Games

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;

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

No Man's Sky, Gotta catch 'em all

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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):

• Over the Hill
• Happy Bastards
• VHOLUME's new demo
• Ascenders: Beyond the peak
• RetroSpace
• Deep Dish Dungeon
• Grain Rot
• Sunset Summit
• AGX GP

Waiting for Stellaris Nomads tomorrow.

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.

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.

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.

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 🥰