Whatcha all playing?
I’ve got a few on my list this week.
Ufo 50 continues to be one of my favorite purchases in a long time. It’s the best collection of games since the orange box imo.
The new Zelda has also been stellar. The frame rate issues are certainly unfortunate, and it may be worth it for some to wait on a more powerful switch 2 to play this title, but I highly recommend checking it out at some point. The game is really creative and the Hyrule you get to explore is super fun imo.
I want to get back to the plucky squire, but these games have kept me busy unfortunately
Currently? Potionomics. I just wanted something that I can finish quickly, because of the upcoming release of House of Light, but now I am still not done with my play-through, so I kinda cannot start House of Light just yet.
But in a couple of days, as soon as I am done with Potionomics?
House of Light. And that for quite some time, I expect.
Let me try this
I have been playing City of Heroes, which is a superhero MMO and I’m surprised how much I dig it despite multiplayer games not being my thing. PVE is much more comfortable for me and the game let’s you make any kind of hero you want, and u can make ur own battle cry as well which is funny.
Also it has one of the best gender options in gaming: Male, Female or Huge. Badass
Another one I’m playing rn is Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, this is a remaster of the old Alex Kidd in Miracle World game which I never played but I’m digging this remaster as well. The new graphics and art is gorgeous and the ability to switch seamlessly from new to old graphics is spectacular. I have always loved old 2D side-scroller even though they are always more challenging than modern games, I like having to fight through something after multiple tries. I was having trouble with the game and after reaching one of the later levels of the game, my save file glitched and reset everything(cloud sync issue probably, I need to turn that off) which almost made me quit the game but I had learned so much so I gave it another try and was surprised that I got to where I was in an hour and beat the boss I was on before in first time. Very very satisfying
There are some other games I’m playing rn but I don’t wanna write too long so here are just their names: CLeM (amazing, intriguing puzzle game), Skies of Arcadia (emulated through Flycast with RetroArch, has achievements even!) and Peggle which I’m trying to 100% even after 30 hours haha
I made the mistake of starting Frostpunk (1) since I saw that 2 released. It’s an incredibly well-made game. The art style is beautiful, the game is intense, there is a lot of emotion, and it does its one thing just so well. Unlike a lot of modern games these days, Frostpunk wants you to lose, which is fitting for its setting. It sees that you’re behind, then kicks you in the shins for good measure rather than lending a helping hand. I’ve lost so many hours of my time to this game in the past week.
I’ve read that Frostpunk 2 is a completely different game. That one might be next on my list if I get to it before Factorio updates and the expansion for it comes out.
I’m about halfway through FP1 (I have the DLC). I want to go back and finish it, but like you said, it just kicks the shit out of you. It’s legitimately stressful for me to play it, so I’ve kinda been like “Ehhh…do I really wanna play right now?”
But I am hoping to eventually complete it. Because FP2 does look interesting.
This is so strange to hear. I loved Frostpunk, but found it to be the very opposite: Far too easy and forgiving, which made the finale in particular, as the music swells up dramatically and the storm reaches its peak, feel kind of anticlimactic, because everyone was well-fed and warm(ish) in my settlement on my first attempt of playing it. Not one person froze or starved to death, no kids were sent into the mines and we most certainly didn’t serve a 19th century spin on Soylent Green.
I know this sounds like I’m bragging, but I think the reason why this game felt so trivially easy to me is that I grew up with far more complex, challenging and punishing city builders, like Caesar 3, Pharaoh, The Settlers 2, 3 and 4, Anno 1602 and 1503, etc. I must have played many hundreds of hours of Caesar 3 alone, watching city after city succumb to fires, pestilence, barbarians and unrest until I figured out how to deal with these issues. There are so many more variables and difficult decisions in these games compared to Frostpunk, despite their idyllic presentation. Frostpunk’s core city building mechanics suffer from the very idea the narrative and the few scripted decisions aim to avoid: Pretty much every problem the player has to face when building the city has an ideal and obvious solution (if you know your city builders). It’s more of a puzzle game than an actual city builder. A very pretty and atmospheric one, which is why I enjoyed the brief campaign, but still.
I hope this encourages you to pick it up again. It may seem difficult at first glance, but once you figure it out, you can cruise your way through it with little effort and spend most of your time looking at the pretty graphics, waiting for the next scripted event.
