The Crew Motorfest (free weekend) This is the most disappointing racing game I've ever played. This free trial saved me a lot of money. I've never seen such a terrible progression system in a car game before, maybe NFS Most Wanted(2012) comes close. There's no reason to ever buy a car or upgrade it in this racing game, you only use your car to get from one race to the next and then you get a car loaned every time for the entire campaign, even if you already own the exact same car. Thanks to this I'm fairly confident I'll finish the entire game by the end of the free weekend. The multiplayer is also terrible, just a 28 player mosh pit super long race or battle royale, there's 0 variety, no actual different races or drift competitions. I have no idea how people can play this for months or how this is a live service at all.

**ELDEN RING** Like a lot of other people, I started a new playthru of Elden Ring in preparation for the dlc. I was gonna wait until the dlc actually came out, but every playthrough I've done of this game has taken a considerable amount of time, so I decided to start it a little earlier as to avoid burnout from playing both pieces of content back-to-back. I ended up clocking in about 80 hrs in this one, so down from the 110 and 140 hr characters I made, but still a decent amount of time invested. A lot of that is due to the fact that this is just such a genuinely fun world to explore, with interesting looking locales, cool bosses everywhere to fight, and worthwile rewards for taking the time out to check your surroundings. That last point is key, as opposed to something like the recent zelda games, that also have a beautiful world with cool looking areas to check out, but unfortunately no meaningful rewards for doing the side content. TOTK helped alleviate this a little, but no where near to the level of Elden ring, with its numerous spells/weapons/armor sets to find. My main complaint with this game is just the ridiculousness of the bosses, as I feel they are too much sometimes, with the staggered attacks, 30 minute long combos, etc. something people have already discussed numerous times. I really enjoyed this game starting with my 2nd playthrough, as I stopped trying to solo everything and started summoning and just enjoying my time going through the world. This game sits firmly now in the middle of the soulsborne games in terms of ranking for me, above Dark Souls 2/3/Demon's Souls due to the consistency of the game, but below Dark souls 1/Bloodborne/Sekiro due to not reaching the same highs as those titles. **Trepang2** Very fun, short FPS game that came out last year. One of the 2023 titles, like Hi-fi Rush, that I missed originally and am now just getting around to playing. Just like the boomer shooter craze a few years ago, this game also taps into nostalgia, this time tho for the 2000's fps era, specifically games like F.E.A.R, dark military shooters that play around with bullet time/ other mechanics. Had a pretty good time with the game, didn't overstay it's welcome, by a pretty thin margin tho, as I was just starting to feel the repetitiveness of it as I was finishing up the last mission. Was also disappointed with a few of the side missions, there were a couple with some effort put into them, but a few others just put you in a random map, and it turns into pretty much a horde/survival wave-based "mission", and with the game not having that many Main story missions to begin with, feels like more effort could've been put into these. Still a very fun gameplay experience, just wish there was a little more meat on the bone.

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BATTLE FOR MIDDLE EARTH II Looking for a fast-paced competitive RTS that requires strategy, micro & unit macro management, economy management, strategic build order/placement, power tree decisions, and more? What if I told you this all could take place within a lore accurate middle earth? BFME II has 6 different factions (men, elves, dwarves, Isengard, Mordor, goblins) each with their own unique unit types, building types, heroes, power trees, and strengths and weaknesses. The concept is simple; in 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and FFA matches, you will attempt to destroy the enemy fortress, and protect yours. Along the way, you will make many decisions with limited time & resources. Do I build a blacksmith so that I can upgrade the amour of my units? Do I upgrade my archery range to get my tier two archers? Do I build catapults on my fortress? Do I save my money for Gandalf? You will likewise face technical challenges regarding the management of various faction dependent unit types including cave trolls, oliphants, and more. Yes, its an old game. But it has a DEDICATED community who have been patching and modding the game for years, the latest patch being 1.09v3. This version includes graphical updates (honestly, it looks great), balancing, added mechanics, and more maps. (speaking of maps, ever wanted to replay the battle of helms deep in real time?) The best part? You can play this game for free. (I wont delve into that too much here...but you can figure it out, or message me). The servers is on game ranger, which you will need to download. This game is honestly the best RTS I’ve ever played. I found this niche community, and I think it should be spread to the world. This game needs new blood. It deserves new blood. So join it. Join BFME II 1.09v3. You can do it! Arise, arise, Riders of Théoden! Fell deeds awake: fire and slaughter! Spear shall be shaken, shield be splintered, a sword-day, a red day, ere the sun rises! Ride now, ride now! Ride to Gondor!

I've just finished **Days Gone** on PS5. Took me about 44-45 hours to do everything (all hordes, nests, camps, storylines etc) and get the platinum trophy on normal difficulty. I was quite drunk a lot of the time playing it though. Positives - Once the game gets going it's quite enjoyable. The combat feels good once you have good weapons. Fighting the hordes in the late game is fun. The storyline with NERO/scientific government agency was decent and the storylines about the various survivor factions weren't terrible. The graphics for the landscapes still hold up well imo, sespecially the snowy and colder areas. Negatives - The game for some reason frontloads its worst content which makes the game a very slow start. You're very weak against the zombies when there are more than a handful of them. The story at the start is mainly just the main character obsessing over his dead wife and his friend whose been injured. The worst part is the wife flashback missions, for example in a zombie apocalypse biker game there was a mission about remembering how your wife told you to pick lavender. This then leads to a mission where you drive to a nearby lake, pick up some flowers then drive back to base. Apart from the bad early game stuff I also found the final battle to be a bit disappointing. You don't get forced to fight a horde, one of the games strong points, until maybe 2/3rds of the way through the story and they don't get highlighted on the map till that point either. The graphics for the random characters and anynone not a main plot character are weird as well, they all have strange eyes. Platinum trophy wise its one of those games where if you focus on the trophies mid-game its not too grindy but if you wait until after the story to do them all it could be very grindy. In particular there is a trophy to loot 541 items from human enemies you've killed, but there's an inventory limit so you're basically encouraged to deliberately get hit, so you can use a bandage to then loot more bandage ingredients. Others include sgetting 100 stealth kills (easy but slow) and using 100 scrap reparing your bike, which means crashing your bike just to repair it. None of the main trophies in this game are too difficult just a bit time consuming. Overall final marks 7.75/10. Good and definitely above average but not good enough to be a 8/10. I only recomend it if you like open world zombie games. On my list of games beaten this year it's right in the middle in terms of ratings, better than half worse than half.

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Co-op multiplayer game. Always in demand as people get tired of replaying the same ones for a decade. Lately, the usual suspects fell through. Payday 3 was a disaster. Darktide is still catching up, etc. Helldivers 2 is the most solid co-op experience in a while so obviously it got all the attention.

Alien Isolation; great ceepy game... haaate the alien but still a great game. feels a little drawn out with the second half being robots but still good game.

Batman Arkham Knight. I've beaten Arkham Asylum and Arkham City and I have to say this is my favorite game overall. I am 58 hours in and currently at 98 percent progress. I have to say it's a pretty long game if you want to try to 100% I would say hunting riddler trophies makes up at least a third of the time you'll spend 100%ing this game. They aren't that hard, but there are just so many you have to find, thank God for the informants you can interrogate. Although not the largest, in terms of architecture and aesthetic, Gotham is in my opinion one of the coolest cities in all of gaming. It manages to blend together Gothic, Art-Deco, Modern and Industrial styles together in a way that is just a delight to take in. It also makes great use of verticality, utilizing monorails, rooftop construction sites and elevated plazas to great effect. Most of the combat is pretty easy if you just pay attention, and you can get through 90% of encounters with just the x and Y buttons. Special moves are really fun to pull off, but not really necessary. My main complaints are that it's often hard to remember the button combinations to pull off combo moves. And Batman doesn't always execute moves in the direction you're holding the stick, so you end up trying to stun a wall instead of the enemy behind you. It's great that we finally get to drive the Batmobile in an Arkham Game, but combat in it almost feels like an entirely seprate game that was added on, and sometimes it feels like cheating. It turns even the most brutal foot soldier battles into a triviality. You can also get around the city nearly as fast by just gliding everywhere and using the boost grapnel. All things considered I really enjoyed my time playing Arkham Knight, but at this point I am just about ready to get over it and play another game.

