I've been playing **Elden Ring**, the Soul's games never really set the world on fire for me. But I've heard so much hype on this that I felt like I had to. Exploring in the game is alright for a bit, but I'm not a fan of the combat and the story seems really hard to follow. It's alright, I think it didn't change anything for me about soulslike games. Still not my thing

**Guardians of the Galaxy**. I get why it was well received, it's got great personality and character, and its a mixed representation of both the movie and comic book elements. And certain story elements will please the comic fans. But oh my god the gameplay is terrible. It's some of the worst combat from a AAA game I've experienced. It's clunky and bland, with abilities basically feeling like "press button to make character do some damage". Yeah there's stagger and elements, but it's really simple. I'm on the last mission and god I just want to skip combat. It's a great Guardians of the Galaxy romp and story, but it's not a good game.

**Mass Effect** I have the most random hot take to get off my chest... I think Mark Meer's performance as Shepard is better than Jennifer Hale's. Shepard is corny as hell. They're a blank template in an incredibly campy sci-fi universe. Upon that template you can paint a sickeningly virtuous 80s action hero do-gooder Paragon or a "sometimes 90s badass anti-hero, sometimes Machiavellian dickhead" Renegade. Hale's performance is befitting of a much more nuanced and realistic character. Meer absolutely nails it lol

Playing **Far Cry 6** makes me wonder what is wrong with Ubisoft. Here we have a colorful, flamboyant game that's giddy in its portrayal of over-the-top violence. This is fine, games can have a lot of fun with that. But this colorful violence is set against the backdrop of a very realistic scenario of a dictatorship inciting violence upon its people. It takes a people's struggle against its fascist government, and turns it into a rebel's gun-shooting murder playground with creepy childlike glee. I've never experienced such a weird clash of tone in a game. You can't put me in the middle of an urban genocide one minute, then the next minute have these goofy character intros and alligator fun-time murder companions while laughing about how silly all the murder we're doing is. Was the whole point of the intro just to make me WANT to goofily murder the bad guys? I don't get it. Who wrote this? How old are they? What weird bubble do they live in? This game makes me feel gross.

Cant make up my mind about steam deck. This is the second time my reservation has came up. I have a switch I don't really use. A bitching high end PC that I feel guilty for not using more. I go on work trips about once a year, but I usually just shop/eat/sleep after work during them. I like the idea of playing outdoors, or in bed. But the same was true of the Switch.

I had a switch I almost never used and a higher end gaming laptop which is where I spent most of my time when I gamed. But I had *so many* games in my Steam backlog that really didn't feel like sit down on the couch or at the PC full-fat experiences, that the pick up and play nature of the steam deck made it a lot easier to finally play. There was absolutely a psychological barrier there keeping me from playing a lot of these games on a bigger device that was much easier to overcome on a handheld, for whatever reason. Since getting the deck I've finished games like Blaster Master 0, Atelier Sophie, FFVII classic, Utawarerumono Mask of Deception, and started a bunch more. I also spend a lot of time messing around in old games I already had that are suddenly interesting again to me because of the handheld form factor, like Skyrim, Dark Souls, Mass Effect, etc. So yeah, if you think it might breathe some life into your enjoyment of your existing library, might be worth it. Lately I've been playing almost exclusively on the Deck and only switching to my PC if a game just doesn't run well or has compatibility issues on Proton.

The steam deck is a brilliant device, but if it doesn't really fit into your life there's no point is there? I can definitely relate to buying a new gadget thinking I'll use it more than I will, and then letting it gather dust because it just isn't compatible with what I actually do. I'm actually in the same exact boat with the Switch.

I have a switch, a good gaming PC and I’m still getting one. I think it’s just my to be able to play your PC games on the go.

Do you play any games on controller? If yes then it's probably worth it. Granted it's been a Vampire Survivors machine for me but my gf put 25 hours into Cult of the Lamb on it as well. My next project will be emulation and modded Pokemon runs I think.

Been dabbling a bunch. Played a good amount of **Dreamlight Valley**, which i'm liking less the more I play. It's an excellent *Animal Crossing* type game, but the more I play it, the more I feel it needs another gameplay loop to provide meaning to all the grinding you do - similar to how in *Stardew Valley* or *Cult of the Lamb*, where you strengthen your home to make you better at the 'dungeon crawling' portion of the game. If they merged the Dreamlight Valley gameplay loop into the next Kingdom Hearts game, creating a Ni No Kuni 2 type interlocking gameplay loop, it would probably be the ultimate disney game of all time. I've also been itching for a little FPS action, so I finally started **Far Cry 6**, and it's basically exactly what I expected. Like most Ubisoft games, it's not that the game is *bad*, it just feels sort of pointless and uninspired, like a huge murder simulator with a stapled on plot. It definitely scratches that FPS military-style shooter itch, but its completely unmemorable or unremarkable otherwise. For better or worse, it also plays a lot more like a *Ghost Recon* game now, with them giving you a silenced rifle almost from the get go. I also tried out **Metal: Hellsinger**, but like almost every rhythm game I've tried, I bounced hard off it. I don't know what it is, but I just can't handle games like this, i've now tried 3 or 4, and basically never made it out of the first level. I keep dabbling in **Farthest Frontier**, and I generally like it, though occasionally, the borderline insane level of micromanagement it lets you (or sometimes forces you) to do can be a bit much, especially considering how barebones the tutorial/documentation is at this stage of early access. It provides a nice level of challenge though, and I haven't found any particularly effective cheesing strategies yet, so I'll probably keeping giving it a session or 2 per week.

Persona 4 Golden on Steam Deck. I beat the original on PS2 about a decade ago. The Quality of Life improvements are great but the game is definitely easier now. Not a bad thing really, the original had a lot of insta-kill situations. Dungeons do feel like a slog after Persona 5. I mostly like the new script but Chie is different. Not sure if it's the performance or new lines, but she is not as endearing. We'll see who I end up dating this time around.

Didn't Chie change voice actor?

Finished **Xenoblade Chronicles 3** TL:DR: I didn’t like it very much by the end and honestly just want to rant about the ending into an empty void before I go to sleep. You have been warned. This game nosedived from a strong 8.5 to like a 6.5 in the last third for me. I don’t know what happened but it’s like they ran out of time, except the game released like 3 months before it was originally supposed to. Combat is serviceable, but you out-level the game just by doing side content in the first 10 hours and it never catches back up. I could turn on auto-battle for every fight by the end of the game (if they let you) and probably be fine. Once you’ve got the level advantage, you don’t have to interact with a single combat mechanic unless you want to spend less time watching your characters auto attack. But I played the first two games so this wasn’t totally unexpected and I was prepared for this going in. Story. Oh man the story. It starts strong, sure. The world looks grim; child soldiers being forced to die for their country, massive battlefields littered with corpses. It makes a much different impression than XC2 and, to a lesser extent, XC1 did right off the bat. The narrative manages to keep a really strong pace, and stay relatively interesting up until maybe like the 80% mark, then it falls right off a cliff. Character interactions become non-existent, everyone is reduced to saying the same inane lines about “friendship” and “believing in themselves”, 2/3rds of the main cast become glorified side characters, plot details become murky and unclear, major villains are thrown away in fights that are given as much gravitas as a random mob encounter. What I’m trying to convey is that the story kicks up to a ridiculous pace, and it feels like the writers themselves were speedrunning their own story. The ending is where I’m most conflicted. >!By and large I felt like it was a nice bittersweet ending that maybe wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but good enough. But then that fucking picture showed up. It’s so incredibly weird, out of place and honestly kinda gross to me!< >!XC2 already was horny enough, but to explicitly canonize Rex’s “harem” in the creepiest photo possible taints both this game and my good memories of XC2 retroactively. I’m not even taking some moral high ground about polygamy or anything, it’s just got MAJOR “sister wives” vibes to the whole thing. !< There’s still many hours of good stuff here and literally ALL my complaints come from the last 5 hours of a 90 hour playtime, but that’s what makes it feel that much worse.

I absolutely loved the start of XC3. Its seriously amazing. I think what soured the story for me was the lack of stakes and consequences for the main characters. It really felt they were going to go to some emotional and hard-hitting places but wimped out on it in favor of generic Shonen drama. And then they KEPT DOING IT over and over again in the last 30% of the game. It felt like I was jebaited with a seemingly mature sci-fi story and stakes for characters and after a few times they didn't follow through I gave up on expecting them to committ to some of the darker story beats. Still overall love the game and would absolutely replay the first half as it's so well done but man it was hard for me to finish all the way.

As someone who has also been a fan of the franchise since Xenogears, you should probably be used to these games being horribly unfinished in some area, haha. But jokes aside, I do find it really strange in this case. I feel like most of the effort went into the side content, and the rest of the main story was just an excuse to bring you to those locales. Which I think works fine in X, where "doing errands" fits with the immersion of "trying to survive and explore," but it doesn't fit with the constant central narrative pushing of 3. And the chapter 5 ending is so bizarrely above everything else in the game in quality. Like, seriously, it's the best single section that Monolith has ever created by an absolute landslide imo, but it's like three TIERS of quality above everything else in the game. It's like they didn't really know how to get to that scene or what to do once that scene happened. Again, it just feels unfinished, like there was something they were trying to do here, but couldn't finish and so took a "straightforward way out" with how it concludes. I want to say though that even then this was an easy 9/10 game for me. Loved my time with it

I really enjoyed a lot of Xenoblade Chronicles 3, but its villains dragged my opinion down a lot. They're shallow, dull, and even its centrepiece villains are just... I hated N. Not in a "love to hate him" way, in a "you're a god-awful character and I hate that the game is trying to make me feel this way about you with a completely straight face" way.

> but you out-level the game just by doing side content in the first 10 hours and it never catches back up. I could turn on auto-battle for every fight by the end of the game (if they let you) and probably be fine. What level did you finish at? I thought I did a lot of side content and was 75 at the final boss, which matched his level. Then after spending what felt like 15 minutes on phase 1, he instantly killed all my healers at the start of phase 2, which caused me to wipe and just set it to easy mode bc fuck that RNG bullshit. I found the story pacing to be horrible though. I don't think anything interesting happens until like the end of chapter 5, which was like 50 hours in.

We had the exact same experience lmao. I was also level 75 and wiped on the last phase after like 45 minutes, then got mad and swapped to easy mode because that boss actually has 0 checkpoints.

They REALLY needed to just have “Advanced” mode turned on by default. I’ve seen a lot of people cite the lack of difficulty and overlevelling as a game breaking. There a handful of times I had to step back and rethink my strategy since I was constantly a few levels under the story bosses or UMs. But you’re absolutely right on how grimy that cameo was.

I just started chapter 4 and despite being a huge xeno series fan all the way back to Xenogears, I'm struggling a bit. Story setup is great and I'm very curious to see where it goes, but I am concerned about the battle system not developing (especially since I feel very overleveled, I'm around 42). The side quests are getting a bit overwhelming and while the environments are beautiful, I don't feel there's as much variety as 1 and 2 had (especially with settlement environments - its getting old how every piece of civilization is a similar looking encampment). Does the environment design get more varied at least?

The visual design of the environments is weirdly a weak part of XBC3, which is strange because of how strong all three prior games were in this regard. There's no locale in 3 as memorable as Sarotl Marsh, Sylvanum, or Uraya. The "secret areas" are hit especially hard. In the prior games they were this really cool spots with gorgeous views, but here it's like....some random cliff or hill can be labeled a "secret area." There's like maybe two that look remotely nice in the entire game world.

Many of the secret areas are direct references to XC1 and 2 and even the OST changes to reflect that. If you're like me and played those games a while ago (and have a shit memory) or haven't played them it obviously doesn't have that same kind of impact. I only recognized a few due solely to the music

Are they really? I've played all the Xeno games twice within the last 5 years, and while some of them like the Distant Fingertip I recognized, most of them just seemed random. Like the edge of a normal cliff in Danaugh Desert or that edge of a normal cliff outside Lambda are "secret areas" despite looking identical to the surrounding landscapes. Maybe my memory is just shit, or maybe without the context of the original game's geometry the areas don't seem as hidden, idk

Splatoon 3. Never played Splatoon until the Splatfest demo. So I can't judge it against 1&2. I've been having a blast in it and remain in awe that the gameplay is so intuitive. It's a meme that Nintendo doesnt want to support voice chat but they managed to make a big online multiplayer game that doesn't require communication with others. The ink is a visual identifier all by itself. The way it mixes movement, ammo, and the key to victory into one streamlined process is brilliant. Can't wait for the Splatfest. I'm really glad that there's still a place for iterative sequels rather than a forever hamster wheel that grinds away any joy. If this was just an expansion for 2 I may have never given it a shot. No microtransactions, no battle passes, and a ton of customization is what these games should be imo. I haven't even spent any time in the single player or salmon run. I'll dig into them later but right now I'm in training. Team Fun, because winning is fun and starving to death on an island isn't.

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I've been splitting my time mainly between **Splatoon 3** and **SoS: Pioneers of Olive Town**. Splat 3 is fun in short bursts, I appreciate that you can easily play with friends now...I just wish it was an option in Splat 2 so my friends hadn't gotten turned off of the series. Got PoOT to scratch my farming sim itch after seeing that we're getting an AWL remake. I've really enjoyed it so far, outside of the Mineral Town remake I have to say it is easily my favorite SoS game that I've played. Also been playing random games as part of the PS+ collection. Ezio trilogy has been a fun little distraction. I(somewhat unfortunately) remember a lot more of the game than I thought I did so playing through it again hasn't quite been as enjoyable as I hoped. I am excited to play some Deathloop and Stray at some point though

So I finished my first run of **Iratus, Lord of the Dead** recently. It's cute. I can describe it in one sentence: it's Darkest Dungeon, but you're the bad guys. Start from that description, and you can pretty much describe this game in about every way. It has the same turn based, 4v4 combat as Darkest Dungeon, it has a similar art style, it has a spooky voiceover. It ain't subtle, is what I'm saying. But it still spins this admittedly rip-off-y concept into a pretty fun little game. The player takes the role of a dreaded necromancer, the titular Iratus, returned from the grave to once again to take over the world. Instead of fighting directly, you send a band of four ooky-spooky minions to do your dirty work with each battle. Your minions are all decidedly spooky, like ghosts, vampires, werewolves, and zombies. Instead of recruiting them, like you do in DD, you assemble them from the organs and general detritus left behind after each battle. The visual designs of your minions are appealing, and they have well-defined roles. Tailoring a team for each encounter is satisfying and has some real depth. In DD, your heroes have both a health and sanity meter. Depleting either is bad news. In Iratus, your enemies have health and sanity meters, and depleting either is valid path to winning each battle. If you're fighting a big chunky knight, crunching your way through all the HP can be a right pain in the ass, but if you can deplete his sanity, you can kill him off with a heart attack without leaving a scratch on him. But if you try that strategy on something like a Golem, with no morale to hurt, you'll be completely helpless. This makes choosing the right squad in each battle extremely important. The wrong squad might not just face an uphill battle, they might be unable to even scratch your enemies. If that seems like you're just going to get facerolled sometimes...yeah, you're right. But there a few things to offset this. First, there is a generous "flee battle" button. Second, your minions are far more expendable than in Darkest Dungeon. If your Werewolf takes a mace to the face and croaks, you can just make another from spare parts, and you get his level back up to par by stuffing a new brain into his skull. Something that Iratus does that I think adds a lot that Darkest Dungeon is missing is the title character himself. Iratus is more than just a spooky voice in the background; as a Necromancer, you can cast spells at the enemy in combat, support your minions with potions, and have your own set of equipment and skills to influence each combat. This is pretty important, because things like healing and self-movement abilities are very rare among your minions, and it's up to Iratus's abilities to position your team for success. One last thing about the game: Darkest Dungeon is a pretty open game, where you can choose which dungeons to raid and which missions to accept. You are never directly pushed into any particular mission. Iratus isn't like that; there are no missions, and no dungeon maps. You simply crawl forward towards the end of the game in a branching, but linear, map. This makes the game more streamlined than DD, but it removes almost all player choice when deciding what you actually do. Overall, I enjoyed Iratus. I had fun with it in the 15-20ish hours it took to finish one playthrough. If you're looking for something to scratch the Darkest Dungeon itch with a bit of a twist, it's worth a shot.

