Gaming

I started Hades recently and have been enjoying it a lot. I'm debating if I should pick up Sonic Frontiers, it's been forever since I played a Sonic game.

Still playing Final Fantasy XVI. The story and characters are fantastic. Now that I've put some time into it, the combat feels pretty great. Excited to see where it goes. I feel like I'm still in the first quarter of the game.

More Final Fantasy 14. I've started the Heavensward post-game content (I guess you can call it that?).

I'm done with all the optional dungeons and raids you unlock after the base story, and now I'm continuing with the story quests that were added in later patches. There's just so much time-wasting, back and forth bullshit, that it's just a chore, though. Start quest in town A, go to town B for a short cutscene, go to town C for another short cutscene, go back to town A for yet another cutscene. Since you can teleport everywhere by this point, it doesn't take long, but is just so boring. That's why I'm constantly queuing for random dungeons and hang out in the Gold Saucer, basically avoiding the story.

As for classes, I've mainly played Reaper, which is fun, and today started trying out Dancer, and had a good time as well.

I think I'm about 2/3 of the way through Disco Elysium.

Horizon Forbidden West - don’t like it as much as the first but I’m determined to finish it before moving on to something else

Elden Ring. Always Elden Ring. It's massive. Don't know when I'll finish everything I want to.

Dave the Diver. It's a great blend of Subnautica, Recettear, and absurdity.

Deep Rock Galactic - I should have probably picked it up earlier. It's such a wonderful co-op game with so many memorable, epic moments happening.
Very charming atmosphere, too.

I've been seeing a lot of good stuff about Baldur's Gate 3, but for a variety of reasons a bunch of other CRPGs I've played haven't clicked with me. So, since I owned Divinity: Original Sin 2, I decided to pull that back out and focus on it for a bit to see if it got my attention this time. The very early start up trying to break out of the fort is a bit rough, but once you get past that it gets compelling fast. The tactics play out really enjoyably, and I really find it enjoyable to take bigger encounters, if I get stomped, and figure out the optimal positioning I can set myself up in to beat the odds on the next try. After a good few too many hours I'm finally off the first island and it's starting to open up for real.

This might have convinced me to the BG3 first and save Starfield for a while, even though that and FF16 both look damn good too.

Finally getting around to playing the halo infinite campaign. Fingers crossed it’s okay for an old geezer who’s been playing since the original Xbox release.

Horizon: Zero Dawn, almost non-stop. The mechanics can be a bit finicky sometimes, but the story and world building keep me coming back.

There are a lot of little things that I really don't like about it and these almost certainly exist because it was originally exclusive to Playstation. I sometimes find my self a bit irked because there was so much more they could've done to make it a classic. Instead, it's just good enough.

Warhammer 40k Boltgun

Surprised nobody else has said Tears of the Kingdom yet. I’m like 110 hours in and still haven’t beaten the main story. There’s just so much to do!

Lots of overtime sapping my will and time to play games.

Borrowed Metroid Dread at the library. I love the game, but I'm having a real tough time. It's a little too hard for me, but I'm still hoping to finish it.

I finally got around to playing the Portal series. I played 2 first (it was a free Games with Gold pick) and thought it was great, so about 20 or so puzzles through the first Portal now. I'm kind of surprised the series ended with one sequel.

Felt the itch to play some Dead Cells again, so I did that and finally got around to playing the new Castlevania DLC. Always a blast.

And I also finally got around to playing Ghost of Tsushima. Haven't gotten very far yet, but so far I like it. The combat is a little slow and janky for my taste but the enviroment and sheer beauty of the world make me want to keep playing it.

Been playing through Tunic finally when league friends aren't around.

Been playing the absolute hell out of the new League Arena when they are around!

I'm super looking forward to Pikmin 4 coming at the end of this week 🙏. Been waiting a long time and everything I've seen looks great so far

I've been playing a ton of Factorio. Trying to get a megabase going steadily

Approaching the end of ffxvi. Then gonna hit Diablo 4 season 1, hope it doesn't suck too much.

Borderlands 3

I'm enjoying it overall, but good GODS can I tell it was 100% not designed to work for PC players.

Ori and the will of the wisps on the switch. I like the game and it seems to have improved many things over its predecessor but keeps stuttering on this switch port. Not sure I can persevere ! Anyone had similar issues? Maybe something I can change in settings...

