whatchu playing now

Hmm, I dunno, I think a couple of them have been really hard! Not all of them, most have been predictably OK, but there's been a couple that have been real skill checks so far, either due to the amount of damage they do or the other enemies cluttering the arena. There was one (Corrupt Woodsmith) I lowered the difficulty for, because 1) this game lets you and 2) I was getting pretty bored and wanted to move on. Something related that I like about this game is that you gain helpful skills, but even in what must be the last third of the game or so I still don't feel remotely OP. Almost every fight poses some challenges, bosses or no.

But anyway, yeah, especially for (I think) a first effort from an indie studio, this game is really impressive and fun. And they kept the price low and allow an upgrade to PS5 for free.

Now that you mention it maybe I did have to lower the difficulty once or twice! It’s been a bit. Kinda want to play through it again once I finish Elden Ring. Again.

I was struggling with the Hunter, and after I got lucky and finally beat it I realized I still had my settings on lower difficulty, lol. Ok, back to normal! For now.

I'm not playing anything recently and I miss it :(

Start a Dark Urge playthrough?

about 25 hrs into FFXVI
feelings are ... complicated
it's a good game, but not much of a FF game? FF has changed a lot over the years, but the FF elements of this game feel very much like window dressing
music is excellent, story & voice acting is decent, feels a lot like FFXIV crossed with GoT grimdark type fantasy
battle system is basic tho like a dumbed down DMC/Bayonetta and magic is way too overpowered (I haven't died once, playing on the highest available difficulty)
also there are these sort of super boss fights that verge on marvel movie bullshit, I hate them
much better than XIII and XV, but in the lower half of FF so far

I've decided to not purchase anything new until I've gotten through my existing backlog. Starting with the shortest games first and then working my way up to the longer ones. Just finished Abzu, 2016's underwater vibefest from some of the Journey devs (it was fine). Up next: Pony Island. I literally know nothing about this game except that it's the same guy who made Inscryption.

Tracking things here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/zchyrs/. If any other ilxors are on Backloggd, hmu!

really wish those game logging sites were as pretty as letterboxd...

xpost I wish I had your restraint! My downfall is too many 30-100 hour games in my backlog.

finished spider-man 2, playing a little returnal now

I thought I beat the final boss in Kena, then it turns out there's another final boss right after it which is one of those epic two boss fights, like the end of Elden Ring or Sekiro. I was so psyched and now I am so bummed.

I've been playing Dave the Diver, because I guess Dredge alone didn't satisfy my need for 2023 games about fishing.

It is an extremely thoughtfully designed game. On the surface it's a fishing game, but it introduces new concepts and content at a regular but gentle pace - quick enough to keep it interesting without being overwhelming. It turns out it is also an Overcooked-lite restaurant sim (you serve what you catch in a sushi restaurant) and farming sim (fish farming, crop farming) and adventure game all in one.

I wasn't entirely sold on it having boss fights, but the mechanics for each are different enough and they're all doable, so I didn't mind too much by the end (about 40 hours of 'main game' play). They just disrupt the otherwise chill vibe. The only other fault is the half-baked side quest of running a restaurant branch, but once set up it can be largely ignored.

And the developers just released free DLC that riffs on Dredge and lets you catch and serve mutant fish.

I finished Resident Evil Village, it didn't always feel like much of a game, but that parts that did feel like playing a game were fun (the escape room bit where don't have any guns, a few of the other self-contained mini-boss zones). The whole RE4-style shop and weapon upgrade thing felt a bit bolted on and not very necessary.

Then I started Blasphemous 2, which really has me hooked so far (never played the first one). I like how there are three weapons and each acts as a Metroidvania upgrade, so whichever one you start with lets you go certain places in the world, then you find the next one which will unlock other places in conjunction with your first weapon, etc. Lots of cool time-based platforming puzzles.

The text is gibberish, but the religious imagery has a vibe and the gameplay feels great.

I'm giving up on Alan Wake 1 -- so tired of the sparse checkpoints where I get punted back to a section after I die, and the combat is IMO way more repetitive than Control. I'm not even sure I care enough about the plot to watch a let's play -- can I go into Alan Wake 2 without knowing how 1 ends?

absolutely, i played AW2 completely blind and it ruled. after playing it i speedwatched LPs of both 1 and american nightmare and the additional context isn't worth it at all

imo do not waste your time suffering through something you're not enjoying and, as you probably already know, AW2's gameplay is a different beast than AW1/AN's, it's more of an adventure game with survival horror trappings (scarce resources, not enough upgrade materials in the game to max out all your weapons so you have to pick favourites). i've seen it described as the best silent hill game since 2

it's also an infinitely better twin peaks game than deadly premonition, albeit to be fair to DP its NPC scheduling and free roaming investigation mechanics are absent in AW2. in everything else though, AW2 blows it out of the water

AW1 is kind of a weak game. I stuck with it to the end more out of stubbornness than anything.

Backlog report: Pony Island was amusingly meta, so it was fun to go into blind. It was a touch irritating at points (given the conceit of the game, that seems more or less intentional). That was leavened by the fact of it being nice and short. Apparently the developer uh...developed these ideas further in Inscryption, so I'm looking forward to getting around to that one.

