Was out of town for a while but I am back! What have you been playing! I beat control resonant and started silent hill townfall. It’s decent so far. Also going to be jumping into Castlevania soon. Been playing a lot of playdate! Season 3 is off to a strong start!
- Geometry Wars 1 and 2. Recently got sucked into it. Really enjoying the Pacifist mode!
- Paper Mario (N64). Chapter 3 or 4, having a blast after a slow start.
- GRIS (Switch). Undecided, I’m simultaneously in awe and bored.
- Project Gotham Racing 2 (XBOX). Time attack with friends on Insignia. I’m not great at it but barely being able to make out anything on my 15" CRT isn’t helping! Good game though.
The last Metroid is in the finished pile. My replay spree is complete.
Dread was so much better than I remembered, I think precisely because I replayed the whole series in a row. No longer is it its own thing compared against my favorite individual Metroids, now it’s a series finale tonally and mechanically paying off what the past three games have been setting up.
Now I have to avoid the genre until the new one comes out so I’m not sick of it then.
I had so much fun revisiting Dread after a year or two because that game lies to you about how linear it is—it’s crazy.
I swear to god, there’s a point somewhere in the first third to halfway through where it just becomes an open-world game.
I also love how the first area, Artaria or whatever, takes you through several loops of itself with such masturbatory level design—in some ways, it is my favorite Metroid sequence by far.
This was my third time through it. The first time I fell for the lies, second time was after I read about that slide jump and I tried all game long to break it all as hard as possible. Maybe context isn’t the only thing that made this run special, maybe it’s that I can finally bring that same balance of mastery and whim-following that I have with Super, where sequence breaking doesn’t even feel like I’m resisting anymore.
I played Ghostrunner which was pretty fun, albeit a bit janky at times. I tried Grim Dawn, but the moment to moment gameplay felt a bit too shallow. I guess I don’t like the Diablo-like APRGs.
I’m currently playing and enjoying Dragon’s Dogma 2.
Ace Combat 8
This thing is a behemoth. It outclasses all of its predecessors in every category. Mission variety, level design, character development, plot, themes and messages. It’s heavy in more ways than one: the emotional weight of the narrative feels as heavy as the planes themselves. It’s a test of your ability to identify and fight to your objective, even if it changes mid mission, and still be able to pick up the radio chatter between your wingmen.
And it’s not always idle banter, they are not merely smiley faces duct taped to the canopy of an F-18. No, their emotional states impact your mission. They have heart and drive, but that means they feel pain and grief. They are interconnected through mission and cutscenes alike, hell even through the music.
The soundtrack is easily one of the best in the series, and that’s quite a feat considering it’s well known history of bangers. There’s no dud tracks, not even the briefing or hangar tracks. And the music is, on multiple occasions, diagetic in way we haven’t seen since Journey Home (AC5). The dynamic music system creates moments so hype I was smashing my fist on my desk like a goddamn caveman.
I shed tears several times, I haven’t felt a game on an emotional level like this since Nier Automata. I’m halfway through a second campaign playthrough on Hard difficulty, S ranked every mission so far. My only worry is that the game is hitting the mainstream. This will be some people’s first Ace Combat, and they’ll go through the previous games – each stellar in their own rights – and be disappointed by how primitive they are by comparison.
GOTY contender, OST OTY for certain.
Ooooh…
Okay, listen, I have to finish 3 first at least. 7 was already waiting patiently for me to get around to it.
Good! You may spot some interesting things in 8 that tie 7 and 3 together.
This game looks great. I don’t buy brand new AAA games often but my wallet is itching.
If you want to dip your toes in, you could pick up AC7 on sale on Steam. It goes down to like, $10 from time to time. And it’s much more easy-going game as far as system requirements go.
I’m almost done getting the last achievement on Turing Complete, I’m not even playing right now but my head still hurts
The message from deep space
Really fun puzzle game
An alien probe lands on earth, and your job is to decrypt the message
Highly recommended to go in blind
https://store.steampowered.com/app/4080030/The_Message_from_Deep_Space/
If I was slightly smarter and didn’t watch a video on the first few days, this is the type of game I would love to go in blind.
Gives me something similar to Chants of Sennaar if it was sci-fi vibes.
Just recently started NG+ on Pokemon Rejuvenation. So far my playthough a second time has been beautiful because I don’t need to brute force things as hard since I chose the easier difficulty.
