Whatcha all playing?
Sorry for the late thread! I’ve been playing the Talos principal reawakened. I never played the original and I’m having a really good time!
I finally finished persona 3 reload. I skipped part of the DLC because more dungeons sounded like torture at that point. But otherwise it was great.
I started playing blue prince and then, after a few hours, realized the name was a play on words for blueprints. Doh. It’s been interesting. I am kind of getting a bit tired of the RNG of filling out the house, but I’m getting enough progress made to keep me going.
I’ve also been playing the oblivion remake, and it’s been a lot of fun! It’s like the ratatouille meme while playing. It’s nice. Oddly cozy
Stardew.
I’m tired boss
Fallout 76 has a new springtime event so I’ve been playing that a lot. Little bit of the Oblivion remaster. Started Cabernet.
I’m deep into Blue Prince right now. Not loving all the randomness for this kind of puzzle game but the puzzles and lore are good enough to keep me going. Always a weird feeling to think “I love this, I just wish its core premise wasn’t part of it.”
Decided to replay Prey 2017 after… 8 years? Good lord.
Anyway, going in with New Game+ makes things so much more interesting.
Still on an extended break from Blue Prince, hoping my sister and her fiancé catch up to me eventually so we can take a crack at the final(?) puzzle together but they’ve been busy lately and not had much time to play. If you enjoy puzzles and haven’t played it yet you are truly missing out. I still think it will be in GOTY contention even with all the other heavy hitters this year.
In the meantime I’ve been utterly enjoying Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I’m probably over the halfway point now in the story, though I’ve been dragging my feet doing side content and optional bosses to extend my playtime. For once when it comes to a JRPG I wish it was actually longer. I could easily lose myself in this world, story and among these characters for 100+ hours.
Really recommend the game, though with the effusive praise it’s been collecting that’s hardly a surprise. Brilliant music, engaging combat, interesting story and well written dialogue that is superbly acted whether you go for the English or French. And all that for a €50 game?!
Called it quits on Blue Prince last week. 20-30h in and I hit the main goal of the game of reaching the 46th room. I started scratching at some of the deeper puzzles and mysteries to solve but I think the combination of some frustrating mechanics (drafting the right rooms, running out of resources, etc…) along with time being a premium, I had to stop myself. I just realized my excitement for “one more run” just wasn’t there and rather than sour my opinion on it, it was better to move on and appreciate the depth that’s there for people getting into it. Super impressed by everything that I’ve seen in it and definitely recommended if you’re a fan of puzzles and taking notes to piece a lot of things together.
And on what feels like the other end of the spectrum, I started Skin Deep and am having a blast. It’s such a weird, stylistic immersive sim where you’re rescuing these low-polygon cats from pirates taking over their spaceship. The humor is good and the systems interact really well. Everything telegraphs what it can do, how it can be used, and the game seems to reward experimentation. I’m trying to be stealthy but there’s no penalty to breaking stealth, and some rewarding per-mission objectives that encourage you to check everything out.
You also get to flush heads down toilets which is pretty cool (and definitely something missing from Blue Prince)
I get that on Blue Prince. Even with the RNG control you’re afforded late game you’re still heavily affected by the luck of the draw. I still think it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played.
If you’re looking to see the rest of the game through someone else’s eyes to get a glimpse of the remaining puzzles I thoroughly recommend Luckless Lovelocks playthrough on YouTube. It’s still ongoing but I’ve really enjoyed his note taking and puzzle solving.
Definitely good to know. I don’t think I’d call it one of the best I’ve ever played but it was certainly awesome as pieces started clicking into place and I could see the outline of how it would go. I’m curious to see what else is really in there (I’ve spoiled some bits and pieces to it) and may go down that path. Thank you!
All the detail, the world building and the little pieces of narrative, the puzzles within puzzles and the constant feeling of the game just opening up under you and always throwing things at you making you go “wait, how big is this game?” was just so cool.
I might be high on recency bias in my praise but I was thoroughly enamoured with it.
