whatchu playing now

OK, right from the start "Bioshock 2" offers a clever inversion of the first game that's immediately drawn me in.

yeah, Bioshock 2 is a banger for the most part. Many people consider it superior to the first one. Make sure the version you're playing has the Minerva's Den DLC in it as that is an essential part of the experience.

It does! Is it integrated into the game or do I play it separately/after I finish?

It's standalone, so you can play it separately after you finish the main campaign.

Not that you asked Josh, but from my own personal experience

Skip: ghosts, gta, horizon (horizon is borderline into the next category tho)

See if you like it: Witcher, tomb raider, Skyrim

Play: intriguing indies, resident evil (everything)

Currently playing Pikmin 4. It’s my first one and damn is it fun, cute, stylish, addictive, a joy, what I want from a game. Glad to have a series I can now dip into if I’m in a gaming lull (i.e. never).

Also just installed 20,000~ emulated games onto my steam deck and playing the very fun game of scraping all their info/box-art while never playing more than 3 of those games. Hording is a very fun hobby if you can confine it to the digital realm

Thanks for the tips! My backlog is actually probably four (or more?) times as big, but it's always good to learn what people gravitate toward.

My “currently playing” log is about the same. It’s a serious problem but it also means I literally never have a backlog because I just play the first hour of every game I have an interest in. I blame ps1/ps2 era demo discs for this habit

I'm jealous that you get to play Res Evil 4 for the first time.

Yeah, I'm looking forward to it! I did have a GameCube, but back then I think I only played a bit of it, and maybe a bit of RE Zero? I'll be mostly going into all of them blind, and by them, I mean *them*, since I know I have 2, 3, Biohazard and Village already, and will get RE4 when it drops down to $25 or so.

Brotato

inspired by Vampire Survivors but with a more tower defense vibe. It has a very well designed stats system where you sacrifice some stats to improve others, and that allows many different play styles to work. You can maximin the stats, or you can, say, only use knives and sacrifice your range stat. There's some stats that do nothing when negative, so you can decide to have no hp regeneration and boost the stats that come with a reduction in hp regen.

My only gripe with it so far is that the weapons are boring -- there's knives and guns, and not much else. In VS I rarely used the ice/fire wands because they were boring, and in this game half of the weapons are guns which are a lot like them.

Re: Bioshock Infinite being a dud - I don't think that's the consensus. It's 93 on Metacritic (user score of 8.6, so it's not just critics), and it's in Wikipedia's list of *List of video games considered the best.*

I loved all three and would rank 'em: Infinite > Bioshock > Bioshock 2.
Bioshock 2 starts off a little slowly (if I remember correctly), but it warms up - and it has a lot of tension/dread, like when you harvest ADAM and that's like a signal for everyone to come rushing at you.

I might get the collection ($10 on the PS store right now) for the DLC, which I've never played. And it'll look better than the versions I played on Xbox 360.

Yeah, Bioshock 2 has been a lot more tense than the first one so far. Harvesting ADAM is kind of crazy, but I just had my first Big Sister fight, and it was tougher and more intense than anything in the first game.

I would recommend playing the original re4 over the remake Josh. It’s a seminal game, great to play for “gaming history” reasons, but it’s also a far more interesting game than its remake. I’m assuming you were talking about the remakes with 2 and 3? If you’re doing those (which I recommend), 4remake is just a reskin and the original comes across as much more interesting in its gameplay, style, story and graphics.

This is not to put down 4remake! It’s still a great game, but the original is just something special

Currently playing FF origins: Strangers of paradise. It is a great game that got some slander at launch due to lame reviewers not respecting its B-movie humour (and essential aspect of any great game) and some technical limitations (just buy a better graphics card or drop your resolutions geez). Apparently this plays kind of like Diablo? But I have no trouble is stating it is 1000x the game diablo is due to the fact that Blizzard as a company has no soul and this is bloody FINAL FANTASY made by TEAM NINJA. like how did this not blow up!
You get to hack, you get to slash, you get to level, you have a job system (the greatest system in all of gaming), you get great cutscenes, you get to min, you get to max, you get to press the "o" button to do a doom-esque glory kill which turns your enemies into crystal. absolutely top tier stuff, 10/10, not kidding.

Also I did just finish ff1 and the whole modern actuon b-movie retelling of its plot with the most one-dimensional characters ever is actually really charming. Seeing those NES villages blown up in ps5 graphics and travelling through the world map, it’s very very nice

i should try that one again, i shelved it because it ran really poorly on my 2017 gpu but maybe they've fixed it, it seemed more like a bug preventing the lower graphics settings from working than actually being that gpu intensive

Yeah sorry I was being facetious about the whole graphic card thing. I'm playing with a 2020 rtx 3080 at locked 120fps, max graphics, ultrawide 1440p, no DLSS, no dips. I would think you could get at least a stable 60 with a 2017 card? If it still struggles give this mod a try.
https://www.nexusmods.com/strangerofparadisefinalfantasyorigin/mods/4

I wouldn't say the RE4 remake is a reskin,there are some substantive differences both in how it plays and in different segments and boss fights. But I do agree that it's way better to play the original first, and I appreciated the new one for the novelty and new content after playing the original to death.

Ha, it seems unlikely that I will play the original for $10 when I'm waiting for the remake at $20, especially when I have the other recent Resident Evil games and have never played any of them before, but maybe!

I meant RE4make is a reskin of re2/3make (which are all great, though fundamentally the same game).

