What are you currently playing?

[Dalisclock]

More Elden Ring. Just encountered an enemy called a marionette or some such that has a moveset that involves literally throwing a hissy fit and flailing it arms with blades (melee version) or spamming arrows (archer version) in every direction pretty much until your health bar is depleted. Oh, and the roll in packs, so it's possible to find yourself getting ganked by 2 or 3 of them at a time. Ridiculously dick move, FROM; you're better than this.

Don't worry, you've got a couple of poison swamps coming up. Wouldn't be a FROM game without a couple(dozen) poison swamps.

 

[Dalisclock]

Almost done with Tails of Iron. For realsies this time. I've made it to the Frog Swamp so I'm reasonably sure I'm almost done. My game counter says about 8 hours but man it feels longer than that and I don't know if it's counting the times I had to fight a boss like a dozen times to actually beat it.

When this game isn't deliberately wasting your time with MANDATORY SIDE QUESTING to get past NUMEROUS CASH GATES it works really well and it's frustrating that the game could have been better just by making the sidequesting optional to an extent. Like make the quests to fix up the castle mandatory but the arena in the communist mole subway city could be a thing you do because you want to, not because you have to.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

More Elden Ring. Just encountered an enemy called a marionette or some such that has a moveset that involves literally throwing a hissy fit and flailing it arms with blades (melee version) or spamming arrows (archer version) in every direction pretty much until your health bar is depleted. Oh, and the roll in packs, so it's possible to find yourself getting ganked by 2 or 3 of them at a time. Ridiculously dick move, FROM; you're better than this.

Don't worry, you've got a couple of poison swamps coming up. Wouldn't be a FROM game without a couple(dozen) poison swamps.

Plus if it’s any consolation those enemies are absent from swamps IIRC. Or can just be rode past worst case. Apparently lore-wise their erratic spasm behavior is triggered by them malfunctioning, so yeah. Best just avoid these fools until one can make quick work of them since their loot/rune drop sucks anyways.

 

[Xprimentyl]

Don't worry, you've got a couple of poison swamps coming up. Wouldn't be a FROM game without a couple(dozen) poison swamps.

Oh, I've experienced some of it already. I tried a loot run through a rot swamp; jumped on my ghost horsey and ran through picking up anything I could see and ran into a random boss fight because those can happen in ER.

Plus if it’s any consolation those enemies are absent from swamps IIRC. Or can just be rode past worst case. Apparently lore-wise their erratic spasm behavior is triggered by them malfunctioning, so yeah. Best just avoid these fools until one can make quick work of them since their loot/rune drop sucks anyways.

I did decent damage to them; I can take one out in about 3 hits, but it's the moment between the 2nd and 3rd hit where they become... problematic. Not too worried, just had a moment of incredulity watching the screen fade to black after I was murdered by a mob swinging everywhere all at once killing me before I could register getting my finger to the block button.

 

[BrawlMan]

Prodeus again. My problems with this game are the reload button (an old school shooter such as this shouldn't need reloading), and the Super Shotgun and Plasma Rifle have to be bought in a shop. Those weapons should just be given to you at a certain point in a later level, or found early enough in a secret area. The ore count is high for both weapons, and the game heavily favors gamers that are secret hunters. The price only gets higher for buying the double jump and dash. My other problem is that enemies can blend into the background. They should have more colors on them than just grey and some highlighted orange/red. Those alternate blue counterparts don't count and rarely ever show up so far. Otherwise, great game and I appreciate the level design and atmosphere. A lot of the lighting effects reminds me of Doom 64. I played a lot for today, and might do more this evening.

 

[Worgen]

Oh holy fuck Hard West 2 becomes bullshit. It hasn't been too hard, the way combat in it works is that its closer to a puzzle then a normal xcom type game since each time one of your characters gets a kill, it gets all its action points back, so if you set things up right you can have one or 2 characters just tear through a group of enemies. But in this mission not only do you have big groups of enemies with a lot of heath, enough that its hard to setup a good path of kills. Plus, 2 of the enemies can summon other enemies that throw dynamite which auto hits your guys for a lot of damage and sets them on fire, plus the setup of the area means that its easy to end up in a bad position where you have a hard time hitting the enemy but they have an easy time hitting you, but they also are clones of your characters and have all your skills. And to top it off, the first big group isn't the last of it, there is another bigger group after it with a boss.