I’ve gotten sucked into the rabbit hole that is multiworld randomizers lately. I’ve done several smaller multiworlds with a group of friends (4-8 players) all playing different games, and a week or so ago got involved in a larger one (15 or so players) that was organized on a forum I frequent. All of these have been through Archipelago, and if you’re not familiar with multiworld randomizers their FAQ is a decent introduction. I’ve played a few different games in these - Minecraft, Wind Waker, and most recently Balatro, and all of them have been really interesting and fun ways to play games that I was already pretty familiar with. Also, my regular gaming group has had trouble finding multiplayer games that we all want to play recently, and these archipelago multiworlds make it so that we can play something together without all having to agree on what to play, plus you can play asynchronously so we can start together but then finish runs out as we have time. It’s been really cool and I’m jonesing for more.
I was just setting one of these up a week or so ago! Super excited to dive into it
I’ve really enjoyed it, and it’s been a breath of fresh air for this friend group that was really struggling to find stuff to play together. We used to get deep into a lot of survival crafting type games, think Ark and Conan, but several of us had gotten pretty burned out on those, and most of the multiplayer stuff we were interested in either didn’t grab everybody or was limited to just a few players. Stuff like Helldivers being only 4 players meant that not all of us could play together, which felt bad. These multiworld games, though, mean that we can all get on a discord call and kick the runs off at the same time, and it feels like we’re playing together as we call out stuff we’re sending to each other or items we need, but then we can wrap the runs up over the course of the next week as we have time. Plus there are enough games that most folks have been able to find something that feels comfortable for them.
Decided to give Overwatch 2 a shot, until the new Doom is out.
First time playing OW in a couple of years, just doing normal 5v5 Quick Play, and it’s been fun. Mostly Tank and Support, but occasionally the Matchmaking Algorithm graces me with a DPS game. Current favorite heroes: Hazard and Orisa for Tank, Brigitte and Juno for Healer, and Venture for DPS.
After I’m done with Doom, I’ll take a look at Stadium, the new game mode that was added to OW recently.
This is my game of choice. If you ever get a chance and want to laugh go to custom games and try out 12 hogs 1 hole.
That one at the Illios Well? I know that one and have played it a few times in the past.
Yeah it’s hilarious. I was on an edible the last time I played it and was cracking up.
I have a conspiracy theory that the game tracks your total playtime and rewards people who play a lot of support and tank with better dps queues. I mostly play support, but if I queue as both Support and DPS I will almost always get a DPS game, last night I got 8 games in a row as DPS.
These past couple of days, I’ve been always queuing flex and I got 5x DPS in 60+ games, including one in the final 10s of a loss, where I didn’t even make it to the point.
It doesn’t really bother me, I like Tank and Support, and since Blizzard added a bunch of them when OW2 came out, so there’s still a lot to try and learn.
I played a bit of Phantasy Star Portable, but my PSP’s battery is half dead and I’m waiting for a replacement so I didn’t play long. Seems like a fun game tho.
I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and I have a few thoughts about it.
The gameplay starts slow, too slow to be interesting, but after around 20 hours you unlock all the main systems and it gets really fun. It is however dragged down a bit by how bad the blade gacha and how grindy other secondary mechanics are (affinity charts and region development/mercenary missions).
The story was fine, it was pretty standard for a JRPG. I felt like the main characters were more interesting than the ones in the first game, but the overall plot and themes were a bit weak.
Various (minor) XC2 story spoilers
I did find the theme of death and remembrance interesting in this setting, but I didn’t feel like it was explored deeply enough.
Same for the ethical issues of using blades, which the story acknowledges, but never really deals with it.
The blade gacha system also goes against what the story is trying to say, as it forces you to treat common blades as expendable or just workforce for mercenary missions.
The story feels overall a bit rushed towards the end (especially the ending comes abruptly, I was expecting it to be a fakeout) and weirdly unfocused before that, but still engaging enough.
Way too much Dungeon Clawler on my Steam Deck. I think that and a little bit of Baba Is You are mostly the only non-mobile games I’ve really been playing over the past week.
Speaking of Talos, I have been continuing my quest to discover every Skyrim mod that adds big new locations to explore by playing The Gray Cowl of Nocturnal (10th anniversary edition which was released earlier this year.) I feel that over the years I have got to the point where I know a thing or two about Elder Scrolls lore and yet I have no idea what’s up with the ancestral cheetahs, where they come from or whose ancestors they are.
