What game are you currently playing?

Blades of Fire
I've sunk another few hours into it. I'm enjoying it despite some issues and rather poor design choices. My least favourite part of Demon's Souls was weapons bouncing off walls - it's worse here. Enemies striking me through trees while my weapons bounce off. Happens a lot when enemies are slightly elevated too. Died a couple of times due to this. One of those massive hammer-wielding guys did his jump move and placed himself in a place where I couldn't hit him, but he could hit me. In combat, trying to pull enemies away from other enemies, and if you go too far they'll run back to their positions in a manner that would make The Flash jealous. I've had a few instances where I've gone to the forge, returned to the world, and had every enemy on the map aggro to me, which was funny. Skeletons, elementals, and those little dwarf things all over me - it was like something out of Dynasty Warriors!

Speaking of the enemies, I like their designs and enjoy fighting them, bar the humans, which are boring. I also like how you acquire new weapons and parts. Forged myself a flamberge, which is probably my favourite weapon so far, with its decent damage and fantastic reach. On my way to unlocking some more weapon types. The story has picked up a bit now, also.
 
Farcry Instincts Predator via BC.
Holy shit, this is bad. First few hours of the game are hilariously bad and janky. Once you get feral powers, it starts to get a little bit more fun. Plus the awful input lag/ deadzone issue wasn't fixed.
 
Last edited:
Finished Clair Obscur and got the platinum. I wanna get back to finishing up Trails in the Sky FC since im in chapter 3 at around 28 hours. It feels like im getting toward the end
 
Finished a Dishonored 2 playthrough on PC that I started way back in 2016. What incredible attention to details. Not many games have me so invested in soaking up the lore and environmental details like d2.

Resarted playing Kena: Bridge of Spirits again after reading its combat ramps up to be challenging like a souls game. It's pretty good so far, better than expected, but combat is few and far between. Hopefully it picks up.
 
Been playing lots of Schedule 1. It's pretty fun but currently unbalanced (which is fine, considering it's just one awesome guy doing all this awesome work).

But I don't think I'll be able to play it for much longer. I've done pretty much most of the stuff I was interested in. I'm producing more kush that I can sell in a day (or even 3 days for that matter). I reckon it'll soon become stale for me now.

Will probably try Deliver At All Costs - but I don't have high hopes from it, at least in terms of longevity.
 
Playing some MTG on Xmage. Using my old MTG deck with some modifications. A few of The Final Fantasy MTG cards are already usable/playable on XMage but no Tifa MTG card/s yet, will definitely make a new deck with Tifa when she's on it lol on Xmage!

Just won 2-1 Vs Orzhov Control 34 PT Magic 2015 (Portland) deck. A control deck with an army of doom rats, zombie and flying Demon lol. Lost the second round but won the game 2-1 . Recorded the battle:
 
Just finished Biomutant and fucking hated it. I can't believe I actually finished it.
I have Huntdown going right now. I do not hate that. I actually love it so far. Just beat the hockey boss and decided to take a break until tomorrow or Sunday. Really fun game.
 
Trying to play Crysis 2 Remastered on Series X.
They really messed something up with the aiming in this game. It's pretty hard to hit anything that isn't standing right in front of you.
Sadly, M/KB doesn't work. Support obviously resides in the code, because the keyboard does work. Without any configuration, WASD moves the character normally. But the mouse does nothing. I wish there was someone available at Crytek that could respond to user requests. They need to enable mouse support for this game. As it currently stands, the original Xbox 360 version when played through backwards compatibility is a far more enjoyable experience.
 
About to finish Atom RPG and recently got Underrail, and Darkwood.

Atom RPG scratched my fallout itch but left me wanting more so I moved to Underrail.

I could have played the expansion which is Trudograd but I really didn't like the writing in Atom RPG. It felt constricted. You have the same dialogue tree with every single person. There are some meta shenanigans with it where there are rumors of a person asking the same 4 questions to everyone but it doesn't negate the fact that it's so tiring. Lots of stuff are also Slavik or Russian themed so much that I have difficulty in connecting with it. Like it expects me to be familiar with their literature but I don't so nothing really hits me.

