All the Game Awards chatter and the current sale made me take the plunge on Clair Obscur" Expedition 33 and I’m so glad I did. Only ~8h in or so but it is such a vibrant, wild world to explore and it makes me think of the classic JRPGs I played growing up. The introduction of more active battling mechanics like parrying and dodging adds a level of complexity to the combat that I enjoy, even if I cannot for the life of me get the parry timing right.
Steam Deck took a couple minor tweaks to make it look good and the hair effects still are a bit janky (eg. Gustave’s hair will light up from a light source making it look grey). The soundtrack is phenomenal and was the first time in a long time that I’ve wanted to buy a game soundtrack (this battle track in one of the early areas cemented this as something special to me).
Super worth it and excited to dive in deep on this one.
I did see a tip about turning up the volume for sound cues when I was digging around trying to find if there was some kind of setting I could enable for a more visual cue (like you get for a Jump attack). I don’t usually play games with headphones on but I find myself doing that with this one!
The Steam Deck experience is pretty good. The issues I’ve had with the characters’ hairstyles catching the light weird seems to be more an issue of the lighting in general. I was in the Stone Wave Cliffs which has a lot of caves to explore and a lot of instances where there’s a “light at the end of a tunnel”. What I noticed was the light at the end was almost too bright/overpowering and it made it impossible to see the cave around me which, while maybe accurate to what you’d experience in real life with losing night vision and whatnot, makes it really hard to see/navigate. Similarly some of the menus are noticably darker as if I would need to turn the brightness up but not every menu is like that either. Just some weirdness there and I haven’t tried that section on my PC to see if it’s just how the game is or how the Steam Deck is handling it. Otherwise though, the Deck experience is pretty good and I’m getting into it for a couple hours a night without much issue. Definitely not the cleanest/fanciest graphics but in the “good enough” camp for me that aside from the lighting woes, I don’t notice much of a problem.
No, I’m not a No Man’s Sky fan. I’m a recovering No Man’s Sky addict. If retirement exists in the future, I hope this game still exists, cuz I’m gonna ruin whatever remains of my life with it.
I also decided to give Final Fantasy VII Rebirth another chance, this time going only for the story. It’s a much better game this way even if it still feels a bit bloated. It does feel wrong tho to just ignore most of the map, even if I know it’s empty.
I was trying to finish the post Endwalker quests in Final Fantasy XIV to get to Dawntrail, but I’m not really feeling it. I’m probably burnt out on the game due to playing it for 500 hours last year.
It was alright but it felt like the flight mechanics was on rails compared to like Elite or x4. I got my money’s worth and may come back in the future but it never really got it’s hooks in me.
I restarted “Edna and Harvey: The Breakout”. Partly because I wanted to play it for a long time and partly because my pc is too weak for bigger stuff. Already started it some years ago, but took a break from the game which was a bit too long to get into it again. So now I finally restarted and am verry happy with it. The dialogues and the design is just fun. Also it is quite relaxing.
ialways come back to it when i want something chill. i am building a corvette to be a flying greenhouse, and spend too much time fishing and cooking lol
It’s enjoyable, but I’ve never been really engaged with it. There’s no progression, I don’t feel like my character, equipment, or ships are getting better even though I’m upgrading things. No planet is special, even though they’re all unique.
I think it would be better if you started out in a “settled” region with interesting factions, hand-designed planets, optional quest lines, etc. The infinite procedurally generated stuff would come into play if you push beyond the edges of known space.
Yeah and having an expansive universe with like three languages and three races of intelligent creatures, none of which seem to have any personalities just left it feeling shallow.
There’s no storyline in even the main story. It feels like a vast and lonely universe. I think procedural world generation has largely the same problem as generative AI: infinite slight varieties of responses, all of which are as bland as a HR seminar.
I’ve come to realize over time that I would prefer a completely linear story to games on the other extreme end.
What you’re suggesting sounds very interesting though, linear and more handcrafted content paired with procedural content to pad in the margins. Keep playing forever if you want to, but feel a sense of story and accomplishment in the main storyline.