I'm playing Tom Clancy's The Division (using GeForceNow). And I'm really liking it. Dying is not really frustrating, but challenging at most. Progression is not hard and the story is really enjoyable.

Got back to Minecraft - probably not for long as it was mostly something to fill the time rather than a real need to play it again. It's a good game for that anyway.

Besides that, I got a craving for some good old PSP fun and jumped on two games there - Pangya: Fantasy Golf & Ridge Racer 2.
Despite the fact I don't really care about golf (neither real nor in video game form), Pangya is pretty fun. Nice graphics, simple but enjoyable gameplay. Just started so I'm curious how difficult it'll get later on.

As for Ridge Racer 2... played A LOT of it when I was younger, never finished it though. Still as good as remember. I'm also surprised how much of the game stuck with me - guess I had way more fun with it then I thought.

Horizon Forbidden West - don’t like it quite as much as the first but want to finish it up

Just finished DREDGE. It was a lot of fun, and the first game I ever gained all of the achievements 😄.

Stardew Valley. But I’m trying to decide if I want to buy a console to play Hogwarts Legacy.

Barony! This game scratches my roguelike itch perfectly.

I am looking forward to Blackout Protocol on the 19th! One of my most played demos during Steam's Next Fest.

working towards 106% in Crash 4. it's tough as nails and it's not a game that shies away from slapping you and laughing in your face for the smallest screw up. The 106% demands literal perfection on each level.

but it's a lot of fun and slowly conquering this behemoth is super satisfying

Super Mario Galaxy, I didn't own a Wii, and not much of platformer gamer.

There's some really fun parts, but the motion control is annoying for the surfing section, and I still have problems aiming my stomps at enemies.

Deleted the game after a frustrating fight with that giant mandibug boss (can't aim my stomp), came back, reinstalled the game, and defeated it after watching YT video on the timing. I will give it another try later.

I tried remastered Mario 64, and quit since I have issues with the flying control. Tried sunshine but somehow it doesn't stick.

Primarily playing Guild Wars 2 and getting prepared for the new expansion around the end of August! I’m also super stoked for Baldurs Gate 3 and going to jump in with some friends!

Doing another run in Satisfactory. I'm building a mega base building vertically and horizontally. I'm around 30 hours in in this run, made coal after about 6 hours and I'm still working on oil, but getting there. I've gotten to the last tier before, stayed a while, but never pushed long enough to obtain the employee of the planet cup or to buy everything in the awesome shop.

I just finished Jedi Survivor. It was a hell of a run, fun, super enjoyable and absolutely amazing. I can’t wait to start the new game + and try to get all the achievements

I played Super Mario Galaxy, and was having difficulties with motion control and aiming the stomp (even after doing the spinning stomp move), then I reached a place with underwater level, I bailed out. Personally for me, it's probably better suited for short bursts of gameplay than longer period of streaming the game.

Right now I am replaying Zero Time Dilemma. I am still enjoying it.

I've been playing a mix of Remnant: From the Ashes and Stellaris.

I've completed Remnant now, and am just gearing up for the DLC, but the problem with it is that you have to erase your campaign progress (character progress stays) before you can start the DLC, so I'm running around the campaign world to try get the things I might have missed before I can dive into the DLC.

For Stellaris, I've been playing a modded playthrough, with a mod named GigaStructures, which has been absolutely ridiculous in the power scale. The start of the power creep is turning small moons into hyperpowerful attack ships, aptly named Attack Moons. I then progressed to turning planets into ships, which was yet another order of magnitude. Finally, you can convert 5 moons and 4 planets into a stellar craft, using a local star as it's power source and core component. The power scale with these mods is pretty wacky

I've been playing Diablo 4 this week; I can't even begin to tell you how many gleeful hours I put into Diablo 2 back in the day, but this one is feeling more like a chore than fun. There's a part of me that wants to just grind out to 100 to get there but I recognize sunk-cost fallacy when I see it, so I'm at least taking a break for a while.

A friend gifted me Nancy Drew: Curse of Blackmoor Manor during the Steam sale so that's probably on the menu for this weekend. My 12-year-old has played a couple from that series and enjoyed the puzzles so I'll see if they want to play it with me. I also picked up the stealth puzzle game Gunpoint and am looking forward to giving that a go.