I enjoyed the game mechanics but I would love to have better writing which I'm hoping Underrail will have.
 
18969120379_b6a9a9a642_b.jpg


I'm clearing out my backlog and decided to start playing this game from 2012. It's funny, at first, I even considered abandoning it, but as I played more, got deeper into the story, and got used to some of the mechanics, I started enjoying it. Yesterday I played almost all afternoon and ended up going to bed at 4 a.m. I think I'll finish it today if all goes well.
 
Had a fun day at the amusement park yesterday and got home really tired. Decided to look through the ps+ catalog for any curiosities and installed sonic frontiers.

This game is fucking weird. Why does it feel like sonic fell into death stranding? Seriously, thanks to being tired and faded I was having some strand-type introspective moments.

Between last night and this morning I played 4-5 hours. Despite so little gameplay, I am pretty sure the game has some mortal flaws, all to do with level design. So if there's a whole new map environment and the style of the action levels totally changes for the better at some point... I suppose it could be good.

Still, I find it pretty interesting. Sonic Team, huh? Whatever that means these days, I do find the game unique and if I play it again I want to make some notes because my gears were turning the whole time.
 
Anyone recommend me some console games to play. I'm 90% pc but after recently playing suikoden remaster and Clair obscure on console I am more in the mood to game there ATM.

I'll throw FF12 out there, if you've never played it. It's a long, slow, cozy game. Some light grind. Awesome music. The battle system is weird but is fun to learn and mess with as you program your team behavior. Then it pays off in the knock-down drag-out boss fights. Story is sort of political intrigue thing.

The modern releases have a fast forward button that actually fits in well to the way the game plays, so you have a little more control over the pace depending if you are trying to purposefully mop up some side stuff or taking in the exploration of a new area.

If you're looking for something different, robocop was cool. It was actually pretty light on shooting and largely of a walking simulator. It's a short game, too. If the movies have a place in your heart, it's actually a pretty good way to revisit.
 
Star Ocean 2 The Second Story R

Done. Final time around 70 hours, after running through NG+ today to recruit everyone I passed over. This was my first time through SO2 (I've completed SO4 and most of SO3 before).

To everyone saying this is the best Star Ocean game... sure. I've never been a lover of this series, but this one's pretty good.

Visual style's the standout for this game, and it looks pretty darn good, but after finally playing one of these 2.5D games for myself which deliberately plop pixel art into HD environments, I can see why not everyone's a fan. The pixel art stood out to me is out of place to everything else around. I acclimated to it, but I never grew to love it (I love pixel art too but the clash didn't make it feel right here). That said, stuff like the lighting effects impacting the sprites, like the shadows cast on foliage in turn shading the pixel models, I thought is really cool. I don't like the overall style but I think the art artists made the most of what they worked with.

I was more impressed with the portrait art. R's portrait art is rich and luscious. Still anime, from how smooth the contours of faces are, how large the eyes are, and how... anime big the hair is, but an incredible amount of detail is put into the costume design, shading, and overall capture of minute details. Also it's animated. It looks damn good and might sit in the #2 of my favorite portrait work ever (#1 being, of course, Valkyrie Profile - you really can't beat the king). The game also includes portrait work from the OG and Second Evolution (SE) releases. The OG art is fine - my general impression is that it's the product of some dude with not a lot of restrictions on his design work as the expressions don't always match up with the characters' dispositions. The SE art is... lol. lmao even. It's clearly the product of my contempted '00s minimalism, where everything is generally made to look as cheap and shit as possible. It's flat, uninspired, and often ugly.

On the topic of version offerings, the game also includes 3 audio tracks: English, SE Japanese, and R Japanese. I unwittingly switched to SE at some point in my first playthrough without realizing it. This ended up offering me a much better experience. The R language track apparently consists of all the original Japanese seiyuu who did voice work for the original PSX release redubbing the entire game 25 years after the fact. This went poorly. Rena and Opera sound around 25 years older than they should. Bowman doesn't sound as experienced and confident as he should. Claude sounds so timid he could crawl into a hole at the drop of a hat. I won't exhaustively list everyone. I listened to the R VA work a little at the start of my NG+ and eventually tossed in the towel and switched back to SE. The SE voice work is good by the way. There are a couple performances I'm not super on board with (Ashton leans too much into being a coward). but if you'd like, SO2R lets you mix and match voice track performances. Cool stuff.

