whatchu playing now

Psychonauts is pretty classic, I'd say - a lot of it is the writing, but it's also got some great level design (Lungfishopolis, Waterloo World, Velvetopia, and especially the Milkman Conspiracy)

it's an all time fave for me but another i wouldn't want to go back to

agree in that it's great but hard to argue going back to at this point, unless you REALLY love 3D adventure stage setpieces and don't mind schlepping through a lot of mediocre/bad platforming to get to the beautiful bits

also the best shit is almost all in the second half (considerably!) so it takes some time to get to it

just in case anyone else missed the coint and plick rollout, like me:

POLL is YOU: Thirteenth Coint and Plick results (best games of 2019)

I took Darksiders 2, many thanks!

i bought thimbleweed park on sale for $8 on the switch and have been enjoying it. a very faithful homage to lucasfilm games point-and-click adventure games, made by the creators of maniac mansion and secret of monkey island, with all the fun/frustration/terrible humor that implies.

i really enjoyed the first half of it and hated most of the 2nd half

ha well maybe i'm not halfway through yet.

it's my favorite of the many lucasarts nostalgia adventures.

now that i can focus on literally any other thread...

what me playing now:

- Control. If I had played this sooner it would possibly have ended up on my disappointments list. I'm not far yet. The art direction is obviously next level but the dialogue, the shooting, the overwhelming linearity/killbox/lackluster pick-up-and-read environmental storytelling... I want to like it but so far it's leaving me cold. Maybe I'll change my opinion later in. I hate that you unlock the throwy power and they immediately give you a boss who automatically dodges throws. Wtf is that. Just unlocked evade, which like... how you don't get that in the first 30 minutes is beyond me. Anyway.
- Antimatter Dimensions. It's free and it was on the rollout, so I figured what the heck. I guess it'd be a cool way to teach kinda how dimensions work? Shame all of the "jokes" are pepe trash
- Animal Crossing. I've never had CBD but I imagine this is what it feels like. My heart rate has never been lower, this is a delight. Unfort introduced it to my partner tho so uhhhh who knows how much more I'll get to play lol

yes you have to get further in - i was also disappointed in the beginning but it opened up

i shall trust you and keep going (i guess i would've anyway, i bought it haha)

I'll just keep playing with more ~hope~

First time i played it, I gave up before the real game actually starts. You need to at least get to the challenges.

Cat Quest. Pretty nice and cute little game, like a baby Diablo with Paper Mario-style.
I thought it was mobile-focused based on its look, but it's definitely geared towards pad control.

hello fellow gamerz, peace and health to you all.

i finished Outer Worlds; i'd give it a C+. it scratched a bit of the New Vegas itch. some of the design decisions, idk, there's 3 kinds of ammo and like 150 kinds of food. pretty good v/o tho, thankfully.

i finally gave up my daily challenge gold streak in read dead online. if any new content rolls out i'll get back in the saddle (yes sorry). after i could afford to put together 10 outfits i liked my motivation kind of fell off truth be told.

i beat control over the weekend (it's great) and just started outer wilds. died twice so far. the controlling is a little frustrating so far but i'll stick with it.

i was thinking i'd try outer worlds afterwards maybe... there's always lots to play

The controls in Outer Wilds (the names of these games...) are sensitive but you get better with practice, generally.

i need to come up with a mnemonic or something for these titles, any time someone mentions one or the other i have to look it up

Outer Worlds has an “R” for “reminiscent of Fallout”

Outer Wilds has an “I” for “I do not know what happens in this game”

Wilds is for "whoa, 22 minute reboot, that is wild!"
Worlds is for "oh come on, what in the world"

outer wilds -> breath of the wild -> majora's mask -> it's the one with the time loop

I bought a Short Hike earlier and I downloaded and played through it after dinner and I wish there were more charming games like this that you could play through after dinner

— it has visual style in a way that i think is quite uncommon these days; when i made it to the top of the mountain i actually felt something in a way that i don’t get from any more spectacular vista on a game with more ‘modern’ visuals
— breath of the wild ish climbing mechanics in a small tightly designed area instead of a huge sloppy one isn’t something i realised i wanted to play but hey glad i did. plus the controls are better!
— if only Celeste had been this well written

