Nice, thanks for the write-up! I will definitely bump this up the list then. Honestly it looks so appealing I think I’ve just been looking for an excuse to give it a shot that outweighed my wariness from the reviews.
I started playing Children of Morta with my son yesterday and I’m pretty impressed with it. I e tried playing Diablo 3 a couple times and found it really boring, so I assumed dungeon crawlers just weren’t really my thing. But I started to find some depth in the combat after a couple runs in CoM, and I quite like the roguelite cycle and progress. We’re making pretty slow progress because my son is young and kinda sucks at it, but I’m enjoying it more with him than many other games we’ve tried.
I also started Baldur’s Gate 3 with my partner with it yesterday and am pretty much in love so far. I had similar experiences with both Divinity games but they both were just a liiiitle too long and we would lose steam around the end. Hoping that’s not the case with this one.
What did you like about Spirit of the North? I got it with PS Plus but haven’t bothered with it because it got pretty middling review scores. Looks beautiful though.
I have Hard space Shipbreaker on my list. I’m hoping it’s the type of game you can pick up and play I short, relaxed bursts. Is that how you’d describe it?
I bought Unbound as one more desperate attempt to chase the love I had for the burnout series, and yeah…I hate the time limit thing. The driving is good enough (I still miss the frenetic arcadey driving of the burnout series), but I just want to race, not spend all my time assessing the risk and reward of every event.
I also hate the daytime/nighttime thing and just the cops in general. I don’t feel like NFS has ever figured out how to do the cops in a way that isn’t cheap and frustrating.
I’ve played both divinity games in co-op with my partner. You have an entire (quasi) open world game fully explorable by both players independently. At one point in the main town in DOS1, I was running around tracking clues for a mystery while my partner (a rogue) was stealing everything she could get her hands on from the market. Once I reached the climax of the mystery quest, we joined back up for the final battle.
This freedom engenders a lot of creative flexibility and is just overall a chill way to play a game together. I agree that it makes for the best co-op experience I’ve ever played (especially when you’re playing with an otherwise non-gamer).
Cozy f2p MMO with Disney princess vibes is a mix of Elden Ring and Ghost of Tsushima? This equation does not compute.
Gameplay demo looks fine…but the encounters looked a little manufactured to give the appearance of elden-ring-like combat, when I would wager it’s going to be much more hack n slashy in reality.
Still playing Dysmantle, which I originally started intending it to be my background game that I’d turn on when I had only a short window to play or got bored or frustrated with my “main” game.
~40 hours later I think I’m nearing the end and dreading it because I don’t want to not have Dysmantle in my life. Ever since a played Subnautica a few years back, I’ve been looking for another game that scratches the same survival/crafting itch but with the critical components of an overall objective and calculated progression. Dysmantle is different in almost every way but it does hit those check boxes perfectly.
The gameplay loop is repetitive, but amusing enough on its own to be fun until your next upgrade, which are granted to you at just the right pace and open up new abilities to better dismantle your surroundings.
I think it’s flaws will probably hit harder for some people, but for me it strikes exactly the right chord. Luckily I still have the DLCs, and they have a spiritual sequel coming out next year that looks even more promising.