Soundtrack is underwhelming. I wasn't sure whether or not it was the arrangements or original compositions and I think it's... both? Sakuraba of this era can bring the heat - he composed Valkyrie Profile for Christ sake but there's not a lot of personality in much of this game's music. On the arrangement end in some cases he's trying to squeeze juice out of a stone but even some of the better original tracks like Phynal (the only example I can think of off the top of my head) feel like they've fallen victim to Sakuraba slamming his face into the synthesizer and calling a day. Best arranged track is Mission to Deep Space, because of course it is + it's hard to screw up one of Sakuraba's all time greats. The Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 3 versions are probably still my favorite - VP's is just a smartly tweaked version of the original SO2's original version and SO3 has that sweet sax - but this one still has the infectious energy of the track. ... Coming back to this part just to add: I can't believe I played a Sakuraba game where I don't love any of the battle tracks. wtf

Story and writing are fine, mostly. At least there are no bed shitting moments like in SO4 and nothing as annoying as Fayt droning on and on about the not-Prime Directive in SO3. I think the Claude-Dias rivarly subplot is a little dumb but no other real complaints. It tells a simple story reasonably well. It also manages to hit hard at a few spots when it really needs to (Westa losing her cool in a flashback when her husband died and lashing out, wishing she'd thrown away Rena's pendant so nothing could draw Rena away felt authentic; Noel bawling on the beach when the Laucer ship is sunk and he thinks his parents are dead is the quick concluding and emotional reaction I would expect from a child) which... I did not expect a game in this series would be capable of.

Gameplay itself: I don't think combat is as refined as in Star Ocean 4. A couple problems consistently held it back: AOEs on skills tended to be a little too narrow on the z-axis, and chains seemed too responsive (that is, my inputs for a skill would remember for too long and start an animation on the second skill in the chain, leaving me whiffing empty air). Star Ocean has never been the battle-minded version of these character RPG brawlers; that's always been Tales' wheelhouse, and it still shows. A control setting to prevent starting basic attack chains until in proximity would be nice as would another to enable skill usage whenever you want (surprisingly, I know these two complaints are at odds) - I got pretty frustrating watching Claude run to the other side of the arena to use Phase Gun every time. Fundamentally this is on me - if I played better, this wouldn't be an issue. But the appeal of this genre is ease in accomodation, and Tales has blown Star Ocean out of the water here (well, except Arise which took some steps back but w/e). I do like that these games still let you break the heck out of them though - if you know what to invest points into you can speed run broken gear pretty fast.

QOL improvements are good. Game told me where all PAs and important events would be and even singled out time-sensitive ones; fast travel system has limited restrictions enabled when you can warp some places but not others. Menu sorting system is robust; notably missing a manual sort for when you want one item at the top because you're repeatedly remaking something and would prefer to not have to scroll every time but there are workarounds (i.e. replicating the material and then sorting by newest).
 
I can second this. It was difficult to play without wanting to vomit everywhere. 😅

Very brave.
There is something about these games that the AAA games are lacking. I remember playing Two Worlds 2, Risen on 360 and enjoying them despite their faults. I think if these teams would have a bit more money and time, those games could compete with the high budget open world RPGs.

However, Elex 2 was not good, even as an eurojank enjoyer.

Let's see how Gothic Remake will do. I think they have put a bit more effort and money on that so it might actually get some recognition.
 
This game doesn't have an OT or any thread. It's a pretty awesome Descent-like that looks and plays like an early 00s PC game in a good way.

It launched a few months ago after an early access period and despite the 97% positive ratings they keep refining it with updates like today's:
 
Last edited:
I started playing Tiny Rogue again as I haven't played since the Heaven and Hell release dropped. It's an amazing little game and jammed full of content. Perfect for the Deck.
 
