Gaming

I started Hades recently and have been enjoying it a lot. I'm debating if I should pick up Sonic Frontiers, it's been forever since I played a Sonic game.

Still playing Final Fantasy XVI. The story and characters are fantastic. Now that I've put some time into it, the combat feels pretty great. Excited to see where it goes. I feel like I'm still in the first quarter of the game.

I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through Disco Elysium.

More Final Fantasy 14. I've started the Heavensward post-game content (I guess you can call it that?).

I'm done with all the optional dungeons and raids you unlock after the base story, and now I'm continuing with the story quests that were added in later patches. There's just so much time-wasting, back and forth bullshit, that it's just a chore, though. Start quest in town A, go to town B for a short cutscene, go to town C for another short cutscene, go back to town A for yet another cutscene. Since you can teleport everywhere by this point, it doesn't take long, but is just so boring. That's why I'm constantly queuing for random dungeons and hang out in the Gold Saucer, basically avoiding the story.

As for classes, I've mainly played Reaper, which is fun, and today started trying out Dancer, and had a good time as well.

Dave the Diver. It's a great blend of Subnautica, Recettear, and absurdity.

Horizon Forbidden West - don’t like it as much as the first but I’m determined to finish it before moving on to something else

Deep Rock Galactic - I should have probably picked it up earlier. It's such a wonderful co-op game with so many memorable, epic moments happening.
Very charming atmosphere, too.

Elden Ring. Always Elden Ring. It's massive. Don't know when I'll finish everything I want to.

Borrowed Metroid Dread at the library. I love the game, but I'm having a real tough time. It's a little too hard for me, but I'm still hoping to finish it.

I finally got around to playing the Portal series. I played 2 first (it was a free Games with Gold pick) and thought it was great, so about 20 or so puzzles through the first Portal now. I'm kind of surprised the series ended with one sequel.

Ori and the will of the wisps on the switch. I like the game and it seems to have improved many things over its predecessor but keeps stuttering on this switch port. Not sure I can persevere ! Anyone had similar issues? Maybe something I can change in settings...

Lots of overtime sapping my will and time to play games.

Surprised nobody else has said Tears of the Kingdom yet. I’m like 110 hours in and still haven’t beaten the main story. There’s just so much to do!

Doing another run in Satisfactory. I'm building a mega base building vertically and horizontally. I'm around 30 hours in in this run, made coal after about 6 hours and I'm still working on oil, but getting there. I've gotten to the last tier before, stayed a while, but never pushed long enough to obtain the employee of the planet cup or to buy everything in the awesome shop.

Finally getting around to playing the halo infinite campaign. Fingers crossed it’s okay for an old geezer who’s been playing since the original Xbox release.

Horizon: Zero Dawn, almost non-stop. The mechanics can be a bit finicky sometimes, but the story and world building keep me coming back.

There are a lot of little things that I really don't like about it and these almost certainly exist because it was originally exclusive to Playstation. I sometimes find my self a bit irked because there was so much more they could've done to make it a classic. Instead, it's just good enough.

I've been seeing a lot of good stuff about Baldur's Gate 3, but for a variety of reasons a bunch of other CRPGs I've played haven't clicked with me. So, since I owned Divinity: Original Sin 2, I decided to pull that back out and focus on it for a bit to see if it got my attention this time. The very early start up trying to break out of the fort is a bit rough, but once you get past that it gets compelling fast. The tactics play out really enjoyably, and I really find it enjoyable to take bigger encounters, if I get stomped, and figure out the optimal positioning I can set myself up in to beat the odds on the next try. After a good few too many hours I'm finally off the first island and it's starting to open up for real.

This might have convinced me to the BG3 first and save Starfield for a while, even though that and FF16 both look damn good too.

Primarily playing Guild Wars 2 and getting prepared for the new expansion around the end of August! I’m also super stoked for Baldurs Gate 3 and going to jump in with some friends!

Warhammer 40k Boltgun

I've been playing a ton of Factorio. Trying to get a megabase going steadily

Beat hazard 3. It's in early access and I love the simple concept of "music creates the stage". You can use digital copies of songs, or in this new fangled age of streaming it allows for a plethora of other streaming services and even just desktop live audio if you happen to have some dj streaming on twitch open.

It's basically asteroids with upgrades, bosses, and waves upon waves of musically generated ships to blast.