Oh right, but isn't it more like they remade RE2 & 3 in the style of RE4?

(I haven't actually played the 2 & 3 remakes, maybe I should)

Dave the Diver: fun! Colorful!

i wanted to play this new game "Rougned Odor" but it turns out to not be an actual game :(

Oh man I got Vampire Survivors on the Switch yesterday and played it for HOURS

So far Bioshock 2 is a lot more challenging than the first game. You need ADAM to level up, but the only way to do that is to take down a Big Daddy, which uses up a ton of ammo and health. And then you spend your rewards to get more ammo and health, but to actually harvest the ADAM you need to take down a bunch more enemies, which ... uses up more ammo and health. I'm progressing along nicely, but the game seems designed to keep the advantages of my weapons and health at a sort of equilibrium. Also, I guess enemies heal in this game, too.

Just finished Venba, the Tamil cooking visual novel. It's amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good story, but for the children of first generation immigrants it's incredibly powerful, I'm kind of a teary mess right now.

Sounds great, love a good VN, putting it on my wishlist

I think I'm almost done with Bioshock 2, might have liked it more than the first one? It's really well designed, imo, especially when it comes to resource consumption. There are some fights I've gone into that left me low on absolutely everything, from cash to ammo to health, but it doesn't take that long afterward to build the stores back up again.

I was out with covid all week and only yesterday did I think to finally buy myself Shin Megami Tensei V. So much wasted downtime

Yeah, Bioshock 2 was great, loved it. Now I need to play the Minerva's Den DLC.

Maybe I'll try Resident Evil 2 next?

RE 2 remake is excellent. Recommend it.

Yeah re2make is really something. If you’re emunshre (and own 3), you could start with that one as it’s a much shorter game (like people complained it should have been dlc, which is unfair). Slightly more action oriented, with 2 being more survival/puzzle oriented. Both great games!

*unsure

Restarted The Messenger ahead of Sea of Stars arriving on PS Plus today - still fun.

Very excited for Saints Row to drop on Plus next week too.

oh Sea of Stars is today? might as well give that a try.
have heard that the dialog in English can be clunky, although that could give it more of an authentic 16bit JRPG feeling

Just finished Venba, the Tamil cooking visual novel. It's amazing and I recommend it to anyone who wants a good story, but for the children of first generation immigrants it's incredibly powerful, I'm kind of a teary mess right now.

One quibble that might be specific to me: while I really like the art style, the cartoonish quality keeps me from really getting a sense of what the dishes actually look like, and so I haven't been hit with the same "I would eat all the foods" reactions that others seem to have -- and maybe that's partly because I'm quite unfamiliar with the cuisine!

I am too hungry a person to play that game

Started Resident Evil 2. Was convinced I was going to die during the tutorial, this is going to be a total trip, and probably would be too stressful if it wasn't often b-movie silly.

after feasting on baldurs gate 3 i wanted something a little more manageable so i flew thru DUNGEON ENCOUNTERS and i gotta say that's a good lil game, highly worth it if it's on sale and you wanna spend a couple dozen hours on a head scratcher that you'll walk out of saying, "ah you know what, dungeon RPGs, I get it now."

my biggest complaint is that the puzzles in the game (which are optional, btw - you'll get a clue for a coordinate, and if you go there and press A, you get an item) start approachable and fun and end completely ungettable without a FAQ or a doctorate in mathematics. (also the last "math puzzle" is a reference to the movie close encounters, so if you've never seen that, or even if you haven't watched it like a week before playing, GOOD LUCK!). it really feels like those later puzzles are designed with the intent of "let's get the internet to work together to solve these" more like an ARG than an individual test of wits

I would totally play that Tamil cooking game, but yeah the cartoony graphics definitely don't tell you what the food is like

the decision-making process for 2/3 of the game is more 'what is the least awful choice I can make' than 'what is the best choice I can make'.

Revisiting this comment as I try to finish Pentiment myself (months long layoffs between plays), which has been a struggle because I think of all my failed checks (spoiler alert: being a medieval peasant sucks!). Also I hadn't been paying enough attention to the game's map, meaning that I missed a lot of side quests and attic probably also made the checks harder. But now that I'm in act 3, and have figured out the game mechanics, and am taking the time talk to more of the townsfolk, I'm feeling a lot more invested in the story.

Still mad about Bert

the original Q

And I just finished it. Very well told story, and Eco unsurprisingly gets a shout out in the end credits (Name of the Rose of course, and Baudolino too). I also got a pretty grim ending, having inadvertently maneuvered things that lead to the death of an NPC who really doesn't deserve it.

Biscuits, remind me which one is Bert?

Claus Drucker's adorable scamp son who doesn't make it

I will be playing Saints Row (2022) for my sins

Given Dark Souls DLC a little break to get on with some premium gaming.
So now I'm switching between Armored Core VI and Baldur's Gate 3.
Slightly annoying that they've been released at almost the same time really.

I haven't had much time to play either, although what's quite nice about ACVI is that I can play it in bite-sized chunks. I can take 20 minutes to do a mission, then go do something else. I was expecting ACVI to resemble Sekiro before playing it. There are definitely some hints of the Soulsborne games in there; but perhaps strangely the industrial aesthetic and mercenerial missions most remind me of Death Stranding.

Similarly, Baldur's Gate is giving me Red Dead Redemption 2 vibes in many places, especially the campsite section with the various characters you can speak to.

Saint's Row really is as bad as everyone said it was lol