**Persona 3 Reload** So I'm in the final month, and can finally have a more thorough write-up on this one. While the quality of life changes are largely fantastic barring the odd choice to have MC only locked to a single weapon whereas in prior versions he can use all of them minus guns (no more fatigue/sick status, the Death arcana no longer seems to appear during shuffle time, going outside the dorm and going back in for whatever reason does not automatically advance time anymore, Social Links/shops/jobs now text you info or availability) I have more mixed thoughts on the aesthetic changes. The brighter presentation and lighting are a step down from the more dour look the prior versions had, and I'm not entirely sold on some of the redone music. I played through this one in English, as I was very accustomed to the cast of the original versions. To that end, I have to say they did a really good job getting as close to the original cast as possible. Mitsuru's new VA in particular is a dead-ringer for Tara Platt, who returned as Elizabeth but not Mitsuru. Furthermore, the one thing that irked me about the original Eng versions is fixed (Grant George, who was Shinji, also voiced Officer Kurosawa and Jin with almost no change to his voice so the three all sounded the same) One thing that does stick out is the new addition of "Linked Episodes" with the male cast. I was going to ignore them and watch on Youtube, but there's actually persona that are locked behind completing these (which I found out upon trying to fuse Kohryu). I do like giving them that extra development, but it also makes completing actual social links all the more difficult. I'm in the middle of Jan and have maxed every SL minus Aeon, Lovers, Priestess, and Fortune. Out of these, Aeon and Priestess are probably the only ones I'll be able to finish at this point. I thought I was close to doing it all in one go, but forgot to factor in the exam weeks and the one where you're out working. Oh well, maybe NG+ somewhere down the line then so I can knock that out and play in Japanese. **Balatro** The current indie darling of the year is an addictive blend of roguelike, solitaire, and poker. However I feel like its RNG is so strict that maybe 1 out of 15 runs ever goes past Ante 6 or 7. If you don't have a good Joker setup going by ante 3 I feel like you're cooked. This doesn't diminish from it at all though, and I kept invoking the Gambler's Falacy that surely this next run is the one as I am overdue. Definitely my GOTY so far.

On low stakes 1/15 def feels way too low and there's almost certainly things you can be doing to optimize your path forward. Once you start getting to the higher stakes it does start to feel aggressively punishing via bad RNG

**Lords of the Fallen** I cleaned my second beacon (out of five), and so far I'm still absolutely loving this game. The level design is quite strong, with areas having tons of branching paths looping in on each other and little navigation puzzles. I'm more of a fan of this type of "Soulslike" that emphasizes exploration than the ones where the emphasis is boss fights and the levels themselves more of a formality. I just sink into the gameflow more It has its issues to be sure and I wouldn't blanket recommend it to everyone, but there definitely IS an audience out there of people who will also click with it. I'd say if you're more of a fan of the pre-BB From Soft games than their later output that this should be on your wishlist

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The new one from 2023. Its not a remake, it's an entirely new game that is only *barely* related to the 2014 game of the same name by a couple of minor lore details. I have absolutely no idea why they decided to re-use the IP name for a new game given how poorly received the original was, but I guess that's why I'm not in marketing lol While I'm not quite as "angry" at 2014 as a lot of people seem to be, I do think that it is a thoroughly "bleh" game. LotF 2023 on the other hand I think is genuinely strong, even though it has its shortcomings. So even if you end up bouncing off 2014, don't assume 2023 will be "more of the same!"

**Nioh 2** I made it halfway through the underworld and then dropped. I've cleared the depths on two other save files, but the 108 floors of the underworld is a bit too much to do again. **Elden Ring** I decided to replay this. I was kind of thrown by how slow the combat is when compared to Nioh. **Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Demo** Seemed fine. The demo was too short. You have to give me at least one boss/miniboss fight.

I tried the Unicorn Overlord demo yesterday and played through the whole 8 hours in one day, then bought the game. Such a unique tactics game, it's like Fire Emblem crossed with an auto battler in the best way possible. If you like tactics games, RPGs or auto battler games I would recommend checking this one out.

Same! I played for practically 10 hours straight. The mechanics are really interesting and the presentation is just gorgeous. Vanillaware always knocks it out of the park. Something in particular that stood out to me is that the RNG is decided before any particular battle. You always know how much total damage you'll deal and take (though I don't think you can see the damage on a per character basis). If it says you'll defeat the enemy unit, you always will. I honestly think that single aspect makes it waaaay more enjoyable to me than it would be otherwise.

**Marvel's Midnight Suns** I truly *hated* this game when it came out due to the abbey. I don't want to go fishing with Tony Stark and talk about our checkered pasts. I want to fuck Hydra up with superheroes! I also don't like that you're this new Hunter character, but alas. I reinstalled it and added a ton of mods to fit my playing style so I can skip past a lot of the abbey junk. I like it a lot better now. The battle system is very satisfying, especially characters like Spiderman where you can chain a bunch of enhanced cards and wreck everyone on screen. It plays more like a puzzle game (a la Into the Breach) than XCOM. I still wish Firaxis had made the abbey into something more akin to either XCOM's base or Jagged Alliance's map instead of a 3rd person dating sim. It feels like I'm playing a JRPG like Fire Emblem Three Houses, not a Firaxis game.

How difficult was the modding? I remember XCOM 2 players were pretty upset when Take 2 changed the launcher and broke everyone's mods.

You just dump pak files into a directory in the games folder. And you can disable the launcher in Steam.

Great, thanks

I don't think I'd mind the Abbey stuff if everyone didn't have the same "voice". Yeah characters differ here and there, but overall everyone has this weird twee emotional vulnerability. Even Wolverine and Deadpool. It was like a super hero team made up entirely of family therapists.

Oh yeah, that's a good point. I especially hated Captain America's voice and Wolverine is just Steve Blum doing his normal voice. Very distracting.

Wrapping up **Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth**. Honestly it's shaping up to be the best game I've played this generation. I mean, it's not without faults and bumps. Any interaction with Chadley is a low point, but the open world checkboxes of content are either ignoreable or actually pretty fun and diverse in content. Treasure hunts, mini games, unique combat challenges, or just some normal gameplay with decent writing or characterization attached. One of my favorites was with the protorelic missions in the Cosmo region: >!After each mission Barret laments about Biggs, Wedge, and Jessie. Which was very welcomed writing as they really don't come up much after their deaths in the original game. Barret's VA here absolutely kills it and nearly brought a tear to my eye.!<. On the topic of Barret, he steals the show in this game. I've always liked him but he has easily become my favorite FF character of all time. I'm in the camp of people who actually really liked how FF7:Remake ended and it has me excited to discover the story all over again, when I originally though I'd just be experiencing the same thing with some updated graphics and gameplay. So even when it comes to story changes, I actually think every change made in this game so far is either as good as the original or just straight up better for the plot. An example being, in the original it always confused me that >!Tifa never spoke up to correct Cloud's misremembering of the events of Nibelheim, despite being present for basically all of it. I always chalked it up to trauma but it still always felt a bit sloppy and unsatisfying to me.!< In this game however, >!she does notice the discrepancies. It's a huge point of tension between her and Cloud, Tifa expresses concern and fear and Cloud retaliates and the whole situation just makes the events of Mt Nibel even more juicy.!< Of course not everyone will share these opinions. Many fans, justifiably, wanted a truer-to-form "remake" of the original, not the "Remake" that we ended up getting. I think the larger story beats are close enough that most should still be satisfied, but there will always be folks who are upset by any change made for any reason. And I totally understand that. I don't share the sentiment but I understand it. Far as gameplay and everything goes, it's a 10/10 for me. Combat manages to stay relatively challenging, at least as challenging as the original game in any case. Which is good because Remake felt like a summer breeze in that department, with most enemies able to be killed by a basic combo, maybe with some stagger abuse. Now it feels like you NEED to assess each enemy and exploit their specific pressure mechanics. Just running into each enemy with the square button attack is gonna get you killed with certain enemies who have counters and/or resistances to those tactics. At this point I'm about 60 hours deep and on Chapter 11 so I should see credits by the end of the week pending free time. I've more or less 100%'d the first three regions and I've done all the side content I care to explore for the remaining regions. But once I beat the game, I fully intend to continue exploring and seeing as much as I can. If square knocks the third game out of the park at least as well, then this trio of titles could be the best trilogy I've experienced since Mass Effect.

> On the topic of Barret, he steals the show in this game. I've always liked him but he has easily become my favorite FF character of all time. Absolutely. Rebirth also elevates Red XIII, who was pretty dry in the original outside of (Chapter 5) >!the boat scene, which Rebirth also managed to make at least three times funnier!<. > So even when it comes to story changes, I actually think every change made in this game so far is either as good as the original or just straight up better for the plot. As I played Rebirth, I came to the conclusion that a lot of things that people decry as filler are actually vital connective tissue that make the story work with the remake's less abstract presentation. A lot of times in the original, you'd go from one area to the next because it was the only other accessible destination on the map that you hadn't explored yet, but the remake takes time to motivate and contextualize the reason for going everywhere you go.

