whatchu playing now

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

I finished uncharted 2 and started uncharted 3 and I like these games! It is a little like playing Dragon’s Lair sometimes but I never had enough quarters for that back in the day so I’m happy. The shooting sucks and I wish it could all be cut out.

Are Tomb Raider games like this?

The OG Tomb Raider games were like 75% platforming/puzzle-solving and 25% bangbang, I feel like the Uncharted games flip that ratio (though I only played the first). Haven't played the new trilogy, which may itself be influenced by Uncharted and the like, but I just got them on Steam.

Crypt of the Necrodancer (2015) - excellent roguelite that's also kind of a rhythm game. Fits in great company with Spelunky and Rogue Legacy. Took me a little time to get used to the beat matching, but eventually I saw how it freshens up the genre a bit and makes it generally more exciting moment-to-moment. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll ever be good enough to beat the game with the third story character (Aria) that's a one-hit death character... including if you miss the beat. I should probably get the Zelda version, right?

Think I will try tomb raider then! Pretty sure I have them from some ps+ at this point

the new Tomb Raiders definitely ape the shooting-gallery mechanic of Uncharted and I could do without them but there is still a nice amount of platforming. not quite enough actual tomb-raiding for my tastes, mind. My favourite part of the original games were the large, eerie halls where you had plenty of time to contemplate the puzzles that some ancient builder had set for you.

Yes! Those are the fun parts of uncharted. Plus the tourism aspect.

i played a 15 minute minute demo of the first Uncharted not long after release and decided i wasn't up for buying a shooting-waves-of-faceless-black-people simulator, i'm sure the series got better tho

hmm I don't remember any black people, enemy or otherwise...which is also indicative of something. the first one was less good than the next two, but it's also the basic template that the others employ, with dumb waves of shooting. the stories are very dumb but engaging enough combined with the travel element (exploring ruined crusader castles in Syria or Renaissance chateaux in France, for example). women are represented as well as the men are, joining in the exploring + slaughter as equal criminals. visually they're as good as the first couple ACs, in suitably exotic & dense locales with lots of climbing, good sense of space, of exploring massive unknown and vaguely occult settings. if it were a movie I'd shut it off but as a ludic experience it's satisfying.

they’re the first games i ever played that made things easy to the point of feeling like a successful badass right from the beginning, rather than a novice fuckup who needed many hours to get good. i think even everybody’s tennis has a steeper learning curve. but there’s something to be said for that! just sheer fun/thrills. it’s just too bad about the repetitive shooting galleries.

the shooting reminds me of those olde-fashioned shooting galleries like they have at Disneyworld, with things popping up here and there, and that's...nostalgic. that's the best I can say for the shooting. but it's not ""that"" much of the games I guess. they're less repetitive feeling than AC games in their murder sprees, where the hand to hand combat always came down to the same button mashing---or maybe you were actually good or patient enough to do stealth.

speaking of stealth, I bought a metal gear (phantom pain?) when I got the ps4 & might finally give it a spin next.

finally wrapped up thimbleweed park. i had a lot of fun playing it but yeah i had to lean on hints a lot more heavily in the second half than in the first.

Phantom Pain is fucking amazing and one of the top five games of this generation for sure.

it's fucking excellent.

nice, I'll give it a try finally!

Please Note:
1) As with all Metal Gears, you will need to commit to about 45 minutes to being force-fed beautifully rendered, interactive, nonsensical backstory before you can play. Don't let that put you off.
2) You're gonna want to balloon everything. Go with that.
3) Creative answers to every problem are available with a bit of experimentation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1pN8TvupNn4