Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 20th
Three day weekend ... Messed up my schedule. Oh well, what have you been playing? I've been checking out a ton of cool playdate stuff, as well as more binding of Isaac. I also picked up a game called the roottrees are dead that I'm excited to check out! It seems like a game similar to case of the golden idol which is one of my all time faves
I'm playing Dungeon Drafters, a deck-building, turn-based, tactical rogue-like. (What a mouthful) It's been very fun, the emphasis on positioning reminds me of some of the fun aspects of other tactics games I've played; and, the deck-building is pretty fun.
The game has some interesting tweaks on the formula, like you graveyard not being shuffled back into your deck except at special shrines in the run, so you have to deploy cards more tactically and individual cards are allowed to be much more impacfcul as a result. Status conditions are amazing in this game and I love using them.
The art style is charming and I really enjoy how clever I feel when my careful positioning and shuffling allows me to efficiently take out opponents.
Pillars of Eternity, which I did not give a fair shot when I first tried it and am enjoying a lot more this go around and Baba is You.
As a father of a 8 month old baby, I have barely touched any of my gaming systems for the past year. Games need to be quickly accessible and possible to quit at any time for me to play. So mobile gaming is basically where I'm at.
Slay The Spire works perfectly well for Android. I've been playing that a ton.
Pokémon TCG Pocket is weirdly fun. Even though it's encouraging microtransactions and subscriptions, it's very much playable without making a single transaction. The TCG is decently interesting, though not without flaws. It's still in a very early stage, so I'm interested to see how the game grows.
I played an unhealthy amount of Baldur's Gate 3 and finished my run. Sadly, Ansur, the last boss before I went onto the finale, ended the Honor Mode part. I'm a bit salty about it, since it wasn't the boss being too hard or something, but mainly bugs, that did me in.
My first try I got him to half HP, then the game just didn't want to use any actions anymore. I couldn't even save and quit, but had to go through Task Manager to kill it. Next try I get him to like 80hp, fresh turn with all of my characters, but the game just crashes. Third time, he's at 80 or so again, but because of terrible animations I didn't see that he was supposed to be flying in the air, charging his giga attack. Because of some debuff, he was just writhing on the floor, so I just couldn't really tell. I had a dozen Globe of Invulnerability scrolls, so I could have survived easily.
Anyway, I'll do another run next month, after Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, and maybe the new Diablo 4 season, but dunno about that last one.
Pentiment, an awesome point-and-click whodunnit with meaningful choices and beautiful medieval graphics. You only have limited time so you can't do everything and follow every lead.
Return to Moria, a generic survival/crafting game that was recently free on Epic. I had low expectations of this one, but it is surprisingly solid. But it really sucks that there is no dedicated server support.
I played Return to Moria for a while on my partner's (more powerful) PC, since my laptop isn't exactly in fighting shape. I thought it was fun and very good at getting me in the vibe of the game. I particularly liked navigating the confusing warren of the Mines. I did fall off a bit when I did a lot of prep-work for the Orctown and found out it was kind of tiny.
If I had the PC and time, I'm sure it'd be very fun to play with friends.
I've downloaded some old PS2 era games. Some of the gameplay is quite dated, but I really enjoy the retro feel of the environments and graphics. Perfect photorealism isn't always necessary to enjoy a game. I've been playing Burnout and Ghost in the Shell SAC.
How's the GITS game? I've never heard of any tie-in games from that series and I'm fascinated about what the game is like.
It's honestly not amazing. It's a third person shooter across multiple different levels of built up environments, offices, corridors. The enemy AI is pretty terrible, and although there are different tactics you can use to "hack" and take over enemies or melee, it's usually just easier to shoot.
But the parkour style navigation stood out. You can do wall jumping, which I was not expecting, and there are hidden pickups you can explore and find. And the open environments are nice (the corridors can feel a bit samey after a few levels).
It feels like one of those tie-ins that, had the dev team had more time to explore, balance, and really make it into its own game, might have been really good.
Nothing. My GPU is in for RMA. It died in the middle of me and a friend finally hanging out to get into the RE4 Remake together.
What I WANT to play is Deadlock.
...
Actually, I have a steamdeck, so I've been tackling an MGR playthrough on revengeance difficulty. But holy crap the Deadlock withdrawal is real.
Deadlock
This looks really cool. I have completely missed the lead up to this game, anything in particular you're excited about it? I'd love to hear it.
Everything?
It has the complexity of a MOBA (but genius level UX that completely addresses how that would normally be daunting, through a fantastic community item build system), movement approaching the intensity of Titanfall and a match format that finally fills the hole in my heart that was left by Battleborn, and is maybe even better.
It has a a unique 80s magic/fantasy aesthetic, and what we know of the lore so far is fantastic. (I laughed out loud when walking by a radio in-game and a newscaster voice went "Have love potions ruined dating?! These 20-somethings tell all!")
My advice, hit up !deadlock@sopuli.xyz, get an invite, and just give it a try. The way it's looking, it might turn out my favorite game of all time.
Since I just got my deck repaired, I can continue Sonic Origins on there. Had to install it on my desktop temporarily.
I also just got the summon I wanted tonight in Fire Emblem Heroes: New Year's Níðhöggr (Nithhoggr). As a casual I see strong unit like her and think I'm gonna be set for a long time, like when I got Heir to Openness Alphonse or Gatekeeper (even though he didn't last long for me).
STALKER 2, and I haven't felt this frightened to climb down into the basement of a decrepit waste processing station since the original trilogy. So in short, it hits just right.
I actually stood in my kitchen last night eating some yogurt and two Lucky Charms cereal bars just to procrastinate what I knew I had to do.
How's the AI now?
It functions well enough that I haven't noticed anything off, save for maybe two occasions in 40+ hours where I was unlucky enough to have bandits spawn in near me. Once out in the woods, and one time they literally appeared sitting in chairs in the room I had just passed through, then attacked on my way back through it. You can't help but laugh when it happens, but it's nowhere near like it was on release.
I know that several of the squads I encounter in the wild have been artificially spawned in just outside of my exclusion radius, but they move organically enough that I've never had my immersion broken with the impression that these aren't just stalkers on their own mission. Sure, if I reload a ways back and travel the same route, it may well be a different assortment of them, no one at all, or maybe bandits or mutants the next time, but rather than feeling tacky it keeps the Zone feeling unpredictable. Retracing my steps after reloading often results in a wildly different experience from Point A to Point B, so I can't cheese my way through much of anything.
I've also encountered large, roaming packs of mutants who, when avoided, travel well outside of my exclusion radius and continue to be heard far off in the distance (Flesh are a good example) even though they're no longer rendered on my screen. I've traveled in that direction a short time later just to run into the same pack having changed direction, so there definitely are some persistent A-Life doing their thing out there. It's just sprinkled with some chance encounters.
All in all, the A-Life isn't exactly where they/we want it to be, but they've taken enough corrective steps that I find it very enjoyable, and I say that as a long-term fan of the originals, as well as hardcore versions like Anomaly. Honestly, the only thing I truly dislike about STALKER 2 is the number of bloodsuckers. They've become a lot easier to dispatch with my better gear, but if I'm ever going to run into three bloodsuckers in the wild, it should be like one time. But there are times where I encounter packs of them several times per day, and on Veteran difficulty that is absolute bullshit.