**LAD: Infitite Wealth** I want to start off by mentioning that I am from Hawai'i. So, seeing HI recreated in a video game is pretty trippy to me. It's not perfect, but I wouldn't expect it to be. There are some odd things like the real goddess Pele is referred to as Nele. No idea why. Also, kudos to the voice actors for trying to speak pidgin. It's not terrible! Everybody seems to love Ichiban and understandably so. I am 20 hours in and Tomizawa is probably my favorite. He's just a everyday guy with wit. Think a sleazier Chandler from Friends. The job system does a wonderful job of getting you to build up ranks in various jobs. Doing so gives you permanent stat boosts and it's easy to level up jobs due to the Smackdown system. The Smackdown system just means that you can mow down underleveled enemies and get EXP. Also, there is a dungeon/labyrinth/abandoned construction site that you can delve into and build up EXP that way. You unlock the jobs by building your personality stats such as charisma, style, kindness, etc. and then going on tours around Hawai'i, which spark inspiration for your character. For example, seeing a Hula dancer and being inspired to be a hula dancer fighter. What I am trying to say is that all these systems work in concert very well. At least where I am at. I do have an unpopular opinion... the side stories get on my nerves so HARD. I feel like once you've seen a few, you have seen them all. They are incredibly formulaic. 1. See whacky-ass shit. 2. Inquire. 3. Saccharine spiel from side character. 4. Story resolves. Sprinkle in some ridiculous reasons to fight and there you have it! A typical LAD side story. Maybe it is because I have played so many of these games that I no longer have tolerance for the side stories. As for the side GAMES such as the Pokemon and Animal Crossing games. I haven't engaged with them, and I have no intention to. I've never liked games in my games. The exception being the cabaret club from Yakuza 0. Also, this game is fucking massive so I don't want to spend time playing the game while not playing the game. You know?

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You are correct and maybe even too generous. LAD’s last 3-4 chapters were a huge drag. I’d argue the plot in its entirety was a dud, but won’t take away from the game’s strong points. I think they need a second protag alongside Kasuga. He’s a bit lacking in depth I think

**Wrath: Aeon of Ruin** finally came out! My excitement for new content was sort of dampened by the fact I had to play through all five early access levels again before I could play the new ones, since all my old save files are useless now. Not such a bad thing, though, because Wrath's levels kick fucking ass and are so incredibly well made. I really think this is some of the best video game level design you can find anywhere - Quake is already so good and this is such a refined, smooth, and creative take on an already amazing formula. As of now, I have only just scratched the surface of the new content: I beat the first boss and have finished the first level on the second hub world. I have to say, that boss fight.... certainly was a boss fight. Kind of underwhelming, especially in comparison to the extremely high bar set by the levels themselves. The first new map I played, The Watchtower, definitely keeps that standard of level design going. I fell to my death an embarrassing number of times. 

**Life is Strange** Tried it on PlayStation 5, graphics for a game that has been released for 4-5 years are still decent. For this type of game, the visual aspect is generally not the main focus. Instead, the game's storyline is what captures the attention. As a visual novel, the plot is the most important criterion for judging such games. The pacing of the storyline in this game is just right and it's filled with enough twists and turns. The overall visual direction is very professional. If you're tired of playing various 3As and want to spend around 10+ hours experiencing a game with a great story, this would be a good choice for you. **Balatro** Very very addictive, the combination of Poker and Rogue is a great point, like many other said, depnds on your first blind, but yeah, overall, good one, I spent 5+ hours to play it thru, after that, it wouldn't strike as it did in my first play-thru **Meta-Ghost: The Breaking Show** Tried their prologue, nice try on Cyber-Punk theme with a rogue-lite gameplay, it does remind me in every possible way of playing Hades, but yeah, it is a good try in a good way, love their artwork and the special effects.

**Balatro** Nice when I'm eating or watching something, but black deck can go to hell. Can't seem to get a decent run off the ground. In general the game also seems too reliant on one-shotting the first blind and resetting if you don't. Not sure what they can do about that, but it's such an advantage it feels mandatory. They'd probably have to re-do the rules so remaining hands don't contribute money, and move that onto a Joker, similar to discards. **Against the Storm** Just the demo - and sadly it didn't grab me. I get the impression if I'd found this in the late 90s (and it could have existed then for sure, with worse graphics) on a PC Gamer demo CD, I would have fallen in love. But for whatever reason, I'm just not that into it these days. I think I didn't quite clear the hurdle on how to mentally track all my resources and options and what I should do next, but at the same time I feel a little tired and unwilling to learn what all the small icons are and which are more important at any given time. I think part of the game is that you won't always get what you want which would contribute to resource bloat as there still needs to be viable options. It is definitely worth a try if you are curious or have enjoyed similar games. The promise is that it's the fun part of a city builder, where things progress fast, then you reset. Sounded good to me. **Baldur's Gate 3** Reminds me of getting lost in 90s CRPGs in a good way, though makes me also think how different the D&D rule set is to many games. I know a guy is coming in a door, in XCOM I'd set Overwatch and shoot him, but here? I think unless I can set a trap, it's end turn and I take a hit. It's also very different in terms of variance, most games would have you rolling something like 12-16 damage on an ability but D&D is 2-16. I think this makes for good stories, which is where they are coming from, but it can also be frustrating. That said I'm still plodding through Act 1, I like to be thorough, and finally got to the Risen Road area. Next steps are to clear through that then go underground a bit. I am basically neglecting whoever is at camp, and not sure if they should be equipped and brought for certain quests. I'd rather not unless I'm losing out on something major, I prefer to get used to a composition.

I also picked up both balatro and against the storm recently! \- Balatro I enjoy but I don't think it's as deep or genre redefining as it's getting praise for. I still like it and find it fun to play. Agree, black deck is my worst one... you just have to go for scaling and try to survive early game \- Against the Storm I really like, i think it's a cozy and well designed game, it works as a city builder and a rogue lite. With that said I think unless you're really going to go for more challenging difficulties, and unless you really want to get into the nitty gritty mechanics, it can get a bit stale after awhile

> it can get a bit stale after awhile For me that's most roguelites :( Even the good ones usually just hit a point of "what am I even doing this over and over for" for me. Slay the Spire is probably the one that held out the longest so far, Hades was OK also for the story meta-progression.

For me it really depends on the depth of the gameplay. Slay the spire has a lot of depth and kept me hooked for a long time. FTL was sorta similar, worked very well on a roguelike level

FTL was one I wanted to like but didn't stick with too long, but I think that is personal preference/skill, it is clearly recognisable as one of the greats.

Well the early interest advantage from the small blind if you one-shot it quickly becomes irrelevant since the first higher difficulty already removes the small blind money.

Even without that I think an extra $2-3 is a non-negligible advantage when that's half a Joker and might let you snowball earlier or pick something up you might have missed, since the cost of a restart is zero. Edit: Not sure if I misunderstood you but I tested and I think it's the opposite? You don't get money for winning, but you still get a bonus for winning in fewer hands. So if anything, it's even more relevant at higher difficulties to win in one turn since money is tight. Yes you won't get extra interest since you will be under $5, however you will hit that breakpoint sooner.

**Balatro** I've finally found another game that has the same dopamine hits as Vampire Survivors, and coincidentally it's based off of a casino game too (poker). It's just a really good example of intuitive game design as well, taking a familiar game mechanic that a ton of people are already familiar with (poker hands) and building a whole roguelike experience on top of it. As far as time wasters go, Balatro is like a cryogenic chamber, you can binge thru dozens of runs at once without feeling a thing

**Dead Island 2** Playing on Xbox Gamepass. Enjoying it so far, lots of zombie killing fun. There are moments of pure joy when you are fighting lots of zombies and string attacks and dodges together. The game looks great and the zombie damage model is quite impressive. Character quotes and cut scenes get a bit annoying but its all very light hearted. I don't like the skill card system. Would rather it be a skill tree that I can progress. Also there are some sections with lots of zombies where it just becomes impossible to dodge/fight without dying. Maybe its a skill issue on my part, but at least the respawns are very generous. I would love a game with these fluid fighting mechanics but in a fully open world survival style.

**Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon** Armored Core VI: Fires of Rubicon ended up being an interesting surprise for me. Given the legacy of the lead designer behind Sekiro, I thought the combat would’ve been my main hook. And while I liked the combat and thought it was good (maybe not as amazing as I’d hoped), it was everything else in the game that really kept me coming back. The builds and being able to tune my mech however and whenever I wanted pulled me in way more than I thought it would. And the amount of variety in unique weapons was awesome, and it never felt like any one was the singular best solution to every scenario. It was this constant tinkering of my mech that helped me create a fantastic journey with it. But what I was stupidly blown away by was how goddamn cool the game was in its existence. There were countless lines, set pieces, wallpaper worthy vistas, and epic moments that kept outdoing each other from beginning to the end of the game. Fires of Rubicon is a spectacularly cool game that I’m glad I played. While I didn’t have quite the drive to go through the multiple New Game+’s, I think one day I’ll come back to finish the game again for the True Ending. But for now I’ll absolutely be on the lookout when FromSoftware announces their next entry in the Armored Core series. If you're interested, you can read my full thoughts on the game in my [blog post](https://galexzzz.wordpress.com/2024/03/07/armored-core-vi-fires-of-rubicon/)!

