whatchu playing now

i have noticed the bear traps several hundred times already, it turns out

i am reminded of the birds, in any NES game

all respect to that, because i fucking hate those birds in ninja gaiden, and i fucking love those birds

Any luck finding the save lady yet?

yep! i also managed to find the name of the shell (through she save lady) and add a couple upgrades. no luck in any of the directions yet. or rather, moderate success in several of the directions, but kept dying. it's fun, though! like dark souls, it's fair (most of the time)

You may want o start with the miniboss behind the castle past the swamp. The game is well organized, so take the path of least resistance.

the one that's behind all the beartraps (fuck!) ?

it did seem to be right in my face, i should probably take that on

back on my slay the spire bullshit

played 80 hours of breath of the wild over the fast 3-4 weeks and wow was everyone not kidding about how incredible it is

*past

i gave Just Cause 4 a few hours because it was free and it's not great. i remember thinking the first one was a lot of fun, but something about the expansion of capability in sequels just goes to tedium right away

aww I have played 2 & 3, gonna play the freebee 4 just 'cause...I like blowing things up. I'm expecting a certain tedium but I don't know other series that allow me the same easy havoc with heavy weaponry.

I loved the second one, right up until I was something like 94% complete including finding all the items etc but one oil rig bugged out and stopped me from accomplishing my dream.

The third was trash enough to make me stop being interesting in the series.

I liked the dumb semi-Mediterranean vibe & blowing things up. I may have liked it more because I bought an edition with dlc which included a weapon that made lightning come from the sky & blow up everything even faster.

thinking about going back to MGS Ground Zeroes tbrr

Zs how is mortal shell treating you?

i need to go back! having a great time with it, but only 3-4 hours in. i think i'm at the first boss, basically. lots of fun small stuff happened, and i like the system for using items, incentivizing actually using things. it works well for me because i'm always saving up items and not having fun

i had kind of a meltdown at work/life all last week, so i'm crawling back up ((down?)) work mountain today and tomorrow, but I hope to be playing some serious videogames again soon

They will wait for you!

bumped into someone playing 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim on twitch last night and i think it's kind of perfect looking? very undiscussed but a likely winner? I may pony up the sixty bucks i was saving for cyberpunk for this instead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhq-0aWa7GU

Yeah that game looks cool. Hard to believe it's from the same team that did Dragon's Crown

I haven’t found a review of it that isn’t an insane rave. Seems like the perfect “if you like these kind of games, you’ll love this game” game. I just don’t know if I like this kind of game!

read quite a few people saying that they put it on easy to quickly get through the not very good gameplay sections to get back to the very good story sections

It made Polygon's top 15 games: https://www.polygon.com/2020/12/14/22166004/best-games-2020-ps4-xbox-one-switch-pc-series-x

i bought it when it came out but i haven't played it yet because i'm lazy. everyone in my social media bubble loved it. looking forward to it

there was a Consolevania review that I wasn't sure was serious but ultimately was super gushing and got me interested. bought it during Black Friday sales for the backlog

Finally playing the copy of Astral Chain I bought one year ago in a dying suburban mall. This game is hilarious. The control scheme takes getting used to, as does controlling your pet robomonster. I kinda wish the characters weren't cops, but the fact that they're imaginary universe anime cops makes it a little easier to take.

Also, while this kind of frenetic 3rd person DMC-style action isn't usually my thing, I'm getting into it

i need to play more of that game, i loved the intermission stationhouse wandering/chatting.

Learn Chess with Dr. Wolf (iOS/Android): Really great chess tutorial

my 9-y-o's pretty into it

I'm looking for some 2D Zelda-like games with no random or procedural generation. Anything good recently? I think the last ones I played were Minit and 3D Dot Game Heroes.

I am currently playing the Spyro Reignited games on PS4. I never got into the originals because the first one gave me serious motion sickness. These ones don't, thankfully. I'm also playing some idle crap on my PC and phone (Synergism, Ordinal Markup, NGU Idle, etc.)

Oh, and there's a connection: There was an entertaining stage in Spyro 2 based on the fetch quest from Link's Awakening. Maybe that gave me the urge for more Zelda.

there's that Blossom Tales game which is straight up a 2d zelda clone if that's what youre looking for

Blossom Tales is really good! I'd recommend it as well.

Other Zeldalikes I'd recommend:

The Count Lucanor - Maybe less of a Zelda since there is no combat, but a nice short horror game that is actually a bit scarier than its cartoon-y art belies.

Anodyne - I actually haven't finished it yet, but it is very dreamlike and almost Lynchian.

anodyne 2 is even better though it adds a 3d overworld so its not purely a zeldalike anymore

I played some Anodyne. Great stuff so far! The others mentioned go in my wishlists.

Anodyne was a lot of fun. I bought Blossom Tales and Count Lucanor on sale.

horace - got this for $2 on sale. i'm pretty tired of the emo 8-bit aesthetic but this is a very good platformer. challenging but not impossible, fluid controls, little minigames that break up the platforming.

ori & the will of the wisps - prettier than horace but similarly challenging in a satisfying way. looks very nice.

ring fit adventure - i am very sore

just finished Find Satoshi
https://findsatoshi.com/

I just finished Miles Morales: Spider-Man. Great semi-sequel to Spider-Man as expected. Funny though, how both this and The Last of Us II came out in the same year and both have major set-pieces involving battles in ruined museums, complete with playable flashbacks to better days. Almost like there was something in the air over the last few years nudging the writers make a broad statement about science and history and the dissolution of such institutions...

Gone Home (2013) on the Switch, a creepy little horror story that I read about after finding that Emily Carroll did the art for it. It’s on sale on the UK switch store, very very slow burn. Wandering around the house piecing together diary entries, expecting something horrible to happen all the time, cortisol sky high. Very early in, it’s beautifully done for the kind of thing it is.

I wouldn't exactly call Gone Home a horror story, though it does play with those tropes. It's a great game to be sure. I loved collecting all the tapes!

Inspired by a podcast by some acquaintances of mine, I've found myself dipping back in to SKYRIM, which is not something I expected to happen in 2021! unfortunately, I only have it on Steam and it taxes the hell out of my little laptop, even with the lowest possible settings. I've toyed with the idea of getting it on Switch, but the cost is balk-worthy.

I've also been getting in to Slay the Spire, finally. Definitely a compulsively playable game.

oh christ slay the spire is consuming. do we not have a thread yet? i want a thread.

xp yeah I’ve already realised how inaccurate that description is, but it’s dark and unnerving to play nonetheless!

never even occurred to me that gone home would code as a horror game to some. makes sense I guess. great game

and slay the spire is everything. nails but

yeah I was bringing my thinking about the artist to it, she does horror stuff, as well as my general fear of the whole Marie Celeste scenario. Great game though, loved piecing together the various storylines gradually.

I also assumed Gone Home was a horror game until I finally played it in recent times. The images you see from it, description and logo all make you think there's going to be murder or ghosts involved. But really it's not, it's more like, a nostalgic, period-piece family indie film? But yeah, very cool. Makes me interested in trying other first-person-walk-'em-ups.