whatchu playing now

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.

it was the progenitor of that whole subgenre, pretty influential game

You are definitely meant to think it is something of a horror game and is more effective if you think it is

I don't know about the first half of that, but I agree that "it's not a horror story" is an unfortunate spoiler.

The developer commentaries are a) very good and wide ranging (including several from Corin Tucker of Heavens to Betsy / Sleater-Kinney) and b) take very nearly to listen to as the game to play.

they were good! I blew through a couple hours watching them on YouTube today. Getting Corin Tucker was super nice

doom 64. the babies crying is fscked up

Steadily progressing through Ori 2, which is still definitely more challenging than the first, at least at times. There was a big deal made of getting it to run on the Switch, technologically speaking, but it doesn't seem to look or play (as in, gameplay) significantly different from the first one, on the surface. Some invisible under the hood specs must be different, though, because it definitely runs worse. Frame rate drops, a few crashes here and there. Nothing that impedes or breaks the game, but you can feel the console struggling. Still a beautiful, great game.

Well this is interesting, if you are a creative type.
SuchArt_Creative_Space

(it's a free demo at the moment)

very cool

ha, is that title intentionally in doge speak?

Pretty sure I am almost done with Ori and the Will o the Wisps, but man, the (I assume) final level is just driving me nuts. For those unfamiliar, a lot of levels don't end with a boss, per se, but a chase, requiring you to use all of your abilities and reflexes to outrun something like a giant wave, or lava, or some monster. The last one in Ori is this giant worm, and it is just soooo unforgiving. Just need to do it again and again and again, and every time you mess up it's all the way back to the beginning. Came close to beating it once, but it requires some serious breaks from the stress.

dang, that sounds fun! i still haven't played an ori

They're really quite beautiful. Great games.

i was reading about the new dead cells DLC (a game i haven't played in a year or so, but which was in still in development and i'm excited to check out now), and it mentioned it in the same breath as hollow knight, hades, and ORI! i think i was mixing up ori with a different game (okami? which i've played, so i don't know why...)

anyway, sounds pretty cool. for someone who is unlikely to play both games, should i just start with the sequel? i don't know mind missing out on any story or anything like that

just play the Definitive Edition of the first one, its probably available on the cheap and its a classic "indie" game at this point

Hmm. I say start with the first game. Though the gameplay of the first and the second is very similar.

Lol beat the worm, but no, not the end. Looks like I have another level of tricky platforming to go.

Lol beat the worm, but no, not the end

Posts out of context.

has anyone delved into nerts online yet? spent a few hours playing with pals and im hooked

also i just hit a (the?) huge difficulty spike in yakuza 7 and while i'm THRILLED abt where the game is going im worried im gonna hit a wall here. not ready to grind in an arena to progress past the nastiest tag team of all time

Finished Ori 2. What a lovely game, with I guess a predictably bittersweet conclusion. Just challenging enough on normal mode, and like its predecessor it's incredible to look at and listen to, with a really effective environmental theme. It's always satisfying to me when excellent design and gameplay can result in an effective and truly emotional payoff.

Next up: RDR2 (I think)

anyone here have geforce now? thinking about buying cyberpunk and playing it that way through an old mac

Anyone else tried the Moonlight app? I used it to stream Destiny 2 from my PC to my iPad and it worked great. Much better than Steam Link which is kind of buggy for me.

Playing Gris finally. I almost want to recommend it on the ILM ambient thread.

i don't know if i'd call it ambient or new age but it's definitely very good at being the video game manifestation of whichever thing it is

Exactly my point! Enjoying it so far.

I started Cyber Shadow after a friend kept telling me to play it, and guess what it's great so far. Very much a Ninja Gaidenvania. The original NG is one of my favorite games ever, and the mechanics of this feel great to play. Difficulty really cranks up after the first boss, but as far as I can tell there isn't any penalty for dying, so it's easy to get back in there.

The Messenger might be a good one to try too. It takes itself less seriously than Cyber Shadow appears to. Fun jump mechanics.

anyone here have geforce now?

Yep it's been my primary gaming method over the last year and it's pretty consistently great in my experience. Just about to transiation away from it actually, because I managed to convince work to get me a new laptop which also happens to be a ridiculously overpowered gaming machine. But still, gfn's only real downsides are all the things you can't play through it. The ones you can work really well though.

Anyone else tried the Moonlight app?

Yes! Just stared with it now, in line with above gaming pc upgrade. I've got a cruddy kindle fire tablet and a cheap 3rd party bluetooth controller to go with it but those plus Moonlight mean I can play Forza Horizon 4 with zero lag and visuals all set to maximum on the loo in bed. It's pretty amazing really.

started cyberpunk via geforce now last night on my 2014 MacBook. so far so good

Oh yeah, I didn't know the Messenger had a PS4 release finally, it would be a good companion piece after I finish this retro ninja game.

Maybe the 'story' in Cyber Shadow is trying to be serious, but it doesn't get in the way, it's mostly tough action sequences trying to get to the next checkpoint, I'm into it.

Well not saying there's anything wrong with however serious it is or wants to be, but Messenger by contrast is definitely light hearted. Cyber Shadow appeared more gritty from what I saw.