Started playing Pikmin
I’ve reinstalled Disco Elysium, but on the Steam Deck this time.
I had started a playground a while back, but I took a break after barely scratching the surface.
I was too burnt out from work at the time to really enjoyed it, so I parked it and kept it for later.Playing it on the deck also has the benefit of me not still sitting in my home office after working.
Me not remembering much of the beginning of that playthrough is actually pretty immersive in its own way too.
Path of exile 2 is free this weekend, and has a new season starting in a few hours, I’m trying to get my friends together to jump in.
It’s not very in the spirit of this sub though, but it did take a lot of patience to get here.
I’m still kicking around the idea of getting no man’s sky, but it hasn’t dropped enough yet.
Persona 5 was in the humble bundle, I’ve yet to get into a persona game (tried 3 and 4) to the point of “gameplay” there’s so much story than just doesn’t connect with me before the gameplay starts. Makes me miss Pokemon Red/blue.
P5R may not be to your liking then either. I found it to be less front loaded on the narrative than P4G, but it’s still a very narrative focused game. I can say however that I much preferred the story of P5R. I haven’t played P3(any version) yet. That’s just kind of the way Persona games are. They all start kind of slow. At least the two I’ve played. SMT may be more to your liking. I’ve only played SMT IV but SMT seems to be more gameplay focused. That one is at least from what I remember.
I played the demo of smt5 (which is how I know you’re referring to shin megami tensai (sp?) in case anyone else wants to experience it) and it was a really fun game, definitely faster to pick up the gameplay, and it reminded me, in many good ways, of dragon warrior monsters and Digimon, but at the end of the demo I was hesitant to pull the trigger because there are so many other games that deserve some play time.
I’ll definitely go back to it when it’s on sale, and I’m going to give p5 a, maybe not fair, shake.
Yeah Shin Megami Tensei is often abbreviated as SMT. I’d say with P5 if you don’t like it by the end of the first palace, then you probably won’t like the rest of it. You’ve seen most of the core gameplay and mechanics by then. I would definitely say play P5R and not vanilla P5 if you have the option. Some mechanics are changed in P5R that make it a smoother experience. The big new additions are mostly at the end, the “Third Semester”.
Dragon’s Dogma. WTF? Why did nobody tell me it was good? Why do people describe it as “hack and slash”? It’s a proper ARPG. Also, do I just suck or is it actually this hard?
I’ve beaten all the souls games multiple times but I got stuck in DD pretty early on and just quit out of frustration. I’ve been meaning to go back but I do think it actually is that hard.
Figured it out! It’s not hard. It’s actually quite easy. It just gives zero fucks about letting you know the level of the enemies or the areas where they are. I got a quest to gather some flowers at level 5 and was told they could be found in the outskirts of the city so I went south out of chance. Turns out that’s 20ish level area. Perhaps the same happened to you.
My work buddies and I started replaying Pokémon Black and White together. It’s a lot of fun, and it has been long enough that it’s like experiencing it for the first time. There are private servers now that enable the online content (since the official ones were taken down).
I did not realize the first time around just how much the plot was a takedown of fascism, but given recent political events, it is a little on the nose. But they did an impressive job of exploring the reasons people might be radicalized and truly believe that they’re in the right just because they’re following a charismatic leader (even one who very obviously doesn’t have their best interests in mind), and in a way that kids could understand.Huh, maybe I’ll play it again then. I tried to replay it a few months back but didn’t get far, decided to play something else instead.
Metal Gear Solid: Delta: Snake Eater (PC)
Never played an MGS game before (other than Portable Ops on the PSP), so I thought I’d install it tonight and give it a shot. There’s no Denuvo BTW.
I’ve been really digging Death Stranding. It’s kind of a silly concept of just delivering packages all over the map but it seems to be scratching some itch I didn’t even know I had. I like that I can pick it up for a delivery or two as my real life schedule allows and then randomly sometimes I actually progress the story or unlock a new tool to make my courier job easier. I’m only vaguely aware of the story but it’s enough to get me to actually watch the cutscenes even if I’m confused the whole time.
Overall I’d recommend at least trying it out for a few hours since it’s one that I never thought I’d enjoy but I’ve been proven wrong.
I picked up that Humble Bundle with the Mega Man X collection in it. Man that game still totally holds up. It’s just fucking awesome.
There was a bluesky thread on games that scared you as a child, and I was reminded one of mine was Duke Nukem 3D. Since I haven’t played it in over 20 years, I decided to look up that remastered version and you know what, pretty fun game still. The levels feel much smaller to me nowadays - even though they’re fairly dense - but the guns feel good, killing enemies is satisfying, staying on your toes all the time hits just right. I also find it deeply amusing that creating a character was as easy as putting as many one liners from your favorite movies in the script as you can.
Picked up Nioh 2 on the PC, a game that I already owned for the Ps4, but now I’m trying the complete edition. Turns out that the DLC added new weapon types - and weapons in Nioh are far more intricate and complex than other soul-styled games - including a Fist type. Not only that, but literally the first skill you can learn is the Dempsey Roll! I feel cheated from having played only the base version. Maybe this time I’ll actually finish this game.
