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.
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.
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!
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.
Still on my ten hour trial of FC 24, which is almost done.
Trash optimization, but I prefer the gameplay over 23. Still not going to buy it.
It’ll probably come to regular EA Play around May/June, so it’s not a terrible wait and not like I’m in a rush.
I do wish we had more straight up arcade football games. EA tries too hard to straddle the line between “sim” and “arcade” and feels less fun because of it (IMO), especially in comparison to the older FIFA games.
The only reason I really play it is because right now it’s the only game with actual women’s teams.
They do the bare minimum, and the commentary reflects that better than anything (more generic than male teams, also occasionally hear “he/him/his”, though it’s fairly rare), but at least it’s something.
Otherwise, I booted up Mad Max the other day as a spontaneous decision. Seems fairly fun and might get into that, but I could also just catch up on TV. Who knows.
Every November I play Dishonored. Just finished the main game, and now I’m playing the Knife of Dunwall DLC. Next will be Brigmore Witches, and then it’s on to Dishonored 2. I love these games yo.
Dishonored is amazing! I love that even though the story is pretty linear (and a great story it is), there's so many ways to go about to achieve the objectives. It's a fun time.
I played Dishonored 2 once, but I couldn't really get into it because, one, I didn't like the changes they made to the Outsider, and two, for whatever reason it felt kinda depressing to play. It was pretty cool you could choose who to play as though. I've thought about revisiting it at least once more to play as Corvo, since I picked Emily the first time.
I really liked the differences between Corvo’s and Emily’s powers. I also like the variety of ways they allow you to complete tasks and combine powers.
Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi - This has been sitting in my Steam library for a few years, and I finally decide to try and give it a go. I'm usually a sucker for vampire games, but I'm not sure how I feel about this one. There's so much backtracking, and not in a fun, Resident Evil kind of way. And I guess some of the deaths are either on a timer or scripted? Either way, because I didn't really "know" anything about any of the characters, I didn't have that sense of urgency to get to them so quickly. Like who even are these people to me besides just my relatives? I didn't end up finishing it, but I think I'm going to try to give it another go before putting it in my 'meh' pile.
Diablo 3: Season 29 - Finished the Destroyer chapter! The conquest that finished it out ended up being to complete a level 45 rift with no set pieces. Now I'm taking a little break from it before I start working on the Conqueror chapter.
Diablo 4: Season 2 - I am despising Helltides right now and trying to get Living Steel. That is all.
I’ve been really enjoying My Time at Sandrock. it was in early access for a while and just had their 1.0 release a few weeks ago. I played and enjoyed the first game they made, My Time at Portia, but Sandrock is an improvement in every way.
It’s a stardew valley-esque game with a focus on crafting rather than farming. the story and lore is more extensive than I expected and the writing for the characters is also impressive to me. I’m mainly a cozy gamer so Sandrock is a perfect game for me.
Yesterday I finished Cocoon - super nice puzzle game from the gameplay designer of Limbo and Inside. Can really recommend it for it’s surreal athmosphere, great sound design and well built puzzles. Check it out!
Half way through BG3 with a couple of friends. Playing together in a single player game streamed from one friend. Works really well this way, which is not too common.
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