Yeah, it’s awkward managing your actions to the summons versus your party. It feels quite messy compared to a single event or short automated run. If you summon then get a big knock back, then you need to spend all your actions in healing!!! Frustrating. When it works, it works really well though. Had a few boss battles where I felt like a king bringing in a summon
I’ve been successful in restricting myself from buying new games since I got the Itch bundle back in july, and only playing game. This lead to a lot of downloading, playing for a few minutes, and uninstalling games. The last one that stuck was Stranded deep, a survival game that was free on the Epic Store some times ago. But it won’t let you quit before sleeping or going back to your shelter.
Come on ! I have too many things to do, and try to squeeze some playing time in my day, but when I need to quit, I need to quit right away! It is so frustrating, and I’m amazed how many games still do that!
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By the way, there is a good discount on Steam for Root right now, for those who may be interested
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I picked up returnal a couple of days ago.
It is extremely good (really solid and fun 3rd person shooting mechanics with a alien/lovecrafty story vibe) but the save system or lack there of is frustrating. I was just about to clear the first level for the first time (I think) when the game crashed so I’m back to the start.
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Seems crazy to me that the runs in that game are so long but there’s no way to pause and save your progress.
I’ve been playing a few games recently. Mostly multiplayer, with Deep Rock Galactic (fun dwarf diggy/shooty action), Warhammer: End Times: Vermintide (which has too many titles), Resident Evil: Operation Racoon City (terrible game, a must-play if you’re a fan of Resi 5/6), and weirdly I’ve been getting into Heroes of the Storm, all with a couple different groups of friends where we’ve been playing consistently together online since we’re still not meeting up in person. I do feel like once a game is not-terrible then playing it in multiplayer tends to make it at least a good experience, or in the case of Racoon City, the terrible game is just a different way for us to have fun and bond over laughing at it.
But mainly I’ve been playing Monster Hunter: Rise both in multiplayer and singleplayer and have sunk an embarrassing number of hours into it since it launched. It’s my current comfort game, and I feel very similarly to Errant Signal’s video on his experience with Fortnite:
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I’ve been playing a huge amount of Magic: The Gathering Arena which is the best implementation of Magic that I’ve played. Despite my love of tabletop gaming, Magic is one of the very few games that I’m actually good at, and I may have a streak of masochism with my constant playing of it because, like many things we’re good at (or at least think we are), I find repeated plays end up becoming frustrating. At the start of each month I rapidly graviate through the leagues until I’m at a level where I am roughly winning and losing in equal measure (which for me is high Platinum/ low Diamond level) because, well that’s how the matchmaking system works, and the curse of Magic is that when everyone is very good, many games come down to luck. Did I draw that perfect hand where my deck performs exactly as I want it to, while my opponent just gets land or is slightly behind, or is it me that’s mana screwed/ flooded this time? The longer epic games that could go either way are few and far between (although when they happen, they’re great). Fortunately I’m shallow enough to still thoroughly enjoy drubbing my opponent even if it’s because they had to mulligan down to 5 cards and still got a crap draw. I am a deeply flawed human.
As mentioned here, I’ve also got myself an Oculus Quest 2 recently and been trying a few games on it. Subnautica is astonishing but very nausea-inducing if I’m not careful. Superhot VR and The Room VR are both wonderful and immersive in very different ways, but the VR game I’ve mostly sunk into is Elite: Dangerous. It turns out the least disorientating VR games are ones where you’re sitting in a cockpit, and E:D brings back my childhood memories of pretending I actually owned a Cobra Mk III, and the cockpit was my bedroom. VR is a much much higher fidelity version of the same fantasy, and I’m having immense fun trucking pretend space shipments to other worlds and accidentaly falling into stars. I also fully intend to get Half Life: Alyx the next time it’s on sale.
Outside of my virtual worlds and Magic addiction, I’ve been playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker and have also been greatly enjoying it. I don’t especially enjoy the fiddliness of Pathfinder at the tabletop (although I don’t hate it) but the crunchiness is just perfect for a cRPG and I’ve also been having a really fun time with it. It’s tough and unforgiving but only in the way that cRPGs were when I grew up - the difficulty is actually hitting me right in my nostalgia nugget (my nugget seems to get bigger every year, but it’s possible I should see a doctor about that rather than posting on a forum about it).