Each track completed awards a unique new ship to pilot, procedurally generated. There is a galactic conquest mode where all your music is made into clusters in it's own galaxy. And the solo dev of the whole thing went ahead and added upgradeable special attacks in the most recent update, which is why I've been playing this week.

Borderlands 3

I'm enjoying it overall, but good GODS can I tell it was 100% not designed to work for PC players.

I'm super looking forward to Pikmin 4 coming at the end of this week 🙏. Been waiting a long time and everything I've seen looks great so far

Viewfinder comes out tomorrow, I'm looking forward to that. I played the demo on steam and confirmed that it is something I'll almost certainly enjoy.

For this week and the next I'm hoping to complete Vampyr.

A bit disappointed with the floaty melee combat, but eh not that many vampire games on PS4 at the moment.

Been playing through Tunic finally when league friends aren't around.

Been playing the absolute hell out of the new League Arena when they are around!

Approaching the end of ffxvi. Then gonna hit Diablo 4 season 1, hope it doesn't suck too much.

I just finished Jedi Survivor. It was a hell of a run, fun, super enjoyable and absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to start the new game + and try to get all the achievements

I played Super Mario Galaxy, and was having difficulties with motion control and aiming the stomp (even after doing the spinning stomp move), then I reached a place with underwater level, I bailed out. Personally for me, it's probably better suited for short bursts of gameplay than longer period of streaming the game.

Right now I am replaying Zero Time Dilemma. I am still enjoying it.

Got back to Minecraft - probably not for long as it was mostly something to fill the time rather than a real need to play it again. It's a good game for that anyway.

Besides that, I got a craving for some good old PSP fun and jumped on two games there - Pangya: Fantasy Golf & Ridge Racer 2.
Despite the fact I don't really care about golf (neither real nor in video game form), Pangya is pretty fun. Nice graphics, simple but enjoyable gameplay. Just started so I'm curious how difficult it'll get later on.

As for Ridge Racer 2... played A LOT of it when I was younger, never finished it though. Still as good as remember. I'm also surprised how much of the game stuck with me - guess I had way more fun with it then I thought.

I've been playing a mix of Remnant: From the Ashes and Stellaris.

I've completed Remnant now, and am just gearing up for the DLC, but the problem with it is that you have to erase your campaign progress (character progress stays) before you can start the DLC, so I'm running around the campaign world to try get the things I might have missed before I can dive into the DLC.

For Stellaris, I've been playing a modded playthrough, with a mod named GigaStructures, which has been absolutely ridiculous in the power scale. The start of the power creep is turning small moons into hyperpowerful attack ships, aptly named Attack Moons. I then progressed to turning planets into ships, which was yet another order of magnitude. Finally, you can convert 5 moons and 4 planets into a stellar craft, using a local star as it's power source and core component. The power scale with these mods is pretty wacky

I've been playing Diablo 4 this week; I can't even begin to tell you how many gleeful hours I put into Diablo 2 back in the day, but this one is feeling more like a chore than fun. There's a part of me that wants to just grind out to 100 to get there but I recognize sunk-cost fallacy when I see it, so I'm at least taking a break for a while.

A friend gifted me Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor during the Steam sale so that's probably on the menu for this weekend. My 12-year-old has played a couple from that series and enjoyed the puzzles so I'll see if they want to play it with me. I also picked up the stealth puzzle game Gunpoint and am looking forward to giving that a go.

Horizon Forbidden West - don’t like it quite as much as the first but want to finish it up

I'm playing Tom Clancy's The Division (using GeForceNow). And I'm really liking it. Dying is not really frustrating, but challenging at most. Progression is not hard and the story is really enjoyable.

Just finished DREDGE. It was a lot of fun, and the first game I ever gained all of the achievements 😄.

Stardew Valley. But I’m trying to decide if I want to buy a console to play Hogwarts Legacy.

Barony! This game scratches my roguelike itch perfectly.

I am looking forward to Blackout Protocol on the 19th! One of my most played demos during Steam's Next Fest.

Felt the itch to play some Dead Cells again, so I did that and finally got around to playing the new Castlevania DLC. Always a blast.

And I also finally got around to playing Ghost of Tsushima. Haven't gotten very far yet, but so far I like it. The combat is a little slow and janky for my taste but the enviroment and sheer beauty of the world make me want to keep playing it.