Next up is Deltarune Chapter 2. I think I'm going to replay Chapter 1 since it's been a few years and I've forgotten about most of it.

Concurrent to this, I'm finally winding up Baldur's Gate 3. As much as I love that game, it will be a massive relief to finally be done with it.

Finished "Kena," thought it was pretty strong, especially for a relatively under the radar indie. Final boss battle was a bit of BS, but ultimately satisfying. What next? Hmmm ...

AW1’s dam segment was my favorite bit. The meta ending fight lost me at the time, though overall, liked the game’s scenery and atmosphere a lot. Will play AW2 eventually.

I've been playing Sifu. It's really hard.

As mentioned above, I thorough enjoyed AW1, but I (humblebrag) got pretty adept at combat, so it didn't feel like a chore to me even if it went on for a little longer than it needed to. Can see repeated checkpoint loading sucking the fun out of it. It succeeds as a ~vibes~ game above all, and I think they loaded it up with more combat than necessary.

AW2 is superior in every way. YouTube re-caps probably all you need to get caught up.

I think I'm going to (re)start "Rift Apart." I played a bit of it months ago, or at least helped a friend play a bit of it, but he was so bad it was a bit like helping my mom, so I'm not sure I got the full experience.

Alan Wake 2 is on sale right now, but not for a particularly deep discount. With DLC on its way I'm leaning toward putting on my patient gamer cap and waiting for a sale that includes the whole package, no doubt for a price (eventually) lower than this current sale price. In fact, there are a handful of games on my wishlist that are currently on sale for around $50 right now, and while I know I said it before, even though I understand video game pricing makes some kind of sense, when the sale price still feels too high it implies the original price was definitely too high.

that's the market baby, making people pay for impatience (or multiplayer)

Tried "Sable" (it was free with PS Plus Essential) - as people have pointed out, it looks like a Moebius comic, which is a great visual style. However the gameplay was too dull for me (go here, get this, give it to someone - and there's no combat, btw, and nothing so far was remotely challenging), so I stopped after 2 hours. I wanted to like it, but alas.

Tried "Mafia II" (also free with PS Plus Essential) - the volume of the opening credits (introducing the game company) was way way way too loud (why would they do this?! I had my stereo set to a normal volume), played the game for a few minutes, then uninstalled it since I never want to subject my speakers to that super-loud opening credits sequence again.

Now I'm playing (don't laugh) "Lego 2K Drive" (you guessed it - free with PS Plus Essential), which is actually pretty fun, coming from a guy who never plays driving games.

I noticed that "Dishonored 2" is currently an absurdly cheap $2.99 at the PS Store - I finished it earlier this year and really really enjoyed it. I played it with the non-lethal strategy (which relies on stealth a lot), and the game offers a lot of different techniques for incapacitating and distracting people, so for me, a lot of the fun was just trying out new ways to do that and trying to be creative with it.

Tried "Sable" (it was free with PS Plus Essential) - as people have pointed out, it looks like a Moebius comic, which is a great visual style. However the gameplay was too dull for me (go here, get this, give it to someone - and there's no combat, btw, and nothing so far was remotely challenging), so I stopped after 2 hours. I wanted to like it, but alas.

Yeah had the same outcome, pity.

Same. Making me nervous about Chants of Sennar which I was planning to turn to post-BG3 but all the same people who love that also seemed to love Sable. Might just go straight into another BIG game like Armoured Core or Mario Wonder.

I had heard OK things about Sable, but I'd also heard its performance on PS5 was patchy (no pun intended). Some person just asked the studio if they planned to address this, and their response was basically "sorry but no."

I haven't played Sable but Chants has pretty concrete objectives that are quite a bit more thoughtful and involved than fetch quests. I think the only similarity between the games is the art. It's my favorite puzzle game in quite some time, too.

i haven't played sable but chants of sennaar is a solid puzzle game. it had a few frustrating moments where the concept associated with an illustration was very unclear to me, but it was a good time overall. i'd agree that it doesn't seem to have much in common with sable beyond a somewhat similar art style?

cocoon on the other hand is the most disappointing game i have played in a long time. the core mechanic seemed interesting but they rarely managed to do much with it, and the other mechanics added on top were just not very compelling. it's a very streamlined experience and the puzzles were generally not interesting or challenging at all - by the time they started to get the slightest bit interesting the game was over (it is a very short game). i don't really understand how it got such rave reviews, it feels like a puzzle game for people who hate puzzles?

apex

I've been hearing nothing but effusive praise for Cocoon also. I haven't played it, myself, but it's refreshing to hear a dissenting opinion.

Deltarune Chapter 2 is now off the backlog. Overall, I thought it was fine, but Toby Fox's shtick kinda grates on me these days, and this game piles it on heavy.

