Twinsen’s Quest (Little Big Adventure 1 reamke) and Fallout London.
Twinsen’s quest is great, but… it has a lot of bugs that need fixing, the subtitles don’t always match up to what is being said and in some places there is no indication of what needs to be done leaving the player (me) feeling and being stuck.
Fallout London is great but for some reason in some areas it just… crashes to the desktop without so much as a warning, just closes completely.
I’m a weird critter and play things differently from most, I think 😅 My greatest fun tends to be alting hard, trying nearly every imaginable build. Beat up the same jerkwad thirty times just to try out all’ the toys, that kind of thing :3 I did get annoyed at having to wait for the map to open up but I replay beginnings so many times anyway… 🤷 I wanna go back to CP77 pretty badly, too 😅 Am stuck on a laptop that I can’t imagine running it playably but even just driving around was fun for me. Helped me through a rough patch a night or two, actually.
Also liked how well-done the story bits felt, though maybe that’s partly because I was told they’re really good and just expected them to be 🤷 I do remember some bits fondly, though.
Powered through Beastieball over the past week, a creature collector/"sports" game from the devs of Chicory and Wandersong. I had fairly high expectations because I enjoyed the devs previous work, but it turned out even better than expected. Lots of cool creature designs, music is Lena Raine's usual standout stuff, story kept my attention.
The sportsball system is surprisingly complex, if a little hard to learn. I went through multiple types of team setup and felt like a lot of different setups were viable in the end. Every match is a 2v2, every offensive turn is 3 actions worth, and you get a defensive turn too. You really have to build a team with good synergy between them and be smart about swapping in and out.
Only real downside is it's still early access and a decent chunk of creatures have placeholder art or don't have the full set of animation frames yet. Most are reasonably finished but there's a couple that are a little jarring.
Recent conversations with friends had me playing Star Fox 64 earlier last week, which has been very nostalgic.
Over the weekend, I was surprised to have a couple friends who I thought would never want to play an Arma title show interest in playing Arma Reforger with a group of friends I play with. I got to play a bunch with one of those newly-interested friends yesterday, and was super pleased that she enjoyed it.
I mostly had fun, and felt the work they did to make Night City feel like a proper city, as opposed to the tiny village-sized “city” typical of open world games, really showed. (For example, the fact that people walking down the street had different ages, body types, and walking styles made it easy for me to forgive the occasional pair of NPC clones spawning next to each other.)
But yes, many of the activities/events offered by the game ended up seeming a bit pointless because their outcome was more or less predetermined.
Moreover, the RPG aspect of the game lacked depth, which seemed like a lot of wasted potential given that there were plenty of characters that could have been really interesting to get to know. Instead, the character development was nearly all Silverhand, nearly all the time, and I didn’t even have much influence over how that relationship developed.
Spoilers ahead:
What about Jackie? He was supposed to be my best friend, but I never had experiences with him to make me feel that way, and then he was gone in just a few scenes. What about Panam? She was so determined to make a difference in the lives of the people who mattered to her, yet she all but vanished once we bonded, after just a couple of missions. What about Judy?? Her personal mission-like encounter was really promising. We supposedly fell in love and were planning to leave the city together, yet for the rest of the game, we had no interaction but “dates” consisting of the same half-dozen lines of dialogue and two or three brief animations, repeated over and over again. I’m sure there are more examples, but I think I’ve made my point.
I think the biggest disappointment for me was the ending, though. And the other ending that I got by reloading and picking different options, and then the third ending, and the fourth. They all felt like such empty let-downs that I went online to read about the rest. [Edit: These might have been Phantom Liberty endings; I don’t remember for sure.] Surely there must be some good ones, right? Right?
The only vaguely satisfying ending that I found was a secret one that (IIRC) requires specific choices early in the game, and a very strong bond with Silverhand, and letting the game sit at a particular dialogue screen for several minutes without picking any option. The endings that players are actually meant to experience left me feeling empty. The great deal of time I had sunk into the game was for nothing after all. I guess that could be considered appropriate for a cyberpunk dystopia, but as an experience and a story, it left me feeling cheated. I wished I had my time back.
So, as I said, I mostly had fun playing it, and it had its share of highlights, but I don’t expect to ever play it again. I hope CD Projekt Red keep much of the technical progress they made with this game (I was so happy that my character’s movement was responsive for a change!) and work more on character development and player agency in the next one.
