Just finished Darkest Dungeon, amazing game.

The OG Silent Hill. Dandelions along a path? A bitter tangerine? What the hell are these puzzles, man?

Also, I love the emergency hammer. It’s my new best friend.

I have sinned and got Doom: The Dark Ages for 40 bucks so I can rip & tear a little bit.

Did not like the parry mechanic at first but it’s starting to grow on me. Also, can’t really recommend the game if you don’t have a high end PC.

Did a FNV run for the first time in maybe 10ish years? I had never played modded, was feeling like some fpv shooter arpg hybrid with a dose of nonsense, so figured I’d give it a replay.

Holds up remarkably well. Played it with the Viva New Vegas modpack as a base to simplify things a little bit for myself, added on a few extras for cool features, and it did significantly improve the experience. I remember crashes used to be very frequent, but even with a bunch of mods, this was actually more stable than I remember. Multiple companions mod made the difficulty completely trivial, so felt more like a power romp than an immersive game, but still fun as it sped the playthrough up enormously, with this posse I’m running around with just gunning down absolutely everything in the wasteland.

On the whole, good stuff, modded replay is recommended.

• Shadow Labyrinth: A metroidvania set in a very dark timeline for Pac-Man. As a metroidvania it is solid. The traversal and exploration are on par for the genre. The sections where you transform into Pac-Man are a cool new take as a variation of Metroid’s classic ball. The maze levels which most resemble the Pac-Man we’re all familiar with provide quite a challenge. Overall I would put this on the shelf next to some of my other favorite metroidvanias including, but not limited to, Hollow Knight, Sundered, and the Ori games.

• Tales from the Shire: A cozy sim of living in a Hobbit village. I’m sorry, not-village, as that is the goal of the game: to make your small town an official village. I find the pathfinding mechanics in this game adorable and liken them to the wind in Ghost of Tsushima which acted as your objective guide. In Tales from the Shire you follow little blue birds that perch on nearby trees, rocks, and signposts. Speaking of which, when they’re on a signpost they actually sit on the board pointing in the direction you need to go.

• Primal Planet: Another metroidvania, this one is a primitive setting where you’re a caveman living with your village when it is attacked. You then track down your missing villagers and rebuild the village while levelling up, gaining new crafting recipes, etc. Nothing groundbreaking in here, but it is still a good pixelated entry in the genre with a nice art style and animation. This game does do a really good job of letting you know when you’re under-levelled for an area…brutally so.

I’ve started Shadow of War. It’s sad what WB did with the game when it released, but in its current state it’s a blast to play. The pacing is just a smidge to the slow side but I’m taking it more as a marathon than a sprint, because I am enjoying the core gameplay loop. It’s one of the few games where dying is fun. The story is essentially nonsense and you can see plot twists coming from a mile away, but you’re not playing it for the actual story. You’re playing it for the stories the nemesis system creates.

It’s such a simple system that just creates such memorable stories and enemies. In my playthrough I have an ork who killed me, I then got revenge on them by poisoning them, they then came back from the dead as a legendary with epic poison trait and now I run away from him because he keeps getting stronger. I have another ork who followed me from one area to another, he’s an epic ork with iron will (meaning I can’t turn him to my side) and I keep humiliating him in hopes that eventually I can break his iron will trait. No luck so far but I’ll keep trying.

If anyone is planning on playing it my recommendation is to either start on the hardest difficulty (and focus on collecting skill points because the game does get easier one you have more skills unlocked) or raise the difficulty as you progress until dying is relatively common. You’re simply not going to get the full nemesis system experience if you’re never dying.

FF VII Rebirth. I’m about 40 hours in, currently roaming around Gongaga. I’ve been trying to do all the side quests because they’re pretty well done and enjoyable. The Queens Blood card game is fun too!

Not sure about Cait Sith’s moveset at the moment but maybe he’ll grow on me. I’ve just found out that he’s based on Scottish folklore which explains his accent!

Trying to play Atelier Lulua, but like most JRPGs, the beginning is painfully slow.

Why can’t game devs make JRPG start with a bang like with Final Fantasy 7 OG?

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2. Terrible game honestly

• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Slow Walk down corridor
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Fight 2 copies of the same sprite, once you kill one, another appears, button mash till they stop showing up
• Skip Cutscene
• Skip Cutscene
• Use Random New Ability once and only once
• Skip Cutscene

It plays more like a visual novel than the kind of games I typically like.

Just started Arco and it’s super fun.

mostly dcss & heroes of might and magic 3 lately

My stalling of Blasphemous continues. Apparently some time saving features - like teleporting between bonfires or getting the good ending while still being able to get rid of guilt - were added in a DLC. You just gotta donate an exorbitant amount of currency to a tithe box that you have no idea the function of without a Wiki. Sigh.

So instead of grinding currency I went back to Deus Ex: Mankind Divided to finish the DLCs. Desperate Measures was a huge disappointment honestly. Completely linear, extremely short and just clearly a main story mission shamelessly ripped out and sold separately.

A Criminal Past was an extraordinary DLC however. Solid probably 6-8h playtime, awesome level design, lots of actually impactful choices. The replayability seems high enough that I could definitely see myself going back for another run at some point.

This DLC disables your augmentations at the start, and while I don’t like the “lose all your abilities and equipment” trope (especially since it’s a repeat from the Human Revolution DLC) it didn’t bother me as much here. Probably because I took a substantial break between finishing the main story and coming back, so it didn’t really feel like losing abilities.

Pretty early on the DLC gives you the option of using an item to regain the use of your augs, however, it’s heavily implied that doing so would lead to negative consequences so I abstained. For the most part, this was fine. I was actually extremely impressed by the level design, which was well thought out enough to accommodate stealth without augs… except perhaps for the prison riot. I have no idea how you’re supposed to navigate that unseen and non-lethal without augs. But I probably missed something.

Regardless, it was an awesome experience all told, and continuing the trend from Human Revolution once again a DLC is the best part of the game in the New Deus Exes.

Moss: Book II

Pokemon firered for the Nth time.

• Magic Arena - phone and laptop
• Tunic - Steam Deck
• Tears of the Kingdom - Switch
• Final Fantasy VII - Desktop

I only play the last two with my kids watching.