 

[Phoenixmgs]

Little Nightmares - 4/10

I don't get the high ratings for this game. There's so many issues with the game itself from the controls to the AI. The game wants you to do certain sections fast but the controls aren't up to snuff and how fast you can do certain things is animation dependent. It's also probably the biggest 2.5D game I've played where you have quite a good amount of space to move up and down as you're going right/left and it's hard to tell where your character is at vertically to make certain jumps and whatnot. You have some "puzzles" where you have to pick up something and throw it at an elevator button but the character will throw the item so weakly that you think that's not the solution, only to later find out it is the solution when standing in the exact spot the devs want you to stand in. In the 2nd half of the game, you're interacting with the game's enemies a lot more and how their AI works is a mystery. In some sections, you're definitely supposed trigger something to distract them but for how long they are distracted is anyone's guess. You never get a feel for what exactly triggers the AI and you end up trying several times to get past an area when the AI decides to not be an ass basically.

 

[Bedinsis]

AI - The Somnium Files

So far I'm not that impressed. I thought a key aspect of an investigative game was to find the clues and put them together so that you would get to solve the case. The way it's set up so far is that you go to a place, walk through the complete dialogue tree/investigate all the hotspots, and then the game just continues. Only the dream stages, which I've seen two of so far, actually had some puzzles, but they felt like they worked on Moon Logic.

Apart from that, the backstory of the protagonist makes me think "Uhhh, I have several questions...", and the game is strangely sexual.

 

[Dreiko]

So I jumped into Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous yesterday, and man, it didn't let me go, must have put in like 13 hours. God I love the holidays.


So, it may differ for you if you know the rules and lore of the P&P game, but for me everything was new, so I spent literally a good 3-4 hours in the char creation mode reading everything, from the dozens of classes and subclasses, tens of deities, dragon , vampire, elemental, demon and so on bloodlines, different racial backgrounds and what abilities they give your char, and all the feats (active and passive skills basically) that you can learn. The ratio is like 80% lore and 20% gameplay mechanics so I would go in to figure out what this thing does but then get caught up in the lore and wanna find out more. Ended up making a human lord steelblood bloodrager with a red dragon ancestral bloodline who believes in that one god that likes greatswords and steel(forgot his name and they're all weird ones).

Of course, you can skip all that if you select one of the like, 5 premade chars the game gives you, but I can't imagine something worse you could do to yourself in a game like this lol.



So, how is the actual game. Well, it's pretty much like baldur's gate but with a real and functional turn based mode pretty much. You still gotta rest to regain most spell uses (outside of the really weak lvl 0 spells that you'd only ever use when you are too far out of range to use a better spell or you are running on empty) and everything is off of dice rolls and you will be missing a lot. At least at first.

You get saved from being mauled by some demons off screen and get carried to a town that is having a fair, a girl who is actually a dragon heals you, then all hell breaks loose and the ground opens up and swallows you and most of the rest of the town and you have to escape the caves you fell in while finding allies in a similar predicament. Then there's some kerfuffle about this flaming angel sword that somehow confers in you the memories of a dead angel and his dying wishes, and you're set on a quest to do what you can to fix all the troubles that are happening, or even make em worse. All in all the game is just really epic all the time basically, if you like orthodox fantasy I can't imagine being dissatisfied here. The dice rolling would be weird I imagine if you've not played BG but the game is a lot more forgiving (I'm playing on the difficulty above normal and I only died once in the first major boss fight, and only because the asshole summoned adds in the middle of the fight out of nowhere lol).


Best thing so far has to be the choices you make, you get to do really big impactful angel or demon (and I figure more varied later on) stuff that gives you story based abilities. So far the angel choices are really feel-good and satisfying even though I generally don't go for them. Everyone is so happy and inspired that it's hard to go for the edgy route lol. Though the game has like 9 paths you can go down not just angel or demon so I am looking forward to seeing what they are.

