Still playing Red Dead Redemption 1 on Steam Deck. Managed not to run into any jank up until Mexico. I did the mission where Landon Ricketts teaches you how to manually set targets in Deadeye mode, then when we walked through the gates into town he just immediately pulled out his gun and started shooting two horses hitched nearby, for no reason. He briefly stopped to reload and then just started firing away again. Dude really hated those horses
5 Likes
I didn’t know Death Stranding was coming to Xbox, and not only is it now on Xbox, it is $20.
I am so happy. I have wanted to play this game for years. I had sold my Playstation 4 years ago to pay for travel, a decision I have never regretted.
I can delay purchasing a Playstation 5 for a little while longer, though I do have eyes for Sackboy and Astro Bot.
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20 bucks is a bargain + you’ll have a cohort of new players actively doing the social stuff good deal
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Have been playing olde tyme kickstarter rpg Dead State and I’m enjoying it pretty well. I know everyone including myself was/remains zombied out but this game is solidly in the Romero quadrant of that stuff. Basically an Interplay Fallout structure + managing your safe zone (in this case an abandoned elementary school in central Texas) reminiscent of the castle mgmt stuff in Neverwinter Nights 2 if anyone remembers that. Combat isn’t too complex but it’s engaging enough being based on how you’d imagine a Romero RPG would approach it: focus on getting close to zombies but being careful positioning, avoiding making too much noise, then more standard Fallout combat against hostile humans. But the main selling point is the narrative from Brian Mitsoda the old Troika dude. Doing again the Romero thing of your fellow survivors turning on each other, melting down in a panic, etc and you’re trying to manage all that through resource mgmt and dialogue trees. It’s overall quite low-key and utilitarian which I appreciate. A budget old kickstarter game so getting regular CTDs but easily mitigated by F5ing. Not really playable in “Ironman” mode though for this reason, so don’t check that box when setting up a new game. Personally don’t mind the technical issues bc everything else is chill and good
6 Likes
Played a bit of CONSCRIPT last night, man that game is SCARY. The audio in it is wild! It’s a WW1 survival horror where you play as a French soldier in the trenches.
Made some decent progress in Days Gone I think? It looks like I’m entering the 3rd act after taking out a major antagonist. No idea where this is going.
Started playing some Taiko last night and my partner joined me. We had a lot of fun. Taiko is the perfect pallete cleansor, cute, colorful, great songs.
5 Likes
Still sipping Metaphor in with 3x/week sessions. When I first saw the monster in the second town, I thought, “That’s a baby,” and I was right. I’m still thoroughly entertained by the game and where it seems to be going.
Otherwise, while traveling, I’ve been slowly picking at Avernum 2 again. Love the world, like the story, but sometimes finding what to do next feels difficult. There is no shortage of things to do next, but sometimes I run into a fight, realize I’m way underleveled for it, and have to find something else. There is a very old-school mindset of trial-and-error regarding zone difficulty, and unlike Avernum 3, there isn’t a singular directional logic of North = More Difficult. Instead it’s sort of like, “West, sometimes North, and sometimes Deep is more difficult, but you’ll need to spend ten minutes walking across the world sometimes to get to the next big feasible thing.”
I also chugged five years of Billion Road last night. Sometimes I need to buy shops, earn money, and beat imaginary players.
1 Like
Did you (or someone else here) end up setting this up? Late to the party but I’ve just picked it up myself, after having a hankering for a cute relaxing game and it seems right on target for that.
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The expanded inventory update finally dropped a few weeks ago for Signalis on Switch — So, I’m starting a new game after making it a few hours in before deciding to wait last October.
I have an entire night to myself, so I wanted to get INTO it (and bump up the horror with some vocal practice using the onscreen text), so I hooked up the Switch to my Wacom for the first time and got some atmosphere lighting going. Creeeeepy :O
Edit:
19 Likes
Metal Slug Tactics.
Man… this should’ve been a game meant for me, my favorite games are Final Fantasy Tactics and Metal Slug X!
The game is pretty broadly fun and cool, but it does two things that make me wanna put it down. The first, why is it a roguelike? It has these procedurally generated enemy spawns that just blow for something like this. Half the fun of isometric strategy is tinkering a way to really beat a map that’s been stumping you, and that is just completely not here. The lack of progression also kind of bleeds into abilities being kind of confusing and not that intuitive, and you don’t have them long enough to fully figure them out.
Secondarily, but a bigger deal. This game has some utterly horrendous performance for what this is, it stutters, freezes, and slows down when dragging units around and in doing certain things. This is a pixel rpg, even if I’m on switch this is totally unacceptable. Not usually a performance guy but c’mon.
Feels like a real missed layup here. How is SaudiNK not just using infinite money printer to give us good games at least. I know we won’t be getting another KOFXIII, but can we at least make them look good?
Praying for a patch.
10 Likes
I tried the demo for The Drifter. It’s part of the AdventureX expo on steam. It’s pulpy and has this controller friendly interface that streamlines the point and click experience by giving you a wheel of selectable options in the character’s vicinity on the right stick. Allows for more actiony segments. I like it and will pick it up when it comes out.
Also been playing Judero. It’s quite captivating with the stop motion and the fuzzy guitar music. Have to admit I don’t know what’s going on, and it might be too weird for me. I beat a boss, then I was controlling a bunny flying on a dbz cloud, and Judero wakes up on an island having a picnic with a boat to sail.
2 Likes
Purely based on the footage I’ve seen it kind of looks like a re-skinned Into The Breach. I’m curious to try this game out eventually though.
