This week I’ve been playing Lumines Remastered on PC. I dumped so many hours into the original one on PSP. The port is very faithful to the original while also adding some nice updates to make it home on PC.
I did have a weird issue where having Vsync enabled made the controls hyper sensitive but turning it off fixed that.
I also don’t have much time to game these days so it’s nice to be able to pick up a quick, low commitment game that’s still engaging.
I played the Switch version a bit a few years ago, really fun puzzle game and the Switch version did some nice things with its HD Rumble.
Spider-Man and Miles Morales on PC. I saw Brand New Day and it got me in the mood.
And after finally getting a job, I’m probably going to get Spider-Man 2 on the next sale so I can play even more Spider-Man and with better swinging mechanics.
Scarface: The World is Yours
I finished the game this week. What started as a rough but decent enough GTA clone with some unique ideas, turned into a pretty tiring experience by the time I was done with it. Between limited mission variety, decent but simple game loop (do simple mission, buy a businesses, take over district, buy & distribute drugs to get money, repeat 3) and constantly increasing reliance on big waves of enemies (sometimes never ending until you reach specific trigger), the whole things falls apart the longer you play. The worst of the worst is probably the final mission, where you’re spawned in the middle of enemy base, right in the open, surrounded by about 30 enemies, with no weapons except for a pistol with 7 shots. It was not fun.
The game as a whole is still “fine”, as long as you play it in very small doses to avoid burn out. I’m glad I finally played it to completion but I don’t think I’ll ever touch it again. It least I know what I’ve been missing all this time.
Final Fantasy XIV
I’ve been thinking about FF recently, mainly FF7 and its remakes but I’ve also looked into all of the other releases available on PC. While I still want to jump into those other titles, I decided to give FFXIV another go for now. New server, new character and a genuine attempt to embrace it all (cheese and all).
So far, so good. I’m taking things slow (literally too, I haven’t teleported once) so I don’t expect to get back to where I left off on my original character any time soon. It’s fine though, I forgot a lot of the story already so I might as well take my time getting immersed in it.
I just hope I’ll be able to click with it enough to get hooked this time.
I’m playing Silent Hill f:
spoiler
I just got out of Hinako’s house after fighting her parents.
The story is not bad and the graphics are beautiful, clean and the game runs smooth except some of the infamous traversal stutter. This is a breath of fresh air after Alan Wake 2’s terrible performance.
Still not sure why they called it Silent Hill if apparently you don’t spend a single second in the town of Silent hill… Well yes, I know why, they used the name to sell more copies.
I was also playing Arctic Awakening but my game bugged out during chapter 4 and the option to restart the scene takes me too far back (at least an hour) for me to want to go back right now. A shame because it’s a nice walking simulator with very light survival mechanics and a nice scifi story.
Not suuuuuper patient, but I’m enjoying Project Wingman. Love playing on my steam deck. Had to scratch that dogfighting itch after finishing ace combat 6 earlier this year. And it’ll be a while before ace combat 7 has been out long enough for me to buy it for a decent price.
Dark Messiah - Might and Magic
Playing Witcher 3 lately for the first time. Coming from already playing games like Kingdom Come Deliverance, Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and modern God of War games, it’s interesting to see how Witcher 3 retains its original flavour and yet its formula has been taken into various extremes by other games. I love the realism and interesting story lines of KCD, and the mindless addictive loop of AC Odyssey full of fantastical myths and moral choices, and the emotional depth of God of War. Overall I weirdly feel KCD took the best lessons and created something really unique.
I don’t know if it’s fair to compare these games like this, but yeah, I get these comparisons in my mind.
Speaking of Witcher 3, it took me three tries to actually get into it, the game is quite a lot when you start it, especially not having played first two. But once I did, it was really fun. I was torn at every moral choice, and a bit burnt out eventually. I don’t love difficult choices with consequences in games as in real life, but it’s good to confront that anyway. A lot of the quests are memorable for that reason.
Overall, enjoying it a lot. I’m sure people in 2015 must have their minds blown by this game back then.
Yeah I’ve not played it yet either. It’s on my list, after I eventually finish baldur’s gate 3.
Been getting the itch to play Kingdoms of Amalur again. Started listening to the soundtrack for now.
Noita
It’s a hell of a game. It’s essentially utterly fair, but brutal. It’s technically a rogue-lite because there are a handful of things that are unlocked on runs for use in later runs, but those elements are so unnecessary for completing the game you can ignore them. It has the ‘knowledge is power’ addage built into its bones, rewarding you for knowing how to play rather than just chipping out meta-progression, and containing such mysteries that some of them are still unsolved, despite people’s attempts to data-mine the game to find its secrets. It’s fun too.
I have a couple of hundred hours in Noita, and I barely scratched the surface. That game is insanely deep!
I wonder if anyone will ever figure out the eye puzzle.
You know you’ve gone off the deep of Noita when you stop calling it a rogue-lite and start calling it a randomized metroidvania. Because the game has built in features that effectively let you circumvent whatever “rogue-lite” elements the game has and what areas, bosses or quests you can access, kill or do becomes dependent on the order of what you find during your playthrough. But eventually you can do everything in a single playthrough (excluding the true ending which requires going into NG+).
Planning on playing Terraria after a few years of not having touched the game. I might just continue grinding on Hypixel SkyBlock. Who knows ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Been replaying through the Halo games. I finished Reach, 1, 2, ODST, 3 and am still so offended by the execution of 4 that i couldn’t bring myself to start it.
Also been playing Magicraft on my Deck at work.
I just played through Halo CE for the first time, finished it yesterday! I just started Halo 2 today and the uptick in quality is kind of crazy. It’s also been a great use case for controller+gyro.
I can’t help but feel (from only the first mission to be fair) the enemy ai is much dumber than in CE. Is that just me?