Edit: that’s probably why the expeditions feel more worth playing… You bump into people because you’re all playing on the same planets, and the star systems you’re playing through are at least somewhat curated.
Yep! 1000+ hours across PC, Steamdeck and Switch 1.
I just enjoy wandering and discovering, and looking for the perfect planet. I’ll occasionally try variant survival saves, like freighterless (using exocraft for additional summonable storage).
I don’t mind the corvette ship designing feature, but I enjoy discovering and acquiring the procedurally generated ships more, or journeying to a location from NMSCE which has a particular ship or multitool.
I like that the game mechanics aren’t wholly intuitive - it occasionally adds surprise, like finding the settlement towers have a once-a-day scan function or that a particular foodstuff in the nutrient ingestor can increase mining yields.
I played a lot of games this year, but there were main ones that “stuck” more than others. I’m a patient gamer, so most of these aren’t new releases.
I was playing a lot of Satisfactory earlier in the year. Not much more recently but I know I’m not done with that game. I started a second save to organize things better, though not sure how well I’m accomplishing that. Though this second one uses more trains while the first one had more of a road setup, including a raised highway to access the oil area in the south east. Still nothing like some of the megaatructures I see in other builds online. I try to plan for expansion, so don’t tend to “finish” buildings, but rather build up a frame that can be added to in any direction. I’d give the game a 9/10 overall.
Another game I got into for a bit was TCG Card Shop Simulator. It was fun for a bit but then dropped off hard as the novelty wore off. I think that’s how “pretend to work a job” games generally go for me. Fun and satisfying at first, but then repetitive and unrewarding later on. I’m going through something similar with Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 right now, though I’ll get to that. I’d rate it about a 6.5/10, though it feels like an 8/10 at first before dropping off to more like a 4/10 once it gets old.
I’ll give Healed to Death an honourable mention, even though I moved on from it pretty quickly. It’s a great concept IMO, since sometimes I want to do a “healing the raid” type activity but don’t want to invest the time into a MMO to get there again. But this one isn’t just playing the healer, you also need to manage a constantly revolving party’s gear and switch them to follow mode (where they do no attacking even if they are ranged) to move them out of the fire during fights. So it’s basically healer simulator but your party is always the worst. If they (actually it’s one guy I believe, so impressive job even if it is lacking overall) added better AIs that didn’t need to be micromanaged, it would be much better. I’d give it a 4/10 in its current state but it could be a 9/10 with better execution.
TMNT: Splintered Fate is very similar to Hades (in fact, I’d call it a clone). I liked it but didn’t stick with it for long. 8/10.
Schedule I is another one of those “work that is fun at first but gets old”. Though they’ve added a bunch of stuff since I last played, so I will probably check it out again at some point. Game loop is basically find a spot, produce drugs, maybe modify them by adding shit to them, then selling them either directly or via a dealer. Then use the cash to produce more drugs or get new places (both areas to produce drugs and businesses to launder the proceeds, though I don’t know if laundering even makes a difference at this point), hire workers or buy vehicles and weapons. I believe they added competing cartels in an update since I last played, so it could be more interesting now. 7/10.
Then had a short period where I was interested in speed running, though mostly just against myself, since I’m nowhere close to the top charts on anything. Did a bit with Subnautica (best time to leave in rocket was under 10 hours now iirc) and Grim Dawn (I think I got my best Act 1 time to beat the record full game time lol). No rating for speed running in general (though it does not go well with ADHD unless you hyperfocus on one game), but Subnautica 10/10 and Grim Dawn 8/10 (it’s similar to Diablo).
Widget Inc was another, it’s pretty much an automation game without logistics, where each new production building rises in cost exponentially and prestiging to increase overall production. Apparently they just released a major update yesterday (looks like it adds enemies). Not sure I’ll look into it. 6/10.
Did House Flipper for a bit, which followed the job game pattern of being fun and engaging for a bit and then repetitive. At first, I intended to get the second game, but my interest in the whole thing waned before that. It was cool that they had Kame house in the game, with hidden dragon balls to find. 7/10.
