Been playing Halo: Campaign Evolved on and off via ps5 (technically xbox too if you count cross platform progress), up to Mission 3: Truth and Reconciliation currently
I love Croc. I played it multiple times throughout the years and yet I never had a legit copy of the game until now. Seeing its Platinum Edition (remaster) on sale finally made me pull the trigger. It runs great, it plays great and the trove of bonus content is wonderful, even if it has a few minor issues that quickly caught my attention. These being:
- Remastered soundtrack reminds me of The Sims 2 - it’s not bad but it’s something I never thought while playing the original.
- There’s no option to switch between different versions of the soundtrack - Croc64 (an unofficial patch bringing modern features to the original version) has PC, PC demo and PS1 to choose from.
- There’s no option to rebind controls (something that already exists in the classic version).
- Updated graphics look weird. I know they said they didn’t use any AI for the new assets but some of the textures definitely feel that way. It’s fine though, I’m playing with the old assets anyway.
I’ll be sticking with Croc64 for my Steam Deck setup as it requires less disk space and I already have it set up but I am playing the remastered version on my desktop. I’ve been going back and forth between the two to compare them and playing on Deck made me realise it’s one of the few platformers I prefer to play with a keyboard - tank controls just key binds make more sense for me this way.
Anyway, I’m glad to finally buy the game that game me so much fun. Another one off the list!
Edit: Speaking of Croc, I just found out there’s an official trailer for a Croc 2 remaster. I might prefer the first game but this is great news!
Going through the ACE team catalog, this time I’m playing Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. It’s a spinoff of Zeno Clash series, but in third person. As always with the ACE team the world is beautiful and weird. Plays nice enough too, liking it so far
Man, I wish this was a proper action game with combos, juggling and stuff and it didn’t play more or less like a martial arts soulslike.
I finished all the achievements on Wayfinder. I really enjoyed it for what it is. It’s clear from some things that they ran out of budget/time to really smooth all the edges. What is there though is a fun action RPG with beautiful art, pretty satisfying progression and combat, and a decent roster of characters to play.
I haven’t been sure what to play next but I just started Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Not sure about the parry/dodge system, it seems pretty anti-fun but I’ll give it a couple more hours.
If that doesn’t work out, I think I’ll start on the Yakuza games. I have Yakuza 0 and Like a Dragon, not sure which I’ll go for first.
I’ve been holding off on wayfinder because people told me to play if with friends like a local WoW server. How does it hold up solo?
I played it entirely solo and had no issues with the highest difficulty dungeons or world bosses. I imagine it’d be a blast to play with other people but if you start on your own you can create another save slot to play with friends or just use a character you haven’t leveled up yet.
I’ve decided I’m finally finishing Elden Ring. Just started a new Bonker and I’m making my way through the early game now.
Man I really need to finish a playthrough sooner or later
Farthest I got was killing the fire giant. Then I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 and by the time I came back I got bad.
I have a character that’s about to meet Malenia, and I’m kinda scared
Despite all the crazy YouTube videos about beating her with wherever, she have weaknesses to certain items/strats, pretty much like all the other bosses in the game.
My recommendtation is don’t play Factorio. I picked it up a couple months ago and basically haven’t stopped playing. It’s stolen all of my free time. Don’t do it.
I’m really tempted to pick it up because of all the comments like this that I see but I also don’t have much free time as is, I don’t want to be completely enveloped by it.
I got it a few months ago. It’s great and fun, but once I launched the rocket and finished the game, I did not find it hard to put down. I will definitely do another play through soon though!
There’s always the space dlc!
Yes. And I also want to try deathworld and ribbonworld
I had the same experience. I even decided to build my base up to 75 science/minute after the first rocket launch, but once I hit that and was finding myself just crafting modules to increase productivity/efficiency to do infinite research with no real end in sight, it was all grind and no fun for me.
I could have decided to make a real megabase, push for the highest spm my PC can handle, and optimize to the end of time, but at some point I’d have to return to the real world.
End game is all boring alien culling for more mining expansions just to get diminishing returns on infinite research you don’t really need anyways. I’m not really a fan of the colonial extractivist themes, and that’s pretty much all the game made me feel by the end.
i have to cheat on factorio with rim world and back again because both are like that for me.
I feel like the only game that could come close to the same level of digital crack is Football Manager. Since I’ve already plowed way too many hours into that one I’m steering clear of Factorio.
I’ve been playing a little bit of Wanted: Dead. Man, this is a weird fucking game to write about. I don’t even know how best to describe it. How about this: Wanted: Dead is a 3/10 but I “see the vision”. There is an alternate universe where this game is an absolute cult classic.
(EDIT: spoiler tagged to preserve real estate as I sort of vomited out a whole ass rant).
WARNING: Wall of Text
On paper, all the pieces - or at least the ideas of the pieces - are there. Melee combat designed by developers who worked on Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Parrying and gun parrying. Third person shooting, grenades, weapon upgrades. Some sick gun-fu finishing moves combining pistol and katana. Cyberpunk storyline of privatised law enforcement using prisoners Suicide Squad style, a conspiracy, and sentient androids. Minigames. Weird and quirky cast of characters. Randomly inserted clips of a custom tie-in anime (???).