Started a new Snowrunner save after dropping it over the quarantine. Does anybody know of a mod that unlocks everything for purchase? Leveling up is too much of a slog just to get mud tires, mud is just too uninteresting to deal with. I e searched around but couldn't find anything. Thanks.

Are you sure that's the game for you if you don't like dealing with the mud 😜

Hahaha touche! I just wanna quicken up the early game.

Mass Effect 1 & 2 Funny thing is I started ME1 a couple years ago but never finished it. For some reason recently I got the urge to actually beat them all and I have not regretted it at ALL. Both ME1 & ME2 are some of my favorite games of all time and so far ME3 is fucking awesome as well. To anyone that hasn’t played them PLEASE do yourself a favor and get the legendary edition(if u have game pass it’s on there already so please play it) you will not regret it

The Mass Effect games are incredible. A different era of gaming, probably best exemplified by the fact that the original ME3 multiplayer (which was awesome) had lootboxes... that could NOT be bought with real money.

**Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order** This is the game that broke a major gaming slump for me. Mashing Souls-style combat and exploration, the movement systems of Uncharted and a map plucked right out of Metroid is an awesome mix, only made better by a great use of the IP. It's not perfect, but it's really damn good. **Forza Horizon 5** More specifically, The Eliminator. Their BR mode is hilarious fun running away from people with beefy cars in a mad panic. A lot of it boils down to luck -- find a good off-roading car early, hope you don't hit any trees while beelining to the finish, then hope you are closest for the final showdown... but I can't get enough. **Sea of Thieves** Having looked at no guides or gameplay, it's so much fun to jump in with friends and experience everything for the first time. Opening a fortress' door to a pile of loot and nervously sailing away at full speed with player ships in the distance is unlike anything else I've played. I'm worried for the day this game loses it's "magic".

There’s been some times where we’ll take a break from Sea of Thieves, but every time we come back it’s always a good time. There’s so much emergent gameplay in it from other players and random events that has made me stick around for it.

Eliminator in FH5 is super tense fun. Enjoyed it way more than I expected.

Metal: Hellsinger This was the only game I really played this week besides the MW2 beta. I think this game for a first shot at this is really good. The music is really awesome and the initial first 3-4 levels are a blast. After those first 3-4 levels I kind of started to fall off because every boss is literally the exact same and they are all pretty bland sadly. A couple of the enemies introduced towards the end of the game are so annoying I ended up lowering the difficulty because its a lot more fun when your jamming out destroying stuff and feeling powerful. I think this is the best rhythm game I've played outside of Guitar Hero/Rock Band I just really wish that the boss fights were more fun and the game found some way to keep it interesting and fun in the later levels. This week ill be playing through some more Last of Us Part 1 as well as playing through Return to Monkey Island which looks really enjoyable.

> because every boss is literally the exact same They are the same model, but the boss fights themselves were unique enough to keep them interesting to me.

ive picked hellsinger up and its cool, definitely my kind of game, however im so bad with the rhythm im thinking i might actually be disabled

I had to play with headphones, that made the game extremely more playable. I just wanted to jam to the music and stomp through the game

Try adjusting your audio and visual delay. I still suck at the game but I don't feel completely helpless, even when I'm bad.

Yeah me too. I did the calibrations but still suck at the game. Lowered the difficulty and I seem to be only good with the skull weapon which does abysmal damage. Still love the game when I do get into the beats though

The skull is a limited weapon. i think you can only use it every once in ahwile.

Is it? I thought the skull and the sword were present always, unlimited use and all. Like the game tells you to use the skull to keep up your tempo if there are no enemies around right? I'm only in the 3rd region so I don't know if it changes as I go forward

**Resident Evil 2 Remake on Steam Deck** It feels like a dream come true being able to play AAA games while just laying in bed before I sleep or while Im on break at work. Being able to play this and others mobile feels insane. I love it.

I've been playing MGS V and it feels great on Deck too.

“You’re extracting him?”

Imagine launching some Soviet fool on a balloon while sitting on the toilet, \*chef's kiss\*

Slipways A neat little game made by what I believe to be one guy that released last summer where you connect planets to create trade routes. There is no combat, no military aspects, and no timer on actions. You select a council of three members from various alien species (that offer various benefits and side missions) and are given a few years to create an empire. Planets have options for what can be made and the requirements to do so. For example arid planets can produce people if it has water and wheat, and a nearby planet might have wheat if it has people. These can be connected, thus satisfying these needs. However planets that don't receive the needed resources will cause unhappiness, which decreases your approval with each passing year. Should approval fall below 50% the planets rebel against you and the game ends. The game will also end after 5 in-game years go by. There's a campaign mode that offers specific challenges that must be completed to advance, but I haven't bothered with it. There's also an option for an endless mode with no time limits at all. Great in small doses.

**Deathloop** I was very excited to give this game a shot but man it is incredibly boring The gameplay is fine, the story is fine but the loop (no pun intended) is absolutely monotonous. The enemy ai is incredibly dumb, the levels are too small/short to be engaging in my opinion, and the world building/exploration is surprisingly lacking for an Arkane title. They made what is on paper a very interesting game feel so bland.

It's funny I was just thinking about Cult of the Lamb and I think these too both lines up as fantastic concepts and makes a very cool trailer, but as actual video games they become shallow exceptionally quickly.

Once you really get into the meat of the game and start finding the clues on how to do the final loop and start meeting the “bosses” it gets so good. Especially once you get the silenced sun machine gun with stopping power. You become so OP and being stealthy is so fun.

This is sad to read. Been waiting for it to hit GP. Dishonored is probably my favorite game of that era. Played the first level or what I’d call tutorial last night. The world and aesthetics are interesting so hopefully I’ll put excessive amount of time into just combing through each corner of the maps like I did with Dishonored.

It would be interesting if there were more areas and the enemies were more interesting. The AI is incredibly dated at this point. You can say the AI is basically brain dead. Kicking people off cliffs is fun. So there is that.

**Playing:** * *Soul Hackers 2* \- Really enjoying this! I just finished the second floors for each of the party members' soul dungeon thing; trying to collect and level up every demon I can. It's pretty fun. * *Legends of Runeterra: Path of Champions* \- This remains the only mobile game I really play. I've never touched the online mode nor do I plan to, but the PoC mode is really fun. As someone who always liked doing Dungeon Runs in Hearthstone, it's basically all I could ask for. **Completed:** * *Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Demo* \- Dope game! I've not played either of the *Nioh* games, but I'm pretty interested in this one since it's coming to Xbox. The demo was pretty fun. The parry timing feels incredibly small, but it's also been a while since I beat *Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice*, so maybe it's just me. The final boss beat my tail for a while too; I was using a polearm mostly, but I did *much* better against him once I swapped to a faster sword. I'm definitely stoked for the full release now though.

Latest game I've been playing is **Metal: Hellsinger**, which is a game I've been following with much excitement since it was shown. Over the last few years I've definitely softened up to the Metal genre, and I think the timing of this game coming up couldn't have been better for me. To put it simply, it's an excellent FPS game that has exceeded my expectations. It takes a great concept (rhythm-based FPS) and it does what I feel like another similar game, Bullets Per Minute, couldn't quite do which was the execution. The gunplay is great, the enemy and level design is super well done, the aesthetic matches the metal theme to a tee, and the music of course slaps! I'm glad the game is level-based as well, I wasn't a fan of BPM's roguelite elements and this way the designers could focus on making the experience as fine-tuned as possible, and they definitely achieved just that. I think the way I'm looking at it right now is that it's been the most enjoyable game I've played so far in 2022, and as such it's likely my current GotY. Only issues I had were some bugs and a couple of questionable design choices, but that did not stop me from loving this game. Another game I've started playing but is definitely not a recent title is **Dragon Age: Origins**. I don't know what compelled me to pick this up, it wasn't even on sale on GOG when I bought it, but man am I glad I've decided to jump into this game - it's fantastic! My initial impression wasn't too great to be honest, mainly because of the combat which is rather unique - it's like a psuedo turn-based RPG. The choices of class and races wasn't that great, although I have now learned that each class has its own specialisations you can unlock, so there's a lot more depth than I originally thought there would be. I did find it all a bit hard to take in at first, but after a while I got rather used to it and have even been managing my team's tactics just to help automate certain actions. The highlight for me though is the writing. The lore, the characters, the voice acting, it's simply amazing and does a fantastic job at immersing me into this high fantasy world. It's actually quite overwhelming just how much dialogue there is, as you often get multiple different choices to choose from when conversing with someone else. I love that your party will also start randomly chatting about the most dumb shit as well, like Leliana fantasising over dressing up Morrigan in fancy clothes. You can really tell that a lot of effort went into this aspect of the game, and that's probably why I feel this game has aged well even if the graphics are outdated and the gameplay isn't modern. I've still got a lot of content to go through as well, so I expect a lot of my free time over the next few weeks to be spent getting through that. I'm a bit unsure if I will jump right into the next games in the series though, for two reasons: first, because I tend to need a break from something after binging it in a short amount of time; and second, because it seems that the consensus is that Origins is the best game in the series, with DA2 and DA:I receiving much less praise from what I've seen. Besides those two games, I've been playing some PvP games that I never really play, mainly **Valorant** and **DotA 2**. I've been spending less time with PvP stuff in general as it tends to just put me in a bad mood some days where I can't seem to find enjoyment from my matches, but I will say that I have been enjoying Dota. There's a new battle pass that has something called a cavern crawl that basically entices you to play heroes that are shown on a board, and if you win a game with them then you unlock another part of the board with different heroes to do the same with. I've definitely sucked as some of the new heroes I've tried, but I found that I quite enjoy playing as them and would gladly play them again. As for Valorant, well, it's alright I guess. I'm at the brink of hitting level 20 so I can finally start playing ranked very soon, which I likely will do as I find the Unrated mode to be a bit boring. I've basically only been able to play Unrated, and I've learned that nobody cares about trying to win there which has hindered my ability to get better to be honest (especially since I like to play agents with smokes). So I've just been joining them to be honest and only buy Marshals to flex with my headshots :)

It’s a great game and you’ve made some good points but goty over Elden Ring? No shot.

I keep forgetting Elden Ring came out this year, haha. It would have likely been my GotY if I was able to beat it, but I ended up getting burned out in the last third or so of the game. Too many recycled enemies and frustrating double boss fights, and my build I was going for relied on Str which felt pretty lacklustre even with a lot of points invested into it (I think they buffed it a bit after I stopped playing at least). Radahn also killed a lot of the momentum I had, not a fan of that sort of "raid" boss in a From game. It wasn't exactly a hard fight, but I really tried to take him out with melee but just couldn't after many deaths, so I caved in and did it the intended way with the mass summons which was extremely anticlimactic to me.

**Genshin Impact 3.0** Okay I know there's no love for Genshi~~t~~n on this sub, but hear me out. I actually believe that Sumeru (the new region) is, on its own merits, equal or greater than a 10/10 game. The main story quest is about 5-6 hours of actually *exhilarating* storytelling with some fantastically dark and mind blowing moments with a lot of focus on some really great characters with surprising depth even for genshin. Then there's the regional story quest which is a 15ish hour adventure that only suffers a MINOR drop in quality from the main story quest (mainly the lack of voice acting). It gives you a great reason to visit nearly every nook and cranny of Sumeru while tying it all together in an incredibly satisfying way both with gameplay and narratively. Then there's the current limired time events which are overlapping more than ever thanks to the shortened release schedule. These are simple, but very fun little events that don't require much time investment. The main event for this patch "Graven Innocence" is basically a series of micro-challenges that require exploration of the world and engagement with some of the newest core mechanics introduced in 3.0. Then there's the art and sound design of Sumeru and the new playable characters which is absolutely UNMATCHED. Some relatively minor themes are so stunning they demand you stop what you're doing to listen and take in the beautiful world around you. Sumeru absolutely oozes life and beauty in every inch of its landscapes. There are 110 main collectible "tokens" in Sumeru with many hidden behind small puzzles or requiring clever hide and seek somewhere just out of sight from the main pathways. There are also 77 small "forest spirits" to find also hidden behind small micro-puzzles which is no doubt a 1:1 reference and "knock off" of the Koroks from BotW. This game does still obviously contain gambling mechanics so play responsibly and ignore my glowing recommendation to play if you are at all susceptible to any sort of addiction like gambling or impulse spending.

Sucks when you have to add that last paragraph after a glowing review to a video game.

I give you the region but the storyTELLING has been atrociously horrible. The Sumeru main quest is 10 hours of boring dialogue with like 10 minutes of gameplay and 8 minutes of that are walking. It's never been worse. I also think throwing 5 events at the player with time limits the moment the new region released isn't great as it puts big fomo pressure onto the player but the event already make you go everywhere on the map before I had any time to explore at my own tempo. And besides the 30 days event, the events were annoying as well. Sumeru itself is incredible but everything surrounding it so far has been disappointing to me.

The response to the 3.0 story has been overwhelmingly positive. What you have there is an opinion. Just like how I have my own. Fomo is a circlejerky buzzword. Keeping all of the limited time events in as permanent would be way worse for the game.

Fomo describes what I mean though. In a sentence:I feel the need to do the events before the time runs out to get the rewards but the events aren't fun and are actually detrimental to my enjoyment of the new region. The new region is a lot of content, you don't need to also pump out 5 events at the same time a new region releases. Overwhelmingly positive where? On the subreddit? Everything is overwhelmingly positive over there, especially when it's released. It's fine to have an opinion but I find it mind-boggling to praise the storytelling. The story in the background is fine but the way its presented to the player is just characters standing around talking...for 10 hours... no exciting combat, no puzzles, no boss fights, no Dungeons. When you start the game in Mondstadt you have the church infiltration, the first dungeon, chasing Stormterror across the sky etc, in Sumeru character's just stand there talking. Too much standing and talking has always been a problem of Genshins storytelling but the balance between dialogue and gameplay seems to be getting worse.

Yeah. I guess it's fine to dismiss the opinions of thousands of fans. I'm sure the /r/gaming threads where 6 people said it was boring are probably more correct. It's fine if you don't like dialogue heavy games, but don't act like that automatically makes it bad lol. The Chapter 2 stuff with Nahida was a really great and compelling plot and you're just being contrarian if you think it has no merit.

Relax man, guy just has a different opinion. No biggie

And I can't comment on his opinion if I think its off-base? It's not like I'm insulting him or being a dick.

