What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

BALATRO is simple, stupid, addictive, and maybe brilliant. Video poker with a roguelike element. Each hand, you have to get a higher score in order to progress. In between hands, you can upgrade your deck of cards. There's different "builds," like trying to optimize your deck to get full houses, and then finding cards to synergize with that and blow your score up every time.

I started Evil Within 2 on the Steam deck. It's good so far, pretty much what I expected.

But this post is more about what video games YOU are playing, and it's the just released demo of Office Nightmare, made by me. store.steampowered.com/app/2982840/Office_Nightmare/

Finished Drug Dealer Simulator story mission. Now, I'm just achievement hunting. Making good money with my labs and the Maui Wowie situation is doing well, but slower because it takes the plants so long to grow. I think it's hilarious that adding Viagra to some of the drugs makes them hella addictive.

Going through my previous purchases, I realized I had Midnight Heist. I got the game because Fooster played it with his friend on YouTube. So, I picked it up and love it.

Thanks to Payday 2, I absolutely love heist games. This one is a mash up of a heist game, like Thief Simulator, and Phantasmophobia. You're thieves breaking into businesses, hacking hideouts, etc. and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Main goal is to hack computers to get data, which triggers your ability to escape. Simple, right?

Well, no. There's a supernatural entity that stalks the location. If it finds you, you're deader than Hell. There are several possible entities to hunt you, each with their strengths and weaknesses. One of the entities is Ogryn sized and trundles about quite loudly and slowly. Then there's the L4D Witch like entity that's blind as a bat but has excellent hearing and is ass kickingly fast.

At the beginning, you will die A LOT. Once you become acclimated to the mechanics and where the good hiding spots are (walk in lockers and bathroom stalls) it becomes a risk v. reward situation. The hacking mechanic is minigame based. They aren't too difficult (one of the games is punching in the numbers 1 to 10 in order), they are just there to waste time between entity appearances. It's still nerve wracking because you don't know when the entity will appear until you hear its footsteps.

It's still being updated and I can't wait when they add more locations.

For $10, it's a satisfying experience. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2204350/Midnight_Heist/

Evil Within 2 continues to be good. It has very strong Control vibes. Control was the best game I played in whatever year it showed up on Gamepass. I will probably replay it at some point. These two games are very similar in how they look and play.

I'm also playing Wall World, which is a roguelite that has you controlling a giant spider-like mining robot along a sheer cliff wall. You find mine entrances, and go in to collect resources by breaking blocks. Periodically you have to return to the robot to fend off waves of attacking aliens. Rinse, repeat. My description of it makes it sound bad, but it is decent mindless fun. It's held my interest longer than most things like it would.

I don't play video games often.For example, I got Cyberpunk 2077 a few years ago, but it doesn't run very well on my best computer, which is slightly below spec. So I haven't even made it all the way through the useless tutorial. Maybe in a year or two I will get a fancy gaming rig that can run any current game.

20 years ago, my ex gave me one of my all-time favorite PC games: Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines as a Christmas present. It runs on a modified version of the Half-Life 2 engine, and offers an interesting mix of physical, mental, and social challenges, along with creepy visuals and a warped sense of humor. The game also features some great music, a combination of gothic and industrial music, plus above average background game music. The original release was buggy, but fans have since patched the game and added additional content. One significant fan project, ClanQuest, added one new quest per clan (7 vampire clans in the game) plus a few generic quests playable by any clan. A few years ago, I started playing through the ClanQuest version, but cut back to only very occasional play (once or twice a year) after getting about 2/3 through the game. I am playing the Malkavian vampire, a mentally ill vampire who gets odd and funny dialogue options that occasionally reveal secrets not available to the other clans. My vampire abilities give me supernatural perception, extreme stealth capabilities, and the ability to induce temporary madness in others. My current outfit is a big white fur coat and a floppy hat straight out of Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat.

Last night, I started back in at the threshold to a seedy warehouse in Chinatown. I checked my character log to refresh my memory about current quests in progress, and found that I was here to meet an informant. I get my tip from the informant just before a bunch of tong show up to shoot the place up. I then proceed to die five times in a row before realizing that I'm rusty at combat and my character is probably not quite good enough at combat to fight all these guys at once. So on the sixth attempt, I smash out the warehouse office window, jump onto high nearby shelving, go into supernatural stealth, and leave without hassle.

I then revisited various old haunts, including a few contacts and most of the bars in the game. I knocked off an easy side quest and declined another one that I found distasteful (betraying a friendly contact). Finally, I acted on the tip from my informant, which led me into a tong bar full of trigger happy gangsters. I die once, then locate a different entrance and prepare for a more stealthy approach. I remember successfully shooting up the place the last time I played this far into the game, but that was many years ago and with a Gangrel vampire that could become temporarily bulletproof.

I want to keep playing because I still haven't played through all of the new quests, but I may want to stop at some point before the end. Bloodlines promises players that you can play the game with a social or stealth character instead of just fighting through every encounter, but I seem to remember that the final stretch of the game is very heavy on repetitive combat, with few opportunities to sneak past enemies or talk your way past them.

I've started playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and that game is pretty damn cool. So far it's a cross between Tomb Raider and Hitman, which is as good as it sounds.

I just got a copy of this and the elden ring expansion as well. Need to find some time for it.