rings: Return to Moria with a group of friends. It’s pretty janky at times, but the vibe is pretty fun and we’re all LotR nerds to some degree, so it’s been fun arguing about where the devs were lore friendly and where they colored outside the lines. It’s also nice to play a survival crafting game like this that has no PvP so the balancing can be entirely based on PvE play, which means the grind isn’t anywhere near the level of Ark or Conan. I’d say it’s a more janky little brother of Grounded with a LotR coat of paint and some pretty cool level design.
GT7 since some new updates came recently, AC Mirage (keep thinking I will pick it back up it but never do) and Super Mario Wonder
I finished my second run of Baldur’s Gate 3 with the Ghost Recon team. I made sure to finish up some major side quests I passed the first time around, and to avoid spoilers, let’s just say that my team was so effective that I got the Interfectorem Draconis achievement in one turn. This was still only on balanced difficulty, but now that I’ve played through the entire game with this team, I’m confident it would work on tactician.
I also started and finished Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty this past weekend. BG3 really illustrates you how much more freedom that game gives you compared to most AAA RPGs. Cyberpunk definitely accounts for different builds in a variety of ways, but they’re all predetermined options for you that the game explicitly allowed for, as opposed to BG3’s more systemic approach that allows you to be more creative. So it reminded me how Cyberpunk is a pretty decent RPG, but in a world where we get basically no FPS campaigns anymore, it’s just about all we’ve got on that front, and it does a better than decent job of scratching that itch. There was one mission I didn’t care for, and of the two mandatory boss fights, they mostly entailed sprinting around the room in circles until the boss gives you an opportunity to return fire. Other than those complaints though, it was solid. The story was good, the missions were fun, the presentation was excellent; I’d recommend it if you want more Cyberpunk.
I picked up Dungeons of Aether as a second-screen game while podcasts are on. I expected this to be more of a roguelike, but it’s not really. I can’t say how much procedural generation there is, because I haven’t failed a mission yet, but I’m more inclined to just call it a strategy game that uses dice. I’m totally fine with that; it’s just not what I expected. The game is pretty fun so far.
Just installed Card Quest on my Android tablet. So far, so good!
Bouncing around between two for the most part.
I’m mostly playing Guild Wars 2, enjoying saving the world from demonic invasion in what has so far been a pretty great expansion IMO and I am a bit of a hoor for some of the new cosmetics.
When I need a break from the rough grind, I jump into a super duper rough grind by firing up ol Leaf Blower Revolution. Idle game my ass, I’m clicking more than 5 cookie clicker players combined! There are still leaves everywhere!
Magic the Gathering: Arena grabbed my attention again after our friend group picked up the cards again. When I dont play modern stuff I’ll boot up my PS2 and play Monster Hunter 2 (DOS) online. Some smart folks brought back a private server for the old PS2 era games. Great Community (MHOLDSCHOOL Discord, also hosts of the Server) and a change of pace.
Saints Row IV: Re-Elected. Some clunky controls at times, but still the usual silly amount of fun.
I been playing risk of rain returns. I love it. Been trying to unlock everything. It’s harder than I remember honesty.
I finally finished my second run of BG3 myself for a grand total of about 200 hours. I haven’t played a single game that much probably since Oblivion 15 years ago, and I racked those hours up over a much longer period of time. It’s difficult to comprehend, no less express, how monumental an achievement this game is. The only thing that stopped me immediately rolling another character is the memory of the final gauntlet of major battles in act 3 (including the one who sings their own boss theme, which I didn’t do the first time). I’m not following any build guides or anything, so it’s been a pretty stressful week of game time and I’m ready to relax a bit.
On that note, I started playing Omno. It’s fine. Nothing really stands out: not a big fan of the art style, the score is pleasant but not as noteworthy or impactful as something like the score in Gris, and the gameplay is simple and tight. I think I’d have lost interest if I wasn’t playing immediately after 200 hours of BG3. But since I am, it happens to be hitting the right notes.