This could have been a great game. It’s just… everything is just so fucking bad. The characters are weirdly written and unlikeable (or absolute dead-horse beaten clichés like the police captain). The main cast are supposed to be terrorist war criminals but act like goofy sitcom characters. The cutscenes are actually made with some effort and care, they’re just horribly written and acted. Sometimes it’s managing to veer into B-movie “so bad it’s entertaining” territory but… most of the time it’s actually just bad.
And part of it is that the voice acting may be the absolute worst I’ve ever heard, and must have been recorded without direction too (and is poorly mixed, to boot). Like, I know I’m ranting here but it’s genuinely unbelievable that this voice acting shipped in a game that is sold for actual dollars. This isn’t just worse than AI voices, at times it’s so bad fucking Microsoft Sam would be an improvement. The protagonist is swiss for some reason, and her “actress” is constantly stumbling through the lines with all the grace of a 12-year-old reading their English exam off the page. And she’s one of the better acted characters! The other team members are even worse!
So, then, the gameplay? Well ultimately it’s kind of a worse version of Ninja Gaiden 2 but with cover based shooting injected into it like invasive plastic surgery. Was it really needed? Matter of taste, I suppose. The general flow is very similar: it’s about crowd control against hordes of enemies. Your main tool is melee and you can perform finishing blows on wounded enemies that give you generous amounts of iframes, only here you are way less mobile but instead you have guns. You don’t actually have enough ammo to dispatch all your enemies with them, though. They’re meant to be used selectively to take out key threats, while melee is the primary focus. So really, you just trade the mobility in NG2 for cover based shooting to achieve the same end result. Which is more fun? I prefer NG2 by a million country miles, but I suppose there is conceivably someone out there who just loves cover based shooting.
Another big issue is the skill tree and the difficulty curve. Way too many core abilities are gated behind unlocks, which makes the first level punishingly difficult. Especially since there is also a very old school “what is a checkpoint?” design philosophy here in terms of how rarely you get to save. Also, the bosses have been quite bad, which should come as no surprise to Ninja Gaiden fans. The first level boss especially was extremely frustrating and unpleasant to fight. Difficult yes, but not at all in a fun way.
So, is anything actually somewhat good? Well, the core combat - despite everything - is kind of alright once you unlock some skills. The gun-and-katana finishing moves themselves do look cool and are actually extremely varied - it’s just a shame that they’re really shoddily integrated into the movement and you “snap/slide” into them in a very jarring fashion. And you feel laggy and unresponsive coming out of them afterwards. Some of them also take way too long, which further adds to the weird feel of losing control of your character for several seconds. Meanwhile, NG2 finishing moves feel absolutely seamless. Overall that’s the case for all of the combat in Wanted: Dead - it’s clunky, it’s rigid, it’s not fluid. The moveset is also way less varied here, so you’ll be using the same combos over and over.
Then there are the minigames which… I don’t know man. There is a claw game you have to grind for skill points and there are two versions of the same rhythm game - one for karaoke and one for eating ramen (???). Maybe there will be more down the line. They’re okay if you love rhythm games, I suppose. I will tell you it’s fucking weird when your terrorist war criminals sing 99 Luftballons on karaoke as part of the main story, though. And not abbreviated either - the whole fucking thing.
So yeah… It’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s been something to do when I’ve felt too mentally exhausted to play The Drifter, but it’s not exactly going to enter my permanent rotation after (if) I finish it.
Cyberpunk 2077 and Palworld. I haven’t really gotten into new games since Elden Ring, but those two seem like good candidates.
Good time for Palworld with the 1.0 update. I still need to get the Dogtown DLC for Cyberpunk.
Scrap Mechanic also just had its 1.0 release. I’ve been trying to get into that as well, but I also keep installing demos and signing up for playtests on steam.
Just got Xemu up and running so I could replay Blinx 2 (after seeing the news and playing a bit of the first one) and decided to throw in JSRF because fucking duh.
Man, while you’re running Xemu you gotta throw in Ninja Gaiden Black!
Everquest Legends: going to try out a Rogue / Enchanter / Bard combo, and solo a bit.
Shaman/mage/rogue was my pick but I might swap in wiz for ports once I get around 20 on the main trio
Still hanging on with The Riftbreaker. Was suckered into a fight by what i believed to be the final boss. It was just the first boss fight and they ran away.
After that, i went around map to map to unlock all the resources I was missing and now I’m on the last one, Palladium.
No idea how close i am to the end game, but I haven’t gotten bored with it yet.I’ve been looking for some multiplayer shooty squad-based action, but the popular ones are too pricey for my wallet or are joined at the hip with unpleasant and unwelcome elements. Dunno, I’m just maybe looking for that special something which doesn’t exist…
Doesn’t help that I’ve lost my touch and can’t aim as well as i used to.Also, I have Metro Exodus on standby, but it doesn’t really draw me in yet. Hopefully that changes because I finished the previous two in the series when they came out and i liked them back then.
I’m moving on 🎶 Moving so far away 🎶
still doing sto and no mans sky. not sure I will return to something single player im trying to get all the way through.
Hexen.
I’m playing the new extension Vestiges Of Grandeur from the remastered Heretic + Hexen pack, on Steam.
Super Mario 64