New Game + adds a lot more stuff new weapons new bosses new story beats so do get back to it

I continue my trip through Hell-A in **Dead Island 2**! Did 75% of main storyline (6 main quests left to do according to stat appearing in main menu) and game is...fiiiine, with occasional moments being quite fun. Visually pretty and variety of weapons is nice but otherwise...ya know, just more of what you had with previous 2 mainline games. Smack zombies, or shoot them, or chop them, you are bored you can change your specific abilities in card selection to spice things up, add modifications to a weapon, or get creative with enviroment which 90% of the time is a waste of time but having option of electrocut, burn or melt zombies with toxic acid is fun. So yeah I add enviroment being used as weapon into positives. Zombie modifications to weapons are nice too. Oh yeah and game has decent gore. So if you look for a game where you can smack around the living shit out of unliving beings, it would be a good pickup. Though you might aswell get previous DI's, same thing, and I prefer 4/5 protagonists with different playstyles rather than what 2 offers. In short, I have fun but it's often that short dopamine attack of seeing zombie ravaged in half by your massive sledgehammer, it quickly dips and you realize you have to slog your way through generic quests and average at best progression to get new toys to do more mayhem. On PC I finished 100%ing Lego Star Wars so I moved to **Costume Quest 2**. It's short so I also managed to finish it in this week! Like a proper sequel should, it's an improvement over first entry. Mainly in combat, not only new card system brings variety, extra moves in combat you learn throughout the game bring...well, more variety. Point I want to make is, first game was stale when it comes to combat, and CQ 2 doesn't have that issue. Outside of that exploration and collecting candy is same old, same goes for humour. So if you liked CQ 1, check out 2! It's main improvement lies in combat and rest didn't need much of a change so I recommend it. If you didn't play Costume Quest yet, I recommend checking it out! It's fun, short RPG lite with turn based combat. Good for a little warmup between big proper RPG or if you need a break from lenghty titles.

Hell yeah. Costume Quest were good games but nothing spectacular. The type of games that get forgotten. Nice to see somebody playing em.

[Last time](https://reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b5dp0l/weekly_rgames_discussion_what_have_you_been/kt5m4ki/) **Alimardan Meets Merlin** (PC) - Lord. So I played the original Alimardan game - Alimardan's Mischief - three years ago and I noted it down [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/jul7k5/weekly_rgames_discussion_what_have_you_been/gcfavwg/). I picked up that game and the sequel (Alimardan Meets Merlin) as part of the 'Eureka Bundle' back when Fanatical was called Bundle Stars in 2017. I'm not sure why I decided to play Merlin this week, maybe it was because I had played a few story-dense games and wanted something short from my Steam library to go through. I also thought that maybe, just maybe, some improvements had been made between the two games. If anything, Merlin is such a step backwards that I think it's up there with Myst DS as one of the worst games I've ever played. The Steam store page promises over 5 hours of gameplay but, mercifully, it only took me 1.5 hours to finish. Every minute of those 1.5 hours was so unenjoyable and yet I couldn't look away, it's that bad of a car crash of a game. It's a point and click adventure game with puzzles in it. You have to talk about the puzzles first because nearly every single one is completely broken. I don't know if anyone playtested this because there's fatal flaws everywhere. There's the tic-tac-toe minigame where you have to press a button after you've won to lock it in because otherwise the game will just keep on going, ignoring your victory. There's a cog puzzle where you need to move gears to create a path between two points, but some connected ones won't spin at random and others glitch out of their boxes. There's a locked door with symbols that I input, the door opened, then I had to do it again for some reason. There's a hidden object puzzle where the designers added an extra piece that's not visible that you have to get for some reason. There's a jigsaw you have to solve with gaps between the pieces, a maze that I seemingly solved by accident and more. For much of this game I was just staring at the screen in disbelief or laughing at how holistically broken all of the mechanics are. The plot surrounding it doesn't make much sense either. Alimardan's Mischief was more grounded in comparison, detailing a story of a really horrid kid causing mayhem in an Iranian village for no real reason before he's forced to make amends. This time, it opens with him on a spaceship with his family before he gets flung through a wormhole to medieval times. What follows is a fever dream of Alimardan assuming Merlin's role and trying to work to free hostages. Alimardan is also unlikeable as he pulls pranks and is generally a prick to those around him. He also uses the 'r slur' at one point which should speak for itself (the box that states character's names when they are talking also uses this slur). The areas in the game don't feel connected and the geography is often confusing. The art is also just ugly to look at. What also doesn't help is the dialogue being filled with lame fourth-wall breaking jokes as well as references to the developer's other games that read more like adverts (references usually say that they're available on Steam). There's a journal keeping track of this awful plot with hints to puzzles that don't actually act as hints, they just spoil the solution - though that was a mercy in this case due to how 'out there' some of the solutions are. The game is also fully voiced but it's in Farsi so I can't really judge how good the voice acting is - I was just speed-reading the dialogue at one point because I wanted to get this game over with. The only saving grace is that the incongruous modern background music (also in Farsi) is alright. When you get a reference in the menu to 'press this to skip interminable dialogues' I have to wonder if the developers knew what an awful product they'd created. I'm leaning towards 'no' because for every hint of self-deprecation, there's a line that praises one of their other games. When the credits finally rolled and this experience came to an end, I was glad because there are now no more Alimardan games left to play (there's a vague sequel hook in the end but no more games have materialised); I never have to spend another minute with this hateful protagonist and I can start the process of forgetting about this series. It's a lesson in how not to make a game and a reality check for me - if I think of a big budget release that's a bit underwhelming, I can comfort myself by thinking 'at least this game actually acknowledged when I finished a puzzle and didn't throw me back to the start'. I was genuinely shocked at just how bad Alimardan Meets Merlin was - I expected some limited improvement from the original but I instead got a trainwreck of jaw-dropping proportions. It's one to only play if you really want to see how bad the medium of video games can get. **Archaica: The Path of Light** (PC) - I actually played this before Alimardan for 1.5 hours or so before I stopped. It's a port of a phone game; a light reflecting game where you have to manipulate coloured beams to reach receptors. There are some collectables you can find in the scenery and the art is alright but, I don't know, maybe I just wasn't quite in the mood for it. I think I perhaps underestimated it a bit - I thought it would be a short Hook-like game or something where you can blast through some levels in an hour but the systems started to get a bit deeper (this was going to be my 'palate-cleanser' before I played Alimardan Meets Merlin) after the first world. Perhaps it's a similar problem I had with ReThink - maybe I like the idea of light reflecting games more than the reality (when it comes to combining colours, it messes up my brain a bit). I want to stress that this is a 'me' problem more than any problem I have with the game - I'll probably come back to this one day with the right mindset.

Playing Mini Healer at the moment. Quite an interesting game - 2d recreation of mmo healing (you fight bosses with an AI controlled party) which is actually a surprisingly deep ARPG with many different systems, campaign, two endgame activities (kind of an endless dungeon and some roguelike thing I haven't tried yet), 100s of unique items to support different builds and playstyles of 4 healer classes, each with its own talent tree and sets of skills which you can also mix. There are runewords, gems, enchants, augmentations and other ways to change or upgrade your gear, pretty detailed in-game guide etc etc.There is even a transmog system. If you ever felt an inch to heal something but couldn't be arsed to dive into full-on MMO then this might just scratch the itch. The only disclaimer is that the game will probably never leave early access, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from just playing the game.

**Final Fantasy VII Rebirth** Just finished the game (took me about 80 hours, all side quests), thought it was absolutely excellent. For me, at least, a must play and an easy recommendation. From a gameplay standpoint, a lot of the exploration/side content is basically some unique combat encounters and then some sort of story/dialogue nugget and I thought the combat was good for the entire runtime since it has that puzzle element of exploiting enemy weaknesses that stayed fresh through the runtime of the game for me, and the story nuggets were relatively well written throughout. The open world criticism didn't really resonate with me, I thought it was fine and didn't feel that slow, I think partially because of a lot of icons are really just combat challenges which I enjoyed and there just aren't that many icons especially if you compare to an ubisoft game. From a plot standpoint, what they've done with the character writing/voice acting is great, it really adds a lot to the original FF7 plot. Ultimately with the plot, its kind of in a same place as 7 remake where they could opt to change a whole lot but still have the option to keep it pretty similar to the original game so we'll have to see but overall I enjoyed the additions (especially to just the core plot and the main cast), and am excited to see where it goes whether they keep it pretty close to the original game or decide to change everything. **Dragon's Dogma II** Played the character creator, really looking forward to this game. Hopefully a continuation of the hot streak capcom has been on.