Risk of Rain Returns was released last week, and I’m having fun with that. It looks fantastic and plays well, for the most part. Some parts feel a bit clunky, since you can only shoot forwards and have to wait for the animation to finish before you can turn around. However, the developers said in the first hotfix patch logs, that they’ll implement controls to specifically shoot left or right, so that will be less of an issue, once that’s implemented. The current behavior definitely made me avoid some characters, just because it’s kind of a pain in frantic fights, where you’re getting swarmed by enemies.
So far I beat the game once, on the default difficulty, with the Loader, but I’m still unlocking stuff, learning, getting used to everything, but mostly just sucking.
Pathfinder: Kingmaker just doesn’t want to end, and it’s starting to get really tedious. After three story chapters back-to-back, and me thinking it might finally pick up the pace, the game throws you a curveball and has like 1–2 years of in-game downtime. Nothing happens, except for the occasional side quest, that takes like five minutes to complete. Who thought that’s a good idea? Yesterday, I finally made it to the next chapter, so I might be able to finish it this week (for real this time).
So many weird design choices, along with a lot of bugs, make it really hard to recommend this game to anyone. I still want to play the sequel, eventually (I wanna be a swarm that eats everything, even though it’s supposed to suck), but some of the things I’ve read don’t really sound appealing.
Bought Prey last night as it was on sale an Steam for £2.45. I’ve only played it for an hour, but I’ve got my moneys worth already.
Been testing out lots of stuff recently:
Jagged Alliance 3 - Maybe I was too harsh with this game, but the whole experience felt decidedly “budget.” I get that a $45 game today is more like a $30 game of only a few years ago, or a $20 game before that, though everything felt rough around the edges: writing, the sparse weapon and enemy types, the unexciting stock-looking art.
Iron Oath - It’s like a hybrid between Darkest Dungeon and Battle Brothers. You manage a mercenary company by hiring and equipping them, then directing them across an overworld map as in-game days pass. Then you dive into dungeons, progressing from room to room very much like DD, and when there is combat, it’s turn-based tactics with pre-deployment on a grid. I played this game nonstop for two days before I tore myself away and got my ass back to work lol. My primary issue is lack of content and lack of combat variety, I’m only halfway through the main campaign but after 100+ battles, they start to feel kinda samey.
Despot’s Dystopian Army Builder - This is made in the same universe as the creator’s prior game, Despot’s Game. If you are familiar with these titles, please tell me if/why you like them, because I don’t understand their appeal. These look like games, they sound like games, they present themselves like games, but these are not games, these feel as if they were made by someone who has only ever seen other people play video games and never played them personally.
Dicey dungeons is a blast! I have such a hard time with the engineer, I’m sure there’s a trick but haven’t quite sussed it out.
I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 again after a long hiatus after my raid static disbanded. Only a little bit into the new expac but it’s been great! I think the new daily system has done a good job of getting me to come back with a clear list of things to do and compelling rewards.
I’ve also been playing Peglin, trying to work through the cruciball. Really fun/frustrating/satisfying game.
I also love peglin! The first few crucible levels are really fun and I enjoyed going through them. Omg though once you get to the last few it becomes a total slog. I still was able to get through all 15 on 1 character but I have no interest in trying to go that far on the others
You aren’t kidding, I have spent the last five days banging my head against cruciball 11 with the vanilla Peglin. Feels like a lot of rng and less about choices as it goes on.
I just sunk basically an entire extended weekend on Killing Floor 2. It’s garbage entertainment but I can’t stop playing 😭
Watching George Romero got me in the mood for zombie sims, so I’ve also been edging my way back into playing Cataclysm: DDA.
I have so many hours in KF 1 and still play it. Never got into 2 but really looking forward to 3.
KF1 was a huge part of my childhood, and I actually went back recently and started grabbing HoE achievements for the first time. Looking forward to 3 as well. :D
Star Ocean: The Second Story R.
The PS1 original was good, but it had some noticeable flaws. The book writing skill was more or less useless, side quests were often too well hidden from view (which was especially bad when most of them were time-limited), the accessories that gave you items were a bit in-your-face, there was no in-game mini-map, the invisible random encounters and lack of fast travel didn’t age well, and the voice acting… What were they thinking when they released this…
The remake fixes most of what went wrong in the original game, including re-casting the English voice actors, and even adds some new content (like fishing) that wasn’t in the original. I’m enjoying it a lot.