For what it’s worth, I feel the same way about normal settings for FP1 in that it’s pretty easy. Switching to extreme though, it felt as though I needed to play perfectly to finish a scenario. To me, I think it comes down to most of the difficulty being frontloaded. A solid start sets you up for the rest of the game, while a rough start can ruin a run as the game continues to kick you down with every temp drop, event, etc.
So I’ve played a fair amount of the Settler games, as well as the more recent Anno entries: 2070, 2205, and 1800. I find those games super micromanage-y, especially the Anno games. But not stressful. Like in Anno, you can just kinda keep things on autopilot, not doing very much, and things will be OK (though the AIs might start getting stronger).
Anyway, that’s a good take that Frostpunk is more of a puzzle game. I hadn’t considered that. If that’s the case, that might explain some of my, aversion. Because that parallels somewhat an experience I had with another game: Wargroove. I was looking at Wargroove as a TRPG/SRPG (akin to Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics), where I have wide latitude to execute my own strategies. So in Wargroove, I kept trying to do my own thing, but kept losing the level. It took me awhile to realize the game wanted me to complete the level its way, not my way. And that’s when I realized it was more of a puzzle game and less a strategy game. Which is weird, because I played Advance Wars as a kid. Though maybe it’s because I was a kid I didn’t realize it was a puzzle game at the time.
It might be with Frostpunk that I’m doing something similar. Expecting a colony manager, a la Banished, but not seeing the puzzle game aspect. I’m making those narrative decisions based on nothing logical. Rather emotional: “Oh these kids are gonna starve! I better do this instead of helping the workers!”
Thanks for this; this was helpful, for real!
Been playing lots of The Finals Lately, and recently jumped back into Titanfall 2. Really enjoying the creative gameplay of the Finals, and Titanfall is just so damn good.
Is titanfall 2’s multiplayer still active?
Yeah always around 2k online. There was a jump to 5k lately because it was super on sale on steam. I can usually always find a match (anecdotally for me on steam anyways)
Cool that’s good to know, thanks!
I finished Doom II and some levels were an absolute pain. I gotta say though, this re-release (Doom + Doom II) is a bit disappointing. There are a bunch of glitches, although pretty minor, that are just annoying. The most frustrating one for me was, when you have the Pistol Start option activated (to automatically start all levels with just the Pistol), the Backpack is bugged and doesn’t give double ammo capacity. Once you die and restart the level it’s fixed, until the next level. I don’t know if it ever made the difference with me dying or not, but it just sucks.
Today I started Final Doom, specifically TNT:Evilution, which I’ve never played before. Just like before I’m trying UV, Pistol Start, no mid-level saves, but depending on how it goes I might start using saves. I’ll probably try a different source port though, since this KEX engine port isn’t the best.
I also played through Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC, although only the main quests and almost nothing else. It was kinda meh. The story was fine, but the final boss fight was complete garbage. The romance part also felt really rushed, especially since I went through everything over just two days/seven hours in total.
Then, I’m also kinda in-between games right now, since I’m waiting for the Diablo 4 expansion release in a bit over a week. There are a bunch of games I want to play, but probably won’t finish in time, so they have to wait. I tried Ace Combat 7, played through the first mission, but it didn’t really grab me (KB+M is definitely more playable than the Steam forums made it seem). I’ll probably play through one of the dozens of metroidvanias I bought, but never played.
The new Kex port is great for it’s accessibility for new players not used to the Doom sourceports scene, but I guess there’s still a few kinks to solve. I still end up preferring to play on my other sourceports (Woof! Is my favorite) but I gotta get back to it to actually finish Legacy of Rust later. At least this new port is MUCH better on the console versions now, if only the Switch version had proper access to the player uploaded addons…
In the meantime Ive been going through Freedoom 2, and I hear people are adapting the assets of the new mapping format into an open sourced version. Looking forward to that.
True, how easy it is to get into the games with this port, along with the mod browser, definitely outweighs the few minor issues.
I’ve actually downloaded Woof myself for my Final Doom playthrough. It takes a few minutes to read up on how to create a batch file to make launching the game more user friendly, but once you’re in, it’s has everything you’d want.
There’s even launchers that do the work of the batch files for you! I like using Doom Explorer or Doom Runner for that. You set it up with your ports, point it at your wads folder and then you can save preset combinations of mods, it’s so practical.
Good to know. If I get more into Doom an non-official stuff, I might look at those, but for now the batch file will do.
