Also picked up the new Castlevania title. (Belmont’s Curse)
It, like Dead Cells, is gorgeous visually, plays very well, and is good fun. It does not stick to the OG Castlevania formula, but is more of a souls-like, and that’s not a bad thing.
The only major downer is I don’t like the music, so I’ve muted that and just have the OG Castlevania soundtrack playing on random while I play.
Ocarina of Time
I’ve never gotten this far before. Didn’t realize the back half was so dungeon heavy. I miss the more open world stuff
I just started Ori and the blind forest this weekend. What a beautiful game. Looking forward to how it will unfold :D
Great game! Way better than the second one in my opinion.
Oh boy, make sure you’ve got tissues at hand. It’s a beautiful game though, enjoy!
I’ve been playing Super Metroid recently and got absolutely hooked. the art style, the sound effects, the music, they’re all excellent. I haven’t tried many metroidvanias and found Hollow Knight quite frustrating, but in this one, trying to figure out the solution or making another loop through the maps after obtaining a new thingy in order to get to the place where I thought I remembered a potential spot to use the thingy is actually entertaining, most of the time.
I just wish the wall jumps were doable, because fucking hell.
The Etecoons wall jump thing was a pain the first time I played all those years ago. I also remember my second playthrough when I realized you could run from the start. Love this game. Need to play it again soon.
I had to resort to save state spamming after getting on the shelf halfway up, otherwise I’d probably commit acts of violence.
Personally, I don’t think Hollow Knight is a great example of a Metroidvania. If you’re looking for suggestions, check out Castlevania Dominus Collection, it includes three of the best Metroidvanias ever made. I’ll also recommend Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. Not an official Castlevania game, but produced by the same guy who did the games in the Dominus Collection. Thirdly, I endorse Monster Boy and the Cursed Kingdom. Really fun and really charming.
None of those games seem to be on sale at the moment, but they can usually be found discounted well under the list price.
I’ve got some Castlevanias (Super Castlevania IV for SNES and Aria of Sorrow for GBA) queued up to try out on my Game Dad, I’ll see how I like them and proceed from there. so far my closest encounter with the Castlevania series was the Dead Cells DLC, which is obviously not the same thing.
Super Castlevania IV is really just a straightforward sidescrolling action game, it doesn’t have any Metroidvania elements, but Aria of Sorrow is a good choice, also made by the guy who did the Dominus Collection games and Bloodstained.
Best game ever. Try Bloodstained and all the GBA Castlevania games
It seems I can finally play some games without losing interest immediately. Depression sucks.
I’m playing Signalis and I think I’m quite advanced,
spoiler
I’m Nowhere (literally what the game calls that area) and running out of things to do in the area. Not sure whether I missed something or the game just doesn’t want you to have a map of the place, but it’s a bit annoying having to run around without it. Fortunately my memory is still good enough. I have more than 30 revolver bullets plus some rifle ammo and a few grenades for a grenade launcher I still haven’t found. I’m running out of healing objects though.
Also playing Divinity: Original Sin at times.
spoiler
I think I’m level 4 and close to solving the murder case.
The combat is fun and I can see the base upon which Baldur’s Gate 3’s was built.
I also like the sense of humour.
I am near the end of Signalis (I think, based on how long to beat data) and was also stuck in the nowhere map for way longer than I should’ve. I ran around everywhere looking for the last hexagonal stone for the door and finally had to look up what I missed. I’m not sure how to do spoilers but it ended up being completely obvious what I was overlooking. There was a puzzle that needed some rearranging but I thought I was still missing a piece.
I don’t think I’m stuck yet, although I haven’t found
spoiler
where to put the hexagonal stones.
The hand is wearing 2 rings and I know where there is another, I think I need 4 if I understood the nearby text correctly.
Alright, looks like it’s my turn to be “that guy”, but as a certified, heavily medicated sad boi, I really can’t recommend Souls games enough. They’re tough, but they got me to redefine what success and personal improvement could look like and was slowly able to apply that to other facets of my life.
I finished a Dark Souls 1 playthrough a long time ago, but every other time I’ve tried to get into a Dark Souls or souls-like game I haven’t been able. I guess I was in a special mood back then.
I’ve been playing a bit of Roadwarden this week. Actually, I only played about 6 hours of it, then I gave up and started to listen to this delightful playthrough as an audiobook instead. I think Roadwarden is probably a good game. I think the problem may be that my attention span is just destroyed. But I am not yet sure.
How should I describe this game? How about this: have you ever played Pentiment and thought to yourself “nonono, this is too action packed and too interesting!”. Or what about… have you ever wished there was a game with as much text as Disco Elysium, but without any voice acting, visual art, humour, mind-blowing world building, charm or top quality near-poetic prose?
Roadwarden takes a lot of inspiration from the Witcher setting. It’s a low-magic, low-fantasy world filled with dangerous monsters, and you’re playing as a sort of peacekeeper. But instead of being a magical mutant with superpowers and steeped in centuries of interesting lore, here you’re instead playing as… just a guy. Just some dude meant to scout out an unmapped peninsula, get to know the locals and report back to your superiors in the big city who want to colonise (or at least exploit) it.