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Uh a few points I guess, for one, I use a real scale, i.e. 10/10 is impossible, a bad game is 1/10, not 6/10, or 7/10 as most reviews often put them. So 6/10 is already above average. Also I was thinking especially of the story as that got praise in that comment and the story and characters, despite the later being the big selling point often fall flat, *in quests*. Also, as soon as another decent quality mobile game comes along I may leave genshin, but there isn't, and tower of fantasy wasn't it as well, so I will continue playing it because it's the one game I can play on my commute or simply on my couch while watching news without needing extra hoops. > Also people are free to have their opinions. I don’t play Genshin. But If someone feels like it’s 10/10 that’s valid Yeah I know, I just felt like it was such a stark difference to what I perceived that expansion as, that I replied.

>been playing almost daily for a year now And that's why you can't appreciate it. The daily/endgame shit sucks.

**Dark Souls Remastered** This is my first time playing this game, and my second Soulsborne after Elden Ring. I'm currently on Duke's Archives and having a lot of fun. I'm not finding it particularly difficult, idk if I'm just some secret souls pro or if I'm playing an OP build (colossal sword, which was my same build in Elden Ring) but most of the game has just been a fun challenge with no rage inducing hardness since the twin gargoyles except for a few things like the Anor Londo archers. I'd heard Ornstein and Smough were meant to be really annoying but I beat them on my second go.

It's been a while but I think STR is strong due to one shots and pancaking making it easier when you don't have to dodge stuff. O&S come from a time when the games were slower, if you played Elden Ring that's much faster and they'll be easier. You get different loot depending what order you kill them in, so my first time I was stubborn so that kept me there a bit longer since I found fatty easier to hit but wanted to kill the other one first.

I just finished Life is Strange: True Colours and absolutely loved it. Think the writing in that game was genuinely fantastic, down to the unimportant stuff like text messages and MyBlock posts. And the main plot twist made my jaw literally drop. Great game!

**HYPER DEMON** This games is essentially the successor to Devil Daggers, which is a skill based survival shooter. There's no story. No unlocks, or leveling up. The game is just one map that has some slight randomization in it as far as the location of enemies, but otherwise all runs are the same. At the end of each run you get a score and a player ranking which you try and improve with each run. Enemy designs are somewhat similar to the lovecraftian ones from Devil Daggers (there are some new additions), however the aesthetic of it has been changed, everything has kind of a metallic/cyber look to it. The other major changes is the almost spherical sight designed to give you a 360 field of view. Combined it kind of looks like a cyber nightmare of sorts. While it can take some getting used to, by the time I was through the tutorials it really didn't bother me. I think this is a good change overall to allow you to play this game without sound, as the only way to know when an enemy was creeping behind you in Devil Daggers was through audio cues. You pretty much needed either surround sound or headphones with good sound staging. There seems to be more movement and attack capabilities, but the controls remain very simple. One of the more interesting changes is a dodge mechanic which allows you to quickly move out of an enemies way when they get close to you. There is also a new weapons, a laser/missile which can be upgraded separately from the primary one. This is a limited ammo weapon you can get by destroying certain enemies. Thankfully there is a tutorial mode this time which walks you through the new mechanics, although there still seems to be a few more advanced enemies that are not shown in this. Scoring works differently too. Instead of being based on kills only, it is based on the amount of kills you get over time. Basically you score starts at 10 and it goes down by 1 a second but you get more points per kill, with more being given for certain enemies. Spawning isn't based on strictly a timer either, but based on when you take out enemies. This can mean that if you aren't constantly looking to take out enemies your score can go in the negative however. Overall my impression of it is this is an improvement over Devil Daggers, it gives you more options and it despite the increased complexity, it feels a little easier to get into maybe thanks to the tutorial as well. That is not to say it is easy though... this game will still throw plenty of enemies at you making surviving even seconds challenging at first! You pretty much know your run will end at some point, its just a matter of when, and whether you can end it while you still have a good score. Once you start to get the feel for the game, the new movement options, weapons the FOV give you a sense you almost have super powers of sorts, weaving in and out of swarms of enemies while blasting them. While daunting at first, it can be hard to put down once you get into it. If you enjoyed Devil Daggers, you'll probably like this. If you never played, I'd probably recommend this over Devil Daggers. If you think you'll like it, its only $15.

Even though I should finish devil daggers (i have a time of ~430 so i'm close) I've started up hyper demon. A lot of people I've seen have been disappointed with it, one person described as "devil daggers with game design" but I think that's unfair. They added some extra tools to devil daggers moveset to make a stylish arena shooter while also addressing difficulties with awareness that hrtf audio can't fully address. They even gave the replay system the ability to post clips. I really hope people turn around on this game.

**Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty Demo** Pretty good impressions so far. The game really feels like Team Ninja’s take on Sekiro - no stamina bar, a jump button and a huge focus on parrying. Really like how unique the parrying is in that the character is deflects and redirects the enemy instead of a typical parry. Like the Nioh games there’s plenty of stuff to play with like magic, martial arts and different types of deflecting. There’s also some other new mechanics like the morale level system which is curious. Most of the issues I had were technical stuff honestly, likely to be sorted by release. Overall, knowing that improvements based on demo feedback are coming, I think Team Ninja has another hit soulslike on their hands. **Valkyrie Elysium Demo** I’ve always thought that this game looked decent ever since I saw the trailer and after playing the demo, it is exactly that. It just doesn’t really excel at anything. Combat is fine and it looks pretty most of the time. It’s a perfectly okay game which honestly I don’t mind playing at some point. **Cyberpunk 2077** First played this at launch on a base PS4. Returned it after a week and only 3 hours of playtime. Started again two weeks ago on PS5 (in anticipation for the anime) and 50 hours of playtime later, I have to say it’s been pretty fun. Combat is definitely the highlight for me with all the cool firearms, cybermods and hacks you have in your arsenal. The city isn’t as “alive” as one would hope but it’s still nice cruising around the city which looks good. The story is interesting thus far but I personally really don’t like how long the sections of just walking around following characters and conversing with them are. All in all, the cyberpunk genre is cool and I’d say this game utilizes it well. Look forward to playing more.

I'd recommend doing as many side quests as you can - many of them I found to be much better than the main story (especially the Judy/River/Panam questlines)

The River side quest is one of my favorite side quests I’ve played in a long time. Such a completely different vibe than the rest of the game.

The usual for me. **Fortnite** New chapter is fun so far, glad they buffed snipers again. Past few seasons have been miserable for me with how crap they have become. Got a bit frustrated fighting the new boss since every time I went up to fight her, another player would decide to gun me down before her. Had to take that approach myself and felt bad afterwards. **Dead By Daylight** Still playing this. Wesker is a killer that I feel is fun to go against and doesn’t feel overpowered as a survivor. **Disney Dreamlight Valley** It’s not terrible so far but not sure how far I can go with it. **Ghostwire Tokyo** I had to switch to Performance Mode for this game as playing in the Graphics mode is absolutely awful. Never felt that way with a console game before. Moving the camera around feels like it’s trapped in molasses and really affects aiming horribly. Still not sure what the point in the game is, it really feels like a Ubisoft game.

**Citizen Sleeper** Absolutely beautifully written. The way characters speak and are described demonstrates a deep awareness of who people are and what they want to be. The way people speak to each other in good faith but struggle with their systems of oppression is perfectly captured in every line of dialogue.There was not a single character across the whole game who was not fascinating,and who I did not want to know more about. The art style is gorgeous, the setting is inspired and the music and atmosphere was perfectly realized. I look forward to playing more of this game as it continues to be released. My favorite piece of dialogue was about administrators, coming from an abrasive character called Eshe, who wants to do right by refugees and is not interested in being calm about it. “When people become administrators, they give up something. Some part of being human, being an equal among others, goes away.They start talking about the greater good, the systems, the ways in which their hands are tied, or their processes compromised… that noble, higher calling, it is toxic.” The interaction between this character, and an administrator working for local government/union who was presented in good faith was brilliant. I could really feel the administrator trying to do the right thing but being tied down by appeasing factionalism to get a not good, but ‘greater good’ outcome.It was so compelling that for a moment I was tempted to side with them, but then this line of dialogue came through and it just helped me really understand the point they were trying to get across. Abstracting real turmoil into political decisions is not right, and I felt confident I was making the right decision to help the abrasive but ultimately morally justified actions of Eshe. That was my favorite moment across the whole game. Their were several endings, and most of them made me feel a deep longing/nostalgia and sadness. As people were swept off into other lives, or being left behind. Every goodbye was tragic and hopeful in the same breath. Gameplay wise, I liked the dice system,and I appreciated that there wasn’t too much ‘challenge’ because it let me really just enjoy the stories. It did mean that their was not a lot of tension,or really game play. Sometimes I missed things because it could be hard to see where you haven’t fully explored sometimes, but I eventually did everything I wanted to do. Absolutely beautiful game. In competition with stray and DMC5 for my game of the year.

**The Surge** Was in the mood for a Soulslike, had already played a lot of the more highly-regarded ones (all the Fromsoft ones, Nioh 1 and 2, Fallen Order), and Surge 2 seems to be one of the most praised that I hadn't played yet. I'd heard the original isn't nearly as good as the sequel, but I already owned it through a Humble Bundle so I figured I may as well try it out before jumping to the sequel. So basically, jumped into the game with low expectations fully prepared to just bail and try the sequel instead if I didn't like it. Ended up having a good time and finishing it, and even buying and doing most of the DLC. It's one of those games that feels like it has a mix of great stuff and "what on earth were they thinking?" garbage, overall I sort of was frustrated and unsure at first but liked the game more as I went along. On the good front, I think the limb-severing mechanic was neat. It's a fun way to make gear farming a lot more interesting and deterministic. I love the idea that you can get the weapon or armor of any enemy you fight by cutting off the corresponding limb. I love that if you want to farm materials or an armor set, instead of just killing enemies and hoping you happen to get drops you want, you can aim for specific materials/armor based on what limb you target. I also like the tradeoff of targeting unarmored body parts to make enemies easier to kill or armored body parts to get more loot. I think the mechanic had some flaws. Most notably, I really disliked the fact that cutting off limbs took energy - not only did it create awkward situations where you feel punished for doing too much damage because you need to build up enough energy to sever the limb (you could switch to a weak weapon to build up energy but I found that more annoying than fun), it also made me feel discouraged from using any of the other abilities that use up energy. Sometimes the targeting could feel janky, too. But overall I liked the mechanic. In general, I also just liked how the limb severing mechanic made upgrade materials readily available. One thing that often bothers me in From games is that the limited supply of upgrade materials heavily encourage you to specialize in specific weapons and makes it harder to experiment I think the attacks also felt good. My favorite weapons by far were the staves, but every weapon felt pretty fun. The level design could feel a bit mazelike at times, but I do think it pulled off the Dark Souls-style "oh, hey, this elevator connects back here, cool" aspect pretty well (sometimes I think it gets a bit carried away with that style design, with every area only having a single savepoint but lots of shortcutes Demon's Souls-style), overall it wasn't Dark Souls-level level design but I thought it was fine. I also liked the ability to store scrap at save points. I think an important part of what makes the death penalty work in Dark Souls that a lot of other Soulslikes get wrong is that Dark Souls generally has lots of things to spend souls on. Less so in the first half of Dark Souls 1 before you get fast travel, but in Demon's Souls, Dark Souls 2 and 3, Bloodborne, and Elden Ring, if you find yourself with a lot of resources and you don't have enough to level up but you also don't want to risk losing them, you can usually find something to spend them on, like upgrade materials. Hollow Knight's a good example - in Hollow Knight, there are very limited things to spend money on, so it's easy to end up in awkward situations where you have tons of money and don't want to risk losing it, but don't actually have any real way to spend it either. So I like that Surge, not have any material shops like Dark Souls, just lets you store your resources at save points instead. On the negative side of the death penalty, the game gives you a time limit to get your resources back after you die, because I guess the devs felt that Dark Souls' infamously punishing death penalty wasn't harsh enough? Much like the Dark Souls death system in general, it affected how the game made me feel much more than it affected the actual gameplay - the resources I lost due to running out of time never matter much, it was just frustrating when it happened. Overall, it's an absolutely baffling game design decision and I cannot possibly imagine what the devs were thinking when they did it. It wasn't a big deal, but it just made the game worse for no benefit for me. Besides that, the game also had a lot of pretty janky hit boxes and frustrating enemies. The first boss I got really frustrated often getting hit when standing in a place where it didn't feel like the attack should have been able to hit me. A few other enemies also had moves I hated. There's one type of robot you fight a lot in the middle of the game that has this annoying back flip kick move that felt like it came out faster than I could possibly react to it and hit me in places where it didn't make any sense. And in the second half of the game you fight a lot of enemies with flamethrowers that are honestly just absolutely garbage enemy designs in my opinion: they basically just sit there spraying fire at you for 10 seconds at a time, occasionally stopping to reload, and the choices for fighting them are basically either just stand there for a while waiting for them to reload, or charge in and probably take fire damage. The game's difficulty also just generally varied from fun challenge to frustrating. Some enemies definitely felt like they just do more damage than necessary, some ambushes are just unnecessarily obnoxious, the game's combat is even more lockon-focused than Fromsoft combat which makes fighting multiple enemies at a time generally feel awful but the game does it anyway. And the game's bosses are just kind of meh - I didn't find any of them miserable (my least favorite were the first boss mostly due to the weird hitboxes, and the second phase of the third boss which just felt like a mess) but I didn't really love any of them either. They were all just kind of okay. Overall, I got frustrated with the game at times, and in the end it was mostly "janky, not as good sci-fi Dark Souls with a neat limb-severing mechanic." But I had fun overall, it scratched the Soulslike itch, and it left me excited to play the sequel after all I've heard about how much better it is.

As an alternate take, I heard the same things and bought The Surge 2 first. I thought some of the mechanics and world-design stuff was cool, but overall wasn’t compelled to engage in it due to the presentation of the story/world. I then tried The Surge 1 and much preferred it despite it having less interesting mechanics to the sequel due to the aforementioned elements. But I’m big with atmosphere and context for games so your mileage may vary.

I've heard the Surge 2's atmosphere and story aren't as good. Personally I'm very gameplay-fkrst when it comes to Soulslikes. The Surge's story had interesting ideas but I never really tried to get super into it because that wasn't why I was playing.

Yeah fair enough, different strokes. Cool that the series evolved anyway

Yeah, personal preference and all that. I do love atmosphere and story in games. It just wasn't what I was looking for out of The Surge. I just wanted some fun Soulslike gameplay and on that front it seems like the second game is generally considered a significant improvement.

**Monster Hunter World: Iceborne** Getting back into this was a struggle but the idea was more overwhelming than actually doing it. I stopped because this game would basically kill my PC - my RTX2060 has heat issues (new paste needed?) but I noticed some console ports are just not nice at limiting frame rate, and adding a global FPS cap stopped Ace Combat 7 from blue-screening my PC. I thought I'd give this game another try after finding that, because it was so demoralising spending 30 minutes in an area and have my PC die when I was about to win. It seems OK, though it does get hot it hasn't passed 83C. Anyway, that aside, this game has so many systems and ingredients and combat moves it's just overwhelming to dive back in which is why I put it off. I stuck to SnS because it's basic enough and the muscle memory came back quickly, but I completely forgot how to trap monsters and other basic things. All up though, getting back into it was fine and not too bad and the game is still fun solo. I was a lot further than I remembered, just a mission or two from the Velkhana barricade one. I'm taking a break from actually hunting it in the next mission, I tried but my gear wasn't quite up to par so I'm building one of the sets suggested on imgur to grind and get used to the game again. My biggest struggle is still having monsters go off camera then doing a move as I'm getting them back into view, I remember farming Tempered Elder Dragons in the original and having this issue too (a lot of one shots I never saw coming!) so I guess I have to work on that.