This game doesn't have an OT or any thread. It's a pretty awesome Descent-like that looks and plays like an early 00s PC game in a good way.

It launched a few months ago after an early access period and despite the 97% positive ratings they keep refining it with updates like today's:


Hmm. Wonder how it compares to overload. That game is a perfect descent fix and there is plenty of it for me.


Anyway, more sonic frontiers and probably the last of it.

One really unfortunate thing about the game is that the sky is full of these bounce pads and grind rails, but those pieces draw in very close. If you could look out and see the hundreds of them scattered in the sky, it would be great. And you would have some chance of figuring out where they go instead of jumping on one and watching teh next parts draw in on you.

All that shit in the sky has a deeper problem, though. It's not that fun. It's grind rail gameplay and it's the same in every game. It can be lightly interspersed but it's carrying way too much, here. If they had put real terrain up there, it could have been a whole different game. Take a third of those maps and put the terrain up high with the rewards up there. The high routes being more rewarding is a sort of basic sonc thing, if they're interested in that.

You can't roll, which is sort of rrdiculous. You have a slide... but no roll?

And fuck double jump jeez. Every game, really??

One of the worst things is that the action levels.... they aren't doing their job right. They are sparsely covering each map. With these huge maps having six of these things, that's a lot of uninteresting space between. Each one of the levels is only about a minute long, and again dominated by longish auto-playing sections. When you do have control, legibility is an issue. You can collect the 5 red tokens in a level when you only saw 2 as you were barreling through. These tracks have no room for exploration other than shooting through an alternate hallway at a thousand miles per hour before getting stuck on another grind rail.

Fighting enemies is unimaginative and dull.

I don't hate the game, but it's bad. I hope 8 hours is enough to say. If this was a huge proof of concept demo from sonic team, I'd say they might be onto something here but as a finished game it's a rickety mess.
 
I picked up Valkyria Chronicles + Valkyria Chronicles 4 in a bundle deal, so I'm working through the first now. I like the combat system in general, but the rng nature reminds me so much of x-com where you can have the perfect strategy but your guy will just randomly miss a shot. It's essentially a test of how well you can save-scum at this point for me.

I'm also working through The Pale Beyond - which is an interesting take on resource management. If you like it I recommend reading The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard to understand how awful antartic exploration can be.

And Expedition 33 - a bit late to the party on this one but it's a nice change of pace from the Trails games I've been chugging, despite being a jrpg-like. I'm taking it slow for now, as usual I'll hit a point (60%+ complete) where I'll drop everything else and dedicate exclusive time to finish it.
 
I played South of Midnight and loved it because of the Artstyle, Music and the lovable Characters like Honey and the Catfish and the death of Huggin Molly made me very sad
Im now thinking to play either Clair Obscure or Doom Dark Ages but neither game clicked with me
 
Doom TDA. Chapter 6 so far. Game is great so far. I can't play these games in long sessions but it's a solid game.

Expedition 33. Seeing why people are saying this is GOTY so far. It very well may be mine too.

RE4 remake. Working on my 2nd playthrough.
 
After finishing Expedition 33, Doom The Dark Ages and South of Midnight I booted up my PS5 and started Final Fantasy VII Rebirth, that should keep me busy for a 100 hours or so
 
Expedition 33 but not feeling it as much as GAF told me I should. I'm on act 2, I've played my fair share of Japanese RPGs and I like turn based combat but I don't like how long the fights are nor the parry window. I'll finish it but weirdly not quite my jam.
 
Still FF7 Rebirth, chapter 12, I'm starting to get tired of it, I have absolutely no idea where the story goes (I played the original FF7 until the chocobo farm, so like 1/4 or Rebirth)
 
172050-assassin-s-creed-director-s-cut-edition-windows-front-cover.jpg


It had been in my backlog for over 10 years. I decided to start playing it yesterday. It's a pretty cool game so far.
Playing this in 2007 was pretty mind blowing. The first 2-3 hours were unlike anything I've ever played. Then I realized that's it, that's the game, those 3 hours repeated ad nauseam.
Still a pretty OK game though. AC2 delivered on its promise.
 
