Gaming

Oxygen not included. Today my cook Splug decided to take a nap in the toilet:

Then I dug to the asteroid's molten core and dropped a ton of water in. It filled the whole base with high pressure steam and killed everybody.

I just got into act 3 of Balder's gate and took a break because I don't want the game to end. Instead, I have fallen back on my old favorite on the steam deck, Dave the Diver.

Townscaper. I find it so soothing to play because it has no expectations of me and no people. Just lots of lovely, inoffensive buildings that sometimes take unexpected forms. It's been fun experimenting with different configurations to see if I can find any blocks I haven't seen yet.

I'm also chipping away at my koi collection in Zen Koi. Another game that does not expect much of me and has no people in it. The Pro edition on Play Pass doesn't have cooldowns or microtransactions either, so I can just swim around eating things and breeding new colours of fish.

Suffice to say, there's a theme in the games I'm enjoying right now: "humans not welcome, just let me relax".

Just started playing Space Engineers on Steam. That feeling of finally making a ship that can get into space with enough fuel to get to the next planet couldn't be better.

I'm still working on my second run of Baldur's Gate 3 with the Ghost Recon team in Act 3. The two big bads of the chapter before the final boss went down like chumps. For one of them, without spoilers (you know the one), I didn't even need to stop the chant, because I just had so many actions with each member of my team. I've been playing less of BG3 now though, because I already did a pretty thorough run of Act 3 the first time around, as opposed to Acts 1 and 2 where I left a lot of content behind with my first character.

I beat 30XX. It's very good. I don't think it's as good as 20XX. The upgrade system is significantly more complicated to understand for basically no discernible benefit. There was also one major problem with 20XX, which was that, as a roguelike, you could see the seams in the level generation and easily identify the same pieces of the levels way too quickly, as opposed to something like Streets of Rogue or Vagante where you could play for over a hundred hours before it feels like you've seen these exact levels too many times. 30XX did not address this problem. So in the end, it's more 20XX, but it's not better 20XX. It's a shame, because I know the developers spent a lot of time trying to make this a substantial sequel, and the art style is improved at least, but this feels like a lateral move. Play it if you liked 20XX and wanted more.

I've also been playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew. Similar to that 30XX review, I think this is a step back from Mimimi's predecessor games, Shadow Tactics and Desperados III. It's still great; it's just that those games did it better. I'm in Act 3 (of 3), and this game's got ideas, but only some of them seem to work, and most of them feel like they're worse than the more linear design of the other games. It's also a bummer that this is Mimimi's swan song, as the developer is dissolving after this. Play it if you liked their other games and wanted more.

Mad Max - Played for a couple days this week, taking down camps and gathering scrap, and I think I got it out of my system. For now.
Metro: Last Light - Finally got around to finishing the playthrough that I started a few weeks ago, plus ran through all the DLCs. I had a lot of fun with them, except for Heavy Squad and The Tower. Haven't quite got the hang of those two yet. The Developer pack was pretty cool with the 'museum' and shooting range/arena. I liked the little challenges.
Diablo 3: Season 29 - Working on the conquests for this season. Completing one will finish the Destroyer chapter for me, but it's taking a little time.

I'm still making my way through Tears of the Kingdom. Just finished the water temple. I spent so much time aimlessly wandering so I've decided to push on and finish out some quests.

I also started Soul Hackers 2 and I love Ringo and her personality already.

Ys 8: Lacrimosa of Dana on PS4. I'm really enjoying although, I think this game is a bit too long for an action RPG.

Modern Ys games, have a really satisfying and extremely fast paced combat system, and this is no exception. Story wise, though, it only gets interesting in the last third of the game.

I'm on the final chapter right now, looking forward finishing the game next week.

Factorio. Hardly anything is as fun as building my factory while listening to a good podcast.

Fallout 76!

Still playing Snowrunner! Just started exploring the second area of Michigan, SO CLOSE to unlocking off-road tires for my fleetstar

I played through NFS Heat which was more enjoyable than I had expected especially since I got it during the hefty 90% off sale recently.

Now I got a bit nostalgic and installed divine divinity again.

Mostly Cities Skylines 2. The performance is not great, but it's passable with the settings turned down and the actual city building is really good. Right now I'm working on a big expansion to my city further down the highway, just got the water/power lines run between them so it's one big happy grid exporting the extra to other cities. Already looking forward to the things I'll do differently in my second city!

Also playing some Super Mario Wonder on the side, which is fantastic. Great mix of easy fun levels and hard-as-nails secret special levels. Very fun!

En Garde! Nice indie game, with a combat system simmiliar to sekiro, but very lighthearted presentation. Also started paradise killer. Definitely interesting, but not sure if it's a game for me

Apex Legends. Picked it up again this week after months of playing other games. I'm having loads of fun with Rampart, but keep finishing third or second.

Finally reached trails of cold steel II. Been playing every game accessible to me from the series by order of release. I think this is the halfway mark.

Worms for the GBA. A friend got me into WMD but I figured I'd give the older games a try with a handheld emulator I have.

I have a PS Vita and one of the games is available on that so I may give it a try sometime

Played Planetside 2 this weekend. I never tried it before and at first I didn't know what I was supposed to do. Then I understood how to play and what to do and I enjoyed it very much. I'm not very good at it, but I play to have fun, not to be competitive.

Forgive Me Father, fantastic fps. Also Pokémon leaf green

UFC 5, at least for another few days. I got all of the offline trophies in about a week (my main objective) and learned, once again, that while I can do just fine against a CPU opponent, playing against an allegedly human opponent online, I totally suck.

I'm likely going to switch back to Spider-Man 2 sooner than I expected.

I finished Psychonauts for the first time a couple of months ago, and just started Psychonauts 2 last night. Only a couple of hours in, but really enjoying it so far.

I've been play Theatrhythm Final Bar Line since beating Final Fantasy 16. Next I'm either playing Spider-Man Miles Morales or Stranger of Paradise.

Still Pathfinder: Kingmaker, but I should be able to finish it this coming week.

It feels like I'm always complaining about the game, but it just does have a lot of issues. The gameplay (meaning combat and exploring) is still good enough for me to put up with it though.

The story kinda picks up now, a shame it only happens after I'm already 100h into the game. Even then, there are a bunch of things that don't make sense. Some parts that your character should know about, but you can ask about it again and again at different points, as if you're hearing it for the first time. The DLC I did after the third act was ok. The pacing for the quests continues to baffle me. After a cool 200-day gap between Act 3 and 4, now you don't get any downtime at all. Everything is happening at once, with new notifications for events popping up constantly.

So, the game was originally just RTwP, and turn-based combat was added later via a mod, which was then officially implemented by the devs (I think). Because of this, I've been giving the game a pass for minor issues in combat, but this week was just bad at times. The game loves to eat parts of your turn constantly. I think it happens when you're right at the limit between a normal move action and a double move. The game shows you'll be able to attack, but then you're just one pixel too far away and your attack just gets skipped. You can't even use it for something else, like cast a spell. There are also some other small things, that wouldn't matter by themselves, but when something small happens all the time, it starts to get annoying.