Path of exile 2 is free this weekend, and has a new season starting in a few hours, I’m trying to get my friends together to jump in.
It’s not very in the spirit of this sub though, but it did take a lot of patience to get here.
I’m still kicking around the idea of getting no man’s sky, but it hasn’t dropped enough yet.
Persona 5 was in the humble bundle, I’ve yet to get into a persona game (tried 3 and 4) to the point of “gameplay” there’s so much story than just doesn’t connect with me before the gameplay starts. Makes me miss Pokemon Red/blue.
P5R may not be to your liking then either. I found it to be less front loaded on the narrative than P4G, but it’s still a very narrative focused game. I can say however that I much preferred the story of P5R. I haven’t played P3(any version) yet. That’s just kind of the way Persona games are. They all start kind of slow. At least the two I’ve played. SMT may be more to your liking. I’ve only played SMT IV but SMT seems to be more gameplay focused. That one is at least from what I remember.
I played the demo of smt5 (which is how I know you’re referring to shin megami tensai (sp?) in case anyone else wants to experience it) and it was a really fun game, definitely faster to pick up the gameplay, and it reminded me, in many good ways, of dragon warrior monsters and Digimon, but at the end of the demo I was hesitant to pull the trigger because there are so many other games that deserve some play time.
I’ll definitely go back to it when it’s on sale, and I’m going to give p5 a, maybe not fair, shake.
Yeah Shin Megami Tensei is often abbreviated as SMT. I’d say with P5 if you don’t like it by the end of the first palace, then you probably won’t like the rest of it. You’ve seen most of the core gameplay and mechanics by then. I would definitely say play P5R and not vanilla P5 if you have the option. Some mechanics are changed in P5R that make it a smoother experience. The big new additions are mostly at the end, the “Third Semester”.
Started playing Pikmin
I’m replaying Riftbreaker. They just dropped the extended endgame (plus a bunch of other new features) and it’s a good reason to play through it again.
The combination of base building, tower defense, and action gameplay just works for me.
Please stop me from building over-defended walls at the far borders of the entire map and using a consistent 4x4 grid placement for flooring that aligns the entire gotdamn map…
Edit: said map
Can’t. I’m too busy building fusion reactors in bulk to power my wall of gatling laser towers.
Hey, did Camo unlock in your playthrough with this update? I started with coop_beta and have since gone back to the main branch after the update, and the tech and blueprint unlocked, but I can’t actually select it.
Normally, I think. I haven’t built it yet but it has unlocked. Not sure what triggered it, though.
Honestly, I’m not going to be using it – I’ve been showered with unique red chainsaws so my stealth consists of cutting down all potential witnesses.
I have this vague recollection from one or two earlier playthroughs that during one of the mission maps, some cloaked dudes show up, theres some Ashley/Mr. Riggs dialogue, and you suddenly can use Cloak. Separate from scanning enough of them to unlock the tech/blueprint. Tried Googling and couldn’t find anything about that, though I feel like I went on this journey once before and got reminded of the mission thing from some website.
That doesn’t sound entirely unfamiliar but I can’t remember if that was actually something that happened in an earlier version of the game. All I know is that enough familiarity with those guys plus hazenite handling will also get you there.
Hollow knight. Trying to wrap it up before silksong. Probs won’t happen but That’s okay. I’ll get to silksong whenever I finish!
Shantae and The Pirate’s Curse. This weeb game showed up in my GOG library for free somehow, so I thought I’d install it so I can decide that I hate it, uninstall and move on. The problem is I love it because it’s a great fucking game. Casual platforming, metroidvania elements, bangin’ ass soundtrack, every character has giant tits for no reason. I recommend it!
The Shantae series are some great metroidvanias with a lot of sass. Definite recommendation.
That said, Pirate’s Curse is my favorite of the bunch; the gameplay is just so satisfyingly smooth.
I‘m gonna play Outpath when I have time solo and Peak with my gf. And I‘ll probably randomly boot up half a dozen other games if Outpath loses me.
Horizon Zero Dawn and Astro’s Playroom
Traded in a bunch of stuff on Monday and picked up a PS5. So far really enjoying it and especially the controller, that thing is amazing. Next payday I’m definitely buying the newer Astro Bot game.
Astro bot is so damn good. I haven’t found another PS game that maximizes the functions of the dualsense like they did, it’s kind of a shame.
I burned probably a half hour just enjoying the vibration textures while walking on different surfaces lol.
Dragon’s Dogma. WTF? Why did nobody tell me it was good? Why do people describe it as “hack and slash”? It’s a proper ARPG. Also, do I just suck or is it actually this hard?
I’ve beaten all the souls games multiple times but I got stuck in DD pretty early on and just quit out of frustration. I’ve been meaning to go back but I do think it actually is that hard.
Figured it out! It’s not hard. It’s actually quite easy. It just gives zero fucks about letting you know the level of the enemies or the areas where they are. I got a quest to gather some flowers at level 5 and was told they could be found in the outskirts of the city so I went south out of chance. Turns out that’s 20ish level area. Perhaps the same happened to you.