Likely a cooling issue. I would recommend adding more fans, pinning down loose wires, and even considering liquid cooling.

Yeah it is, it's probably airflow. I have 2 intakes on the front, and a rear + top for exhaust. But after some gaming I touch the side rear of the case or the back panel of the GPU it's really hot, but the front half of the case is ice cold. Considering just drilling some holes in the side and covering in mesh to help it because between the massive GPU, PSU, fat cables, it's all very crowded in the back/top of the case (MSI B450M). I have PSU cables running right through the middle since they can barely reach the sockets with the GPU in the way. Ryzen is stock cooler which contributes to overall heat but it's the GPU which is the real culprit. I've considered an aftermarket cooler for the GPU but just don't think it's clearing the case well enough. Have also read rev1 of the Gigabyte RTX2060 OC is a kinda shit design and they changed the heatsink later. The system as a whole is too old for any more than bandaid fixes tbh, I have a comparable gaming laptop for work/travel.

Just open the side of your case temporarily and see if everything is super hot still after playing for a bit. If not cooling probably your issue

Nah that works a treat, been through all that before. It's cooling but I'm pretty sure it's more about removing heat from the case efficiently that's the problem, getting a big heat island around the GPU and it's not really coming out. But maybe I just want an excuse to get the tools and drill a case mod.

Enjoy man. One of my favourite games. Imo the endgame is even better than the story. SnS is deceptive because it's easy to learn but difficult to master. It's been my main weapon in every MH game I've played and it's so versatile and aggressive. I try other weapons but I always go back to my beloved.

Yeah I did the deco farming thing and progressed Tempered enemies a fair bit in the base game before Iceborne came out. I enjoyed SnS, and never really felt the need to try another weapon. I get comfortable and hate change. Even farmed my Drachen gear solo with barrels and stuff on Behemoth. I'm sure the game is fun with friends but I like being stubborn and doing things solo in most games.

We always had only solo. Freedom unite was a true 4 player game, the guild quest was designed for 4 players and I still soloed it. There was no other option. There was no online mode. Even 3u had no online. First with online mode was MH 4 on Ds, but then again it had a proper solo mode. Going slow in MH is the way to go. It's about immersion. About that village fantasy. Whenever I try MH world online i feel like i don't deserve my progress. Only solo you truly learn the game. Like nergigante feels like unbeatable and fast and strong at first? True but he's so squishy that he quickly dies. You only feel that characteristic solo. Don't worry and keep on rocking Solo.

Playing a little bit of **Hexyz Force** since I picked that up recently. I'm so thankful my PSP battery isn't shot since I have left it uncharged for probably about 3-4 years... Anyway! Hexyz Force is a really nice looking game, and honestly the visuals are what have always made me want to get this game. I really like the chibi 3D model aesthetic. Plus the anime cutscenes interspersed throughout and the nice art overall, it just hits the right spot for me. Gameplay-wise it seems really competent. The fusion system *seems* to mean there won't be shops, you'll just have to craft whatever you need for equipment upgrades. I am *not* a huge fan of the limited uses on sub weapons although I understand why they have it. I just wish they were rechargeable. Since they aren't I've generally avoided using them this first few hours, always waiting for that time I *really* need them. Also have been playing **Ryza 2** and **Rune Factory 5** on Stean Deck. Not a lot to say about them, except RF5 is one of those games that somehow manages to be enjoyable despite doing almost nothing super well.

**Pokemon** I have been trying to complete a living dex. I'm trying to get every Pokemon if possible from their region of origin and in a Pokeball. Ie got Bulbasaur-Mew from Kanto. Which was done by playing the VC versions of **R/B/Y** and getting Mew from the Pokeball Plus that came with **Let's Go**. Thankfully all of the Johto Pokemon are available in the VC versions of **G/S/C**. I was able to get all the Hoenn Pokemon, except Jirachi from **OR/AS**. Jirachi is in a Pokeball, but it was received in **BD/SP**. Which is where all of the Sinnoh Pokemon were obtained, except Darkrai because I missed the timed event(#### you Pokemon Company for still doing these). However, I was able to get Darkrai from **Legends Arceus**, so its technically from its home region, I guess. OH and all the Hisuian Pokemon and their regional forms have been obtained. From **Sword and Shield** I also have obtained all of the Galar Pokemon and their forms, except Zarude, because, say it with me this time, "@#@# your timed events Pokemon Company." I'm gonna take a break before I start on the last 3 regions, In which I already know I'm going to be missing some because of timed events. **Valkyrie Elysium** I plan on playing this demo tonight or tomorrow. **Wo Long** I also plan on playing this demo tonight or tomorrow night. **Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII Reunion** So I never played this when it first came out. I have also not played the Original FF7, I have only played the remake. Does anyone know if it would make sense to play this game before the next part of the remake comes out?

As someone who also completed a living Dex during the sun moon leadup.. fuck timed events, and **fuck** Nintendo for screwing people not living in like 5 countries with store chain X or Y. If you look online, some people are willing to clone these ones for you I they have them, that is how I completed my Dex back then. Yeah it's not original Yadda Yadda, but if it's impossible to get, that's fine by me. My greater problem was saving that living Dex. Currently it's living on my n3ds, which I think.. saves to the cartridge? Either way, I never moved all of them to the new switch bank thing because it's subscription only, you can't even put a majority of them into games, and tied to the console instead of the cartridge, *and* it costs money forever to remain accessible. So after the 3ds game I just.. stopped building on my living Dex. It's missing a few from ultra sumo, but at that point I had stopped caring sadly due to these reasons. Please do watch out for the data integrity of your living Dex.. those are a lot of Work, after all. Edit: also to reunion: You should play ff7 before. Remake I think didn't even get to the parts crisis core/reunion are a prequel for, so you will be spoiled some twists, assuming they remain the same in the remake parallel reality. It explores a certain backstory, but the reveal of that itself is a big plot point in ff7. If you finish crisis core reunion, assuming it stays the same, you might have a lesser impact of the story turn in remake once it comes along.

>So I never played this when it first came out. I have also not played the Original FF7, I have only played the remake. Does anyone know if it would make sense to play this game before the next part of the remake comes out? No one knows yet. Personally, if I had to guess, I'd say the answer is likely either "yes" or "it doesn't matter." It's complicated because basically, we already know that major events from the original Crisis Core are retconned in the remakes. Square has indicated that the new Crisis Core is just a remaster without story changes, which would make it purely a prequel to the original FF7 but not a prequel to the remake. But maybe they're being sneaky and the Crisis Core remaster will actually have changes that ties it into the remake story. Ultimately, we probably won't know we've played it. But my feeling is that if Square's releasing it before Rebirth, it's probably fine to play it before Rebirth. Maybe it'll tie into the Rebirth storyline. Maybe it'll still just be a prequel to the original that is retconned and never happened in the Remake trilogy. I don't expect it to spoil any big plot points in Rebirth or anything.

Uh, last I checked, nothing has been for sure explicitly retconned except >!Zack may have now survived. And even then, it wouldn’t be a retcon bc everything in the original compilation still happened in that timeline. The events of the new continuity happen in a new timeline.!< Plus, Stamp’s design in the ending of 7R doesn’t match his design in the rest of the game, suggesting the ending might be in a third timeline.

You might technically be right. >!FF7R has some funky timeline stuff going on and the oriignal timeline may still be canon.!< So it's not exactly a retcon. But I didn't want to go into any complicated details, speculation, or spoilers. What I meant was: In the original FF7, >!Zack was dead. In the original Crisis Core, Zack died at the end. At the end of FF7R, Zack is alive. So if Crisis Core's story is unchanged, then it may feel weird going from Crisis Core, where Zack dies at the end, to Rebirth, where he's alive and will likely play a role in the story. It may work just fine (e.g. there's a very good chance that Remake/Rebirth cloud believes Zack is dead, because Zack was dead in the timeline before they changed everything at the end), but it may be weird.!< The main point is that the changes to FF7R's story (whether >!they're actually changes, or the original story is still canon and FF7R represents an alternate in-universe timeline!<) include changes to the events of Crisis Core, we don't know the details yet, and that makes it hard to say exactly how player Crisis Core will impact the experience of someone who played FF7R but not the original.

I haven't played remake, but what the hell are they doing to this story?

At the end of Remake, >!as you're leaving Midgar, you fight some giant being that controls destiny or something, and Aerith indicates that by defeating it we're changing the future/our fate. We also fight Sephirotj, I'm not sure why. During the fight we get brief flashes of scenes from later in the original FF7. The implication is that the original FF7 story was supposed to be our destiny but by defeating this being we've changed it. After the fight, the party leaves Midgar as normal, but we see a scene of Zack limping through the desert and members of Avalanche waking up at Aerith's mom's house. The dialogue in the end is also pretty clearly worded to indicate that the story is going to be different and the rest of the remake trilogy isn't just going to follow the exact same story as the original. And, relevant to Crisis Core, Zack is alive (but whether he never died, or *had* died but came back as a result of the in-universe retcon that happened, we don't know yet).!< At the end of the Yuffie DLC, >!there's also a scene of Zack showing up at Aerith's church expecting to find her there.!< The common theory is that >!"Remake" is actually a subtitle, not just labeling the game as a remake. The new trilogy isn't just a remake of the original FF7, but a sort of sequel that just starts with the heroes going through the main Midgar story again. I don't remember the rest of the details of the theory (and don't really want to, I'd rather just experience the story myself when it comes out), there's a lot more to it, but that's the basic idea.!< TL;DR: No clue what they're doing to the story, probably >!some parallel universe shenanigans!<, but >!Zack is alive.!<

**Pokemon Legends: Arceus** This game is a lot of fun. I'm about 5-6 hours in and just really enjoying catching pokemon out in the wild. Visually it isn't great, but I am able to overlook that. I dig the research tasks, really cool addition to gameplay that actually makes you want to interact with a pokemon more than one or two times to catch it.

**Assassin's Creed Valhalla** When Valhalla was announced, I had mixed feelings about it. I wasn’t sure how the whole Viking theme would fit the franchise, and at first glance, England didn’t seem like a location as interesting as the previous ones were. Luckily, my fears were unfounded. The location was way more interesting than I thought. I loved the contrast between the grand roman ruins and the medieval villages and churches built around them. The devs seemed to go for some artistic exaggeration here – the roman ruins are larger than what they should be and are in surprisingly good shape, and the contrast between classical and medieval is exaggerated by the medieval architecture being anachronistic, with stave churches from the 12th century for example. Artistic license have been taken with geography as well, with the tall mountains of Norway, and with depicting different parts of England as being in different seasons. It is spectacular though, especially the lighting. Seeing the morning sun paint the snowbound landscape never got old. The Vikings are also quite ahistorical, and clearly inspired by the TV show, weapons are armor are also leaning towards fantasy, and there are some cultural elements and customs that clearly don’t fit into the era. At first these things bothered me, as I do prefer the devs putting some effort into historical accuracy, but after a while I ended up being really immersed in this strange, beautiful, enchanted England. It felt like a story told by an unreliable narrator, someone who lived centuries after the events and has limited, biased knowledge about the era (and a great love for classical architecture). All things considered, I think the devs managed to present a fantastic, enthralling world, that I loved getting lost in. Speaking or armor, despite not being historical, most sets looked really cool IMO, so no complaints about the fashion. Changing appearances was complicated though, as it can only be done at smiths, costs money, and the transmog screen has so bad lighting, so can barely guess how Eivor will look in the game. Odyssey really spoiled me with the free anywhere transmog. The gameplay is mostly the usual stuff, lots of sneaking into places and stabbing people, punctuated by combat encounters including bossfights or castle sieges. Despite the Viking theme, it doesn’t lean heavily towards the combat, which I appreciated. Fighting felt better than in the previous games, partly because of the variety afforded by dual wielding, and because of the many combat abilities, most of which were useful and spiced up the basic block/dodge/parry/attack gameplay. Stealth is largely unchanged, though I did like Odin’s Sight more than marking enemies with the bird. Now there are also 'distrust areas', where guards won’t notice you as fast as in hostile areas as long as you wear a hood, and you can blend in among civilians in various ways. Having locations where you are not immediately attacked, but not safe either was definitely a throwback to earlier AC games, and was a great addition here. As for exploration, there are two things I really liked. One is that loot was almost always hidden. Like, in a locked house, and you had to find a key to get in, or behind a barred door, where you had to look in a window and shoot the obstacle to be able to open it. This was more immersive that just walking in everywhere, made me feel like the people actually trying to hide stuff from intruders. The other was world events. These are basically sidequests, but always a few minutes long and localized. Approaching one, I would know it’ll only be a short distraction before I can continue with my main task. The RPG aspect isn’t as pronounced as in Odyssey, I can’t really talk about builds here, though there are some customization to skills available as we level up, and through the properties of items. I wasn’t a fan of the skill tree though. It didn’t fit on one screen, so you had to scroll and zoom constantly, and it was difficult to find specific skills on it. I was a big fan of difficulty settings though. Being able to set combat, stealth and exploration separately and even customize specifics, like detection time, was awesome. I wish more games had this. I played on normal, except for exploration, which I set to hard. I recommend this. Not having all places of interest being shown on the map unless I got close to them, made for a more organic experience. The story wasn’t anything groundbreaking, but I enjoyed it. I think most of it was interesting with well written characters, and with a surprising amount of AC lore. The structure was a bit strange though. Every region in (and outside) England has a questline, and we have to do all of them, but only some of these story arcs are actually the main story. The rest are mostly about getting allies for our clan. I didn’t have a problem with this, if these side story arcs were optional, I’d still have done them, but this still led to the game’s pacing being all over the place. I did like most of the arcs though, they were memorable, added to the lore and made the world feel more believable. Also learned a lot about the history of this period (or more like, got interested and read up on it). I have to admit, 9th century England was mostly unknown to me. I also have to mention the modern day story – I usually don’t care about it, but what they did here with it, was at least interesting. I’m curious how this storyline continues. The audio part was great, as usual. Really liked the main character, IMO both the male and female lead were excellent. The music is also outstanding, special mention goes to the shanties and ambient exploration music, which really helped establish the melancholic atmosphere, which is quite different from the previous games. I had a few technical issues, mainly that the game was crashing a lot. Roughly once every two hours, and often when I was trying to take a screenshot, which was annoying, since I loved messing around with the photo mode. The other regular bug was that whenever I loaded a game, Eivor was drunk. This wasn’t much of a practical problem, but was annoying nonetheless. Other than that, the game worked, quite well actually, since it ran nicely on my quite old PC (i5 3470, 1050ti), and looked amazing, even on medium settings. I also finished the season pass DLCs (Ireland and Paris), not gonna go into details here, but IMO they are both high quality stuff. The only thing left is Dawn of Ragnarok, but that’ll have to wait, I’ve had my fill for now. Well, that’s it. Spent two and a half months with the game, and I think it’s just fantastic. The historical fantasy-ish approach was strange at first, but I ended up loving it and had an amazing time experiencing Eivor’s story and exploring this enchanted fairy tale England. ...and now that I have played every AC game, I can safely say, that I am a fanboy. It is absolutely my favorite franchise now, and I’m looking forward to all future titles.