 

[Dalisclock]

Finished Tails of Iron. The final stretch feels like a boss Rush with some rather tricky fights. Thankfully there's healing, restocks. and save points like every room or so by that point in the game so you can basically never have to repeat more than one fight. Final boss took a number of tries but it's a good 3 phase boss fight despite being difficult(though maybe not as bad as the boss just outside his boss room).

Anyway, overall a worthy souls-like even if there's some stupid padding in the game(Game clock had me done at 9 hrs, Steam showed 13 so I guess the ingame clock doesn't count all the times i had to retry boss fights). Deserves more attention then it gets(which is very little) but not perfect.

 

[laggyteabag]

Stayed with my family over Christmas, and took my Steam Deck with me. Was gifted Horizon Zero Dawn, Stray, Red Dead 2, Risk of Rain 2, Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and a pre-order for the Dead Space remake. Then I bought God of War, Pentiment , Dead Cells, and Forza Horizon 4 with some Steam credit.

I've been playing a bit of Dome Keeper, and it is really entertaining. There was an old Flash game called Motherlode that I used to watch my brother play, and it definitely echos that, just with some added combat. Part of me really wishes that I had longer to dig in between fighting encounters, but I guess it is the way it is for pacing reasons. Not an incredible amount of content, though.

I also finished Borderlands 2 for the umpteenth time. Again, it is basically an improvement over the first game in basically every measurable way, and is definitely the place to start the franchise. Though I'm not really feeling like playing the DLC this time around. I think I might be Borderlands'd out for the time being.

I briefly played a little game called Four Last Things (only took me about an hour to beat), and whilst I love the artstyle, I don't think it went far enough with its premise from an art or writing perspective.

Otherwise, I played Stray, which played fantastically at medium/800p/40FPS on the Steam Deck. It only took me about 5 hours to complete, and I thought it was perfectly paced (purr-fectly). It was cute, I never really got stuck anywhere, and I really enjoyed exploring/speaking to the denizens of the little robot towns that I visited. My only real gripe, is that I wish there was more verticality in the environments, which generally disappears after you leave the Slums town. Alas, it didn't overstay its welcome, and I really enjoyed my time with it. 4/5.

 

[Dwarvenhobble]

Marvel Snap:

I'm still in the "Onboarding" bit I think before it starts to sting more and stops throwing rewards at me constantly but as some-one who has played a lot of CCGs. Marvel Snap is good. Like I played Hearthstone a bit and ditched it because it was very much leaning into Meta decks rather than silly gimmick deck fun. I loved Scrolls and miss it a lot. I've enjoyed Gwent but felt it was missing something but was fun enough, I've played some of the version of Magic games that have been released and they were fine enough but again couldn't get super into it.

Marvel Snap is one of the few games I've gone "Stop giving me rewards to open I want to play." and that should tell you a lot that I'm finding the psychology skinner box stuff to actually be detracting from my fun rather than working as it's meant to to actually be hooking me in. The gameplay is hooking me in because it just breaks Meta decks with the RNG but it's still about thoughtful skilled plays with the cards you have adapting to the situation on board rather than executing a set plan as much.

 

[Dalisclock]

Started Pentiment. So this is gonna be an interesting one. So Pentiment is a point and click adventure game made by obsidian(yes, that obsidian) about a young man named Andreas who lives in the town of Tassing in the Holy Roman Empire (That would be the middle ages/renaissance form of Germany for most of us) in the 16th century. Andreas is currently working at the abbey/church near the town to learn making those really pretty old timey books that had to be hand copied/written before the printing press was a thing, as well as make a masterpiece to cement his place as an artist. After a day of walking around the town and the abby to set the scene and introduce the characters, a local visiting baron(who had commissioned a manuscript at the abby) is found murdered, with one of the monks(a friend of andreas) found standing next to him with a bloody knife. Andreas believes there's no way his friend killed the Baron and decides to help prove his innocence. To be clear, it's made clear that it's very unlikely the mook did it, since the man is like 70 years old and hardly able to stab a man who is like 40 years younger then him to death, plus the lack of an actual motive, but the abby doesn't want the negative attention of a member of the nobility getting murdered there, especially since said nobility had friends who high places.