1 Like
Things are getting weird in Days Gone which means, hey, it only took 50 hours to get really interesting!
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There’s some cool stuff there I would maybe try it PC if you can.
I’m updating my wishy washy Dragon Age: The Veilguard opinion to say that I definitely like this game a lot. I hate to say it, but it really is a Gets Better After Several Hours type of game. It goes from being a totally unmoored exposition fest to a good, coherent hang pretty abruptly. If you like this type of game I’d recommend it.
4 Likes
Just played my way through Sonic X Shadow Generations! I’ve never played a Sonic game before and ended up having a pretty great time with this one (or two?).
- I thought it was interesting how they changed quite a few of the mechanics between the two games. The two sides ended up feeling pretty distinct from each other with just a few minor tweaks
Sonic Generations:
- On the Sonic side, I preferred the Act 1 (2D stages) but I liked both quite a bit
- Stating the obvious here but it’s really fun to go fast. For whatever the Sonic series has been through, it’s clear that the thesis is a strong one. Going for those S ranks was a lot of fun
- Love the music
- I like how creative the level concepts are. I know this is functionally a “greatest hits” collection but I’m just glad not to go through another game of basic biomes
- I was worried that it might be janky given that my only experience w/ Sonic is ~an hour of Sonic Adventure from years ago and I bounced off of it because it didn’t feel great. Generations is pretty polished
- The only time I ran into any jank was with the final level, Planet Wisp (both Act 1 and Act 2), which, combined with the fact that these levels are kinda bad even without the jank, made this the low point of the experience
- Oh also the Final Boss of Sonic Generations… what a complete mess. It’s sad that the end of the game is the worst part because it leaves you with a bad taste in your mouth after a great game
- The challenge stages are kinda fun but 90 of them is definitely overkill
- This is a bit of an odd place to start as a first Sonic game. I like that I got a taste of everything but it’s kinda like reading the Cliff’s Notes. I still don’t know any of the characters all that well. Does Sonic like Amy or is that one-sided? I’ve always really liked the Silver and Blaze designs from afar but I still don’t really know much about them. I’m not sure I even know all that much about Sonic, Tails or Knuckles either
Shadow Generations:
- I was initially a little turned off coming from Sonic Generations bc so many of the mechanics are similar but with minor tweaks, but after adjusting I think I prefer Shadow Generations
- And overall I preferred Shadow Generations because I found the level quality to be more consistent. Of the 12 acts there’s probably 9-10 bangers, 1 or 2 meh and 1 I disliked but didn’t hate (Radical Highway Act 2)
- In a reverse from Sonic Generations, I preferred the fully 3D levels here
- The Shadow-exclusive abilities like Chaos Control and the Doom abilities were a lot of fun to use and I love how high the skill ceiling is here with how creative you can be with the various new abilities
- I prefer the Challenge levels here. The narrower focus (20 OGs with collectables, 10 Hard Modes without) shows off a nice range of ideas without overstaying its welcome
- Bosses have fun mechanics but are a little easy/over before they really get going
- The Final Boss is infinitely better than Sonic Generations though
- The difficulty of the game is wildly all over the place. Some of the S ranks took me nearly an hour of trying and then I’d move onto the next level and get the S rank on the first attempt
- I didn’t love the hub world - I found it kinda annoying to get around from place to place and fast traveled as much as possible. The timed challenges and collection in the hub world are probably the low point of the game for me
- I’m sorry but I might be a 14-year-old edgelord. Shadow is cool as fuck. I love him. I am him. I’m so tortured and dark and edgy. I’m ready to make my prof pic Shadow the Hedgehog holding hands with Riku from Kingdom Hearts and post about MCR and Hot Topic and how nobody gets me. I love the mid 2000s. I’ll tell people that The Nightmare Before Christmas is my favorite movie. Give Shadow his gun back. The best character archetype is “comes-back-in-the-sequel-dressed-sluttier-with-a-gun” (see: Shadow the Hedgehog (2005); Final Fantasy X-2 (2003)) [I’m submitting this to violence island now]
- Wait better yet do a stealth remake of Final Fantasy X-2 but it’s Sonic, Shadow, and Silver
15 Likes
Speaking of Sonic, I’ve been playing through Sonic 06.
I’ve never completed it and hopefully I will this time.
I know it doesn’t need to be said, but this game is a huge mess, and I’m playing the ps3 version which apparently is the worse of the two.
I beat Sonic’s campaign a couple days ago so now I’m onto Shadow.
Shadow’s campaign i think is actually pretty good?
I think it’s mostly just that he doesn’t have any of those awful auto-runner levels.
Driving the car is pretty bad but so far that’s really only been necessary once.
I generally think saying a piece of art or media is simply bad or good is dismissive and unproductive, but Sonic The Hedgehog for ps3/360 is bad in almost every way.
But that’s what makes it great.
4 Likes
Seconding this. The game took quite a long time to find its stride for me (things finally started to come together during Act 2, and by Act 3 I’ve been pretty hooked)
In my experience it’s rare for a game to truly get better as it goes, but I’ve begun having enough of a good time that I’m not thinking quite so much about the little gripes I’ve had while playing
I don’t think it’s Bioware’s best “cinematic” RPG at all, but there is plenty of what I love from them (and from Dragon Age in particular) once the game gets properly rolling
3 Likes
I played Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey for like an hour last night and what are games for if not this kind of ambitious silliness. I am monkey. I contemplate object and climb tree. In its own way, it’s kind of a perfect game, and I wish more titles were meandering, realistic animal simulators.
3 Likes