I really, really want to get into The Outer Wilds because everyone tells me how wonderful it is, but every time I try I bounce off the fiddly control system. I promise I’ll try harder soon. Also I bought Dyson Sphere Program in a recent Steam sale because it looks ace and @yashima recommended it too me. Now it sits in my library, gazing at me hopefully every time I turn on my computer. Soon, I promise, little megastructure simulator! Soon!
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Your character is a new pilot and you as the player are in the same position and you both have to learn how to fly together. There is also always some gravity pulling at you which makes the ship behaving differently depending on the situation. The other astronauts are mostly crashing too 
It is just a question of practice and getting used to it. You can fly pretty precise, but it takes a while to learn it. I enjoyed flying around a lot in the end. It is fast and fun.
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I’m so jealous… I picked up ME:A again because it was on sale for a song (and, for those of you out there who haven’t played it, there is a reason that it is on sale… but it’s still Mass Effect and it’s pretty good-ish).
I’m waiting for the Legendary to go on sale, and then I will happily (JOYOUSLY) romp my way through the galaxy again.
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Yep, cannot wait for Legendary to be on sale!
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Just to show you how nuts for Mass Effect I am, it went live for me at midnight on Friday (pre-ordered on PS4 Pro) and I embarked on a Mass Effect Weekend ending with my unlocking the Ilos mission late last night. I’ve completed nearly all of the side-quests (including Bring Down The Sky) and it has been running flawlessly so far. The ME1 inventory system is a lot easier to manage now, and being able to skip most of the elevator rides is a welcome addition (even though they are noticeably shorter even if you don’t skip them). Even more importantly, you can also choose the Legendary Mode leveling system that cuts the available levels from 60 to 30, which means you can max out your character on a single run-through and move on to the next installment. 
NB: The Mako is…still the Mako. It’s a bit better in this incarnation, but still not that great. 
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Yeah. Andromeda is pretty “meh”, but I will say this: I think it has the best combat system of all the games.
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I agree with that, the combat is really good in Andromeda, and I like the bosses. And, tbh, I enjoyed the story. It is not the trilogy, but I don’t dismiss it so badly as everybody else did.
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Weirdly, that’s what everyone I know says about Andromeda… it makes me wonder why it got the terrible reputation in the first place. I think it just became its own story…
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I think for many fans, compared to other games from the time, the difference in graphics from the original trilogy was not what they expected. And there is always the Sheppard-dependence to consider.
The characters from the original trilogy are quite iconic, and none of the Andromeda ones lived up to that standard. The story to me was fine, I liked the “things were looking better than this when we set off” sort of arch. And I did enjoy the world building. But many people didn’t. And these days, disgruntled fans have many platforms to make themselves heard.
I still put as many hours into Andromeda as I did into ME III
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Played a bit of AI War 2 the other day. It’s nice to see how far the redesign of the redesign has come over the years. It’s definitely a more interesting game these days.
I played a simple game against just one level 7 AI and a “scourge” faction, playing with a blitz strategy to take only a few key worlds to not look like a threat until I found the AI core. The new “bastion” worlds were an interesting twist, and when the AI core suddenly phased out of existence and started moving invulnerably and inexorably towards my homeworld, I had to scramble to adapt. Good stuff, and the whole campaign finished in 2 hours.
I think Andromeda’s characters mostly hang with or surpass the second-string round of original trilogy characters. There’s just no Mordin or Wrex. (I mean, the Krogan in Andromeda is still one of my favorite characters, but not Wrex level. Neither was Grunt, let’s face it.)
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Yes, I think they were a bit on the bland side. Characters like Garrus, Mordin, Jack or even Joker are difficult to top. Although I did enjoy Cora on ME:Andromeda, and Jaal to a degree…
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If I may go on a bit of a tear here:
Let’s start with the disclaimers: I love Mass Effect. I love all Mass Effect, so I am not an impartial observer.