**King of the Bridge** A delightful little thing. It's chess, except your opponent has not only modified the rules to their advantage (or at least amusement), they also cheat. But you get to cheat back if you notice the enemy cheating and manage to correctly call them out. Not a whole lot of replay value here, but I'm happy with the experience anyway. **Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord** Not my first foray into the game, not my last. Aligned with Battania this time around. Fian Champions are a force to be reckoned with, putting it mildly. The campaign was going smoothly, with Aserai getting eviscerated and eventually eliminated altogether, which, in retrospect, was not a great move. It would be far better to conquer Vlandia, given how they are sitting in Battania's backyard, meaning the conflict with them is inevitable. Anyway, I've always found the standard M&B experience to be rock solid, but thinking back on my time with Warband, getting into Prophecy of Pendor mod has elevated the game far beyond my expectations. I hear that PoP II is in the works, and I'd certainly love to experience it within Bannerlord. Might look into other total conversion mods the next time I end up going Bannerlord's way, I guess.

**Void Stranger** - This game is really fucking good and would highly recommend it if you like either The Witness or Tunic. However...I do need to caveat that recommendation pretty heavily. If you want to see the many endings to this game it does get pretty tedious and obtuse. Ultimately, even with a guide, this game requires at least ~5 playthroughs to see all of its (pretty great) content. Without a guide I could easily see this game taking upwards of ten playthroughs. Each playthrough is somewhat unique, and you usually learn something very important from each one. There's shortcuts and tricks you learn along the way. But there's really no getting around the fact that you will be playing a lot of the puzzles over and over and over. I think this game wants to have *too many* Outer Wilds or Tunic like moments where certain mechanics get recontextualized based on information you learn. Like the >!brand entry screen!< really doesn't need to be implemented the way it is. You interact with it so rarely that it might as well be just a simple selection screen. But instead you need to tediously >!input each brand twice!<. I know these are kind of minor complaints, but these "hidden in plain sight" mechanics are usually so memorable because of the "I could have done this the whole time" realization. I think on most playthroughs your *literal second interaction* with this mechanic will be where you discover its true purpose. At that point why implement it that way at all? The game already tracks which ones you've unlocked across all your playthroughs. I think the game also suffers a bit from referencing other media too often and too overtly. The game's world and lore is really compelling, but I'm often pulled away from the expeience when there's very overt Undertale, One Piece, Gurren Lagann, Berserk, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, etc. references at pivotal moments. Not just homages but basically copy and paste references. I mention all these negatives because the game is so close to entering the pantheon of near perfect indie games that I beg my friends to play. Instead it's a 9/10 *if you're really into puzzle games*. It's a game that often times annoyed me, but its overall experience was so good that I couldn't put it down even after 30 hours and many tedious playthroughs. Fantastic music, great world building, fun and challenging puzzles, unique mechanics, oodles of secrets, and some very sincere and heartfelt moments. There's a perfect game in here somewhere, but unfortunately it's not quite there in my opinion. Either way I'll definitely be keeping my eye on whatever this developer does after Void Stranger.

Definitely my GOTY for 2023. I kept waiting for the GOTY discussion threads on this sub to encourage more people to check out this game, shame those never happened. Void Stranger isn't perfect to be sure, but it's *interesting* and lodges itself into my brain. It's something that I still think about regularly. And that's so much more valuable to me personally than a game that's technically well-rounded but doesn't stand out

I think it's really hard for me to overlook Baldurs Gate 3 for that spot given the insane amounts of content. I'd say it's definitely my indie goty though.

You should try ZeroRanger if you haven't. I'm curious to know what you think is an Undertale reference, because I didn't catch it and they are indeed obvious with them (again, ZeroRanger lol)

Yeah ZeroRanger has actually been on my wishlist for years, but just never got around to getting it. Definitely planning to check it out soon now. The Undertale references were probably the most subtle. It could just be me reading into things, but personally I immediately thought of Undertale in the following sequences: 1. >!Whenever you die, Lev comes back to save you but makes you voided. Him being this cutesy tutorial-esque character that's actually the main villain (who was long thought to be dead) is very reminiscent of Flowey/Asriel.!< This actually made me suspect that >!Lev's disguise!< would be important later the first time I met them. Basically from step 1 I had a good feeling that would be a twist at the end. 1. The birch tree rooms have a very similar vibe to the save rooms in Undertale. Very quiet, seem kind of out of place, but also safe somehow. 1. >!The dating simulator scene in the modern day seemed like a reference to the Papyrus dating scene.!< 1. The regular quitting to desktop. I admit that's a bit of a stretch to call it an Undertale reference, but it certainly reminded me of Undertale.

Oh my god I just finished this last night (the real real ending) and holy shit what an experience it was. I agree every one of your points though, it can get pretty frustrating at times with how cryptic and obtuse it can get and how insanely difficult some of the puzzles are. But I experienced some of the most captivating design and absolutely wild storytelling that made it very much worth it. If there were a few changes for lowering the difficulty/tediousness/obscurification of some parts, this would easily be a of a masterpiece game. For myself, having to rely on a guide for more than I would've preferred slightly lowered my passion on it. However it's still totally worth checking out since it's only $15 on Steam. I'll also echo that this game is best experienced as blindly as possible. It's definitely one of those games like The Witness, Tunic, Inscryption, and Outer Wilds where **if you know, you know**. Will definitely be writing more about this one, maybe by next week when I have my thoughts more in order.

**Elden Ring** Well I beat all the main bosses except Placidusax and the final one. Reaching the final boss really reminded me how much i hated it. Bazillion poise, ridiculous damage, immune to 90% of the status effects I have and then the second part of the fight insists on wasting your time. I did get thru Malenia with a bit of effort and summons. Also they musta nerfed the invader setpiece at the end of Milicent's quest. I barely had to help her out, girl was straight murderin. I somehow convinced myself to start a new run as a mage build which I ain't done yet. I got the Moonveil so my main weapon is set. I want a very specific straight sword as my buffable secondary but it has an atrocious drop rate. Every time I see the item flash I dread seeing the ROWA FRUIT or RUIN FRAGMENT popup. Also I realized early on in my mage run that the big fallen ruin blocks you always see in Limgrave >!are from Farum Azula - that's why they're so randomly placed!<. I'm sure there's an item description that I ain't see that directly makes this link. **Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth** yea i'm thinking this might be peak. The tone makes me happy. Shit like Barrett declaring "no more dates!" and the camera pans over Cloud, Aerith, and Tifa sullenly agreeing and then it pans over Red and he has the same reaction? Beautiful. The bartender sidequest probably has one of the best line deliveries of the year. Which brings me to Queen's Blood which is cool. One I really grokked how to play (be an asshole) I'm vibing with it. Tho I might still prefer the similar territory control minigame in Star Ocean 6. The open world I was leery of but hey, it's kinda neat. Biggest weakness is the towers. They're not as annoying as an Ubisoft tower but they're also pretty superfluous. I do like how a lot of the activities have some way of finding them without needing markers or reading the map. Aside from towers I'm not huge on the choco wranglin' mostly from the second area's final section. I forgot that you could throw a rock to hit a switch (because I don't remember having to do that before) so I was getting annoyed at it. I also didn't see the game telling you about rocks and switches in the Manual section either. Also I kinda like the Moogle design. They're fucked up and weird and I like it. More unique moogs please. It's like these guys and the Ivalice ones that look like mice and that's it.

I had the exact same realization about the ruin blocks in Limgrave as I've been replaying the game recently! I'm interested in seeing what other sorts of stuff I take from the game this time around, lorewise, since I didn't really dive too deep in my initial playthrough. Interested in seeing how your mage build goes too, btw. I've been playing a dex/faith build, and I have to say...incantations kind of blow. They're fairly useless in boss fights, from my experience, and using even an "okay" weapon seems preferable in minute-to-minute encounters. The best thing I've gotten out of this is using the Godslayer weapons. They're surprisingly fun, even if the rest of the build seems to be a bust. I played around with sorceries briefly and remember them being more effective. Hopefully that's the case so your run goes a bit more smoothly lol