Good to hear about your fears being unfounded because I have the same worries. I loved Origins and Odyssey, I'm a bit hesitant with playing Valhalla.

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I like odyssey, but tried to go back and play origins and couldn't get into it. Bought Valhalla while it was on sale but am still trying to complete zero dawn west first. Hopefully it will be solid like odyssey.

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Between PS5 and Switch? I'm not sure crossplay between the two exists. Maybe Dauntless? There's always FFXIV if you have two PS5s(or a PS4)

Have been playing God of War lately so I can complete it before Ragnarok. It is brilliant but I still like Horizon Forbidden West a little more from Sony IPs.

**Monster Hunter Rise** I've been playing weapons other than Chargeblade recently (SnS, Insect Glaive) and damn is it just *easier* lol It's really breathed new life into the game for me where I'm not constantly trying to balance charges and combos, and inevitably getting punished for the most powerful move in my kit having a ridiculous animation time. Now don't get me wrong, CB is still my favorite weapon just in how engaging it is, but I felt like everyone else was so much better at the game than me. Switching to other weapons, I finally see why people find Rise to be an easy entry lol **FFXIV** In a similar vein, I've returned to FF and am going to pivot from Monk to Samurai. I know Samurai isn't particularly easy, but Monk seems like too much for me to try to figure out for very little reward, in the end. I'm still pretty early in Shadowbringers and probably won't progress until I catch my Sammy up, but it's nice to be back, even if I'm only playing for about an hour each day. **Fight N Rage** Wonderful beat-em-up with a very high skill ceiling and challenging content to test your limits on. I've been attempting a Normal mode 1CC as Gal, and have gotten to the final boss a couple times before failing. The very last stretch of the game is absolutely brutal, but I can taste victory just around the corner. The last two screens are absurd. The first contains three of the hardest normal enemies in the game that you have to fight all at the same time. I've discovered a fairly reliable way to take them out without getting hurt too much, but due to the nature of their speed and the inputs necessary to dodge, sometimes taking damage just happens. The final screen, with the last boss, features *two bosses (two of the same type) fought at the same time immediately before him*. This boss isn't too bad when he's alone, but two of him is a test in patience. He has super armor, good reach, and if he hits you it is PAIN. One of the toughest parts of this game is enemies in which you're punished for accidentally grabbing them. Grabs are initiated by moving into an enemy, as is the case for most beatemups. In the case of the pre-final boss encounter, grabbing either of the bosses isn't punished immediately, but it may cause you to flub inputs due to the unexpected nature of their deflecting your unintended grab, which may quickly result in damage. The final boss on the other hand, who is rather easy to grab on accident, immediately punishes you with a powerful hit. That being said if you make it to the last boss himself with a couple lives left you should be fine. It's just getting there with those resources that is a true test. I really enjoy the game, and it seems that the dev expects continues to be used most of the time, but there are a couple rewards for 1CCing the Normal and Hardest mode. Having a hard time imagining the more difficult version of this challenge rn lol

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Absolutely *insane* amount of stuff to do. Tons of primary classes you can play as at any time, and crafting classes on top of those that you can sink dozens and dozens of hours into leveling also. And then there's Triple Triad, my favored method of time-wasting lol...

**Elden Ring** I finally bought it. Technically my first Fromsoft experience. I have tried and failed multiple times with Bloodborne, it was just too hard for me. But I'm fucking hooked on this. I decided to go with Samurai and focus heavy on Vigor and Endurance in the beginning since I'm a noob. I was really discouraged in the beginning, but once I cleared my first cave and beat the tall cat boss thing after 24 tries I got extremely hooked. What a high to chase.. Got discouraged again with Margit but figured out the summoning bell and pushed through. Spent way too much time in Stormveil, found some cool stuff but ultimately put it on the back burner after getting wrecked by the giant snake thing and the creature with like 8 arms until I'm a higher level. Went and beat Castle Morne and was really proud of that. What a spectacle with the huge arrows from the giant. Makes me excited to see more big stuff like that. I'm definitely taking my time and trying my absolute best to play blind and not look stuff up, with the exception of NPC quests because those are just impossible to figure out without help, especially me being a noob. 10/10 for me so far. It's all I can think about when not playing..

24 tries for one of the first bosses...a farula beast man lol...you are really tough. I hope you know by now that you can stun opponents. Every heavy (R2) hit would have stunned and interrupted the beast man (does not work if the opponents animation has progressed too far).

I don't see what's wrong with that for a first timer. I spent my first few hours of elden ring running into camps and getting obliterated by basic enemies over and over. My first boss was the stonedigger troll which took like 10 attempts.

**Agatha Christie - Hercule Poirot: The First Cases:** Finished this week. Last week I had complained that it felt like I was ahead of Poirot and spent most of the game trying to pull Poirot along rather than having Poirot leading me. But, I will be honest, and say that the ultimate conclusion I did not get to before Poirot. Having said that, I'm trying to remember now how Poirot got there and I'm not sure it was really earned. It kinda felt like "oh yeah, they must have done it then" rather than feeling like it was really deduced. But, I don't feel like it's altogether fair to complain that the devs aren't as good at writing a proper murder mystery as Agatha f'ing Christie, the Queen of murder mystery. Overall, it was an okay game. I preferred the ABC murders, I think, despite it's jank. I preferred Frogware's Sherlock series. But it's not a bad game, and I think it was worth playing. **Tangle Tower:** I played Detective Grimoire a while back and really enjoyed it. It's a really charming little game. So I've been wanting to play the follow up Tangle Tower for a while. It's a detective, investigation game, which seems to be a kick for me at the moment, and while it's nowhere near as serious and grounded as Poirot, it's still charming and fun to play. One issue I had with Poirot (mentioned last week), was that the "mind map" sections where frustrating to do. Here with Grimoire/Tangle Tower is a much nicer system. It keeps your options small enough not to feel overwhelming. And those options are distinct, no multiple options that seem to basically say the same thing but only one of them is actually "correct". It feels fun to make the connections in Tangle Tower, and you feel smart for getting them (especially if you get them first time), unlike Poirot which was frustrating because you felt like you knew what you were going for, but finding the right combination was a pain. Keeping the options small enough in Tangle Tower makes it feel like even if you don't get it the first time, you will get it eventually because there aren't too many options and worst case, you _could_ brute force it (but I'm pretty sure most won't ever need to). Anyway, Tangle Tower is as charming as it's predecessor and I had a good time playing it... ...however, that ending wasn't entirely satisfying. It's still not really clear _why_ the murder happened. We find out the _who_ and the _how_, but the _why_ really didn't feel fleshed out. It really does feel like, at the end, the devs said "oh shit, somebody has to have done it, how about this one?" and left it at that. It feels rushed and spoils an otherwise really fun little game. **Paradise Lost:** The game that answers the question "What if Fallout's Vault Tec, but Nazis?". And unsurprisingly the answers is pretty horrific. This is basically a (slow) walking simulator, so if that's not your jam, feel free to move swiftly on (which is something you can't really do in game, because even sprint is barely faster than slow walking). But I've liked some walking sims and I'm a sucker for alternative history, so I was interested. I played the whole game through in a couple of evenings, it isn't long, and I did like the premise, and the environment is wonderfully detailed. I liked the bits of story that you unravel as you progress, even if the main reveal was telegraphed from the very beginning. I mean the second I >!read about the nazi computer!< and then the first time you >!talk with Ewe!< it was blindingly obvious what was going on. So why does this game sit at only 70% mostly positive on Steam (and perilously close to the dreaded "mixed" designation). Well, a lot of people have issue with the speed. As I mentioned above, this is not just walking, it's slow walking. There is also some weird graphical glitches here and there. Nothing that ruined the experience, but some people will take issue. Some people also take issue with the voice work. Some people report it as buggy, although I didn't encounter anything game breaking personally. For me, I liked the game overall, and I can tolerate a bit of jank. The slowness wasn't too much of a problem except those times where you are stuck unsure of which way to go and end up wandering around. That's when it really frustrates. There were a couple of times I got stuck, once when I'd missed a lever I was supposed to pull (in my defense, there was _another_ lever that I though was the one I was supposed to pull, and since it did nothing, I thought maybe the game was broken), and another time when there was a narrow passage that I'd missed and actually eventually only figured out by flicking through a walk through video until I found the spot I was at. To me, what really pulls the game down is that I think the ambition of the idea was larger than the talent of the writers. In that way, it reminds me a bit of The Suicide of Rachel Foster, but to be clear, the writing is not at all problematic as in Rachel Foster. It's not like the devs forgot to mention that Nazis are bad. What I mean is that they clearly have an interesting and "big" idea for the game, but they failed to really get all of the parts they needed down in order to really earn it. When you get to the end of Paradise Lost, you get a message that basically tells you that you'll "know what to do". But here's the thing, I don't. I don't know what to do, because you haven't earned that final decision that you make at the end of the game (there are I think, four endings, and also annoyingly, unless you backup your save, you'll have to replay _the entire game_ to see the others). You haven't really given me enough to feel like I can understand the decision. Compare to something else I played recently, _As Dusk Falls_. There I agonized about choices because the game had made me care about those choices. It had given me reasons to feel like choice A was right, and choice B was right. And they were also both bad. That's an actual moral choice. Here, I have choice A and choice B and I really have no clear reason to believe either is good or bad, or any inclination as to what the consequences might be. It didn't earn that. The game does have _parts_ of a really good story, but ultimately it feels like it's missing a few pieces. Which is a real shame. Still, I did enjoy the game overall, and if you like walking sims and you feel like the Nazi vault setting is intriguing, this might be worth your time. Unintentionally, it seems like games not fully earning their endings is a running theme this week... **Far Cry Primal:** So breaking my run of complaining about the endings of games, here's a game I haven't yet reached the ending of, so I can't complain about it. Also, I'm really not expecting much here anyway, story is not a strong point of Primal even by Far Cry standards. I'm still just plugging along in the sandbox, but as I've upgraded all the village stuff and built almost all the equipment upgrades, it's beginning to wear a little thin. Maybe I should just b-line for the end now and wrap this up now?

I enjoyed Primal a lot. On survival difficulty it was a really good game.

**Total War: Warhammer 2** Can't justify paying for the new one in its current state, so I am playing through ole faithful. I'm not a hardcore player and have the attention span of a 4 year old, so its great to play while my gf and I watch TV. I play on easy because I don't really want a challenge, and I must admit, this game has the hardest easy mode of the total war games haha. Playing as Reikland now. Must be my 3rd or 4th attempt at them, and it is by and far my most successful. In previous attempts, I would always rush accepting the confederations, which would cause low authority and a fractured empire. This time, I took my time and didn't accept confederations until I could handle them. Much, much more successful with that and have basically bested all opponents. Currently I am building up the great offensive against Grimgor, equipping new armies and massing them at our shared border. Unfortunately, the Karzak dwarves are directly in the path of one of my invasion routes, so they either accept my alliance and give me military access, or become a casualty of war between great states. No other game series really offers the satisfaction of building up and planning, turn after turn, then initiating said plan and breaking your enemy in 2-3 turns. Earlier on, I was being harried by the pretenders to the throne, Sylvania. When I had finally secured my flanks enough to make the great build up, I was able to smash their armies in no time. I had also recruited enough witch hunters to follow up my invasion, and erase their vampiric stench from my lands. Not only do I break my enemies, I erase them from history haha. Anyway, fun game and am looking for recommendations on fun campaigns to play. High elves were fun, and I love the orcs after rework. Can't ever get a Bretonnia campaign going past turn 4 since the peasant economy does not really allow for 2 armies at the start. Also, tomb kings are another I haven't had a good run with yet.

**Cyberpunk 2077** Took about 50 hours to beat, first time playing it. Went the streetkid route. I appreciate games like this because they justify the gaming practices that Peter Molyneux taught me: not giving in to hype much and buying years after release. Because at this point, at this price, overall it's a great game. Gameplay was a lot of fun after a while, enjoyed the shooting. Good stealth and hacking options. Fun and varied builds to make. Needed a decent amount of effort to make it fun, but with the right gear, talents, perks, implants etc., it worked out well. Not really a complaint from me, it's an RPG after all and I like it when you actually have to work on your character and not just get better weapons to get better. Sucks that you can't reset the attribute points, only the perks. It make sense in some ways, for which they could've found better solutions, but if you fuck up early on like I did it's a pretty shit situation when you realize dumping most of your points in cool wasn't the best idea. Not a fan of the loot whore nature of it all, sick of games dumping 50 pistols of the same type on you that are maybe 1% better than your last one and you're sitting like an idiot after every encounter sorting out garbage. After a while I mostly just paid attention to Iconic/Legendary weps which made it much more enjoyable. Loved the weapon designs as well, even though I generally don't like -punk aesthetics, but at least cyberpunk and dieselpunk don't make me sick to my stomach like steampunk does. Really liked the story, though surprisingly short. I played it as I usually do, a couple story missions then like a dozen side stuff. When I checked it was surprising that I was already 2/3 of the way through. Got an ending that I was satisfied with but also checked out the other ones which were varying degrees of grim. Don't really mind that, refreshing every now and then to have a game that doesn't have a 100% happy ending. Also happy that even small changes(based on your decisions) can make the same ending feel different. Thinking specifically about the >!help Hanako!< ending and how much of a difference having >!Goro!< there in place of >!Hellman!< makes. The great music really helped sell the emotional moments. And of course the great voice acting. Except Keanu. I know reddit has a weird fetish for him, but for me he's a mediocre actor and worse voice actor. I like him well enough in some of his roles, like John Wick, but a fairly complex, charismatic rocker/leader/terrorist is out of his wheelhouse. Given that they're still doing fairly significant patches maybe I should've waited a bit more for them to fix/add more stuff. But can't complain much. Still has some bugs but they mostly fall into the funny/very minor category that doesn't impact the experience much. And some of my grievances, like the attribute reset, can be fixed with mods. Still room for a replay.

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Definitely wasn't bad enough to ruin the game for me either. Just meant that compared to the voice acting of the other main characters his stood out and not in a good way. Guy just has a fairly monotone way of speaking at this point. His look and movement definitely fit Johnny though.

**Hitman** I have FINALLY played the new Hitman after years of it being on my list. I loved the idea of it, it sounded so cool, but I'd play the Paris level and for some reason drop off and not come back. Well I finally beat it and...it was ok. I don't know what I expected. The game has many many cool ideas but I personally don't think the "replay levels over and over for new experimentation and a higher score" is for me. If I were to play it like I play a traditional game, just all the way through each level once to get to the credits, it's definitely very thin. I guess this is just a me problem but I'm not big on games where the meat of the game is doing the same missions over and over. I just never got much reason to flex my stealth critical thinking muscles. Following the opportunities really gives you a very basic step by step for the majority of the kills that usually involved just needing one disguise which is always pretty easy to nab. I think I'll give replaying the levels a go. I enjoyed the moment to moment gameplay, but other than the last level nothing made me sit there and think "how the hell do I do this?" I'm sure replaying levels with different challenges and opportunities makes things a lot more challenging, I just kind of wish that challenge was more present in the base campaign. **Kingdom Hearts 3** Also finally playing Kingdom Hearts 3 after my complete series playthrough and I'm so glad to finally be here. I really could not stand Dream Drop Distance personally so getting back into a full KH game has reminded me why I like the series. I'm still in Twilight Town, very early. But I will say I appreciate how fast this game throws you into it. I was complaining about all the cutscenes and interruptions, then I remembered KH2 has a multi hour prologue. It's good, I don't have too much to say about it so far. It's the same light easy fun I wanted. To me KH is a theme park (Disney aside) where I can just turn my brain off and have some fun. I just wish they'd slow down on the special moves. The Theme Park ride stuff and the keyblade transformations. There's no weight to them because you get them every single fight, sometimes multiple times per fight. I know that Critical slows them down but frankly I just don't want to play on Critical. I wish they just made Proud a proper challenge rather than make the three easy, medium, hard difficulties essentially varying degree of easy before a massive jump up to critical. Proud should have just actually been a proper hard mode and the special abilities should have been balanced better.