Sometimes the games with nothing but praise somehow disguise aspects some might consider a flaw or drawback. I learned my lesson with Inscryption, which had the double whammy of arriving with unanimous praise and also warnings to go in blind. Which I did, only to find out that it was one of those deck building games, so I bounced. I was starting to get fomo with Baldur's Gate, but then I realized it was turn-based, and I don't think that is for me. Cyberpunk is another one that's had some wild swings. Some people love it, some people *still* find it unplayable, or at least very buggy, and I can't tell which is hyperbole. Like, there are other games where people are all "this game is broken, I barely made it past the first level," but then it turns out "broken" means "the ultra taxing ray tracing mode hurts the frame rate in a few action sequences."

that's also one of those frustrating about PC gaming is that a game which is "broken" on one rig may be just fine on another, even one with similar specs. It can be hard to know what you're going to get, performance-wise. A more uniform experience is one of the last remaining advantages of consoles.

I don't think "going in blind" means "not knowing the broad outline of what kind of game it is", haha

Ha, well, I usually take it literally! Some point I will start "Outer Wilds," that's another one where everyone says not to read about it. Of course, I practically research each From game before I begin, to know what I'm in for and what the game is going to require of me, but gameplay of those things is at least a known quantity. Something like Inscryption, I had no idea.

I knew Inscryption had the basic form of a deckbuilder game with escape room elements, and read enough to know there are some later game surprises that it's best to experience without knowing what's coming (fantastic game btw).

UFO otm, I booted up cocoon the other night and as the kids say: completely mid. No thought in the puzzles at all, just a very shallow experience.

Inscription though, get me all of that (I love deck-builders).

Going to keep cracking on with legend of heroes: trails in the sky and octopath traveler 2 while travelling through japan.

I am still playing the greatest shooter of all time: team fortress 2. It’s been my constant gaming crush for the past 3 years. I play one map only (dustbowl) with a group of like 30ish other rotating regulars. It’s a small community, everyone knows each other. I am waiting for the day I get bored, but honestly playing anything besides tf2 is an achievement in fighting the hooks it has in me. If you’ve never played it, I cannot recommend it enough. It’s one of the greatest games of this millennium, no hyperbole.

I played it from 2009-2012 and just got back into it over Covid as one of my students was talking about it constantly

i can understand why people say "go in blind" with inscryption given some of the twists but that doesn't actually extend as far as "don't even watch a trailer & have no idea of the genre"

outer wilds isn't really a game that has big twists that can be spoiled, i wouldn't worry about spoiling yourself by watching a trailer or reading a review either. it does have some puzzle solutions you'd want to avoid spoiling for yourself but you'd probably have to go a bit out of your way for that. personally i found it a very frustrating game because there is plenty about it that's absolutely brilliant but that's offset by some very punishing platforming & space flight, to the point i never finished it

i never finished outer wilds either for the same reasons - the entire game is one big mystery that you could potentially get spoiled on though. the whole point is that you can 'beat' the game in 20 minutes but it takes 10+ hours of exploration to piece together the story enough to figure out how

but yeah you won't get the game accidentally ruined from looking at random reviews or whatever, it's too elaborate for that

Got the double jump in Blasphemous 2, always a big moment in a Metroidvania. Still really enjoying it (the bosses in particular), despite now needing to run through the whole map again.

I've seen that talked up by people who also love Hollow Knight, but the guignol art puts me off, and the gameplay looks a lot more methodical and chunky than the nimbleness in HK. Apples and oranges?

I love the art style in HK, but I've bailed on it twice now because the size of it is a bit overwhelming, and it's hard to keep the map in my head and figure out where to backtrack & head next.

B2 is pretty clever and generous with its shortcuts and warp points, so it's pretty easy to zip around the map. I'm sure it's a smaller and shorter game compared to HK, but I'm into that. And I like how the traversal is tied to the three weapons, which you can switch between with a button press.

Oh I also like how you don't lose your currency upon death, just a portion of your max mana bar.

i'm playing ilxor.com on my newly liberated nintendo wii console

https://i.imgur.com/3736dPi.jpg

That's really the best way to do it

Finished Blasphemous 2, really enjoyed the level and boss design the whole way through. I clearly missed a bunch of sidequests and secrets/items, but I'm ok living with that.

Next up...maybe Control, finally? Either that or trying Lords of the Fallen again, which I'm not feeing yet even though supposedly it's in much better shape now after all the patches.

Would recommend Control for being one of those games that throws a lot of story around to reward the diligent searcher. The combat is pretty fair, though I could have done with fewer respawns when revisiting areas. Also, it looks great.

Finished Prey. Very cool environment that was more pleasurable after leveling up and becoming familiar with maps. Main issue is that it’s set up for a Prey 2 that was cancelled, so the story feels incomplete. Should have been much denser story-wise. The post-credits surprise would have been a fantastic midpoint event.

Now 3 chapters into Wolfenstein: Old Blood. Feels a little cursory so far. Game leads into The New Order, so playing in sequence.

Having recently played all three, but in order of release, I'm not sure how much they'd benefit from being played chronologically. Old Blood does kind of literally lead into New Order, but the bridge is mostly there as a novelty. Like, oh, now we're back at the beginning of the previous game!

I liked all three enough that I've been tempted to get Youngblood, though everyone seems to dislike that one.