Otherwise, I think some of the only other games I have touched are Toontown Rewritten ( recently changed colours to cartoonival pink and I love it ), Dungeon Clawler, STS2, and Mindustry.
I really wanna play a certain pokemon fan game that I’m pretty sure only recently got an English translation ( Pokemon Otherside ) but that is one of the fancy games that comes with an installer that I cannot get working under WINE ( keeps telling me to close duplicates of the process probably because WINE is either duplicating or not giving it a unique PID or something ) nor qemu win10.
That being said, went to check up on the name of the game, and it looks like Pokemon Uranium has finally launched another update that might have added the last of post game, so I might be uber sucked into that!
I’m giving Skyrim another chance, with a bit of help.
I’ve always loved the game world, but the vanilla gameplay never held my interest for long enough to finish. I tried once or twice to spice it up by adding mods, but picking them, testing them, and working them into a compatible state took ages, and by the time I finished all that, I was spoiled to the content and had little motivation left to actually play. This time, I decided to try a pre-composed modlist.
Enter Gate to Sovngarde. It’s a collection of nearly 2000 Skyrim mods assembled by a well-known modder who values immersion and balance. I was skeptical that so many mods could coexist without constantly crashing or turning the game into a disjointed mess, but after playing for a few days, I already love it. More challenging, more interesting, more fun.
Gave up on Aion 2 (my search for MY perfect MMO remains) and finished Dead Island 2 (main story. I don’t wanna go through the sewers and metro maps again, nor do I have the patience for ng+).
I installed Wayfinder instead. The devs were well grounded and recognized the game would fail… their hopes and dreams. They salvaged it pretty well, but it’s not drawing me in. I like it enough that I will likely try to reach the end, but I can’t say for sure.
They do present mods as an option for those who want more or different. It requires switching to the modded client, downloading the engine’s modding kit from epic if so inclined and/or using mods.io platform.
Decent arpg overall.Stalker GAMMA to scratch that hardcore itch. Definitely worth playing if you’re a fan of the old stalker games but I’d skip it if you haven’t played the first 3 stalker games. It is technically free so if you want to try, go ahead.
Observations for the spooky season spoopy feeling. Not very deep into it but so far I’ve enjoyed it.
Star wars Galactic racer. I wasn’t going to pick it up but I got hit with pod racing nostalgia hype and so far the game has been delivering and I haven’t even gotten to the pod racers yet. It’s clearly made by arcade racer fans for arcade racer fans and the races are just pure fun. The rogue-lite (very light Rogue-lite) campaign mode incenticizes rolling with the punches instead of aiming for perfection. And who can forget, the game has Biddy Blas. Scrib Doon.
I just got the first Control during a sale and it’s a lot of fun! Eventually I’ll get Resonant, maybe when it’s also $6 :p
I’m also most of the way through the Faith trilogy. They’re nostalgic, fun, and I’m pleasantly surprised how many mechanics they can squeeze out of “walk and hold A to crucifix”!
Those S3 games look awesome, I’ve been following a few of them as they were made! Gloom Gate might be the best looking game on the system
Gloom Gate is insane! I was playing and my partner was like “I didn’t realize the playdate could do stuff like that” Neither did I haha.
I’m actually trying to get back into playing the playdate more and doing some dev! AI has generally made me very pessimistic and depressed about the games space so I’ve somewhat retreated to the playdate as a bastion of mostly AI free stuff. In fact I’ve been looking at your noble game engine example project a decent amount to try and gauge if I want to use it for my stuff! It’s a great repo, thanks for making it :)
Also, I should ask! Working on anything? 👀 Or any ideas you’re thinking?
It’s crazy what the playdate can do when you fake it 😆 and thank you, I really enjoyed working with the noble engine stuff! I’d like to get back to playdate dev but I’ve got a game to finish (demo just released for NextFest 🥳)
Been playing Pokémon emerald and a bit of Mario kart 64. I just got a android handheld so trying to get through some older games I always wanted to beat
Control Resonant NG+. I usually don’t bother with new game + because I tend to play games so thoroughly that I get burnt out on them, but this is also one of the very rare games where I don’t just tolerate combat but actively enjoy it.
Belmont’s Curse?
Working my way through assassins creed odyssey