That's the plot, but this game doesn't really sell on it's plot(at least not so far, that may change later on). It sells on it's sense of place and atmosphere. To start with, the entire thing is presented as a medieval book with the scenes you walk around in as illustrated pictures in said books(and every transition to a different location has the page turning in the book). All the dialogue is presented as written text but the text is specific to each character. For example, the local printer has all his text as printed woodblock lettering, while another character will have cursive scribbling, or even very gothic embellished writing. It's a small touch but really cool. But more importantly, there's a great deal of effort to try to make it feel like these are people in a time and place 500 years ago in a small corner of Germany. Also the game clock(which advances as you choose to pursue plot events, and that means you'll never have time to do everything because you may have 3 options at a given moment but only time to do pursue one) is a simplified version of the canonical hours used by the abbey.

There's also the cool fact that as part of early game conversations you get to choose parts of your backstory, such as : Where you traveled, what you studied at university(two different subjects), what did you do when not studying,etc. And basically depending on what you picked you'll get extra dialogue options later on in certain conversations, so in conversations that discuss religion, IF you decided "I majored in theology", you can chime with knowledge on those, while if you studied Latin, you can translate latin or mention bits of roman history. Which is kinda cool.

And this is gonna make or break this game for a lot of people, because you'll spend a fair bit of time talking to people about history, theology, the state of the world in the 15th century. At one point you can get into a discussion with a nun about several books owned by the abby (such as the Aeneid) and her own take on said books as a woman and a member of the church and it's very interesting but has nothing to do with the plot, rather it fleshes out the characters as having viewpoints as per their positions in life(the nun dislikes the Aeneid because "It's a story about men. Women are basically goals for the men to chase after"). It'll probably bore some people to fucking tears but it's also completely optional. The baron will try to talk your ear off about Martin Luther and his 95 theses early in the game(because it's 1518 and this is very recent news), some of the locals will talk with you about the local saint and ancient pagan legends of the area if you let them. It's all great for setting mood and giving a sense of place and it might bore some people to fucking tears just by reading this.

I took a class on Medieval Latin Lit(no I can't speak or read Latin, don't ask) in college which means I had to read the Rule of St Benedict(which is the instruction manual for an a benedictine monastery was to be run) and I'd completely forgotten I'd ever read that until playing this game because that was like 20 fucking years ago but this game draws on catholic monasticism a crazy amount. It's weird to feel like this game is written with someone like me in mind because man that's a fucking niche subset of gamers and I can only imagine there's maybe like 5 other people in the world who really fit the "Gamers who dig medieval theological discussions and monasticism as a sense of place" so I'm somewhat at a loss how Obsidian ever plans to make a profit on this, but I commend them for sticking to the bit like this.

TLDR I love how it's going all in the setting here but man I'm not sure how many people are really gonna be able to get into it considering. Yeah, the murder mystery is interesting but I can imagine a lot of people going "NO, I DON'T CARE ABOUT MARTIN LUTHER! PLEASE STOP TELLING ME ABOUt HIM!"

 

[Bedinsis]

AI - The Somnium Files

So far I'm not that impressed. I thought a key aspect of an investigative game was to find the clues and put them together so that you would get to solve the case. The way it's set up so far is that you go to a place, walk through the complete dialogue tree/investigate all the hotspots, and then the game just continues. Only the dream stages, which I've seen two of so far, actually had some puzzles, but they felt like they worked on Moon Logic.

Apart from that, the backstory of the protagonist makes me think "Uhhh, I have several questions...", and the game is strangely sexual.

I got to my first ending in AI - The Somnium Files.

Or rather, I played until I got an ending, reloaded from one of the points where you can get to a different ending and played until I got one, which had proper end credits.

