whatchu playing now

It's kind of amazing how well that game nails everything and and yet how so few games have come close to doing what it does so well. Re: bloat, I never got around to finishing it (will start over at some point), but I have heard some people complain about its length.

Finished Streets of Rogue tonight on co-op. fun stupid chaos.

Are you talking about alien isolation Josh?

Alien Isolation rules. I never finished it, maybe a little longer than it needs to be, but super cool game. Love how it really goes for the original Alien aesthetic.

xpost Yeah, played a bunch of it when I bothered with the Switch. Really well balanced and paced, imo, both in terms of progress and threats. A lot of thought put into it

I'm only up to chapter 5, just saw there's 18 chapters. If it stays this high quality throughout then I am fine with that length? The chapters are a perfect bite size; it is literally replacing reading a book chapter at night for me right now and it fills that role well. I'm sure I would not enjoy it as much if I tried to plow through it in a few days though.

I do like when the alien franchise leans on the whole "can we trust A.I? no!" angle. Happy it gets an early entrance in this game

void stranger is game of the year, easily

Just read a review and that sounds intriguing & pretty insane. Hope it comes out for PS.

I bought Somerville, by one of the people who made Limbo/Inside, came out a year ago on PC and Xbox but just out now on PS.

Looks neat. Saw this with a review:

Playdead have reached out to say “There is no overlap between the creative teams and leadership making LIMBO and INSIDE and the creative team and leadership making SOMERVILLE, in fact the only human overlap there is is executive producer Dino Patti who was not a creative contributor to LIMBO or INSIDE. I understand why you draw parallels between the titles, but I can assure you that there is no overlap between the creative teams and that we have no involvement with the SOMERVILLE project.

Huh yeah, kinda crazy since it looks extremely Limbo/Inside in terms of style.

And there's another game by the person who actually made Limbo & Inside? Looks really cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xub7_FhlWws

Chants of Senaar, the Moebius tower of Babel game, is pretty chewy in a good way! After a very brief tutorial, you're thrown into the deep end as far as figuring out the game mechanics even as you try to piece together all the language puzzles.

Began "Bioshock Infinite." It's already pretty different from the first two, or at least, the start is overwhelming while the others sort of ease you into their worlds. Kinda getting nu-"Wolfenstein" vibes from it.

chants of senaar sounds great. wishlisted.

final fantasy 8. specifically triple triad in the starting area of ff8. i am the cardmaster

I tried to undo one of the annoying triple triad rules once and I couldn't do it in 5+ hours of trying.

board game night cancelled tonight
so it's time for the case of the golden idol - p stoked

not sure if it's similar but loved hob's barrow

big fan of the mystery/detective game boom of the past few years

yes any other recs like these would be appreciated

finally playing FF7R. played the demo when it came out but kinda hated the battle system, so didn't buy at the time.
with a hefty discount and the second one coming out soon, plus reading various hints about how the remake story goes off in a different direction (without getting it spoiled), figured the time was now if ever. and I made my peace with the battle system once I figured out it's just a dumb button basher in FF clothing, so bring on the daftness.

yes any other recs like these would be appreciated

Obra Dinn is the obvious touchpoint (though I was a lot more meh on it than others). But I'll just plug Chants of Sennaar again!

enjoyed obra dinn but found it a bit of a pain to navigate

Will add sennaar to my list

If you like Sennaar and Obra Dinn, I suggest The Case of the Golden Idol: https://www.thegoldenidol.com/trial

(which I see was mentioned, but they offer a free trial)

Playing It Takes Two with my son at the moment.

Was not expecting it to be as great as it is. Lots (and lots) of fun and really inventive gameplay mechanics with an abundance of variety as you progress through the story.

I recently found a working PS2 in a cupboard I didn't realise I had. A recent trip to CEX turned up:

- Eternal Ring (a janky PS2 flagship action-adventure, BUT it's also an early Fromsoft game, so naturally I'm kind of intrigued about it, especially as it shares a similar name to another game)
- Final Fantasy X + X-2

Obvs Baldur's Gate is taking up the vast majority of my time, so it will be a while till I get round to these

Back to cyberpunk with this new update. Still stands as the best looking videogame since its release nearly 3 years ago. Quite the feat!

