I’m still slogging my way through Valkyria Chronicles 4, which is unfair. It’s a fun game, but the equipment required to complete missions cost a bucket of money you gain from completing missions… but you need way more money than you get for completing main-story missions, so I have to do all the side-quests and skirmishes and all this other stuff that I don’t really want to do but have to because otherwise my snipers need 3 headshots to drop enemy grunts and that’s just not cricket.
I think I’m getting close to the end of the story, though. Probably another… 3 missions? Maybe? Around that.
After Valkyria… probably one of the Tomb Raiders that was on sale recently? Probably.
Very, very close to being done with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Oh, not 100%ing it or anything (it’s not even technically possible with radiant quests). I’ll still have a questlog choked with dozens of sidequests of various sorts, and like three-four screens of miscellaneous quests on that tab when I put the game down. But:
I’ve completed the main storyline of the main game, Dawnguard, and Dragonborn.
I’ve completed every guild storyline, including doing all the radiant theft jobs to get the Thieves’ fully back operational and become guildmaster and doing all the optional fixed-target assassinations for the Dark Brotherhood (not the radiant Night Mother contracts).
I’ve done almost every major side quest in every settlement, with just a couple from Dragonborn left.
I’ve done all the Daedric quests.
I’ve been and perk-mastered both a werewolf and a vampire lord.
I’ve discovered (as far as I can tell) every location on Solstheim and at least 90% of the ones on the main map, though there are undoubtedly a few exceptions.
I’m level 79 and have slain a legendary dragon.
I have all but three of the achievements in the entire Special Edition.
What’s left? I’m going to finish off the main storyline in the Helgen Reborn mod, since I’m almost there. I’m going to do those last few sidequests in Dragonborn. I’m going to do the last couple of quests from the Legacy of the Dragonborn (the ones that are more substantial than just “hey, there’s a relic out there, wanna grab it?”), because those have consistently been the best mod-related quests I’ve played. Somewhere along the line I’ll Bend Will another dragon or two and get the dragon-riding achievement. And I’ll cap it by going on a 9-hold murder spree for the bounty-in-every-hold achievement and then get arrested and break out of jail. And I’ll have every achievement. I’ll still have quests I could do, Falskaar and Forgotten City for mod questlines, many more relics to get for museum displays, etc etc etc. But I think that’s enough.
It is simultaneously a wonderful game and a frustrating underbaked, buggy piece of shit. I’ve enjoyed my time with it. But it could be so much better.
Tried out the Marvel Avengers open beta this weekend. It’s okay, nothing groundbreaking. You get a small intro to the storyline, and then a few characters unlock and you can play a variety of missions. There seems to always be four heroes in each mission, and you can either be accompanied by AI, or other people, which is great if you have three friends playing, but I tend to avoid random online play these days. AI it is.
Pretty much a generic brawler with online play, unlockable skill trees for each hero, and equipment upgrades for them all as well, so I guess Borderlands in a Marvel skin with a bit less crazy setring?
I finished the excellent Gorogoa on my ipad this week-end. Sadly, it took me two sessions after I got stuck on a puzzle and the break in between somewhat interrupted flow of the story.
I want to add my recommendation to that of @RossM further up this thread. I showed it to my partner after finishing my own game and he interrupted his Ozark episode immediately and played the first chapter (or two?) right then…
I’ve also been back to No Man’s Sky for the first time since 2018. I played it at release, and it was fun, but it’s significantly better now. And its handy screenshot function means I get to spam you with pics!
The Chris Foss style spaceships are brilliant too.
I remembered that I have 2 weeks of Xbox game pass left and installed Spiritfarer which I read a lot and was very curious about.
And it is really nice. It has beautiful animations, it is so heartwarming and cute and gives you the “just 1 more thing I want to do before I go to bed” feeling
The building / farming aspects remind me of Stardew Valley a lot.
I had pre-ordered Windbound for my Switch and this morning immediately started playing. It’s a survival game where you build bigger and bigger boats (nope not identical to Spiritfarer which is also on my radar) to travel between islands to eventually get back to your people?
Well, it’s a “roguelike” and this morning I’ve already managed to not complete the first chapter by trying to hunt a boar (I was really hungry) and well, as is tradition, the boar killed me. Boars are dangerous!