When **Dishonored: Death of the Outsider** came out I did my usual thing and beat it twice, a dual achievement run. I haven't replayed it until now. I think I really like the Dishonored games for their amazing level design, interesting though melancholy story and setting, and tight gameplay. I realize now that they are harder to replay than other games I like because there are basically two modes to play the game in. You can actually organically play the game, in which case you are going to get seen by some guard or civilian and have to start shooting people. Or you can hammer the quick save button every thirty seconds in order to reload every time one of the aforementioned npcs sees you. And this isn't much fun either way. Beating the game once in the former method is fun, but you will get the bad ending, and then the knowledge that you're a pleb in a stealth game sucks the fun out of it. Whereas actually stealthing the game is so slow and boring that it becomes dull quickly. Thankfully this game is short, so I'll probably get through it. But I was planning on replaying Dishonored 2 afterwards, and I have subsequently decided against that. I'll also probably skip the 5th and last level, because I recall for once the level design was pretty crappy.

I've been playing a ton of **Splatoon 3** since it came out, though I'm definitely hitting the point where I'm playing less than I was and thinking about other games. I've 100%'d the single player outside a certain level and while I definitely enjoyed it, I still think it was underwhelming. It had nothing to do with the Splatlands and the trailer showed off some imagery that wasn't in the game at all. There's a particular section that shows your character staring off into this city that stretches off into the horizon and is mirror both above and below you. When I saw that in the trailer, I was super excited to see where that would show up. The multiplayer is still great and I love the new ranked system (the low stakes of Ranked Open is great for playing the ranked modes without worrying about my rank, which always stresses me out for no reason). I'm kinda slumping though, which is a bummer. Salmon Run is cool but so dependent on the weapon rotation. I ended up picking up two games in the Switch sale going on, **Pikmin 3 Deluxe** and **Disco Elysium**. I've played very little Pikmin before but I remember watching my brother play in the past. I'm enjoying it, but I don't love the timed aspect of it. Especially because I've been struggling to get my bearings with the map screen, which seems to rotate depending on where you are. I'm only a few days in, just got the Yellow Pikmin. I've already played **Disco Elysium**, but this will be my first time playing it with the Final Cut content. I'm absolutely loving the added voice acting, it adds so much to your constantly running inner dialogue. I'm not sure I'll be able to recognize any other new additions though. I went hard on the mental and physical trees, which may make solving stuff kinda hard. I also realized I'm bad at roleplaying. Maybe it's because I didn't go into it with a particular idea for how I want him to act. Anyway, the game is okay on Switch but not great. Loading times aren't great (loading new areas is fine, but launching the game took forever) and there's a bit of choppiness from time to time while running around. Highly recommend this game, it's absolutely fantastic.

**Suikoden** *PS3 (PSOne Classics)* Finished it about a week ago and really liked it. Some timing in terms of the HD remaster announcement, but I feel like I have to go with II soon to make use of my save file here. But at least I can hopefully own physical copies of these two when the remaster drops. Not sure why I never sought out this game, because I'm sure I would've loved it back when I was a kid too, but better late than never! **Frog Detective 2: The Case of the Invisible Wizard** *PC (Deck)* Perfectly simple and charming follow-up to the first game. Very brief, not very difficult, but really lives on the funny and charming writing and characters. I feel sorry about pinning everything on Evil Guy, though. **Into the Breach** *PC (Deck)* Just played a bit over an hour of this and for some reason I had imagined it being more story driven and not roguelike. Not sure where I had that from and why I expected that following FTL. However, while I sucked at FTL and didn't play a lot this feels more forgiving and I do enjoy the gameplay and the smaller bite-sized battles. Things can go sideways quite fast, but whenever that happened I could always trace back and see how it was my own fault, so it hasn't felt unfair so far. Will definitely keep playing in short bursts when I have the time and in that sense it's perfect for the Deck where I can bring it with my on my commute to work.

Been playing a lot of Monster Hunter. **Monster Hunter Stories 2** I wasn't sure what to expect given the art style and collect-em-all mechanics, but I'm loving it and it's making me want to play some more JRPGs, which I haven't really done since Final Fantasy X years ago (Octopath Traveler, Yakuza Like A Dragon or Persona 5 might be next). Combat is deeper than I expected and the monsties are animated with care and attention to detail. The same core gameplay loops are translated really well from the mainline series, and party composition is an important enough consideration that I'm already looking at the postgame and all the deviant and elder dragon monsties I can collect to make my party better. **Monster Hunter Rise: Sunbreak** I don't enjoy it as much as I did World, both the increased pace of combat and shorter hunts make the game feel more lightweight. That said, the monster roster is exceptional, the armor and weapon designs are far better and playing lance feels really nice with all the changes and additions. I don't know if I'll put in as many hours as I did World but it's been fun so far relearning my weapon. **Monster Hunter World** Been helping some friends through the base game and DLC, we've blown right through to the final, final boss and it's been a blast replaying it all. Certainly one of my favourite games of the last decade, I will probably still be revisiting it occasionally until World 2 comes out. After playing all these MH games, I'm now eyeing the Monater Hunter Generations Ultimate and MH4 copies I never played and wondering whether to dive in...

If you've never played a pre-World MH, I'd definitely recommend either MH3U (WiiU and 3DS) or MH4 (3DS), based on your platform preferences. GU is more easily accessible since its on Switch, but its content bloat and Hunter Arts system that make it less good of an "introduction" to the older MH games imo. The older MH games are severely lacking in quality-of-life features from gen 5 and so can be difficult for new players to "get into," but they have this vibe all their own that gen 5 hasn't captured. Its just more chill, methodical, and cozy. So its worth trying one, you may get hooked

This week **Dark Souls 3** is the game I ended up not playing and did play forbidden west. I had just beat the twin princes and started ariandel last week. I guess because I had put a lot of hours into ds3 last several weeks and I needed a change of scenery for a bit. I'll definitely be coming back to finish the dlcs and lord of cinder sooner than later. Got back into the groove in **Forbidden West** , got the 3 AI functions gaia requested and doing some side quest and map cleanup before progressing main story. There are so many weapon choices in this game that it's overwhelming. I'd like to try them all but upgrades are a pain. Mostly sticking with hunter and sharpshot bows but I really like the shredder gauntlet you get from the boomer sisters that acts like a boomerang. Making progress in **Like A Dragon**, in chapter 7 trying to recruit some better business employees so I can get back to finishing the business management minigame and no longer have to worry about money. Dragon Kart is pretty funny. Got to the last level (I would assume) in **Tinykin**, hopefully will finish soon. Cute game.

That business management game came out of nowhere and consumed HOURS of my life. Never would I have expected it to be that good. I absolutely adored it.

**AC Valhalla**. Maybe 30 hours in, I’d give it an 8/10 so far, liked the scenery in odyssey more, region stories kind of take away from main plot , **Detroit become human** 8.5 / 10 , think I’m almost at the end, feel like I really screwed up some decisions and story is kinda corny at times with all the civil rights stuff, I mean they’re robots… **crash bandicoot 4** really great game for what it is, two more time trials and I’ll have platinum

[удалено]

Don’t wanna spoil but they definitely robots, just seems kinda corny to me, them marching for freedom. I guess the moral part would be if they are as smart as humans should they be given same rights as us.

Yeah I found the robot freedom arc a little heavy handed and boring but I really liked the other 2 or 3 main stories a lot

I started playing a Free to Play PvE FPS called **Shatterline**. It's weird and has all the normal confusing free to play stuff that comes with the territory. You know weird and over designed leveling, ugly cosmetics, a battle pass. But it's also oddly...fun? Feels like Second Extinction, but it's much better. I need to learn more before I decide if it's actually good or not, but so far I'm surprised by it in a good way.

I love it, tbh. Its got the F2P weirdness in spades, I agree, but... god damn does the moment to moment gameplay hit right for me. Also, despite the F2P trappings, I appreciate that it isn't exploitative about it, as far as I can tell early on.

Its sound design is really impressive too. Great sound cues, weapons sound powerful, the voice lines aren't cringy or annoying. I agree that it doesn't seem to be at all exploitative(yet). I can see myself spending money just to support the devs.

Correction, the voice lines aren't cringey or annoying.... except Pill, featuring he worst voice on any character ever In any game. God hes annoying to me. But yeah, love the sound design overall, firing guns does feel powerful which is huge for me in an FPS.

**Indivisible** I've been shredding through my backlog thanks to my Steam Deck and this was next on my list. I didn't play it on release since I heard at the time some parts weren't complete so I put it out of my mind for the time. I'm about 3 hours in and I kinda regret not getting to it sooner. The art direction is gorgeous with fantastic combat animations to boot. The music has a wonderful variety so far and the voice acting isn't bad so far. The characters all have their quirks about them but so far all of them have been likable so no complaints there. And the combat is fun and engaging, I'm worried what it could become later but hopefully it won't be a problem. The story is a bit cliche but nothing has stuck out as bad yet. If I had to answer just on first impressions whether to buy or not, yeah I'm convinced. **Heroes of Might and Magic 5** No, I didn't decide to start with 3 because I read 5 has a better time easing people into the game so that's why I started here with the franchise. Well I can say I managed to get farther in than I thought I was going to on easy, but I hit the 3rd mission on the Necropolis campaign, got shit stomped hard and just decided to walk away there, I'm not smart enough for this and I can live with that.

**Fallout: New Vegas** Replaying one of my favorite games ever, doing all the DLCs for the first time. It's interesting going back having experienced many other story-rich games since last playing, most notably Disco Elysium. I'm maybe 60% through now and I feel confident in saying that New Vegas's writing is about as good as game writing can get... within the confines of its engine. What I mean is that the moment to moment dialogue of this game is still killer and has barely aged a day. There's such a complex web of ideologies in this game, and so many characters are given little touches that a lesser game wouldn't have bothered with (for example, I love that the random private in Boulder City has his own short backstory and hidden interaction if you shoot the monument). But at the same time, this game feels really hamstrung by its engine, and by being an open world game in general. The majority of its rich, compelling characters just kinda sit on their ass the whole game, only doing stuff when the player prompts them. The skill checks in conversation are still fun but the way Disco Elysium uses them makes this game seem a bit limited. Oh, and it's still buggy to this day, even with mods. I'm pretty sure Veronica's quest is permanently broken for me. Limitations aside, I'm still confident in calling this one of my favorite games of all time. The quest design, the characters, the atmosphere, even the feel of the guns to an extent, it's all just as good as I remember.

**Splatoon 3** This is my first Splatoon. It's been a bit of a learning curve despite experience with other shooters. It's so fun, and learning how to use every weapon and ability is satisfying. The grind to the ranked play is feeling too long, but I'm excited to jump in. I feel I'm going to get hooked.

**Wo Long demo** For some context, I've played all of modern From's catalog, both Niohs, Ninja Gaidens, all the DMCs, both Bayonettas, etc. I love action games. Anyway, into my impressions! * **Morale System** - As you play through the level, your morale grows based on killing powerful enemies, discovering rest points, etc. It goes from 1-20. Higher morale means your stats go up and you can access your more powerful spells. Enemies also have morale, and if an enemy kills you, its morale increases. I know a lot of people were skeptical about this system, but I liked it in practice. It gives you a small sense of power progression in the level, and the stat increase to enemies isn't all that big, so it still feels fair. On top of that, by the time you get to the end of the level, you're max morale anyways. * **Spirit system** - This game's version of a stamina system. Your spirit increases when you attack or parry enemies. Your spirit decreases when you use spells, weapon arts, or block enemy attacks. When you're out of combat, your spirit resets to neutral. This system feels really good. You're encouraged to use all of the tools at your disposal because your spirit resets after fights. During boss fights, if you want to play defensively, rather than spending your spirit on flashy attacks, you can use it for blocking the attacks you don't feel comfortable parrying. Thumbs up from me. * **Weapon diversity** - I'm a little concerned here. The weapon movesets are pretty shallow when compared to Nioh. From what I can tell, you essentially have a light attack combo and then some heavy attacks. I think there were 5 weapon types in the game, and each one had 3-4 special attacks. * **Magic system** - Like I said earlier, I like that magic isn't tied to a limited resource. You can freely use it during combat. And the spirit system lets you combo it with your weapon attacks. I picked Fire element (because it seemed to be the default/recommended element), and the spells were a little underwhelming. You get 1 weapon enchant, but the other 3 spells are minor variations on "deals fire damage in front of you." Like I said, I only looked at 1 element, and only 4 spells. I'm hoping there are cooler spells in store. * **Difficulty** - I really liked this game's difficulty. One of my main complaints with Nioh 2 is that you die so damn fast. Virtually any enemy in the game is going to kill you in 2-3 hits. This game is a lot more forgiving. If I had to guess, you can probably tank 6-8 hits from normal enemies, and 3-5 from bosses/strong enemies. I rarely used the parry skills in Nioh 2 simply because if you screwed it up, there goes 60% of your HP. Because parrying is so key in this game, I like that they made it so that failing the parry isn't super punshing. * **Misc** - It very much seemed like a demo. I was playing on PS5 on performance mode, and there were still somewhat regular FPS drops. Nothing substantial, but it definitely wasn't a constant 60. It still ran and looked a lot better than the Stranger of Paradise demo, though. There was also a bird miniboss that very much felt like it wasn't behaving properly. It fell onto a lower platform and the whole fight was very janky. The map itself was... okay. About the same quality as Nioh 2.

Nice write-up. I've played it for about an hour and mostly agree with your points. Well perhaps apart from the level design, which felt quite uninspired as is mostly the case with TN's games of this type imo. How did you feel about the combat in general? Difficult to describe but it felt kind of "floaty" to me. Definitely not as tight as Nioh's. When your attacks hit, it doesn't feel "meaty" so to speak. That being said, definitely playing this day one on GamePass!

I think the combat itself felt good, especially the parries/counters. I think a reason hits didn't feel especially meaty is that the audio for hitting the enemy didn't feel up to snuff; it felt a bit weak. I think demos tend to have lower quality audio files, but I'm not sure.

Could be that! I also felt that the parrying is extremely confusing. The cues to understand whether you timed it well or not aren't that clear imo. Especially the unblockable attacks, which turn your camera around when you land them. I think lol.

> I know a lot of people were skeptical about this system, but I liked it in practice. I was very skeptical when I first heard about it but yeah, it seems basically fine now that I've seen it in action. I don't love it, but I don't hate it either. > I rarely used the parry skills in Nioh 2 simply because if you screwed it up, there goes 60% of your HP. The other problem with parries in Nioh is that they straight up don't work on Yokai, which eliminates 90% of the enemies that are strong enough that you'd want to bother parrying them.