That stated, ME:A was a big fumble from a story-telling and gameplay standpoint, IMO. There are a huge (some might say excessive) number of fetch-quest equivalents: Go here, then here, then here, then back here, then back to the 2nd place you went, and then go back to the Nexus to complete it. Oftentimes they are layered: you need to do the first pointless effortless fetch quest to unlock a second, equally effortless fetch quest… or it requires you to go back to a place you were already a dozen times, but THIS time to a slightly different place that wasn’t accessible before.
But worse than that; they have an entirely new galaxy… and it’s The Milky Way v1.1. All races are bipedal and use weapons and technology that is so interchangeable as to be identical to all tech from the original galaxy. Guns are conveniently divided into Pistol, Shotgun, Submachinegun, etc… Shields operate like shields. It’s not even that there is no technology divide (which, if you think about it, is insane… the Andromeda Initiative is using tech that’s 600 years obsolete in their own galaxy where all tech is driven by the Reapers, but there are no Reapers in Andromeda! AND the whole method of FTL straight up doesn’t work… if it did, why is anyone back in the Milky Way still using Relays!?). Even the Milky Way has Hanar and Elcor as interesting non-bipedal races, but no races in any way remotely different or interesting in Andromeda? Not ONE? Sigh…
And speaking of Reapers, did I mention that there are no Rea… oh, wait. There are. Allow me to introduce you to the Kett, or if you prefer, Bio-Reapers-Lite. Half the calories, all the tropes. Which is fine! ME is based on tropes, but it then subverts and expands on those tropes in interesting ways… and here, it’s just the Reapers, again, but less interesting. Less threatening. If Andromeda came out before ME2, I would be more okay with it, but as it stands we know about a threat that does what the Kett does, but better, and more deadly (TOO deadly, really, as in ME3 the galactic threat of the FLEETS of Reapers is definitely the story spinning out of control, but that’s an aside).
But wait! There’s more! I’m okay with a little Deus Ex Machina. I expect a certain amount of it in my sci-fi… it’s okay. But the entire ME:A hinging on SAM and Ryder… that was a bridge too far. It was just… too perfect. It fit too neatly. They crafted an AI-shaped hole, and then wrote the story around it. Sloppy, lazy writing. It’s “Chosen One” brought to an insane degree, and for no good reason. It doesn’t earn it, it just drops it in our laps and expects us to be okay with it.
And one last pet-peeve… for whichever imaginary friend you find holiest, take the person who decided to put so much interesting, funny, oftentimes critical plot dialog happen IN THE GODSDAMNED CAR, and then have EVERY TRIGGER OBLITERATE THE DIALOG INSTANTLY dragged out into a street and smothered politely with an oversized scone until dead. Some of the dialog in the car is great, and the fact that the second anyone starts talking I have to HAMMER the brakes and hope I stopped fast enough… or reload and hope it randomly triggers again so I don’t miss it a second time… UUUUUgggggggghhhhhhh…
Did I mention I really like ME:A? I do! I even own a couple t-shirts of it (sure, I own 6 “N7” t-shirts, and 5 sweaters, but that’s beside the point). I had fun! It has some interesting moments… the dialog is sharp and witty, a lot of the characters show potential (my favourites are Vetra and Suvi, personally, but I like that the comments above picked different favourites!.. and I was this close to liking Peebee as an interesting variation on the Asari, but her eyeshadow is just too distracting, and her character oscillates between “funny” and “annoying” too often for me). I wish we got more of Ryder being overwhelmed by the situation, and less of an N6 (because she’s not quite an N7… get it…), and the cutscenes where the crew doesn’t respect her because she hasn’t earned it… and Addison dislikes her because she’s not her father… there was some real potential in there.
Oh, and where are the Quarians!? This story would’ve been SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING if suddenly have have 1/5th of the entire colonization effort adamantly against any use of AI… and don’t get me started on all the missed opportunities the colonies on distant worlds had.
Anyway. I enjoyed it. I really did (and am so far enjoying my 2nd playthrough… the combat is tight!). But yeah. Sloppy writing, lazy world-building, and so, so much wasted potential.
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Just out of curiosity, what was your take on the ME III ending? I my opinion, it got blown out of proportion, but I’d like to hear your take on it.
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