Played Close to the Sun, a fairly brief mostly narrative/exploratory game set in an alternate past where Tesla not only achieved massive success but has managed things like wireless energy transmission, the death ray he wanted to make, etc and has a giant art-deco steamship laboratory called the Helios out on the high seas. You play Rose Archer, a journalist whose sister is one of the scientists aboard, and who has been summoned to meet her there urgently. Turns out things have gone horribly awry, most everyone is dead, there’s scrawled blood writing on the walls, there’s an earpiece a few survivors talk to you through, etc. There’s clearly a lot of Bioshock influence, but there’s none of the gunplay or magic powers. Instead, you’re mostly proceeding through poking at (largely mundane and unilluminating) documents, solving light puzzles, and occasionally being chased by something that wants to kill you. The premise is cool, and the environments are compelling and attractive and ornate. The writing? Eh. It’s unoriginal, functional, predictable, and is jarringly modern given the period setting.They also have some storytelling devices involving energy ghosts and time-slips and such that they barely do anything with. The puzzles are okay. Chase sequences are never really interesting or fun in my opinion but these are largely inoffensive, short, sparse and easy. It’s all right? I can’t heavily recommend it, but I don’t regret playing it to the finish.
Then as it finally debuted on Steam, I immediately bought and started Control, which is as amazing as people have been saying. It’s gorgeous, has really cool presentation, combat stuff is pretty satisfying (though for me it’s too hard, so I appreciate the difficulty adjustment features they added with the second DLC), the writing is good, the atmosphere is incredible. I love it. Except that there’s a bug where textures regularly go like…this:
Dipping back into Strange Adventures in Infinite Space which has somehow just had a new release!
The sequel Weird Worlds is the better game – a dramatic enhancement in virtually every respect – but if you remember the original then SAIS probably holds some good nostalgia for you!
If you’re not familiar… Give SAIS a try – it’s completely free! (and I got crazy good value for money for it back in the day for $20 + p&p on CD : )
If you like it at all, I highly recommend Weird Worlds – it’s an outright replacement for SAIS that simply does everything better (and so much prettier), and at only a few dollars it’s a steal.
Be aware that the third game, Sea of Stars, is extremely different in many ways. If you just want the best version of SAIS, get Weird Worlds. Sea of Stars is like a more content-packed variant of only the largest (most time-consuming) galaxy size of Weird Worlds, but in 3D (kinda neat, but so much harder to use!), and a lot rougher around the edges. I would say consider getting it if you like the other games and need more; but don’t start there. (Personally I’ve played countless hours of each of SAIS and WW, but only ever played a dozen or so games of SOS.)
Right, I was having a look on Steam, as I knew there was a Root video game adaptation coming, and I recently have watched a couple of playthrough videos on Quackalope, as confirmation bias to my latest purchase.
I discovered that the game has been published already, so I put together my PayPal account and paid $20 (NZD) for it. So far I have played the basic tutorial and the Marquis de Cat, Eerye and Woodland Alliance tutorials, which I very much enjoyed.
Tonight would be the Vagabond, and I guess I will be sort of ready to get my ass whooped by the AI
Got the Sagrada app and expected to not like it very much, but then found myself playing a fourth game in a row late at night. It’s fun, has a ton of replayability from the randomised win conditions, and the online modes (solo, campaign) are great.
If you’re someone who likes everything to fit into its correct place, it will break your brain. Because everything going correct for the maximum points would only happen with a perfect game, and the usual outcome is you missing the last few placements as your spaces and options run out, so you have to slot an imperfect answer in the final round. I have friends who would scream aloud at this!
Glad I paid £6 for the app and not £30 for the boardgame, though. You can quickly see the whole game and decide if you love it enough to buy the physical version.
I’ve rebuilt my old PC and it’s holding up really well. I’m able to play a lot more games on it, and might be able to dip into stuff like No Man’s Sky and other 3D games I’ve not touched in a while.
However, I’ve still just been playing Hollow Knight for the past week. Maybe I… should just not play other games ever again???
I’ve just started Nowhere Prophet to make a change from Slay the Spire. It’s an interesting mix of rogue-like RPG and deck builder. Can be quite brutal with either quick wins or crushing defeats. In play it feels like a more static Duelyst… which made me want to play Duelyst. Think it will be a grower once I get to grips with the interface.
Not sure how I feel about it being quite a long game for a rogue-like. I like snappy 45min runs, but this feels like it’ll run to 2 hours per run.
It feels a LOT less intuitive than StS. Whether this means its just a more frustrating, random experience, or it means it has hidden depths to mine… I have no clue!
(Conflict of interest: I’m friends with the publisher)
I got a couple of wins (The shortest route and then the next one up, I think?) and kind of haven’t played it since.
It was a lot of fun, but didn’t quite have the replayability of something like Slay the Spire, for me. I think the unlocks were just a little too far out of reach and required grinding too much for my liking.
I’ve mostly been playing Persona 4 Golden since it came out on PC a few weeks (months?) ago. I had it on PS2 and never completed it - I thought I’d gotten pretty far through but now I realise I’d hardly played it.
Also started Titanfall 2 which was cheap on Steam. Really enjoying it so far. And I’ve downloaded WoW again in preparation for binge-playing for Shadowlands.