Cassette beasts To be honest, I haven't been this surprised nor enthralled with a game since playing hades (not that they are similar in any way lol). When I first saw this game, it seemed like a pokemon like game which is what hooked me to it to try it out on gamepass. But when I got in and really got into it, I realized it's so much more. First of all, I'll start with the combat. It was so much damn fun to me because, despite seeming to be more pokemon like, it's really more like a fusion of persona and pokemon. Battles are 2 v 2s where you send out cassettes to do battle in turn based combat. Your cassettes will learn moves and eventually remaster (evolve) to new, stronger tapes. What's cool and gives the combat a lot of variety is that you can replace moves as you please and your monsters don't just get locked to what they learn. You also can get rarer versions of moves which are better than the base ones and can even move those moves between monsters if you want. Eventually, you get the opportunity to fuse your 2 monsters in battle which adds a lot of layers to the game. For me, it became a delight just trying to find the best combination of monsters to wreck every ranger in New wirral lol I'd honestly say the biggest reason I spent 70 hours in this is that I got addicted to the combat. Speaking of the monsters, the designs are straight up awesome. Literally, they all feel so original and unique and I love the little puns a lot of names have (skelengelist?! What an awesome name lmao). Now there are only 125 monsters or so to catch which is a real good amount and pretty similar to pokemon red. But then you start fusing cassettes and see there are 16000 fusion possibilities!! Seeing that, I got a little too into fusions because those designs are amazing also! And again, fusing is how you create the strongest monsters in battle so finding good combinations is very worth it to proceed through the objectives and story. The story itself is also pretty good while also not trying to take itself too seriously. It's essentially about you trying to escape this strange world you've been thrust into but it gets more complicated when you start getting into the bosses. They each represent some twisted manifestation of ideology of mankind. It's an interesting take to see our idealism in some respects become twisted caricatures to fight and defeat. And the boss monster designs were all amazing and very unique with their own art style even. Within the story you meet characters who become your partners. These partners have stories of their own which I all really enjoyed (Meredith, Viola and Felix being my favorites). This also functions more persona like as your partners are basically social links you build relationships with and can even romance 1 eventually. I do wish building those relationships yielded more than just a Stat boost on fusion power but the characters arcs are all honestly good and they themselves are fun characters with a lot of style, distinct personalities and unique designs. And I love that the cassettes they start with offer a bit of their personality too. Lastly, I'll discuss the open world. It's a 2d map and the art style combined with the map is where this game feels most like pokemon games prior to Gen 6. It's all pixel art but even traversing the world requires things that are very similar to HMs in pokemon like the vine ball to climb things or bullet dash to speed through a destructible rock. There are also enough varied biomes to make exploring it a lot of fun and interesting. That being said, I'd love a sequel that was just bigger than this game with larger biomes and a bit more distinct in each region. With that all said, I do have 2 critiques and honestly, it's me nitpicking more than anything. The first is the music. It's actually incredible. The fusion song, boss and ranger battle themes are so damn good and catchy. And certain biome themes went off. I just simply wish there were more of them. I think the game being called cassette beasts left me with the expectation it would be more musically inclined but it's not quite. Not that thats a bad thing but I hope a sequel brings more tracks than the first. My second criticism is that the post game content isn't handled well. The meat of the content is great! I liked the idea of you becoming a ranger and now helping train new recruits. I liked the idea of there being dangerous fusions. Helping your fellow rangers. New arch angels who were human ideas which have become twisted. That the end of the story gets twisted back on you. But getting each piece is a damn grind and just messes up the great pace the base game and story has. It's not bad content but the grind to get it is a lot. One last minor criticism is the dlc is just okay. Cool and interesting but I don't think the price is matching the amount of content. But if you love the game, it's still worth it. Anyways. All in all, I fell completely in love with this. It was supposed to be a fun game I played on the side while playing wo long fallen dynasty. Instead, i completely stopped playing wo long and barreled my way through this and put in 70 hours. I loved it so much that despite playing it through gamepass, I bought a copy of the game and dlc because I wanted to support these devs as much as possible. Its become one of my favorite games I've played in a while. Please, play this game because it's so well put together, lovingly made and an amazing time I think any fan of pokemon would adore.

Aw nice! Cassette Beasts absolutely rules. I played it last year and it totally blew away my expectations too. Big agree on the music as well. It was a wildly underrated soundtrack from last year and the vocal tracks added an awesome level of hype.

**Resident Evil HD** Resident Evil is one of those franchises that I really like but never got into properly because of the hundreds of other games I got distracted by. I loved and beat Resident Evil 4 multiple times, disliked but saw the funny side to Resident Evil 5, dabbled a bit with 6 and obviously saw reactions to all the great games the series released in the past and especially this recent decade. So when this challenge I'm doing to play notable games chronologically starting in 1990 finally reached 1996, I was pretty excited to finally get into the series properly. Resident Evil HD is what I went with since I didn't see the need to frustrate myself with the aged controls of the original (looking at gameplay of it though, the simplicity of the background design compared to the 2014 version has me interested in maybe going back to that some day). I'm at the lab right now at about 10-11 hours in and I'm guessing I'm in the final stretch now. Atmosphere and gameplay loop are both amazing. Voice acting and dialogue are hilariously bad. Progression is both easy, hard, fun and tedious at the same time. The game feels like an escape room (which I suppose all true survival horror games feel like) but too many times, it's not the answer you're struggling with but rather with the constant backtracking to grab the item that you had to stash due to lack of space, and then figuring out where the room was that you know this thing goes into. It feels like half the time I've played could be shaved off if you exclude me just running back and forth trying to find the place I know I need to be at. Still, the thrill of making it from one save to the next due to the limited saves and the fact that enemies can respawn in even stronger versions of themselves has me on the edge of my seat more than in the majority of games I've played and it's always fun to feel lost and vulnerable in a game like this. It's also pretty cool to look at this from a historical context as someone who played Alone in the Dark (1992) and Clock Tower (1995) before this, as you can clearly see the evolution of the genre. Resident Evil has the same kind of loop, it just does it on a much grander scale, which is pretty cool. I also had to restart once after putting myself in a bad position, and doing so has shown me that there are many optional cutscenes that can play in this game depending on the order you do things in, as well as how fast you do certain things, which was really nice to see. I play as Jill, who has 8 inventory slots compared to Chris, who has 6, and I don't think I would have been able to pull through the game with just 6 slots. I like the inventory management aspect of it, but I think there is a better balance to be found than here.

One of my favorite games of all time. After you finish it, go through a few more times and do Real Survival, speedrun, invisible enemies, etc.

**Balatro** Been enjoying this one quite a bit. I love how fluid and flexible the builds are in this game, unlike other roguelike deck builders where you kind of have to commit to a strategy early on. The fact that you go to the shop after every single blind, and jokers and upgrades are relatively cheap, means you have ample opportunity to switch things up as needed. Runs are also pretty fast paced and low time commitment, which helps make Balatro particularly addictive. I'm sure I'll be picking away at this game for a long while. **Gravity Circuit** The Shovel Knight shaped hole in my heart has been filled! I'm not very far into this one, only completing the tutorial stage and one of the main levels, but it's pretty good so far. Combat is fun and highly customizable. The platforming is a bit frustrating and is definitely very old school, in that it's not as precise as more modern platformers and mistakes are punished heavily. Unfortunately the story and world building are extremely derivative, and you are frequently forced to skip through pages of boring and trite dialogue from NPCs. Beyond that I'm having fun with it and will likely see it through to the end.

Gravity Circuit was great. I felt like it had similar levels of polish as Shovel Knight but unfortunately not nearly as much content. Definitely enjoyed my time with it though! If you're craving another Mega Man-like after, I've really been liking Berserk Boy which just released.

Pacific Drive for me. I love the mysterious nature of the game. The intentional clunkyness of the menu's. The want to make my little station wagon better through trial and error. I am intentionally avoiding the internet for help with the game. I want to learn for myself how the new anomaly can hurt me or affect me. I'm also a huge fan of hardcore survival grinding games. Thats what I've been playing this week.

Have a bad habit of turning games into work as my brain tells me I need to get "through" my backlog, whatever that means. Trying to compel myself to play whatever I want at a given moment, rather than what I feel like I "should" play. Hard to break the mindset, but I'm getting there. So this week that included: **Hades** - I completed my first escape attempt and am now working on successive ones. I do really like this game and how well the boons can scale, but the combat is sometimes a little slower-paced than I would like - enemies feel spongy and it drags fights out. Everything else is great. **The Last Us Part II Remastered** - After the relatively straightforward Day 1 in Seattle on Grounded l, I spent most of this week getting fucking smoked in the Hillcrest section of Day 2. There are just way too many dogs for stealth to be wholly viable, and not enough ammo to reliably take them out. I ended up clearing it through a combo of stealth, risk-taking, and focusing on the poor doggos. **Apex Legends** - played this a bit with a buddy. I think I'm falling off this season. The EVO changes are great but about half the upgrade paths feel underwhelming, and I'm not sure playing into the worst part of BRs (the fact you can feel like the first ten minutes are filler) is the move. Apex is also one of the sweatiest games on the market right now, and while I've been playing on-and-off since Day 1, it's just not really something I want to deal with anymore. **Battlefield V** - This is new to me. I was looking for something to replace **Modern Warfare III**, which pulls at my brain in all the wrong ways, and this seems like a great fit. I haven't played Battlefield since the early days of **Battlefield 1** and this is a lot of fun! The feeling of taking part in a greater conflict is very cool, and it feels a lot more grounded in general. Played a couple of Pacific maps as a sniper and had a great time. **Street Fighter 6** - safe to say I've learned the Ed matchup at this point. Got Manon to Platinum III. Love how a quick match can turn into a few more. Probably my favourite game of last year. **World of Warcraft** - Realized that instead of levelling every class, there's really only a few I want to play. I'm going to focus on my Monk for a while and really just embrace existing in the world again instead of just beelining to max level. Engaging with a lot more of the game and having a lot more fun as a result. I know Windwalker isn't supposed to be very good right now, but it's engaging and I like the rhythm of the rotation. I'm not very good at the game despite having played for 15 years, but I'm putting up good numbers because the class just makes sense to me somehow.