Reloading made me uncertain if I was experiencing a differently constructed backstory or I just had a bad memory, since things turned out a lot differently. It also made me uncertain what I was supposed to know and not know in that storyline.

Anyway: I don't think I'm liking this game. It is still strangely sexual, to the degree that it affects the plot in the absurd. What I refer to is how there is a scene where our hero has to rescue someone from a dozen armed mercenaries and he does so by throwing a porno mag next to a barrel of oil, which lures the mercenaries and he proceed by making the barrel explode. He then does the same trick with a bikini and very large crate hanging from a crane. The rest are partially handled by a twelve year old with a wrench he brought into this scene. It is so dumb.

 

[BrawlMan]

Prodeus (Switch) - I got the double jump upgrade, and platforming is so much better now. This is an intentional design choice to encourage replay of earlier stages to find secrets and more ore. I am kind of mixed on this, I usually don't like this style of collectible or secret hunting. Games like DmC being a more obvious example. Old shooters like Doom and Quake didn't need to this for secrets, so it really doesn't feel like a throwback to them in this regard. The gameplay is still fun and opens up to larger and more complex level design. I like the design and atmosphere of the church level. Definitely got Quake vibes from it. The dynamic songs in a lot of these levels are wicked sick too.

I played a lot this evening and I am stopping for tonight. I got 10 ores and need 10 more to get the dash ability.

 

[Worgen]

I beat Hardwest 2. It was quite good, annoying as fuck mission aside, really though when I started over I had a much easier time with it. But, I also didn't find Hard West 2 very difficult, even on hard mode. Mainly cause the game is really good at giving you the tools you need, ricocheting shots, using Bravado (going again after getting a kill), using abilities, and giving you pretty much all the info you need upfront. Like you either have 100% 75% 50% 25% or 0% to hit, dictated by no cover, light cover heavy cover, cover with something else and being out of range or not having a clear line of fire. Even though I didn't find it hard, I did find it compelling, the story is interesting, but the dialog is weird and kinda awkward, but the gameplay is pretty top notch. Would reccomend.

I also stared on Starship Troopers: Terran Command, its kinda RTS but with more tactics. I'm only a couple missions in so far, but its really fun. Its more about placement with your troops since the bugs are tough and will kill you quick, but careful placement allows your different squads to cover each other and move forward to deal with things. I do have a feeling its the kinda game that will get really hard and be really annoying, but right now, its just a lot of fun and we shall see what the future holds.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

Started Pentiment. So this is gonna be an interesting one. So Pentiment is a point and click adventure game made by obsidian(yes, that obsidian) about a young man named Andreas who lives in the town of Tassing in the Holy Roman Empire (That would be the middle ages/renaissance form of Germany for most of us) in the 16th century. Andreas is currently working at the abbey/church near the town to learn making those really pretty old timey books that had to be hand copied/written before the printing press was a thing, as well as make a masterpiece to cement his place as an artist. After a day of walking around the town and the abby to set the scene and introduce the characters, a local visiting baron(who had commissioned a manuscript at the abby) is found murdered, with one of the monks(a friend of andreas) found standing next to him with a bloody knife. Andreas believes there's no way his friend killed the Baron and decides to help prove his innocence. To be clear, it's made clear that it's very unlikely the mook did it, since the man is like 70 years old and hardly able to stab a man who is like 40 years younger then him to death, plus the lack of an actual motive, but the abby doesn't want the negative attention of a member of the nobility getting murdered there, especially since said nobility had friends who high places.

That's the plot, but this game doesn't really sell on it's plot(at least not so far, that may change later on). It sells on it's sense of place and atmosphere. To start with, the entire thing is presented as a medieval book with the scenes you walk around in as illustrated pictures in said books(and every transition to a different location has the page turning in the book). All the dialogue is presented as written text but the text is specific to each character. For example, the local printer has all his text as printed woodblock lettering, while another character will have cursive scribbling, or even very gothic embellished writing. It's a small touch but really cool. But more importantly, there's a great deal of effort to try to make it feel like these are people in a time and place 500 years ago in a small corner of Germany. Also the game clock(which advances as you choose to pursue plot events, and that means you'll never have time to do everything because you may have 3 options at a given moment but only time to do pursue one) is a simplified version of the canonical hours used by the abbey.

