Gaming

I'm playing Doom & Doom 2, with custom monster sounds.

I've been playing Breath of the Wild emulated on my PC. First time playing it.

Battlebit has been pretty much it for my limited dedicated gaming time. Super fun, easy to drop in and out of.

On my phone I've been working through the puzzle game Snakebird. Also very fun for when I only have 5 minutes or so.

Cyberpunk 2077 with a bunch of mods. The Enemies of Night City mod is actually making the game interesting and somewhat of a challenge.

The two games I've played the most this past week are:

The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil In Me - It's half off in the sale. The latest Dark Pictures Anthology narrative horror game. I love these games, currently working through a second playthrough and trying to save everyone this time. Also, this developer has several other titles if you like narrative horror. My faves are Man of Medan, The Quarry, and House of Ashes.

Halls of Torment - A Vampire Survivors derivative, and I think, a pretty good one. Has a dark, 80's era fantasy aesthetic. There's a lot of content here for an early access title too, and it's only $4.

I've been playing through Powerwash Simulator on Gamepass recently, among other things. The game has just enough going on to keep you engaged while also being super zen (until you're trying to find those last 6 things that are only 99% clean agggghhhhhhh). Progress goes at what seems like the perfect rate, you're never spending long cleaning an individual item, yet there's so much to clean that you get a pretty good sense of accomplishment from finally finishing a map.

It's pretty good for playing in the background too during useless wfh meetings while being able to stay fairly attentive

I've been working my way through Cross Code in the evenings after I get back home, and it's as excellent as everyone says it is! I keep trying to decide what other games it reminds me of the most, and surprisingly I think I'm starting to settle on Legend of Zelda (the older ones, not BotW/TotK).

The way it gates progress, the level & dungeon design, etc just really seems to be a part of that tradition. The moment to moment gameplay is pretty different though, and pretty unique at that!

Really though it's just been a nice escape in the evenings. It's challenging enough that sometimes I decide to leave a tough fight or puzzle to pick up the next night, but it's not punishingly hard and I feel like it respects my time.

Pillars of Eternity and some Cyberpunk in between.

I'm currently 100%ing AC Revelations on the switch. It'll take a while, possibly more than the first two combined

I am playing through the legend of heroes: trails series just finished cold steel and started cold steel 2.

Mass effect series, on ps5. I’m on MA2 right now.

I started replaying Grand Theft Auto V since it was added to GamePass. Aggalos, Sword and Fairy: Together Forever, Tunic, and started replaying The Elder Scrolls Online.

I’ve been all over the place lately, haha.

Been making my way through totk. I think I enjoyed playing the first one more but it's still pretty good. I'm stuck at the lost woods though, have no idea what I'm supposed to do. I might have done a main quest early so maybe I just have to progress to that point?

This week? I barely grabbed a few minutes on TotK, about to grab a few sage masks.

Currently, though, I’m playing TotK and Garden story. I finished Shredders revenge last week and am about to start Planet of Lana.

TotK is all consuming and so incredible, but I take breaks with other stuff and have REALLY been enjoying Garden story—cute, kind, and delightful.

I picked up Diablo 4, and also had to sign up for Playstation Plus since it's always online... Ended up spending more time playing the games from the Plus catalog. The story is surprisingly good - I always though D3's story was kind of dumb, but the atmosphere in this one is great, to the point where I'm often not listening to a podcast when I play (at least until I finish the campaign)

I played through Stray in a few days - incredibly charming game. In a way it almost reminded me of Chibi Robo, since you're a little guy exploring a human-sized environment. Definitely recommend it.

I also did a run of Until Dawn, which I played years ago. I always intended to replay it but it's hard to motivate myself to redo a story-heavy game like this where it's going to be a few hours before things really start branching off in interesting ways. I really like how they play with different flavors of horror, from slasher to paranormal, to play with your expectations if you're a genre-savvy horror fan. Going to check out The Quarry sometime.

And I'm playing Alan Wake, for another TV-show-esque horror experience. The Stephen King and Twin Peaks inspiration is pretty obvious but I like both of those things. Combat is a little frustrating, though, it's easy to lose track of enemies if you're fighting a group, and the cinematic slow-mo sometimes gets annoying.

X4 Foundations. The Kingdom End expansion is awesome and I absolutely adore everything Boron. Just yesterday I finally broke the mexican standoff my fleet (and that of the Argon) had with the Xenon. For multiple real life hours, we had our fleets parked menacingly at the respective ends of the jump gates that connect two sectors. I charged through the gate with my entire fleet after the Xenon sent through a large portion of their fighters (which got obliterated by my ships) so only their capital ships were remaining. Had to hit the bed during a short break in the battle, though, so the outcome is still to be determined.

In other news, I'm also playing a lot of The Isle again and having a lotta fun with the new dinos and mechanics that have recently been added/tweaked. I'm positively surprised how chill many deino (crocodiles basically) players are about sharing the rivers with beipis (think penguins but in tropic climate)

Fire Emblem Three Houses again - So much changes between the 3 different stories in that game, it is so much bigger than I initially realized. When my partner was talking about what happened in their playthrough and it didn't at all resemble my Golden Deer playthrough I realized I'd have to get back to it one day.

I just bought Subnautica and Cities Skylines, so I'm looking forward to playing them both.

Getting pretty deep into FF16, really enjoying it still, the combat seems to be opening up which is making it more fun, will try and do all the side quests before the end, but will see how it goes.

i'm running psychonauts 2, really loving the level design and story and characters. it has really really good gay representation too!

I just started going through the Resident Evil series with my friends and we're still on Resident Evil 1 (the 2002 remake), but it's a blast! I love the atmosphere and how terrifying the crimson heads are.

The gameplay and movement is a bit frustrating but I think that's the point, and I know later games have easier controls, so I'm just enjoying a historical look at an old game.

I'm really looking forward to seeing/experiencing the different evolutions that RE goes through over time. Not looking forward to Code Veronica though, cuz I know it's really really hard :(

im addicted to hogwarts legacy. i cannot stop playing. must 100% complete it

I just finished Call Of Duty Black Ops - Cold War, and it was kind of ¯\(ツ)/¯. The campaign was short and the story felt kind of patched together - graphically it wa surely top notch, but I guess nothing will ever come close to MW2.

I'm playing through The Last of Us: Part 2 for the second time. I was inspired by watching HBO's adaptation, so I played through part one remastered and then started on Part 2 on my PS5. It's even better this time around as the PS5 60fps patch was released about a week after I first completed it!

Then I've got a stack of other large games to get through including Death Stranding and Cyberpunk 2077.

Pentiment

Baldur’s Gate 3 is a blast.

Early access is more fully-baked than many full releases. The story is intriguing, and seems to react in a very flexible way to dialogue as well as actions in the world. The D&D nostalgia is awesome, and it seems that Forgotten Realms is more familiar to me than I thought.

It’s gorgeous. It feels great. It’s fun.

Fun fact: if you get the early release, you get a free upgrade to digital deluxe when it releases Aug 3 I think. Not a shill, I just love gaming.

On mobile, I'm finally getting into Archero, but man, the red dot spam is wild.

Necromerger is still really fun a couple of weeks in.