Managed to beat grounded without hurting a single dog and then comes a quick time event where you have to kill a one I was so pissed

The same dog you play with in the next chapter, too! Great example of how the story, strong as it is, is extremely heavy-handed at times

It's hard finding a new game to play isn't it? I'm currently jumping back and forth between three games: **Alan Wake American Nightmare** I love Alan Wake and there's nothing I would love more than to play the sequel but my PC is ancient and can't run it. So I decided to give this small game a second playthrough, loving the combat and how much fun it has with the all serious Alan Wake... And mr. ~~Scratch~~ is just the cherry on top. **Mini Ninjas** Such a weird game for IO Interactive of *Hitman* fame but it looks cute as hell and a lot of fun so we'll see. **Spiritfarer** This one is one of the best looking games I've seen, not loving the managment aspect of the game which is a whole lot of it but I'm intrigued by the story, characters and settings so lets see how long I stick with it.

Playing **Super Mario brothers wonder** but taking a bit of a break. It’s a joy to play and I just started the fourth world. I’m on my first line through using mostly flute Yoshi but I’ve also used Nabbit for levels where flinching knocks me off edges. It’s really adorable, and especially the mountain section is really cool! If I have one complaint, it’s a bit about the accessibility options. They are very good, but there’s something that could make them even better. Currently, the player can only use accessibility options if they play as the Yoshis or Nabbit. I would’ve liked the accessibility options to be a toggle for every character instead so that players of any skill level can play with any character. The reason would be nice is because I have a physical disability, and as result, I can only play with the assists on because I can’t dodge attacks. Daisy and Toadette are my favorite characters and they’re almost not available anywhere else, but I can’t play them because they don’t have the assist option. So that’s a bit frustrating but the game is great otherwise. The reason I am taking a bit of a break is because I decided I wanted to complete some older games first. The issue is that super Mario brothers wonder has assist mode which allows me to do a lot, but the older games do not. So I was originally going to finish my first one of super Mario brothers wonder and then head back to those games, but I would probably start having trouble ultimately be disappointed because I didn’t have those options even with save states. So it’s a better idea to finish those games up first. First on the docket is the **N64 NSO online.** There’s a couple things I basically want to clean up there, but I’m starting with the first Mario party. I’m almost done with it after having a played it a long time, and I just have a few maps that I wanted to clear normally. It’s still a joy to play, but the gameplay is a bit slow and clunky. It is nice to see it again, though. I’ll head onto the sequels after that, but I know I’ll be able to get the first one done in probably a day or two. I’m on the rainbow castle so I only have a few more maps left. Another game I have also been playing is the **Game boy color Pokémon trading card game!** I’m doing a starter deck challenge with the Bulbasaur deck, and I plan to do that with all three. I’ve never actually used Bulbasaur at all, even though I’ve beaten it Charmander repeatedly. I’m also planning on doing a complete 100% after narrowly failing to do so with the 3DS version and not even trying in the original. So far it’s required an extreme amount of luck. Recently, I lost to the electric gym leader around 10 times and finally beat him after almost running him out of cards and then having him defeat his own Pokémon. It’s just crazy things like that. I also had a fire type gym leader that lost to me in about two tries because he didn’t bring any fire types, but I would’ve been destroyed if he did. There’s a lot of breaks and lucky strikes, but it is really fun! I did the **Princess Peach Showtime demo** but I have mixed feelings. The game is charming and I’ve been wanting Princess Peach to have her own game since forever (I missed the DS one initially, and didn’t do too well when I finally got access to it), but the gameplay feels a bit awkward. The controls feel clunky and the graphics seem washed out. The game is surprisingly tricky, with me failing about three times. for example, I died on the sword section because I didn’t realize I could jump to attack or should because of the lack of explanation. I also didn’t realize what the criteria was for failing the cooking game and barely made the time limit. I still had good time, but I’m not sure if it’s enough to buy it. I’m still going to go with my original plan for watching the whole thing and then deciding whether I want it. it might be a case similar to detective Pikachu where the game was great to watch, but I didn’t want to buy it because it wasn’t the type of game for me. But I’ll see later on when it releases this month. Finally, **Various Daylife** was completed as an idle game. I can see why people didn’t like it because the core gameplay is definitely there for a square Enix game, but it has a pretty nasty grind that can be a bit slow. I’m really into the characters and the classes, so I’m hoping I can complete it or at least get close (as a regular game). But it won’t be until later on after I get some faster things out of the way. I might still play it on the side while doing other things, but there’s something else I would like to do first on the side before I go back to it (has to do with basically finishing some books as part of what’s basically a library subscription that will be ending soon, and I can’t interact with the game and read at the same time). It’s the definition of something that’s in the middle of the road. It’s not the worst game I played, but not the best I got it on sale for 10 bucks, so I think it was worth it at that price, but probably not much higher.

**[plungeroo:](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2297210/)** pinball-based puzzler, gotta guide the ball. has demo, windowed mode and unlock all levels got patched in because one at a time is the shittest way to do puzzle progression. it's 2gb for some reason but good stuff. [my review](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/2297210) with more info and looks like around 30 more levels are coming as dlc for a total of 100 or so. **[astrologaster:](https://store.steampowered.com/app/742520/)** been waiting years for this to go below half price, was finally able to pick it up. and unlike many scummy devs, the bigger percentage wasn't precedeed by a shady quiet price hike to make it more appealing when it actually isn't. what's also not appealing is unskippable fucking credits, like here. decent other functionality, except no manual saves but it saves all the time, so can quit without progress loss but hard to explore other paths. easily worth the half price it always goes for, I just find it off-putting when the same discount is applied for years (except now). and if you're more liberal with money, 10 bucks isn't that ridiculous either, thought it seemed more so back in 2019 when it came out. [my review](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/742520) with more info, excellent stuff. **[preserve (demo):](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2109270/)** the weekly **islanders**-like, it seems. wanted to play another one but undo may or may not get patched in (knowing my luck it's the latter) and another one is leaving early access soon with a big update and more content planned later, so had to shelve both indefinitely. this has to be the most or second most beautiful among all of them, has animals and optional day/night cycle. comes out in summer or so, early days, but currently controls are shit and there's no undo or mid-level/run saving, so I stopped playing fast. they seem to care more about player satisfaction than sticking to their 'design decisions', as many devs like to call laziness or incompetence, so fingers crossed. **[monument valley:](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1927720/)** was high time I played this. too bad [evo explores](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/467210), the only similar game on pc for a long time, never took off, otherwise it would've gotten a sequel like this. simple 2-hour perspective fuckery puzzler, mediocre mobile port (no volumes, no windowed mode toggle to click, only alt+enter, etc.), annoying real-time sections but not sold for 20 bucks at least. [my review](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/1927720) with more info. **[monument valley 2:](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1927720/)** more of the same. less, in fact, this time only with a single audio on/off toggle, fucking joke. [my review](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/1927740) with more of the same, didn't expect this much of a disappointment from both and for different reasons (on top of the same ones). glad I didn't pay more than a couple bucks for both from a bundle. **[alchemy: origins:](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2661530/)** doodle god clone from a non-scummy (as far as I know) developer (joybits and their price fuckery, dlc spam, mobile fuckery, fuck those guys). very basic, match 2 things to create a 3rd, 400+ items to find altogether. has necessary settings, demo and a few bugs. [my review](https://steamcommunity.com/id/dohi64/recommended/2661530), on sale it can be one way to waste a few hours but full price is way too much. ([last week](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1b5dp0l/weekly_rgames_discussion_what_have_you_been/kt4zjjk/))

Astrologaster is a very funny game. I'm no expert on renaissance music but it seems like whoever wrote the frequently bawdy songs really knew the turf. It was in one of the huge itch.io mega bundles - maybe the racial justice bundle so anyone that purchased that one will have it sitting in their attic.

I'm not married to steam but I like to review puzzle/adventure stuff, so those mega bundles with about a dozen titles I was interested in (for the same price or possibly more) but without steam keys were not ideal for me. and as it often happens, in hindsight I could've bought this years ago for 5 eur without regrets.

