Games

I'm continuing through Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. I just beat the boss that a lot of people say is one of the hardest of the DLC (you know the one...there's a lot of fire), and now I'm poking at the edges of the map to try to find my way to the next thing, wherever that may be.

I'm also occasionally going back to Fallout 3. It's still aged better than I remember it, but the side quests I'm finding later in the game are not living up to the ones I found earlier. While earlier they would send me somewhere and something interesting would happen along the way, they're beginning to start and end exactly where I found them with just a few lines of dialogue. Oh well. The game is still fun.

My wife and I beat Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It's very good, and I highly recommend playing it with someone else, if for no other reason than another perspective and someone to bounce ideas off of for puzzle solutions. It's Resident Evil without the zombies or a giant escape room, whichever comparison you prefer. However, unlike either of those, the possibility space for where you can go next is so large that you often don't know what you're missing or if you have everything you need to solve a puzzle, and that can create some frustration. Otherwise though, I'd highly recommend it.

I also got back around to The Thaumaturge. It's somewhere between an RPG and an adventure game, and the setting is really carrying it for me, because you just don't see much like it in video games. It's set in 1905, in a Warsaw that was recently annexed and all of the political and societal implications of that. The combat is fun, the story is interesting, and despite being made by a small team, the presentation punches above its weight. I do wish the RPG parts were deeper, but I can't say I've played much like this game.