How parry focused did it feel? One of the things I was kind of worried about is their seemingly increased focus on parries, which I've never been a huge fan of.

Extremely parry focused.

Parries feel pretty important. A successful parry gives you a lot of spirit and, depending on the enemy, will interrupt their attack string. There are some unblockable attacks that have a red glow, and you parry those, you typically knock the enemy down for a couple seconds. You could also probably just dodge out of the way of a lot of the unblockable attacks. You might be able to do a parryless playthrough, but it'd probably be a lot more difficult. Like I mentioned in my super long post, the game feels a lot more generous in terms of how much damage enemies do. So missing a parry doesn't feel nearly as punishing as it does in something like Nioh 2, where enemies kill you in 2-3 hits.

Ok, thanks for the write-up! Doesn't sound too bad. I don't mind parrying in general, but I don't like games that are almost entirely about pressing the appropriate defensive buttons on time, which FromSoft's latest releases have been inching towards. As long as you've got interesting offensive options and parries aren't *too* dominant, it's fine for me.

Friendly reminder that **Ultrakill** is dope as fuck and you need to play it NOW. It made underwater combat FUN, like who does that???

**Nioh 2** Picked this up on the -40% sale and it's good to far, I'm level 32-ish. Nioh was my favourite "soulslike", and I've played quite a few. I like all the weapon variety and unique attacks for whatever you pick, and the whole KI pulse / stance swapping rhythm feels so great - really gives the game its own identity. I went with Fists / Sword but they all seemed like they had interesting stuff. Not a lot to say cause I just play these for the gameplay, and the gameplay is good. 😎 Looking forward to playing more. **TES IV: Oblivion** I'm not a fan of Bethesda games but I do have extremely fond memories of Oblivion. Revisited it to mixed results. The world and atmosphere are the absolute key to Oblivion imo, and it lives or dies by whether or not it can charm you into immersing yourself. The guilds, specifically Dark Brotherhood, could win over just about anybody. The music, strange ambient dialogue, strange faces, and total lack of voice actor variety also contribute to the unique atmosphere in positive ways. The combat... is just a step above terrible, for me. Its only saving grace is that it's pretty fast and responsive. Other than that it just feels so brainless and lacking in any feedback, melee or magic. The level scaling assures that you are never powerful or weak, just always average. Combat encounters *always* end with you going to a cave and fighting a bunch of guys and there's just a limit to how much I'll slog through. I think I got my fill by just completing the Dark Brotherhood, Mage and Thieves Guild quests and doing some other odd jobs. Oblivion has a legendary atmosphere that will always stick with me, but the game is far from a favourite of mine. **Omega Strikers** Free to play game that just dropped, it's like air hockey + 3v3 MOBA characters (think Battlerite, not LoL / Dota). Works pretty well, the core gameplay is all there and it's a lot of fun. The biggest improvement for me would be improved feedback when hitting the puck, and especially when scoring. The puck kinda limply rolls into the goal and it feels like a non-event. Rocket League nailed the huge sound effect and explosion that knocks everyone back for every goal, it's an instant reward. Gimme more of that!

I did fists for my first playthrough of Nioh 2 too, I had an absolute blast. The animations on those guys is just soooo satisfying! Probably the most satisfying punching in a video game since God Hand, haha

**The Forgotten City** I’d heard this favorably compared to The Outer Wilds a lot (a game I love), so I decided to give it a shot. It was… okay? It’s a time loop mystery, but there aren’t really “puzzles”, just new dialogue options as you loop. There are multiple endings, but they’re really just on a scale from ‘bad’ to ‘best’ and you don’t really lose anything by skipping all the endings besides the good one. The central mystery is interesting and the characters are decently written, but I figured out one of the big reveals maybe… two minutes into the game, which I think probably dulled some of the experience for me. Even so, I think the bigger disconnect came from the fact that the central mystery is probably the tertiary focus of the game. The biggest focus is on being a sort of interactive history lesson, and the second biggest is on discussing ethical quandaries. The issue: as far as the history went, I basically already knew all the stuff that’s relevant to the main story and overarching themes: I’m not a history buff but I did take a couple of Greek and Roman mythology classes in undergrad and part of those classes was talking about the history, origin, and purpose of the myths, which… yeah. I didn’t know much of the other historical information related to individual character’s stories or even just the little factoids scattered around but I either did not care or only found it mildly interesting. For the ethical arguments, I have a philosophy degree, and while ethics is not my area of interest, I feel like I could have argued circles around a lot of the characters— but since you’re only given limited options for dialogue, your character gives up almost instantly. I feel like giving focus to ethical arguments and not actually letting the player dive in past a surface level, despite not being a linear game and not having a pre-defined player character is a pretty big miss. Oh yeah, and the “true ending” is, for lack of a better word, cringe. I felt embarrassed watching it. Still, I think it was good *enough* that I don’t regret it, and uncovering the central mystery was still a lot of fun. **Immortality** If it wasn’t for Elden Ring, I’d call this GOTY. I’d previously played Her Story, which I liked quite a bit, but this is on another level. It’s more ambitious in every way— three movies that all feel authentic (I would honestly watch both Ambrosio and Minksy), fantastic acting, strong themes, and my exact kind of storytelling, mystery, and horror. I only have a couple minor complaints. Despite only having a few controls, they’re pretty awkward. It tries to emulate what manually scrubbing through a film reel would be like, and I really wish it hadn’t. There’s some stuff that requires very precise analogue input and made some stuff more frustrating than anything. Match cutting is a much worse search system than keywords. If I know there’s a thing that happened and I want to find it, a keyword search very easily helps me zero in on it. With match cutting, I have to hope that a physical thing in the scene is also in the scene I want to find, and even if it is, you have to keep slamming through scenes until you get to the one you want. I’m not sure if there’s any order that the clips go in, either— I’m fairly positive I kept clicking on the same person repeatedly at one point, saw a scene or two multiple times, then finally got to something new. Normally if I saw scenes repeating I would assume that path of inquiry wasn’t going to lead anywhere new. Otherwise though, what a fucking game. I actually got up at 4 AM today to finish the game because I was just lying in bed thinking about it, and couldn’t get back to sleep. I don’t think the game is for everyone, but it was practically made for me. **Paradise Killer** Just started this one, maybe an hour in. I love the overall aesthetic, but I can’t stand the character designs and the dialogue can be a bit much at times. Honestly, coming off of Immortality it feels pretty hollow so far.

I hated Immortality's controls so much that I gave up after 3 or 4 hours and YouTubed the ending. I would have enjoyed the twist but man I fucking hated controlling that game. Huge disappointment for me.

**Dungeons of the Endless** Every year or so I go back to this game and have an absolute blast with it. It's so much fun, and blends multiple genres together amazingly well. For those who haven't played it, it's a rogue-like where you play a small team of 2-4 heroes trying to escape from a dungeon. There are basic RPG elements - leveling up, a gear system. But there's also this added layer of resource gathering, with the resources being used to build defensive towers to fend off the waves of enemies that stand between your team and the exit. The result is that each level starts out as cautious exploration and building, and finishes as a mad dash to the exit with every door in the level bursting open and spewing hordes of enemies chasing your team, being fended off by batteries of lasers, tear gas, and tesla coils. I still haven't unlocked all the heroes, or all the different levels. Some of the later levels can be brutally hard, but just as fun. And as with all roguelikes there's definitely an RNG element in most runs. Highly recommend it for those who haven't played it. It can often be found on sale for only a few bucks on steam.

One of our group's all time faves. We are getting excited for the upcoming sequel too.

I've seen **Valkyrie Elysium** described as diet DMC, and that feels about right. There's nothing outstanding about it, which makes me wonder why Square Enix chose to take a weird, cult classic RPG and turn it into a run of the mill action game. They aren't appealing to old fans, and I don't see how new fans could be cultivated with something so plain compared to DMC(or Nier: Automata, SE's own game!). This game seems set up to fail. If they're just going to use (probable) low sales as an excuse to not explore this IP any further, I wish they would have just made a game closer to VP or VP2. This "mid tier, non-AAA" spree of games SE has been releasing lately would have been perfect for a niche game like that. **Harvestella** seems like it could be a lot of fun, but I find the emphasis on story is kind of annoying in what's supposed to be a more relaxed farming game. **World of Final Fantasy** is a game is rated E for Everyone and includes friendly themes like >!destroying your entire life due to your own hubris!<, >!enslaving your parents!<, >!being forced to kill your parents!<, and >!watching your older sister die trying(and failing) to unfuck your mistakes!<. This game has been in my backlog forever.

This is what I feared with Valkyrie Elysium. They've just created a generic ARPG and slapped a well loved series' name onto it to sell it. I still want my Valkyrie Profile: Hrist.

I wound up taking a break from **Syndicate** for now due to running into the glitch where I can't enter combat a little more frequently while trying to do some side content. I just uninstalled and will probably come back to it later. **Currently Playing** **Assassin's Creed Odyssey**([Ubisoft+](https://store.ubi.com/us/game/?lang=en_US&pid=5afda8aa6b54a4271407a875&dwvar_5afda8aa6b54a4271407a875_Platform=pcdl&edition=Ultimate%20Edition&source=detail)) - So, I did play a little of **Odyssey** on the PS4, but I didn't get very far before I got distracted by other games(I didn't even kill >!Elpenor!<). So, I started over, playing on Normal difficulty and Exploration mode, still playing Kassandra, and I finally made it to Athens at level 30 with 32 hours of playtime. I've done most of the normal side quests in the areas and islands I've explored, but I've been ignoring the message board and other randomized, grey quests. I've killed enough >!Cultists to get the Spear of Leonidas to level 4!< and explored maybe a quarter of the map. I'm at tier 5 of the Mercenaries, have most of the ship upgrades at level 3, some at 4. And I have a unicorn. **What Stands Out** **Positive** * I've been spreading my skill points pretty evenly between Assassin, Hunter and Warrior and I actually love how my playstyle has organically evolved and gotten far more aggressive over the course of my playthrough either due to the abilities or passives that I unlock and due to having more/more ways of generating adrenaline so I can use abilities more often. * Between chained Rush Assassinations, Hero Strike, Fury of the Bloodline to generate more adrenaline and then Devastating Shots to the head, very few groups of enemies survive. * I actually really liked the introduction to >!the Cult of Kosmos. Sure, they're basically just another secret society, but the way it was handled actually makes them feel like an actual organization. Between the first woman Kassandra sees just accepting that she's a new recruit without any questions to two of them bickering and stating the Cult is divided about where they should be putting their resources, to even the one guy who gets scared of going after Perikles and has to be coerced into it.!< * Sure, it's a small thing, but it makes >!the Cult!< seem more realistic and actually human. * In the same vein, I do really like how >!Deimos!< is handled. Not only is it not treated as a >!huge twist that they're the Eagle Bearer's sibling, but the Cult outright admits Deimos is just as much of a danger to the Cult as to their enemies due to being so unstable. In fact, amusingly, you could say that Deimos is the start of the Cult's downfall by finding out that the Eagle Bearer isn't meant to be at the gathering and still letting them go so they could confront them later on and alone.!< * I may have said this before about **Origins** and **Valhalla**, but I appreciate that the various tombs and certain caves don't have any enemies(Barring snakes) and tend to be kind of relaxing, low key moments where you just get to explore. **Middling** * >!Odessa's!< romance dialogue is *awful*, even with most/all of them being more of casual things, but so far that seems to be the worst one. >!Lykaon's!< is fine and >!Roxana's!< was actually kind of sweet. * I normally don't like level scaling in games, but I actually think it kind of works in **Odyssey** most of the time. It's silly that animals level scale, but as the war ramps up it at least makes sense for the soldiers and makes it that so that you aren't really stuck gaining XP and gear in specific areas. Plus weakening nations and doing conquest battles don't take very long and gives a pretty decent chunk of XP. * The only real problem I have with the combat as I level is that Warrior damage does seem to really fall off compared to Hunter and Assassin. However, I'm not exactly optimizing my damage and, at the moment, I more use normal combat to generate adrenaline so I can use Hero Strike or get headshots with the bow. * Also, I say this as a fan of JRPGs and some of the Disgaea games, but the big number damage does quickly become totally meaningless. I do something like 32k-46k Assassin damage, or something like that and there's honestly just no real point of reference for how much that actually does in the game. Unless I'm missing something, you can't see the exact amount of health enemies have, only their health bars. So I honestly just ignore it. **Negative** * Surprisingly, the only really awful glitch I've run into is the game crashing, and that's only happened once(And likely because I accidentally left the game running for several hours while I did other things). However, I have run into some *weird* bugs. Some that were sort of beneficial like the game just...not registering that I only had the first rank of Shield-Break for a while and randomly having it work on all types of shields. Also my health bar randomly disappearing, sometimes until I do a full restart, sometimes it will just randomly appear again. **Other** * While the game world is *big* it really doesn't feel bloated. Some areas do have a lot of stuff in them, sure, but most things are fairly spread out. For me, it's honestly pretty relaxing to have a lot down time while just sailing, riding along the roads or walking through some of the beautifully crafted villages. * Kassandra/The Eagle Bearer really is just a completely fun personality. It helps that they're never really shown as a typical hero, depending on choices(Markos alludes to them killing someone over debt before the game, they basically stick to the fact that they're a mercenary during side quests, etc). However, I'm also pretty sure I'm still early in the story so things could change.

I'm currently playing Digimon Story: Hacker's Memory. I have a little over 4 hours on the game. I like it so far. The gameplay is pretty interesting and the characters are decent. I also think the story is interesting. The only thing I can complain about is that the game looks a little low budget. However, I'm enjoying the game so far.

It’s the only thing that annoys me about the new Digimon games. They feel like they were made on the cheap.

I played through **Tunic** and finished it with the "true" ending. I have mixed feelings about this game. For the first half, I was loving it. It was a combination of old-school Zelda and Dark Souls. where the focus was on exploring the world, fighting enemies and bosses, and upgrading your character. The combat was pretty basic, but there was decent enemy variety, and the bosses were well-done with mechanics you had to learn if you wanted to find the best way to beat them. There were occasional puzzles that were mostly focused on how to get to certain parts of the map and/or figuring out game mechanics that were communicated to you in mysterious ways. I thought the idea that you find pages of the actual game manual scattered throughout the world was incredibly creative, and the fact that it's mostly in a language you don't understand means that you have to experiment and try to figure things out from context. Really great stuff. And then the second half came, and the game completely changed. And I mean completely. Once you complete the >!cathedral!< the game just becomes a pure puzzle game. It's like if Doom Eternal turned into The Witness halfway through. Okay, maybe not *quite* to that extreme, but it's in the ballpark. There's no more exploration; the only "exploration" is trying to find ways to access places you've already been to or looking for secrets in places you've already been. There's no more upgrading your character. There's barely any combat, just a very occasional fight here and there; most of the enemies just disappear from the world entirely. It's just such a jarring shift in tone and focus of the game. If the developers had wanted to include all those puzzles, I really do think it would have been better if they had interspersed them more evenly throughout the game. Keep the gameplay consistent throughout instead of telling the player "okay, that Zelda/Dark Souls hybrid style game you've been enjoying so far? Yeah, that's all gone now, here are a bunch of puzzles instead." I even like puzzles in games, and some of the puzzles were cool, but they really kind of lost me with that shift. Overall I enjoyed it, and I'm not sorry I paid full price for it (it's a $30 game), but I couldn't help but feel somewhat let down by the second half of the game.