— it has visual style in a way that i think is quite uncommon these days; when i made it to the top of the mountain i actually felt something in a way that i don’t get from any more spectacular vista on a game with more ‘modern’ visuals
— breath of the wild ish climbing mechanics in a small tightly designed area instead of a huge sloppy one isn’t something i realised i wanted to play but hey glad i did. plus the controls are better!
— if only Celeste had been this well written

Astral Chain: two hours of complaining that it kept holding my hand and i wanted no more cutscenes and to actually be allowed to play, and then the first real action sequence kicked my ass completely. I found myself ‘button bashing’ and felt ‘old’.

button mashing, my old friend, mashing.

is that a uk vs us thing, huh

i bought death crown because i thought it looked cool and after half an hour ago i am willing to say, yes, it does look cool

https://www.sockscap64.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/90270_j0fv8fkzcxkfnha9s8oa.jpg

Rimworld pretty neat

Currently making my way through Wasteland 2 (the so-called 'Director's Cut'), a solid early Fallout-esque experience that excels in no department whatsoever thus far. Then again, I'm always harder on post-apocalyptic sci-fi settings – generic fantasy was my first CRPG love, and nostalgia for its charms supersedes all else.

A Normal Lost Phone/Another Lost Phone: Laura's Story.
Interesting, very short mystery adventures composed entirely of snooping through a discarded phone, apps, notes, emails, texts, and so on; interesting because of the heavy topics involved though I don't want to spoil.
Both had a good story, though the puzzles in the sequel were crazy obtuse and I resorted to just using a walkthrough for the whole thing.
Recommended if you like a text-heavy mystery that could've been designed 30 years ago (you need to take notes).

*takes notes*

Torchlight II (2012) - pretty solid Diablo clone built on its predecessor which I enjoyed muchly a decade ago. I haven't played any new ones since that era (I think Titan Quest was before), it's probably super dated. It was designed to run on netbooks of that era, so fair low-tech, but fun and good. Needed a hot key to make your pet run around and pick up all your trash items, though.

Gone Home (2013) - one of the earlier, more noted "walking simulator" games in the decade. I liked it, good story and voice acting, and admirable commitment to recreating a 1995 suburban household, but this is probably not my genre. The actual walking almost made me nauseous, and the slow speed got more annoying as I went through. The total game length was about right. I went back after finishing it to hear the audio diaries I missed.

(Now is the prime time for backlogs.)

it's 2020 and I'm playing my first ever MMO, FFXIV ... and I'm enjoying it?
all things that turned me off about MMOs before are still kinda true: deathly slow, meaningless busywork, battle systems that are just "watch the meters", fucking fetch quests, walk all the way over there talk to someone and walk alllllll the way back etc.
but somehow these things are now like a balm for my quarantined soul, a warm heroiny cocoon to sink into for hours at a time.
of course it helps that the super extended demo (up to level 35!) is free. I might even end up buying the fucking thing.

everyone seems really positive on that one ever since they rebooted it, and its fans claim it has some of the better writing in the FF series, but i'm still not gonna play a mmo ever again

I hear they are cutting a lot of the filler quests out of FFXIV, making the main story take less time to complete.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/details-on-ffxiv-5-3-arr-revamp-13-of-quests-removed-from-2-0-2-5-increased-exp-from-msq-flying-in-base-zones-crystal-tower-raid-now-required.191034/

Finally an Antifa simulator?

https://kotaku.com/tonight-we-riot-devs-wanted-to-make-an-unapologetically-1843321038

played it a little bit, going to take some getting used to the controls which are a little more awkward on switch lite

love to liberate comrades

fwiw it's not antifacist per se as pro-worker

mb I definitely should not conflate different leftist groups.

disco elysium now out on mac???

holding out for switch

which if it's out for MAC can't be too far off...

I finally picked up an Oculus Quest to dip my toes into VR, with the aim of easing my way into some super, SUPER basic development via Quake mapping and sideloading the VR mod onto the headset, and eventually upgrading my PC to handle HL Alyx through a link cable setup. I'm trying not to spend too much on the Oculus store since they're stingy with discounts compared to Steam and I need to recoup the cost of the headset, so in the past couple days I've just been getting to grips with the Superhot VR demo (kind of a joyous experience, though I don't know if they'll be able to replicate the puzzle dimension of the non-VR version's levels) and just started Virtual Virtual Reality (a stunning first 30 minutes or so; I have high hopes for this one).

splatoon 2

it’s great

restarted witcher 3 a week or two ago. it's fun and a slog at once