There's also the cool fact that as part of early game conversations you get to choose parts of your backstory, such as : Where you traveled, what you studied at university(two different subjects), what did you do when not studying,etc. And basically depending on what you picked you'll get extra dialogue options later on in certain conversations, so in conversations that discuss religion, IF you decided "I majored in theology", you can chime with knowledge on those, while if you studied Latin, you can translate latin or mention bits of roman history. Which is kinda cool.

And this is gonna make or break this game for a lot of people, because you'll spend a fair bit of time talking to people about history, theology, the state of the world in the 15th century. At one point you can get into a discussion with a nun about several books owned by the abby (such as the Aeneid) and her own take on said books as a woman and a member of the church and it's very interesting but has nothing to do with the plot, rather it fleshes out the characters as having viewpoints as per their positions in life(the nun dislikes the Aeneid because "It's a story about men. Women are basically goals for the men to chase after"). It'll probably bore some people to fucking tears but it's also completely optional. The baron will try to talk your ear off about Martin Luther and his 95 theses early in the game(because it's 1518 and this is very recent news), some of the locals will talk with you about the local saint and ancient pagan legends of the area if you let them. It's all great for setting mood and giving a sense of place and it might bore some people to fucking tears just by reading this.

I took a class on Medieval Latin Lit(no I can't speak or read Latin, don't ask) in college which means I had to read the Rule of St Benedict(which is the instruction manual for an a benedictine monastery was to be run) and I'd completely forgotten I'd ever read that until playing this game because that was like 20 fucking years ago but this game draws on catholic monasticism a crazy amount. It's weird to feel like this game is written with someone like me in mind because man that's a fucking niche subset of gamers and I can only imagine there's maybe like 5 other people in the world who really fit the "Gamers who dig medieval theological discussions and monasticism as a sense of place" so I'm somewhat at a loss how Obsidian ever plans to make a profit on this, but I commend them for sticking to the bit like this.

TLDR I love how it's going all in the setting here but man I'm not sure how many people are really gonna be able to get into it considering. Yeah, the murder mystery is interesting but I can imagine a lot of people going "NO, I DON'T CARE ABOUT MARTIN LUTHER! PLEASE STOP TELLING ME ABOUt HIM!"

You might like Kingdom Come: Deliverance then too. Lots of that medieval/religious/historical kinda stuff centered in early fifteenth century Bohemia. Best on PC and plays as good as it probably ever will now.

 

[Dalisclock]

You might like Kingdom Come: Deliverance then too. Lots of that medieval/religious/historical kinda stuff centered in early fifteenth century Bohemia. Best on PC and plays as good as it probably ever will now.

I have it. Need to check it out someday. Appreciate it.

 

[Bartholen]

I've been playing Binding of Isaac as Tainted Lost. It's basically a version of The Lost, but you don't even have the ability to take a single point of damage per room. You start with a single card that can give you that ability - once. So suffice to say that playing as this character is pretty damn hard. It's balanced out by Tainted Lost gaining more powerful item pickups by default, so you can get quite strong very easily. So far I've managed to clear It Lives!, but died in the cathedral. I have no idea how people other than professional streamers or gaming content creators have ever had the time to play this game enough to clear all the achievements. I'm approaching 700 hours in the game, and (fittingly enough) have 70% of the achievements locked. But the difficulty curve for getting the remaining ones is more like a line pointing straight up.

 

[Dalisclock]

Finished Act 1 of Pentiment. Not gonna spoil anything but digging it so far. Act 2 takes place after a 7 year time jump and I do appreciate how there's a palpable sense of how things have changed for everyone over those 7 years. People are older, some people have died, there's a new child or two in there and world events as well as the events of act 1 have influenced life in the village in meaningful ways. It's really nice to see when there's a real sense of continuity in setting and I wish more games would do stuff like this. Hell, I wish more stories would do stuff like this.