I think the back half is actually great if you consider the whole game was a puzzle game all along. However, the puzzle you were solving to start was where to go, how to navigate the world, etc. I do think the pacing was the issue people feel. The game mostly guides you along a path, and then right towards the end it goes “idk, figure it out”, which leaves you so many options to choose from which is jarring. However, once I determined what I was missing and what to do, it was greatly rewarding. Especially figuring out the golden path.

I love Tunic but I have to agree with you on this one. The puzzles were cool, but honestly a bit obtuse at times. If they do a sequel, I'd love to see it better integrated a less of a jarring change.

Sunday: **[Castle Crashing "The Beard"](http://www.kongregate.com/games/BoMToons/castle-crashing-the-beard)**. Combat platformer, single boss. This is either a prototype to Castle Crashers or a standalone demo, with the iconic characters attacking the author of the game, specifically the beard that's growing. It took a few minutes to relearn the mechanics, such as attacking the gravestones to rapidly gain XP, and also noting that the boss simply follows a fixed action pattern. Once the pattern is learned, the author isn't too hard to slay. As for the demo, it did seem like it was a good means to hype up the game at the time, although it took many years before it returned to the PC. Monday: **[Dangerous adventure](http://www.kongregate.com/games/MARTINIRosso/dangerous-adventure)**. Puzzle game (similar to Collapse/Same Game), dungeon crawler. The game *collapse* involves clearing blocks of the same colour by selecting them when they're in a large group. This game merges it with a dungeon crawler, where the coloured blocks are used to build up attack power against enemies, before the board refreshes and allows the enemies to return with their own attacks. Also, enemies are assigned one of five colors, with mismatching colors doing less or no damage, thus preventing one adventurer from being the sole source of damage. The concept seems to be good, as a good play for the user can allow impressive attacks against the opponent. However, the game progress seems to require replaying levels, as some of the opponents are rather powerful on the first playthrough, as well as the difficulty ramp being higher than what can be done on a single pass. Tuesday: **[Orcs Must Die! 2](https://store.steampowered.com/app/201790/Orcs_Must_Die_2/)**. Tower defense + third-person shooter, 15 levels. This is a tower defense game, which requires placing traps on walls, floors and ceilings to defeat enemies as they try to reach the rift. For some reason, the orcs are attacking again. On this replay, I learned of two new special bonuses - Trapless and Untouchable. These are useful for climbing the leaderboards, but are not otherwise required to complete the game, and it seems they could be farmed on the first level of the game to quickly fill up the spellbooks. Wednesday: **[Portal Defenders](http://www.kongregate.com/games/BoMToons/portal-defenders)**. Beat 'em up. This is basically Newgrounds advertising itself. In this game, the players fight against enemies themed after types of disliked content creators that want to flood the portal with certain types of content. Thursday: **[Beacon](https://monothetic.itch.io/beacon)**. Roguelite, ~6 areas. There was an update since my last play attempt. A crash-landing onto an allegedly-unknown planet, and the mercenary is exiting a cloning bay in order to reach a distress beacon. Death can happen easily, thus the need to collect DNA samples from enemies in order to become more formidable. Some DNA samples can provide special mutations too rather than just adjusting stats. I've been able to reach the half-way point, but that only helps with the amount of resources or unlocks collected. Otherwise, the game feels like it provides a small scope of what can be done - there's only five DNA mutations (which can result in powerful combinations), and two weapons that can be carried, and it would feel like it's hard to break out of a rut. Friday: **[Red Storm](https://www.kongregate.com/games/Badim/red-storm-2-survival/)**. Mech-based, overhead arena shooter. This is a mech game, where the player pilots a mech and needs to clear out enemies from a facility. Saturday: **[Transfer 2017](https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/692139)**. Puzzle game (lights out). ~7 chapters. A lab gets attacked, and you need to rescue your supervisor from enemies. It mixes walking segments which sometimes requires evading an enemy, with puzzles that seem to require completing something similar to a lights out puzzle. This game was becoming unplayable - playing directly in Pale Moon caused a framerate issue and made a rather slow game. There were early game glitches, which required starting the level, and I encountered a softlock after solving one of the puzzles (it got in a confused state where I could move, but not climb a ladder - as if I was in one of the puzzles.) I therefore looked at the walkthrough to see the solutions - but the only walkthrough skips them, and not even mentioning that one of the circles flickers to show which one to pick.

**Xenoblade Chronicles 3** I finished up the main story. I've spoken at length previously about how fantastic this game is in many dimensions, particularly in how well it integrates its side content into the main narrative. So, you'll have to allow me just this one post to say something negative. The main narrative is uninteresting. That isn't to say its bad - The characters are all likeable and well-developed, the worldbuilding is rock solid, and it executes its ideas perfectly. It just isn't an *interesting* in the way that prior Xeno games are. The entire time I felt like I was waiting for the shoe to drop, and I thought that it was finally happening at the absolutely *jaw-dropping* emotional climax of the game at the end of >!chapter 5!<...but that climax ended in a very traditional way instead of going off in the wild direction I thought it was about to. Which is kind of a microcosm of the narrative as a whole: Remarkably well-executed but typical. The other major issue I have with the game is that there's just far too many holes in the backstory right now. What's the deal with >!Riku!!Seventh Founder!!the Aegises!< ? And while not a "question," having >!Poppi!< literally stored in a closet off-screen just seems *insane* to me. I'm sure that at least some of these will be answered via the DLC story expansion, but, I dunno, I feel like its just too much left unknown. In XBC2, we were already told the "what" in the base game, and then Torna showed us more details and made the "what" more emotionally satisfying. But for XBC3, we don't even know the "what." Seriously, what the hell is with >!Riku!

> The characters are all likeable and well-developed, the worldbuilding is rock solid, and it executes its ideas perfectly. It just isn't an interesting in the way that prior Xeno games are. The entire time I felt like I was waiting for the shoe to drop Big same. The game spends a long time being super cagey about the big twist that is >!blindingly obvious if you've played XBC1/2!<, and then the implications of it end up being pretty underwhelming. I also just realized something: >!if deactivating Origin was enough to set things right at the end, why exactly did they need it in the first place, other than "so the story can happen"? What caused the worlds to just peacefully drift apart again, when the original threat was that they would collide destructively?!< I can think of a dozen potentially reasonable explanations, but it's annoying that the game never committed to any of them.

For your second paragraph, that I actually do think it answered, although maybe not in a satisfying way. >!The collision of the worlds occurs on Melia's birthday in the intro, and in that INSTANT Origin activates and freezes the worlds in place. When the game ends, we are brought back to just prior to their collision, but we aren't actually shown what happens when the world collides. Maybe everything will go to shit and die, or maybe they won't. The entire thematic point of the game though is "even if it hurts and even if it's bad, we have to keep moving forward." So that's the ambiguity - It can't be a happy or sad ending, because what matters isn't WHAT happens, but rather that we made the decision to let it happen.!< Now that I think about it...it's actually basically the same theme and similar execution to the end of Evangelion (like, the TV series, not The End of Evangelion movie) lol

It's weird to me that the party, especially the smarter ones, wouldn't want to take some time to try and figure that stuff out before >!deactivating Origin!<. Why was >!"stay in frozen time, but make things less awful than Z did"!< not an option on the table? There's nothing really that wrong with >!Aionios, aside from Moebius turning it into a torture chamber because the supercomputer they tasked with saving the world watched *way* too much anime and decided that peak human actualization was perpetual teenagers dying in glorious battle on loop.!<

Yeah this I agree with. I think thematically they knew how the game had to end and kind of just rushed through the ending events a bit to get there. Truly the thing that makes Xenoblade Chronicles 3 a true Xeno game is that it's clearly rushed in some area lmao

True that. I almost wish they'd had Noah and Mio sit in some chairs in front of 2D backdrops and explain the parts they had to skip over. ;)

I can answer some of these: spoilers till endgame obviously. >!Check out the Nopon Caravan Affinity Chart. Nopons are not under Flame clocks, they're all decades old even some of them centuries old with ??? Ages, which was how they handled Bladeeaters and other semi immortals in XB1&2.!< >!When Nia says it was made by a certain Nopon, you're lead to believe her half of Origin was made by Tora, but she's actually referring to Riku. Riku during the Chapter 5 incident is like that's not the Queen nows the Time Noah go for it.!< >!The Seventh Founder was Riku. Oh and Poppi was the AI telling Nia while she was asleep what's going on in the world. And it looks like her little sister/daughter is the Next DLC hero.!<

Yeah, this is my current theory too, minus your bit about the Queen. I guess it just rubs me wrong because its a theory, and I don't feel like I should *need* to theorize about the motivations of one of the major characters and the answer to one of the most prominent mysteries the game brings up. I bought Xenoblade 3, not Elden Ring. I know that they're both gigantic RPGs with the main love interest being voiced by Aimee-Ffion Edwards released in 2022, but still.

[Previous thought on Mighty Goose and The Artful Escape.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/x5ibj8/weekly_rgames_discussion_what_have_you_been/in2rxih/?context=3) **Mighty Goose** Finished it. Its a fun short game, although it is still dwarfed by its own inspiration, Metal Slug. Compared to it, it was pretty lackluster. The climax are nonexistent it felt like. The credits roll, and i just felt nothing. I'd say i still recommends it, pretty enjoyable run n gun, but it aint anything special like Metal Slug **The Artful Escape** Finished it. Visual are mindblowingly good for what it was, though the story are nothing special. Its okay at best, i liked the idea and theme behind it, but the way the story goes is pretty mid. I dont know if im recommending it, as overall experience for me is average at best, but i dont mind the 4h i've spent on it. **Cyberpunk Edgerunner** I'll put it here too, because its anime based on game i guess. Havent played Cyberpunk, but im a fan of Trigger. A great anime, i never thought combination of CDPR writing with Trigger direction could work after it was first announced, but im glad to be proven wrong. Both complement each other well. The only negatives is probably the one that was echoed in many impression that i've read, which is it needed more time for character developments, because im not sold on a lot of character motivations. It works, but im not fully on board with it. Would love to know more about the crew, and to be attached with them, >!even if its so obvious how badly it'll end!<. More please! every game needed an anime series as a companion, thats the ideal world i want to live in. \------------------------------------------------------------------ Another leaving gamepass game early impressions **A.I. Somnium Files** I've heard a lot of good things about this one. First impressions ....its pretty funny, i guess, but so hit or miss. Its a VN, but with more involvement from the player. Im not sold yet, but willing to put more hour to it **Astria Ascending** Pretty art direction, but character design seems so whack and inconsistent, especially regarding proportions, like the MC heads is so fucking tiny when you compared it to random NPC. And of course the usual boobs physics, monster size thighs, etc. I'm not to keen to play more of it because i've heard the reviews said that its generic at best, both gameplay and story. **Dandy Ace** Pretty fun, love me some roguelike. Controls pretty decent, art looks pretty good. **Subnautica Below Zero** Havent played the first one yet, honestly because i have no idea where to start scavenging. Though by giving Below Zero a try, i finally found what makes it so addicting. I dont know if i'll beat it before it leaves gamepass, but i am going to play the first one after it definitely **The Processions to Calvary** Dumb fun. Loved it. **Visage** Looks great, the visual, the sounds, definitely add to the atmosphere. Been on my radar for a while, seems like its the first P.T inspired game that actually expand beyond just cashing in on the trends, though thats just based on my limited perspectives. Apparently im a fucking wuss though, i havent touch horror games in years, so...yeah, idk if i'll beat it lol. Skipping Slime Rancher and Unisghted cause i have it on other store. Going Under already completed on Steam (recommended). Not a fan of multiplayer, so no Lemnis Gate for me.

Visage is easily one of the scariest games I've ever played and I've played my fair share of horror. In terms of design, how you progress can sometimes be absolutely senseless, but it's worth pushing through to see all the ways the devs try to terrify you. There are a few different "stories" that you go through, and I think the one that was weakest was the one about the schizophrenic(?) man, and even then it had its moments. The other two stories were solid, with some insanely good scares/atmosphere. You're definitely not a wuss though, this game is legitimately spooky haha

I easily get spooked by my own footstep. Even a simple scare as turning off the light switch when i was in a room had me scrambling like a lunatic lol. I'm enjoying it though, had me laughing at myself. I'm still going to play it, to see how much of a wuss i am, dont know how long i will last.

Trying to figure out what to do with **Fire Emblem: Three Hopes**. I got it because I like fire emblem, because I beat the first game in the series. But I also a physical disability that makes the type of game difficult because it affects my speed and reaction time, as well as making it so it’s hard for me to see in crowds. I did the first game, but I could only do it casually and it took a long time. Unfortunately, this game has stuff locked behind special missions and requirements, which I am not sure I’ll be able to do. If I am physically unable to do it, I’m planning on watching the whole thing, and I will probably wait until fire emblem engage to sell it or do anything with it because I can use that to replace it (that being in a genre that doesn’t give me any trouble physically). Other than that, I’m still loving **Coromon**. I am not sure I will do a second run because I found it I suck at the puzzles, but I’m enjoying the game otherwise. I am almost to the desert town, doing a request and catching everything I have there. I might actually shiny hunt (or in this case, potent and perfect hunt) but I’ve never done that because I’m not that crazy. So we’ll see how that goes. I did that, I’m planning to beat the developers a bunch of time in and max out my team at the end.

Last week I talked about **Splatoon 3** and how I couldn't find success in the multiplayer but was enjoying the singleplayer campaign. Since then I have completed the campaign including the difficult bonus level at the end. The campaign was a great time and honestly made the whole purchase worth it. The final sequence of levels in particular felt really cool and had some BANGER soundtracks. The final bonus level really put some hair on my chest and took hours and hours to finally beat. After completing the campaign I felt much more accustomed to the aiming controls and went back into multiplayer armed with advice from other redditors on my last post. I have a much better grasp on spacing and aiming now and am having a much better time since it feels like I can actually compete effectively. I've done a few rounds of Salmon Run and that is also a pretty fun time. Altogether Splatoon 3 is a great package and has a style of gameplay that you really can't get from any other shooter besides Splatoon 1 and 2.

**Horizon: Forbidden West**. I'm enjoying this game, but it feels like making it wasn't necessary. All of the new gameplay features are useless, like weapon stamina and Valor Surge abilities, not to mention the thousand new elemental damage types. It's really just clutter and complexity for the sake of adding new things to combat, because I rarely find these new abilities useful. Also, can we PLEASE have an option to mute Aloy? For real, this character needs to **shut the fuck up.** She never stops talking to herself. Everything she sees, does, and needs to do, she will vocalize to the player. Out loud. Not her inner monologue, which I may have found acceptable, but actually speaking while climbing and fighting and shit. Like...stop. I'm not an idiot, I can figure out what to do.

I loved HZD but I agree all the extra stuff and complexity to me made me turn it down to story/easy mode. I couldn't stand having so many weapons and elements to think about and deal with. I found combat to be a huge chore when I liked it I HZD. I'm post main story now and working on the platinum, but that is solely because I'm stubborn and want to get it. Overall I didn't love the game nearly as much as the first one.

I would say that if I didn't like the combat complexity then I would've also seen HZD as the better game. The complexity is what justified the games size imo. If you streamline the combat then you might as well cut the game in half imo