Last edited:
Tried Sable last night. It runs like shit on ps5. It's a short light-platforming exploration game and I might have been half way through it. But omg I got to a whole region where the hitching and stutters got to an unplayable level. It was close to headache-inducing, and definitely too distracting for a game like this to be able to do it's thing. I'd finish it if it weren't for that.

Looking for short games I have around as I'm getting a new pc together which of course mandates you pick some hardware-demanding game to play to beat back the buyers remorse lol. Good thing there's good stuff to pick from lately. MHW, Oblivion, Doom, E33, Wukong, KCD2.
 
Tried Sable last night. It runs like shit on ps5. It's a short light-platforming exploration game and I might have been half way through it. But omg I got to a whole region where the hitching and stutters got to an unplayable level. It was close to headache-inducing, and definitely too distracting for a game like this to be able to do it's thing. I'd finish it if it weren't for that.

Looking for short games I have around as I'm getting a new pc together which of course mandates you pick some hardware-demanding game to play to beat back the buyers remorse lol. Good thing there's good stuff to pick from lately. MHW, Oblivion, Doom, E33, Wukong, KCD2.
I really loved Sable, but even though I'm generally not very bothered by performance issues that one really hurt.

The chill vibes, art, and music are amazing when gliding across the world, but it really takes you out of it when the framerate struggles so badly.

I did finish it though and got the plat, so evidently didn't bother me too much. But I do wish the devs could somehow fix it (would probably do a replay if so).
 
Last edited:
Trying Balatro right now. As someone who has zero fucking idea how to play any card game, I'm utterly confused but weirdly intrigued...

I'm starting to feel the addiction itch somewhere too. Gonna get a "1970s Vegas Casino" scented candle that smells like stale cig smoke, piss and moldy carpet.
 
I really loved Sable, but even though I'm generally not very bothered by performance issues that one really hurt.

The chill vibes, art, and music are amazing when gliding across the world, but it really takes you out of it when the framerate struggles so badly.

I did finish it though and got the plat, so evidently didn't bother me too much. But I do wish the devs could somehow fix it (would probably do a replay if so).

I really liked it, too. Too bad. I was thinking about installing the ps4 version to see if it's any better but I don't know if my save will carry backwards.
 
Honkai Star Rail: I pulled The Herta and her light cone last week, and now I'm building her and her mostly F2P team. I'm hoping to get it done later this week since I have all the weekly mats, but I still need credits and some other mats to finish leveling up all her traces. The relics I have are decent to good, although I might farm some more here as well since I'm not entirely satisfied with one of the relics I'm using for her. Anyways, here's a cool idle animation of her that I captured in-game:

 
Last edited:
Deliver At All Costs is too small for it's own OT, buuuut

Don't expect competent indie masterpiece from a bunch of former students, that's for sure. It's a very solid 7.5 out of 10.

For the price, I think I'm having quite a lot of dumb fun with very cute art-style and really robust arcade car controls. There are pacing blunders, repetative mission design and some minor rough sports here and there, but at it's core Deliver at All Costs is an amazing little title that punches way above it's weight. Especially since it's a studio's debut.

Maybe try it on sale or in some sort of sub service (I think it will be there soon), but I do recommend this game despite the fact that you can easily find a lot of reasons to write a negative review.
Honkai Star Rail: I pulled The Herta and her light cone last week, and now I'm building her and her mostly F2P team. I'm hoping to get it done later this week since I have all the weekly mats, but I still need credits and some other mats to finish leveling up all her traces. The relics I have are decent to good, although I might farm some more here as well since I'm not entirely satisfied with one of the relics I'm using for her. Anyways, here's a cool idle animation of her that I captured in-game:


Lucky bastard! I really need The Herta for my current party with Anaxa but no luck so far after 40 pulls. Finally finished Penacony though and oh my god it is peak.

UPD: nvm
kQeZZIl.jpeg
 
Last edited:
Lucky bastard! I really need The Herta for my current party with Anaxa but no luck so far after 40 pulls. Finally finished Penacony though and oh my god it is peak.