And that’s kind of just… the whole game. Granted, I’m not all the way through listening to the playthrough yet. But you’re just riding around, reading mundane descriptions of mundane things, helping locals with mundane tasks.
One thing I want to praise though, is how the game does player-customizable world building. At certain points you’ll get some questions about certain minor aspects of the world, and you can pick an answer out of usually 5-7. And whatever you pick will be the reality in your playthrough. Are people in the capital wearing tunics or furs? Is the capital well off or poverty stricken? What happened to that old inn on a street off the harbour? It’s something I haven’t seen before, and it does make every playthrough a little more unique. I found it neat.
I had a similar experience with Roadwarden. I played a few hours but it didn’t hook me and gave up on it. My verdict was that while the premise is interesting, the writing isn’t good enough to keep me invested.
Yeah. There are games out there with worse writing, but honestly that is not saying much. And when your “game” is literally only text, that text better be top fucking quality. And this isn’t really bad enough to be entertaining, it’s mostly just dull.
I have a lot of qualms, but there are two main problems:
- Protagonist has extremely weak (almost nonexistent) personality and internal motivation
- The overarching plot has no early hook, no emotional investment and no stakes.
Again if we take the Witcher comparison: imagine The Witcher 3 but you play as a cardboard cutout instead of Geralt, and the whole Ciiri storyline is completely absent. You just ride around doing contracts.
Kingdoms of Amalur: Re-reckoning
Got it on sale recently after reading somewhere some time ago it could scratch a similar itch to Skyrim, and I didn’t realize until booting it up it was a cleanup of an old XBox game. Hits that sweet spot between fun, interesting, and juuust familiar enough mechanics-wise to shut my brain off after a long workday.
Highly recommend if you enjoyed the on-rails-ish-but-open-world-ish console feeling of the early 2010s 😄
Oh and it runs frickin beautifully on Steam Deck - 90fps OOB
I’m very slowly playing Valheim again since 1.0 released. Technically “new” but I’ve had it for years.
On my phone: Mindustry (again)
On Steam Deck: Caves of Qud (still)
Assassins creed odyssey
I borrowed Crimson Desert for the PS from the library this week to see if I’d like it. I really enjoy it & my husband does too. We are gonna watch for deals for the PC so I can mod it.
I’m playing Alan Wake 2.
My review of the first game wasn’t too favourable, and if I’m honest, the second game seems to be shaping up similarly despite what I’ve heard about it.
The gameplay in this series isn’t really good. I enjoy the mind palace stuff and how that can change the world and narrative, but it’s also not that hard to sort through. The combat mechanics I don’t consider fun. This is the first game I’ve turned on the easy mode accessibility options for.
Now, the world and narrative and other artistic decisions they’ve done are great and why I’m sticking through it. I just feel like a game should be fun to interact with, which generally I don’t think AW2 has been. Would love to hear others thoughts.
The gameplay in Alan wake 2 is whatever and I also lowered the difficulty to get it out of the way, but the story, and how it unfolds is superbly done, it’s so worth sticking to it. It’s a truly well crafted piece of art. Creative, visually stricking with fantastic atmosphere, great narrative moments, and excellent acting. My only other critique were the puzzles (boring af) and the side content, (unnecessary padding but easily ignored).
Yea, I agree. I’m at the
spoiler
carnival section
right now and I agree with all that you’ve said. Atmosphere, narrative, the set pieces - they’ve made something really intriguing. Unfortunately the actual game aspect of it is so damn boring and pointless.
I was hoping for more since I enjoyed Control so much. I know Alan Wake is a different kind of game than that, but my hope was that they could fix my issues with the first Alan Wake. That is not the case. But I still appreciate the story and other things they’ve done. It kind of reminds me of the first Senua/Hellblade game, but I actually enjoyed the combat in that and the game was like ~5 hours long.
I didn’t finish the second Alan Wake, but I was kind of getting the impression that I was towards the back third or quarter of the game, but like you said, the gameplay didn’t really do too much for me and I eventually just got tired of playing it so I put it down. That being said, I do kind of have a hankering to pick it back up and give it a fair shot, especially with it being spooky season and Remedy being on my mind due to all of the buzz that the Control sequel has gotten.
I’m playing The Lost Crown. A very charming point and click adventure, one of those games that give me a distinct vacation feeling. The use of photos for parts of the enviornment works quite well and gives it just the right atmosphere for an English harbour town. The puzzles aren’t good though. You are too often told exactly what to do and others just don’t work very well. But the plot and the characters are just as charming as the graphics, so it’s definitely worth a try if you like that kind of games.
I’ve recently started Metro 2033 (I don’t think I have played any of the rest of the series).
It’s been fun so far, and is the right age to have some pretty normal keyboard and mouse controls (which can be a problem if you go back too far).
Slime Rancher
Played it for a few hours and that’s my limit. It a charming game but then it gets too repetitive and grindy for my liking.
I did install Machinarium ready for another play through after many many years :)