Cyberpunk is a great game, it has a great story that is marvelous told. That is the games biggest strength and one of its biggest limitations too. Heavy story driven games like cyberpunk don’t mix very good with a open world with its many detractions and side quests. If a game has a strong story that will capture the player, making side quests and open world design a burden, or into something that gets ignored.
Logically viewed everything that V would do after having Jonny implanted in his/her brain should be laser focused on the task to learn more about it and to find a cure or solution. There should be no driving around and playing mommy or daddy for some freaked out cabs or other side quests. Yes, doing side quests could be explained as a way to get resources for the main tasks, but as those side quests are completely optional there is nothing really backing that explanation up.
So you either have to ignore a life threatening condition to play side quests or ignore that huge part of the game and fixate on the main quest.
Cyberpunk has no real “sandbox” moment because the open world really only opens up after you get the world largest cyber brain virus implanted deeply.
Empirically, Final Fantasy 14. Also my only 1000 hour game since games services started logging playtimes in a more durable way. Only other games I can think that might have touched that time are Diablo II and UT99, but both of those playtimes are lost to the sands of time.
Riichi Mahjong - Been doing way too well in my IRL games all season. I think that means I'm due to lose this week. That's called like Gambler's Theorem or something, right?\
Blue Revolver: Double Action - This has been sitting in my Steam library and I saw it got a big update. Learning how to play a shmup is on my bucket list, but so far I cannot get any further than stage 4 on the lowest difficulty. Very fun though, and banger OST.
Also went down to Round 1 today, haven't been in years. Played a few rounds of Wacca, Chunithm, Arcana Heart, and Chaos Code.
I finished Prince of Persia The Lost Crown. It’s good but some weird decisions by the devs. For example, you can buy treasure maps at the end, so you don’t need a guide to find everything, just for those maps to not actually show everything. I already mentioned the arbitrary limitation on the pictures you can take last week. Then, the whole game you’re trained to use your parry, normal enemies or bosses, just so some of the later bosses can just spam attacks you can’t parry.
I’m also done with Vampire Hunters. Beat all the stages, unlocked all the characters, but it just doesn’t have a lot of variety. It’s all just “normal” weapons, that shoot forward, nothing really crazy going on. Every level also plays the same, so it gets old relatively quick.
Then I tried HoloCure - Save the Fans!. This (F2P) game isn’t just like Vampire Survivors, it is Vampire Survivors, but with a VTuber skin. Since it’s copying the best in this genre, it’s not bad, but I’d rather just play Vampire Survivors. I’d only recommend this, if you’re a huge fan of VTubers, don’t want or can’t pay for Vampire Survivors, or have put in like a thousand hours into it and just want something a little bit different.
Next is Karate Survivor. Like the name suggests, another VS-like game. This one I’m not so sure about. The theme is 80s Martial Arts Movies, and you’re playing as Jackie Chan from Wish. Instead of weapons, you’re combining different fighting moves into a combo. It sounds neat, but the beginning is pretty rough. You can only run around, and your attacks basically all go forward. Since it’s martial arts, your attacks also have a tiny range, so you’re basically standing inside the enemies, so you can hit them. My first few runs weren’t that fun, but you unlock new moves of course and also some movement-type abilities, like rolling over obstacles or sliding under tables. You can also kick or throw small objects at enemies, like bottles, buckets, etc. or use some objects as weapons, like a broom or baseball bat. These weapons are a bit lame though, since they all have the same attack animation. Later, you can also kick bigger stuff at your enemies, like pallets or motorcycles. Each of these unlocks make the game more fun, but the normal combat, still isn’t my favorite. I’ll stick with it a bit longer, but dunno how long.
Finally, a bit more Baldurs Gate 3 coop. Grymforge is cleared, there were no survivors (except our party). Next is the rest of the Underdark.
Cars in the distance aren’t real. Get a scoped weapon and shoot they don’t react, just fade in and out.
No subway system. I was so hyped to life sim cyberpunk, get on a train like in the promotional material but nope.
Essential the set dressing is a mile wide and an inch deep. Unlike other open world games where I can see someone living a life, instead cars are boring no personality behind the ai, same with crowds.
I like Cyberpunk. Not as much as the Witcher 3 and I think that’s mostly because I didn’t like the npcs as much. Jackie is about the only one you have a positive relationship with and he’s gone in an instant.
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