What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

I picked up Diablo 4 on Xbox thinking it would be my new long-term video game investment after not really playing much of anything for the last year. It's...fine. Incredibly well done for what it is. Just not sure that what it is really does it for me anymore.

Last week I grabbed Baldur's Gate 3 and, holy shit, it's the real deal. Closest thing to a TTRPG I've ever played, and in all the good ways. Every single encounter has MANY ways to resolve. The voice acting is incredible. Exploration is very satisfying. Every nook and cranny of the environment is worth exploring as you WILL find something of interest. And not just some little meaningless filler to pad the play time. Everything is so well fleshed out and impactful.

I actually find myself counting the hours down at work until I can go home and play again and that hasn't happened in a long time for me with any game.The fact that they delivered a thing of this scope and quality with so few bugs and no micro transactions is extremely impressive.

Just be aware that you will be tasked with choosing what your character's genitals look like. It was a little disconcerting choosing my gnome's vulva but it's pretty cool that everyone can build a character that matches any sex/gender combination that they identify with.

Yeah, I am fucking hyped for BG3, I intentionally avoided everything about its early access. Going to wait till I have like an extended period I could play it to buy but...

I want to say there's a no nudity option in the menu? That might nix that choice out?

I would probably be playing Baldur's Gate 3 now if I wasn't busy making my own video game, a task which I am trying very hard to not falter on.

Oh, I'm not offended by the nudity or anything. I just found the process funny. I wasn't prepared for "design your junk."

So let me tell you about my video game I'm creating. There's this group that goes to Origins and Gen Con, called the Red Shirt society. It refers to red shirt brown pants, to cover up for where you got stabbed and shit your pants during war. Whatever.

They have this game they run events for, called Monster Mash. I've played for years, and it is always fun. Each player is randomly assigned a D&D monster. They are NOT all created equal. Every monster is thrust into the dungeon, and it's a battle royale. The rules enforce combat and don't let you turtle. I never last long, but it's fun.

I have long thought it would be a fun premise for a video game, and am finally acting on that premise. I am changing the formula though, to suit my medium. My current title is Gacha Dungeon, after the vending machines that spit out random toys. Here's the pitch:

100 monsters thrown into a dungeon to engage in 1v1 battles until there is a last monster standing. When you start, let's say there are 10 "starter" monsters in your gacha machine. You spin the machine and it spits out one of the monsters. That is your character. You then battle until you either die or win the whole thing. When you defeat a monster, you gain gold. If the monster has never been defeated by you before, it enters your gacha so it may be a future character you get to play. You can spend the gold on stat boosts for the monsters, to make it easier to win with them. If you actually win the whole thing, that monster would then be brought out of the gacha and you could choose it specifically to play as. Most of this is not implemented yet, it's just the direction I'm heading.

Making a video game is infinitely harder than making a board game, but not having to deal with a publisher / physical goods is liberating.

I created my long time halfling character in BG3 and was QUITE UPSET that I didn't get to add in the well established backstory that he had just the right amount of half-orc in his family tree

I kinda stayed away from BG3 talk, but do we just get to play as 1 character with a bunch of pre-scripted NPCs? I've not gotten out of the nautiloid yet so I've no idea how or if it opens up to more player created characters.

Basically, yes. You can also just use a prescripted character as your character. I believe it's how Divinity Original Sin 2 worked?

Yeah, so BG3 is an odd combo of party and individual player mechanics, at least 4-5 hours in. Which ever character initiates a conversation is the one that dictates the reaction and conversation tree options. So its hard to have a character great at that all that stuff, though my halfling rogue is decent at deception, persuasion, and arcana/history checks so he's all right. But a high charisma paladin would probably be best if you like to white knight the story.

But inventory is separate for each character, so I find myself doing a lot of moving around for weight and barter with vendors. Ugh. Not the end of the world by any means, but sheesh, in 2023, really?

And very few auto-save spots. I'm in Emerald Grove and apparently tripped some sort of "we want to arrest you" trigger and well....lets say there are a lot less tiefling refugees for the druids to worry about Not how I wanted it to go but my only save is 2 hours back so f it, I'm gonna press ahead.

I've been playing a lot of Synthetik, It's like EtG, but without the gun puns. I think what keeps drawing me back in is the variable classes you can play and the amount of pew pews and other items. Haven't beaten it yet, but I continue trying.

Played the closed beta of Payday 3. And I loved what I saw. They took Payday: The Heist, souped it up with UE, then put a bunch more depth to the game. It's going back to more action movie style like the first game, and paring back on the craziness that was Payday 2. The LEOs are MORE intelligent (e.g. Shields are more dangerous because the LEOs will actually use it as mobile cover. ). I only played 90 minutes, because there was only one heist to play in the build, I didn't see the point in grinding. It comes out on 9-21. Birthday's on the 24th. So, guess who's taking the 21st and 22nd off?