UPD: nvm
kQeZZIl.jpeg
Well, technically I was both lucky and unlucky because I won the 50/50 for The Herta at 40 pulls, but then I lost my 75/25 for her light cone, and it took about 140 pulls in total to get it. Still, 180 pulls for both The Herta and her LC is not half bad. :messenger_grinning_sweat:

Anyways, congrats on pulling her, my man! You'll absolutely love her, especially since you also have Anaxa! My team for her is still a work in progress, but it's almost finished, and she already does pretty good in this F2P team:



She even out-DPSes my Acheron team, which is also WIP at the moment.



And yeah, Penacony is absolute cinema, although I'm only halfway through it. Hoping to get through the rest of the main story maybe this weekend, if not the one after.
 
Last edited:
Bloodborne (PC)

It seemed only right after completing my new PC build that I put it to the test with some PS4 emulation. It took me a few hours this afternoon just to configure shadPS4:

1) I needed to get an old copy of the emulator, 0.7, just to import the pkg files because the developers removed support for newer versions.
2) I had to figure out exactly how modding works. Even with a mod manager, it takes a little bit of finagling to get everything to run: For this manager, the launcher executable needs to be in the same folder as the shadps4 files and when activating mods in the program, the subfolders of the individual folders within the created mod folder (the last of which the manager makes for you) need to conicide with actual game file folder names to properly interface when loading the game. For example, in the Vertex Explosion Fix mod, that name would be the individual folder name within the overall mod folder, and the subfolder within the VEX folder would be named 'parts' to fit with the associated Bloodborne file name. Ultimately not that complicated to figure out especially because the individual mods already have the file hierarchies in place, just a lot to sort through.
3) Once I got into the game, which thankfully loaded (almost) without issue (I dropped down to 900P in shadPS4's settings because widescreen 1080P required some fix in the settings I haven't found yet), I had to make a couple, minute changes to smooth over the experience: a) I was constantly gesturing whenever I confirmed pickups or otherwise pressed X in-game - disabling motion controls in the shadPS4 settings fixed that issue; b) I was running and rolling like molasses (oddly, walk speed was fine). This was a consequence of me messing with the Vblank Divider setting and setting it to 4. Plopping it back to the default value of 1 fixed the movement issues but in turn nixed most of the in-game audio. The solution I chanced on is setting the value to 2. Issues have been minimal since - sometimes I don't clear elevator lips or my movement speed drops down due to stairs (I think my avatar's feet get jammed in the level geometry) but nothing major. My audio died again one time when I climbed the ladder by the small bridge with the brick troll right before Father Gascoigne - only a hard reset fixed it. Incidentally I've had one crash in the couple hours of play and it was in that same spot.

Anyway, these are my overall game settings: In shadPS4, among the available patches offered within, I'm running Disable Chromatic Aberration, Disable Motion Blur, 60 FPS (With Deltatime), Disable VSync, and the Resolution Patch (900P). For separate mods via my mod manager, I'm running Full Cloth Physics with Blood, SFX Intel Fix, Vertex Explosion Fix, and, of course, Bloodborne Enhanced. On that last one I've flipped the switch on just about every QOL setting there is: Auto-refill vials and bullets is the best change that should have been in the game itself from day 1. Warp from lamp to lamp likewise is very convenient. The lamp itself is... probably too decked out - I can level up, shop, and even use all the workshops from lamps now (provided I have the key items, which I didn't give myself). I also enabled the full shop setting to buy anything, but I had good reason for that:

uI6qDI2.jpeg


Experience has been great. Not 100% as smooth as console, obv, but I'm having fun. There are some boss and chalice settings I haven't gotten to yet but should be a fun time. And Bloodborne is still a great game - I wonder if it'll cement itself as the best From game for me with the basic QOL upgrades.
 
After finishing Expedition 33, I'm back on my playthrough of The Legend of Heroes saga. Currently about to start Chapter 3 of Trails to Azure, and looking forward. The story is a bit slow in the first 2 chapters, but it's finally moving ahead and looks like things are going to get interesting.
 
Top Bottom