Also was playing some Dark Souls this year off and on. I realized that there was a lot more to the world than just a hard path through tough enemies. Like there’s shops, blacksmiths, and a ton of hidden things. I also tried builds other than highly mobile swords builds and found 2H is actually easier because your hits often stagger the enemies (and do way more damage), so instead of dodging and timing carefully, you can rush in and overwhelm opponents, eliminating members of groups before the others can even react. Got stuck on the gargoyles, though there were some close attempts and I’ll probably get farther the next time I pick it up. 8.5/10.
I 100% Particle Fleet: Emergence. This game is great if you like systematically picking apart an opponent’s position. Took 15.8 hours to get 100% of achievements, though there’s also a bunch of other maps without achievements that I haven’t done yet and will return to when I feel the itch that those games scratch. 7/10.
I didn’t play it for very long but tried Breathedge, going for a subnautica kind of experience. It does feel like it, but I don’t think the game is tuned very well. I’m not sure if it changes later on in the game, but the part I was playing had me constantly returning to the start. I could go farther out as I upgraded, but progress felt stagnant and I gave up on it. The game did set goals at points of interest, but they were pretty far between and I felt like either I didn’t know what to do to extend my range that far or that it would be tedious as hell doing it the way I could see was possible. I’ll give it a 7/10 on the assumption that part of my issue was needing to git gud, but if I was right about it being the tedious route, I’d drop it to a 5/10.
Played a bunch of Dota 2 for a few months. They give you free dota plus access when you start, which gives access to some useful meta information, but then when it expires, the amount they want for a subscription is kinda high. I’ll give credit for coming up with a f2p system that can generate revenue without any p2w (between the dota plus and cosmetics), but the price turned me off and I didn’t feel like playing as much without that info. Maybe I’ll return to it eventually, as I did enjoy the game itself and like that the full hero list is free (unlike LoL with a rotating set of free ones, though I also don’t mind that monetization system, but I’m on Linux so LoL doesn’t really exist anymore). 7/10.
Stuck in Time is an interesting idle-ish game. You play a regressor, so a character for whom the world resets and plays out exactly the same (depending on your actions) each loop, and as you loop, you get better at doing everything. You give a series of actions to perform each loop and can tweak that list as you go for the next loop. 7/10.
Icarus is a survival game on an alien planet that was teraformed and seeded with a bunch of earth life. You start out with stone age tech (though with a modern understanding, like you can build stone age tools for water purification). I like that, even though there’s oxygen on the planet, they still have you in a atmospheric isolation suit because the air contains microbes we can’t breathe safely (though no idea how it would be safe to consume food and water in those conditions, but hey, it’s still more accurate than most “visit alien planet with oxygen” fictions are which usually just do analysis that says it’s safe to breathe the air). The open world mode is very well done, a nice combination of freedom to do what you want plus missions to do something more specific for a reward or direction. I’ve more or less mastered the forest biome and have started branching out into the arctic biome. The wildlife can be tough to deal with before you figure out how to fight certain animals (like bears and polar bears), especially when you’re stuck with stone or iron age weapons. I almost rage quit the game a few times due to a scenario that spawns a bear, which then tends to stick by your corpse and gear. But there are multiple strategies to handle them, so I suggest sticking with it and even looking up how others do it if you’re really stuck (I did for bears, though they get easier to handle with shotguns). 9.5/10.
Nova Drift is a recent game I’ve been playing, a bullet hell roguelike, so far 2.8 hours in, it’s a lot of fun. 8.5/10.
And Ship Graveyard Simulator 2 is the latest in the job games I’ve been playing. It’s following the trend, as I’ve finished tearing down the biggest ship in the vanilla game and am now on the fence about whether to a) finish up the smaller ships I skipped along the way to the biggest, b) buy some DLC with more ships, or c) just move on from this game. I will say that it is more satisfying than other job games I’ve played, but at only 23 hours in, it’s hard to say if it will have more staying power than the others. 8/10.
And on my playstation, I’ve been playing through FFX remastered. FF7 was always the “main” FF in my mind, but I think I like the FFX gang better now. I’m not as into JRPGs and the turn-based combat as I used to be, but don’t mind it so much in this game. 9.5/10.
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