I finally broke down and bought Project Zomboid. Love, yet hate the game. You have all this depth, and yet you will die almost immediately, so you won't be able to experience it.

I play zelda breath of the wild 2, after 40 hours of play. I was disappointed with this new opus. So yes, it's a good game overall, but like BOTW, it breaks the Zelda license by getting into the open world sauce released since 2020.

Got Pseudoregalia last week and played a few hours of it over the past couple of days. It's a 3D metroidvania platformer with PS1 era aesthetics that started as a game jam project on itch.io early this year. Heard some buzz about the game on some reviewer sites and it was only $6 with overwhelming positive user reviews on Steam. It's...solid? I mean, the movement feels pretty good as you get upgrades with some cool nuances to things like its version of a wall jump, but eh? There's no map which means you will wander trying to look for that gap you vaguely remember you can now do with your wall run, but the corridors blend together too much in each area for my liking. Combat is there but not something I found fun. I think the biggest issue is a mix of constantly wandering into platforming challenges that I couldn't complete with my current moveset and most general platforming sections being too open in terms of finding the next bit to jump to. Seems like speedrunning is a huge emphasis of the game with optimizing your route through the game (reviews have it at 2-4 hours for the first playthrough), but that's never been my thing.

I don't regret buying it, but I'm not super excited to see it to the end. I might hop back to backlog. Zelda? Street Fighter 6? One of my dozens of other games I haven't even started yet? Or maybe I'll default to YuGiOh Master Duel like I always do...

I irresponsibly spent way too much money buying the premium edition of Mortal Kombat 1, which gets a preorder beta this weekend. I don't even play online, I just love MK and my son is excited about it too, so hopefully it gets a decent amount of play.

I sprung for the premium edition because it includes the first batch of extra characters, and they brought back my second-favorite character, Ermac. First favorite is Skorpion. The extras also have Quan-Chi, who I unironically love. He's a ridiculous jackass but he's fun to play.

I recently installed Warhammer 40k: Tacticus on my Android phone and have played something around 40 of a potential gazillion of 'missions' of 3-5 of my dudes and dudettes against evil forces on small hex terrains. In the grim dark future there is only boredom.
If you know and love WH40k, the rules are there, I guess. It's very colourful and easy to play. It's also full of loot boxes and prizes, I feel I got two or three presents for every killed enemy, plus login bonuses, events and whatnot. There seems to be a world wide active player base with guilds, thousands of people.
If you love the setting and want a quick fix for 5 minutes without the meditative parts of setup, planning or painting it might be worth checking out.
I noticed today that the last couple of days I logged in, collected the trophies for showing up and left without actually playing. That seemed like a good post for a friday to me.

Allow me to present a radical idea. Old games are good. And so are new games. Been dinking around with the Switch, especially the Super Nintendo collection, after the boys are in bed. So much good stuff. I’m not even talking the stone classics like Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong-Quest or Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island. SUPER E.D.F. EARTH DEFENSE FORCE and Pop’n TwinBee are blasts of shoot’em up goodness. Operation Logic Bomb has a bit too much wandering around and not shooting for a top-down run-and-gun, but when there is running and shooting and finding the right gun for the job, I am smiling. Even The Ignition Factor, a top-down firefighting action game, is bad, but has a goofy charm when you’re cutting a path through a wall of flame with your hose.

Also finding a lot of joy in newer releases like Wargroove and Crypt of the Necrodancer. I haven’t passed the tutorial campaign of Wargroove yet, but its thoughtful pace is appreciated. At the same time, the constant movement of Necrodancer keeps me going. I’m not good at it (still failing to exit zone 1), but those occasional moments of murdering a dragon without taking a hit have me feeling like a god.

Even the boys enjoy the Switch sometimes. My oldest can’t stop talking about Teengae Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and he’s making friends who can tell him about upcoming bosses. It’s the classic TMNT arcade games but with a host of attacks and dodges and six player support. You can still throw Foot soldiers into the screen, but now you have to think about how you’ll hit them and dodge their attacks. Just joy.

Mortal Kombat 1 came out today, and I'm an hour into the story mode. It's fantastic, as their story modes have been ever since the landmark title MK9. Ever since that title, I've been waiting for them to bring back tag team matches, and thought for sure they would this time since this game includes Kameo fighters that can help you during matches. But no.... they still didn't do it. Boo.

MK11 also had a really cool mode I enjoyed in which you'd have a team of 3 AI fighters go up against other people's teams of AI fighters. It seems to be absent. I hate when new games have less in them than older games, in spite of how much better they look.