Bit of FFX, bit of FFXVI, last boss of BG3, and always an excessive amount of TF2

cocoon looks rad

Just finished "Bioshock Infinite," and my take is maybe ... ambitious failure? Everything about the gameplay is pretty sound - the fights, the design - but there's so much back and forth between locations, which gets boring, and the fights are kinda all the same, too. The biggest sticking point for me, though, is the story; I literally had no idea what was going on. Something about an inter-dimensional white supremacist steampunk city in sky, with ghosts and crossing timelines and alternate timelines and prophecies and ... who the fuck can tell. Normally I'm fine with convoluted gibberish - I have no idea what is going on in *any* From game - but this is so character driven that it proves a distraction, imo. It's hard to fight when you have no idea exactly what you're fighting for. Even "Control" felt more cohesive, and that was a gleefully surrealist farrago.

yeah, I think it's one of the most disappointing games in memory. Storywise, I don't think it ever recovers from the baseball of racism moment in the opening segment. Just a total dogshit story through and through that revealed Ken Levine to be a David Cage level artistic fraud.

Cocoon is rad

Do you recommend it for someone who didn't finish Inside?

Idk, what didn't you like about it? They're both pretty short. So far Cocoon is pretty brilliant at introducing you to new mechanics (without any text or dialogue) without being overwhelming. There's always a new little application to what you just learned and you feel pretty smart, but it stays very focused at the same time. It's pretty masterfully designed, especially considering it only uses one button.

There are "boss fights", but they're very forgiving (if you get damaged, it just tosses you out of the world so you can restart the fight immediately).

Inside being horror-adjacent was hard for me to keep playing (I gave up after a mermaid ate me).

It's the 2023 Interactive Fiction Competition lads. That'll be my month of games.

Oh, Cocoon is much more colorful and friendly. You're a little bug and the occasional big mean bug isn't that mean to you. Mostly it's environmental puzzles and playing with the "worlds are also spheres that you can carry around and use as tools, as well as jump in and out of" mechanic.

I'm loving Cocoon. Never played their other games, but now intend to. Bought Limbo on sale years ago and never touched it.

No Man’s Sky. I think I can get into the loop of this, but the UI is absolutely terrible. Have to Google and annoy my brother with questions like “how to find my base it’s not on my compass or map” routinely.

Warhammer Darktide finally launched on Game Pass. If you are a Left 4 Dead fan, this is a good one of those.

Mortal Kombat 1 is fun, but feels a teensy bit lacking for some reason, mostly that after you beat the story mode the Invasions/Tower/Krypt mode feels pretty bare. I enjoy it and played a lot of Kombat League, but I'll probably be moving on for a while, figure that like MKX and MK11 there'll be a lot more to play with in a year or so. Spider-Man 2 is out at the end of the month, anyway...

Rust, only because my friend wants to. it's crap imo

We have been trying minecraft in vr, playing co-op makes it better. Almost fell over looking down from high cliff tops.

For reasons that are not clear to anyone really,

I have started Total War: Warhammer (1) on my small and v basic PC.

I suspect this will go the same way as my venture into Starcraft about a decade ago..

fun being rubbish till I realise managing the logistics is too much like my real life to make it something I do to relax.

finished FF7R and had fun when it was a game.
one of the things that I really hate about modern AAA games tho is when they do that barely interactive not-a-cutscene thing - you know, you walk along slowly pushing up on the thumbstick for aaaaaaages while the characters banter and talk about the plot until you get to the next bit of gameplay. or another walking section. or squeeze slooooowly thru a gap. if you want to tell the story just gimme a cutscene ffs!
anyway I enjoyed what they did with the already daft story, even when it went a bit meta, and the button mashing with occasional pause to cast a spell or limit break was serviceable enough. actually looking forward to part 2!

that not-a-cutscene thing was ripped directly from the original FF7. at least I think that bit where you're walking with Aerith through the rubble was

i assumed the squeezing slowly through gaps bits in FF7R were meant to hiding loading times.

currently really enjoying Dragon's Dogma, weird medieval action RPG that does not take itself seriously. does a surprisingly good job with atmosphere thanks to a day/night cycle with dark nights that really impact the gameplay

squeeze through a wall is 100% loading in the background.

dialogue throughout journeys is just to stop you getting bored... GTA always did this well, but on the 24th time?

would rather the game find other ways to make traversal fun besides listening to video game dialogue small talk. and anything actually important should be in cutscenes, agree on that

Dragon's Dogma is cool! Such a unique & quirky take on an action RPG. I'm very curious to see how the sequel turns out.

My favorite gaming podcast is doing a bonus ep this month on Majora's Mask, so I'm doing a playthrough of both N64 Zeldas rn. I've been zooming through Ocarina, the first time I've played it in...20 years, maybe? It holds up pretty well for like 90% of the time. That other 10% is pretty rough though.

finished the Yuffie side content for FF7R, really enjoyed it. never cared for her in the original game but she was a charming brat in this, hope she turns up a decent amount in later games. FF7R also made me appreciate how good Square are at skin textures, freckle game on point.