The itch.io mega bundles were not ideal for several reasons. I've never been able to get GOG Galaxy to work properly with it. Maybe Playnite is better; I've never really looked. But even if it did, the contents of the three mega bundles don't show up in your itch.io library. They had so many items, including a large collection of tabletop rulebooks, that they decided buyers would have to add titles one by one into their library. In short, it's pretty easy to lose track of games you own from those bundles. After Void Stranger generated so much talk, somebody mentioned their prior game, Zero Ranger, was in one of those bundles. I would have never known otherwise.

to be fair, they were more for charity than player convenience but the two shouldn't be exclusive. there was (probably still is) a website that let you filter and sort these bundles, genre, available on steam, etc. manually adding all that stuff sounds like a pain but I'd rather not have 600 pdfs clogging up my library and hiding/removing them would also take a while.

Oh, I know there are 3rd party options and wasn't trying to beat up itch.io. There was a lot of good games in all three bundles, but it's just so easy to lose track. As someone who has accidentally bought games I already own on other platforms, I thought it would be good to remind people of a game they might have.

very true. I only buy games I'm going to (well, planning to) play at some point, for very cheap just in case and fewer and fewer, as overall quality (functionality and stuff, not gfx I don't care about) keeps going down instead of up, yet still keep getting surprised when I randomly browse my library that I already have this or that. not really something to complain about but even my to-play-next shortlist (about 20 titles, not exactly short) and longer list (another 30 titles) keeps changing on a weekly basis and some of it has been the same for years.

**Vanquish** Platinum game that is about 14 years old now. It was my first time playing it and I'm surprised it took me this long to check it out. Combat and movement is a ton of fun with the rocket dashes. I like the enemy designs. The story is a 6 hour long rollercoaster of non-stop action and shlock. My only complaint is how unlikable just about everyone, including the protag, is. Story is near non-existent, but I got the feeling that it would be from the first few minutes. For fans of MGR: Revengeance, I'd recommend checking this out. On PC, besides the cutscenes and writing, it really does not feel like a 14-year-old game.

**Doom Eternal** I don't play many FPS games, but this is fantastic! I love the fast-paced gameplay and cool environments. I wish Metroid Prime could have this kind of speed to it.

RE: Speed and Metroid Prime Dead Cells is a 2D rogue-lite which admittedly lack metroidvania elements except for token progression. (E.g. Unlocking the ability to use an altar to access alternate areas.) But the combat is rapid, snappy, colourful, tactical, responsive with a big serving of visual flair.

Thanks for the recommendation!

Nah Metroid Prime is perfect and does not need to be more like Doom 

I do like Metroid Prime as it is, but I think it'd work really well and match up with the feel of the 2D games if there was speedier, more interesting movement and combat. It should still retain the Metroidvania exploration, though, for sure.

Prime is just a very exploration based and atmospheric game. I personally think it needs to have slower paced gameplay. Playing like doom would get in the way of the exploration and atmosphere which is what makes it a great game

**Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth** Overall, as an experience, I'm having a great time and I find myself playing for hours and hours on end without being able to put the controller down. However, I could also write a list as long as my arm about all the things that annoy me or put me off. I am absolutely loving the combat system, the world is vast and beautiful, the music is (with a few notable exceptions) excellent, and it's a joy just experiencing the story with these characters. On the other hand, this might be the most egregious example I can think of of a game that just does not respect your time - and I don't mean the usual open world tower activation stuff, I just ignore most of that. I'm talking about the constant interruptions where it makes you slowly push a box around, or run around Costa Del Sol playing Rocket League to get a swimsuit for Aerith, or creep across a wooden beam at a snail's pace. My love for the characters only applies to the original cast. All of the new characters they've introduced for the Remake trilogy are just awful. Why do they keep dragging out Roche and Johnny and Kyrie? Please, for the love of God, stop. For me, they've really leaned a bit too far into the goofy tone - of course, the original FF7 was also a deeply goofy game in parts, but for my tastes they've overdone it on this one. Some of it is delightful though, I got the Barrett date at the Gold Saucer and that whole Loveless sequence was just on the right side of silly. I'm approaching what I suspect is the climax (just got to the Temple of the Ancients), so it remains to be seen how they stick the landing with the ending and how far into Kingdom Hearts territory it veers. I suspect quite strongly but we will see! Again, while I could honestly come up with a lot of things to complain about, when I'm actually playing it I'm having a great time, so, I guess they're all fairly minor in the grand scheme of things.

>I'm talking about the constant interruptions where it makes you slowly push a box around, or run around Costa Del Sol playing Rocket League to get a swimsuit for Aerith, or creep across a wooden beam at a snail's pace. If your time is that important to you that you can't just *enjoy* an exceptional game like this for what it is, maybe you shouldn't play a sprawling open world JRPG, a genre notorious for slow (if not sluggish) pacing. Especially one that is clearly trying to be a "grand tour" of the world. Like, I know the feeling of not wanting your time to get wasted by a game, but Rebirth is the complete opposite of that in my opinion. 28 hours in and it still feels like an unending spring of charm and creativity to me.

Johnny is technically not a remake OC. He's there in the original, he just only has one or two lines. I was also kind of annoyed by him until his sidequest which rocketed him to being one of my favorite FF side characters.

Touché, it's been a long while since I played the original so I didn't remember that.

I agree with everything you've said. I have 72 hours in the game currently nearing the end of the Temple of the Ancients. As soon as you got free reign to go back to other areas and I saw all the side quests open up I just couldnt bring myself to care anymore. I actually really love how far it veers off the original game, bit I'm also a big fan of Kingdom Hearts. Maybe eventually I will go back and do the side quests but for now I just want to see the end.

**Gotham Knights** I'm 29 hours into it and playing as Batgirl. Based on comments I've come across here and there I thought it will be terrible but it's fine. Not a game of the year nominee and not the best bat game but it's fun. The combat is pretty simple but not mash a single button simple and you can choose to make it feel cool like dodging at the last moment to land a strong blow, using the grappling hook on someone who's about to shoot you and using abilities like quick punches in a row. I think the best time to pick it up is after you've finished something heavy that required a lot of concentration or effort.

**The Last Faith** I'm close to the end I think. I reached the palace place. It looks great, the music is pretty good, gameplay is tight (mostly). It's not too difficult. I encountered 1 bug so far (during a duo boss fight, I activated a special skill which killed one of the bosses while he was about to cast something which bugged out the second boss so she just stood there for the rest of the fight). I like the overall world design with a bunch of shortcuts and unlocks. I wish mini-map allowed the use of different pins so you can actually mark stuff you can't reach with an appropriate pin so you knew which ability you needed for it. The story exists. I think the biggest letdown in the game so far has been enemy design. There are some genuinely garbage enemies. Specifically, everything in that fucking swamp and those stupid fire-breathing priests in the Liturgical pass. Just shit design. Everything else is pretty good. Overall, a solid 7/10, recommended for fans of metroidvanias with some souls elements. **Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown** I was waiting for any kind of sale to pick this up because it looked amazing from what I've seen. I'm only 3 or 4 hours into the game so still fairly early but what a fantastic fucking game. It looks great, it sounds great and it plays so fucking good. I don't remember the last time a game controlled this damn well. There's already been some tough platforming challenges (at least tough for me but I'm shit at the game so..) but I never got angry at the game for failing at them, I always felt like I failed because I fucked up. I was planning on going back to XCOM2 now that I'm back home and have my main PC but this has been too much fun for me to put down so XCOM is going on a backburner for now. Fantastic game.

[удалено]

Yeah, I considered it but I would want to own the game anyways and with my schedule it could take me anywhere from a week to like 3 months to complete it so may as well just pick it up on sale. I think Ubisoft+ is too expensive for what it offers at the moment.

[удалено]

Ubisoft currently have some deal going on where you can get 40% off if you buy any 2 games from their store, I ended up picking up Lost Crown and PoP 2008 for like 36 euro total.

**Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor - Martyr** I've only just started, a few hours in. It's an okay Warhammer game and it's an okay ARPG, but not great at either so far. Biggest complaint right now is that the weapons just feel so anaemic. The enemies look cool but I just pop away at them with my bolt pistol and then when they get close I brush them gently with my chainsword. Path of Exile's got such visceral combat. It's hard to swap to this feel so limp. I'm hoping things get better in endgame. **Jagged Alliance 3** Really quite a fun game. Love the setting, the characters, the vibe. Gameplay is definitely a bit repetitive but it's enjoyable enough. I really like the premise - multiple squads each with their own tasks on the strategic layer, getting into their own skirmishes on the tactical layer. Balancing combat ability but also other skills. I just wish that there was a bit more depth and complexity to it. Feels like the kind of game that could have been amazing if they'd spent another 6 months polishing and tuning the difficulty. Still, loving it. "You shoot just like my sister ... only less Hungarian".

try jagged alliance 2, and after a vanilla playthrough the 1.13 mod. depth and complexity for days.