If you’re digging Duke 3D, I can’t recommend Ion Fury enough. It’s incredible how far their team has pushed the Build engine.
I’m not in any rush, so I’ll keep that in mind, but currently my plans for after I’m satisfied with Duke 3D is trying Dark Forces and the original Doom, both that I also haven’t played in a few decades
How hard exactly are the Nioh games? I’m playing through the Ninja Gaiden series at the moment so I guess I’m on a bit of a Team Ninja kick, which has made me look at them again. But from what I’ve heard they’re perhaps even more prohibitively difficult than Ninja Gaiden.
Having played very little Ninja Gaiden, I don’t think they’re similar at all save from being 3rd person games. Nioh is much closer to the Souls formula, which slower combat, stamina consumption on actions and a demanding care on facing enemies, with the added complexity (though not necessarily added difficulty) of weapon stances and combos, skill trees, colored loot, and a Devil Trigger-like skill.
If you’re going to try one, you should expect something more akin to Dark Souls + Diablo lootfest than the action romp that is Ninja Gaiden
Oh interesting! I knew about the different weapons and combos and coming from Ninja Gaiden that is appealing but the Diablo style loot piñata gameplay I was not expecting. Not sure it makes it more appealing to me though, sadly. I had hoped it was more of a Souls-meets-Ninja-Gaiden.
I’m still a bit scared, even though Ninja Gaiden have an even more brutal reputation than Dark Souls I found NGB and NG2 manageable whereas DS3 and Elden Ring felt like just on the border of what I can handle, sometimes going over it. Maybe we’re all just given to different types of games?
Overall, I find Nioh to give you far more tools than the usual Souls game, but also not demand as much mastery of them. There’s still some punishing mechanics (the only game that I’ve enjoyed doing the Exp recover after dying was Lies of P) and obtuse stats (even more when you consider the loot piñatas), but its still a game where I can go “All right, I don’t want to deal with this” and use the Yokai transformation to melt a boss’ HP.
Of course, at the end of the day, to each its own, so if Souls+Diablo gameplay doesn’t sound appealing to you, its an easy skip.
Alright, thank you so much! I will keep it in mind and maybe tentatively wishlist them for a deep sale!
Hell is others
The PC version of Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter. This game is super difficult for me but I’m having fun trying. It also tends to jump-scare me more than any horror game has before. Sadly, I can’t get GRAW2 to run because of weird Physx problems and Wine/Proton, so I might go re-play Ghost Recon Future Soldier for the Xbox 360 again after this one. I’m too busy to get to that this week, though.
I also scooped up a Fire Emblem Awakening cartridge last week. I might try to finish the last two chapters of Fire Emblem Warriors and then dive into that one. I’d play both at the same time but the contrasting speeds of the two genres might be a bit too much.
My “I have 10 minutes to play” game this week is BlazBlue: Clone Phantasma. I really enjoy the BlazBlue series (especially the 3DS release) and this one is the cutesy/chibi arena fighter version. Very simple and shallow but great for quick games.
Those advanced warfighter games were so cool. Rarely see them mentioned but I fucking loved those squad based shooters.
might as well be a solo game, though. my squad mates are as dumb as a bag of hammers 😆
PixelJunk Monsters 2. It was like $3 and a fantastic price for that. Not as good as the first game, but an amazing tower defence game nonetheless
I’m rocking on Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Still Outward. I love this game, probably going to be playing it for a while to come. I want to try a flamethrower mage build next, or perhaps an archer/off-hand dagger build. There are still two entire regions I’ve not yet visited in 60+ hours of gameplay.
How is the story ?
It’s good, but not amazing. Each of the 5 main fractions has It’s own main quest line with 5 quests, and any given character can only do one of the lines. There isn’t much dialog, and don’t expect a giant tree of options and alternate endings in each line, but the writing is solid and the themes are varied and interesting. After the main quest line there is a DLC quest about rebuilding a town with some lackluster town-building mechanics. I ended up not finishing this with my first character, it was too tedious. It wasn’t horrible either though, I just don’t have that much free time.
There are lots of side quests spread over the land, but there is a lot of open space in this game, so you will end up referring to the fandom wiki in order to find some of them. The focus is more on exploration, survival, crafting, and optimization than a detailed and branching story.
This one has been a go-to for me since it came out. I keep coming back between other releases, and it’s pushing hours logged on par w/ Skyrim, at this point (excl. VR hrs, ofc)
Bioshock Infinite DLC. Recently purchased the remaster on sale. Never played through the DLC. Part 2 has a bit more sneaking around than I would like, but I still enjoy being in the world.
I could never get into Infinite. BioShock 1 is one of my favourite games ever, and 2 was also incredible. But after a few hours in Infinite I put it down and never picked it up again. That was years ago though, maybe I should give it another shot.
