What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Had a wild run of Rogue Legacy 2 tonight, one shotted the last area, it's 3 bosses, and the boss after that, then got stomped by the actual final boss. Think I could have taken him if I wasnt ground down by the guy before him but still. Great game, that.

I've had Valheim on my steam watchlist for a while. Not read much on it, so in my head it was kind of a Vikings version of Stardew Valley mixed with minecraft, which I suppose you have not played. Normally I avoid early access/perpetual beta as an excuse to ship broken stuff, but does this feel pretty complete and non-janky?

These days Valheim is pretty complete and not janky, from what I've seen.

It's on Game pass. My friend keeps trying to get me to play it with him. I keep resisting. Doesn't look like my kind of thing.

jason10mm wrote: I've had Valheim on my steam watchlist for a while. Not read much on it, so in my head it was kind of a Vikings version of Stardew Valley mixed with minecraft, which I suppose you have not played.

I haven’t played Minecraft, but wife is (or maybe was) a serious Minecraft junkie. She tells me yes, it is definitely a lot like Viking Minecraft with different graphics and maybe more focus on skill development. In our experience it’s not janky, but reasonably stable. It’s crashed a few times in 10s of hours of playing. Things in the world seem to work as you’d expect.

VAMPIRE SURVIVORS came out for iOS so I've been playing that. Such a simple concept, but really well done. Short games, lots of variety in upgrade paths, lots of things to unlock for that sweet dopamine hit.

Played through Norco on Game Pass. I played on PC since it's a point and click adventure, basically, but it's probably passable on a controller.

The story is interesting. Essentially it's a story about returning home to deal with your mother's passing, but you get mixed up in some intrigue, all draped in a unique sci-fi setting.

There are a couple of sequences that are tedious, and there are also some combat sequences that frankly would have been better off being removed entirely. Puzzles are mostly good and pretty easy to solve if you pay attention.

The writing is very good and I would be very surprised if the creator is not from the Louisiana area because it all seems very authentic. I say "seems" because I've never even been there and wouldn't know authentic if it bit me on the nose.

I think you can knock this one down in about 8 hours if you are wanting an old school adventure game with modern conveniences.

My wife gave me God of War Ragnarok for my birthday recently, so I started that this morning. Seems like more God of War! There was a "last time on God of War" thing, which was nice since I didn't really remember the specifics of what happened and this is a direct ass direct sequel. Looks beautiful, combat is still fun... Yea I mean it's more of that game so what else is there to say really. We'll see how the story pans out this time around.

GOWRagnarok update: i dont remember the first game holding your hand NEARLY this much, and its kind of really annoying. you have 2 talking characters with you at all times so far, and every time theres anything beyond "walk forward" happening one or the other one goes "KRATOS MAYBE IF YOU FROZE THAT WATER YOU COULD GET UP THERE!?" like as im literally doing that thing. "FATHER I BET YOUR BLADES COULD BURN THAT THING THERE AND WE COULD GET THROUGH!!!" like son i am in the process of equipping my fire thing maybe just shut up for two seconds.

I've seen people say they mute the audio when they reach a puzzle because your companions immediately tell you how to solve it.

This sounds like something Penny Arcade would lampoon.

If you have Game Pass and have any interest in adventure games, you should check out Pentiment. I just beat it, after having hit it pretty hard for a few days, as the story sucked me in.

You play as an artist in the early 1500's, working in a monastery on some commission art pieces. Everything is 2-D and styled to look like art in old books, and people talk with speech bubbles. The fonts for different characters change based on their station in life.

You can run around town talking to people, but you also have work to complete, and a schedule to maintain. The game deliberately makes it so that you can't do everything that you want to do. It's fine though, just press on.

It would be pretty mundane if all you did was go to work at the monastery. Soon, a murder occurs, and you take it upon yourself to solve the crime. From that point on the game is quite a detective story, with multiple suspects, mysterious motives, etc.

The best part of this game is that your choices matter in extensive, subtle ways. From time to time choosing a dialog option will trigger a note of "This will be remembered", and you even have occasional skill checks that are affected by things you have done or your character's background. You get to choose some options for your character that affect their knowledge and dialog choices.

This is a niche game that a lot of people would look at and not even try, and they would be missing a real gem.

I played Valheim for about a month last year. Then a friend of mine showed me his castle? Manse? JFC, he had piers for his boats, decorations on the wall, the whole nine yards. I was sleeping in a glorified lean-to.

The same friend and his buddies got me stoked on the new Dwarf Fortress, and I bought a copy. After a couple of days I realized that it just wasn't for me. The part of me that knows how to use credit cards likes the notion of open-ended settlement style games (c.f. Timberborn), but the gameplaying part of me doesn't. There's a ton of stuff going on, but it turns out that without a goal I just don't care. I guess I'll write it off as helping out the developers, since they worked on it as a labor of love for forever.

What I have been spending a lot of time on lately is Railway Empire. Trains! You get a weird mix of almost Paradox Interactive-level detail, coupled with you competing with the madam of a bordello, a girl dressed like Robin Hood, Santa Claus, and a talking rat mobster. That weirdness aside, trains!

Picked up Elden Ring on the Steam sale, and installed the Easy Mode mod. Having a blast running around with my Astrologer, blasting fools.

I think that's smart. There's a lot to see without the difficulty thing. Besides, this one is such that eventually you outlevel a lot of the difficulty anyway.