1000xRESIST. I first heard about this game from Balatro of all places. It’s very good. It’s hard to talk about it without spoiling too much and I do think this game is best played with knowing as little as possible. You really need to pay attention to what’s going on. I haven’t played a VN style game in a long time but I’m really enjoying it! Some twists I definitely did not see coming.
I’m rocking on Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Umurangi Generation
I hopped in to unlock all the gear and achievements (all except for “Speed runner” since I can’t be bothered with downgrading the game just to unlock it). Went pretty fast since levels are small and requirements simple but it was fun nonetheless.
I’ll have to jump back in to do some proper photos of the DLC stages but that’ll have to wait a bit.
Persona 3 Portable
Progressing pretty slowly with this one as I treat it like a “play before bed” type of game. I really like Kotone and enjoy the new events written for her, hopefully they keep their quality throughout. Social links seem to have the same problem as the original ones for the most part (agree with people to make them like you) but whatever.
There’s one thing that’s bothering me and that’s lack of audio settings - the sound effects (especially crit hits) during combat tend to be slightly louder than everything else and quickly become rather grating to hear.
All in all, it’s pretty fun so far. While I don’t expect much differences in terms of the main story I’m curious where the rest of the writing ends up.
Project Wingman
I’ve decided to take another stab at playing this thing in VR. My initial attempt was a bit weird as even though my PC is close to being bare minimum to run the thing in VR it didn’t seem to use all of the available resources during gameplay. After some searching I found multiple claims that VR performance got kinda wrecked with the release of patch 2.0 so I decided to give the old version a shot. Boy was it worth it! Well, kind of.
Both performance and hardware utilisation are definitely better, giving the speed and smoothness I didn’t see during my previous session. It’s super fun to play and gives me hope I might be able to finish the campaign before I finally manage to upgrade my PC. It’s also has a functional menu controls in VR unlike the 2.0 version.
It’s really fun and being able to look around makes planning your moves way easier (I should look into non-VR head tracking for my normal playthrough).At the same time, 1.0 is 1.0. The anniversary update brought with it various improvements, including: better control of cloud settings, visual improvements to stages and updated HUD. It’s also the only version of the game you can play the DLC with which is unfortunate since I really want to play the “Express Lane” in VR.
It’s an acceptable compromise overall but far from ideal way to experience the game. Oh well…
Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown
I honestly didn’t expect to play this game any time soon due to price but it’s currently 90% off (or 84% directly on Steam) so I decided to take this opportunity and compare it with Project Wingman while it’s still fresh in my mind.
I haven’t played much yet (only 5 missions so far) so I’ll stick to first impressions, with more thought out writeup probably next week. Here are the things that stood out the most so far:
- Not being able to rebind HOTAS controls in game is a terrible choice and whoever decided on that should feel bad. It can be done by editing an ini file but that shouldn’t be necessary in this day and age. Also, no mouse support for menus - seriously?
- Speed control doesn’t feel right yet, I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.
- Flares are so limited you might as well not have them. Not that they’re as necessary as in PW but still.
- Not yet sold on voice acting, prefer Project Wingman on that front so far. It feels a bit too… clinical (or slightly less natural), I guess?
- I have similar feelings towards writing in general. It feels a bit too sterile, corporate and unnatural, with lots of “lordumpy” narration. Not the worst thing ever but it’s definitely noticeable.
- Game looks great, more dynamic elements in the cockpit are always a plus.
- The idea of music fading out when flying through clouds is cool but gets annoying really fast. Decent way to push people away from flying into them, I guess.
- I’m playing on hard but it’s not particularly challenging so far. I hope things pick up or there’s an unlockable higher difficulty after completing the game.
All in all, I think PW is a better game for me at the moment - not because AC7 is bad, but rather because it’s a bit more “safe” in comparison. I still like it and hope to warm up to it as I play but so far it kinda makes me want to go back to PW, not gonna lie.
PixelJunk Monsters 2. It was like $3 and a fantastic price for that. Not as good as the first game, but an amazing tower defence game nonetheless
I’ve reinstalled Disco Elysium, but on the Steam Deck this time.
I had started a playground a while back, but I took a break after barely scratching the surface.
I was too burnt out from work at the time to really enjoyed it, so I parked it and kept it for later.Playing it on the deck also has the benefit of me not still sitting in my home office after working.
Me not remembering much of the beginning of that playthrough is actually pretty immersive in its own way too.
My work buddies and I started replaying Pokémon Black and White together. It’s a lot of fun, and it has been long enough that it’s like experiencing it for the first time. There are private servers now that enable the online content (since the official ones were taken down).
I did not realize the first time around just how much the plot was a takedown of fascism, but given recent political events, it is a little on the nose. But they did an impressive job of exploring the reasons people might be radicalized and truly believe that they’re in the right just because they’re following a charismatic leader (even one who very obviously doesn’t have their best interests in mind), and in a way that kids could understand.Huh, maybe I’ll play it again then. I tried to replay it a few months back but didn’t get far, decided to play something else instead.
I picked up that Humble Bundle with the Mega Man X collection in it. Man that game still totally holds up. It’s just fucking awesome.
