whatchu playing now

Don't forget Elder Scrolls Online (which sucks)

yeah good point

And I like Oblivion and especially Skyrim! But money ruins everything

skyrim was better than oblivion so i dont see a trend line

also with that amount of time between releases its probably not really the same studio/team working on the games even if todd howard is still the public figurehead

I'd beg to differ but I'm reconciled to Morrowind being their high water mark tbh

Oh, if you’re just referring to quality control of Zenimax products in general, yeah, it’s all over the place.

Elder Scrolls Online, despite a rough start, is apparently considered one of the better MMO’s these days though. Fallout 76 supposedly turned itself around too.

I’m not sure what they’re going to do with Starfield. It’s not really a live service game, but if they treated it as such, it could be something worthwhile. Right now it feels about 15 years behind the times. It’s wild how BGS just do NOT seem to learn from their mistakes with their RPG’s.

I think you have to have the MMO gene to like ESO ... it's just not fun to me at all compared to Skyrim.

I have heard that 76 got better. They still release significant expansion content, which is cool.

It's not a straight line of decline is also fair

Think I'm just refusing hope for my own mental wellbeing

I mean the line from Fallout 4 to Starfield is not encouraging. They keep sanding down the RPG elements to the point of it being set dressing. Dialogue choices and decisions are essentially meaningless. They’re making action adventure shooters with an RPG veneer. They seem to have this idea that modern gamers would reject a more pure, free form RPG in line with Morrowind. But the massive success of Baldur’s Gate 3 says otherwise. I hope they learn something from that. And hire some decent writers FFS.

The one reliable thing they had was the sense of exploration and discovery which they, bafflingly, cut down at the knees with Starfield where you essentially pick “points of interests” from a menu.

I’m not sure how true this is any more, particularly now that Microsoft is involved, but historically they seem to have been kind of a homespun AAA studio. A lot of old heads sticking around and a particular, maybe outmoded, way of development. It got them far and had its folksy charms, but it clearly needs some shaking up.

OK, now I'm done with Wolfenstein 2. Surprised it ended without a big boss fight or anything, kind of took me by surprise. Scoured my backlog and thinking of trying Kena, seems to hit the marks for well-received, pretty to look at and not too long.

Working my way through the last episode of Alan Wake (I've met the Log Lantern Lady) and I'm finding this deeply irritating, to the point that I'm tempted to stop playing and just watch a Let's Play for however much I have left.

I started playing Eternal Ring (the pre-Demon's Souls FromSoft game on PS2) and it is.... not good; not good at all. BUT there's something very compelling about it for me as a Soulsborne fan. Like, you can see just enough of the Soulsborne DNA in there. I'd love to livestream it, but it's on PS2 so I don't know how. Apparently you can get it for PS4 in the States, but not here.

A few observations:

- It's mystifying that the analog sticks aren't usable. You have to use the L2 and R2 buttons to look up and down, which makes everything (especially fighting) really difficult.
- You don't have crosshairs or lock on either, so you're forced to just hope you're lined-up enough to connect with the enemies. This is horrible with flying enemies, especially if you're using ranged magic.
- There is a Crestfallen Warrior style NPC and some of the other NPCs do the classic FromSoft laugh!
- The level design of the dungeons is bloody awful! You'll enter rooms and corridors that lead nowhere - you can literally just go from corridor to corridor and end up in a room with a couple of regular enemies and nothing else, so the only option is to turn around.
- But the main challenge is orientating yourself because pretty much everything looks the same, so if you lose track of the way you're facing, there's no real way to tell if you're just heading back towards the entrance.
- Some extremely funny voice acting. Most of the NPCs have Brooklyn accents
- Speaking of which: Unskippable cut scenes. I died by stepping in some water right at the start of the first dungeon and had to watch the entire less-than-action-packed intro sequence over again.

"Kena" is OK so far. It's kind of like a humanoid version of "Ori," with, maybe, a bit of "Breath of the Wild" tossed in. Nice to look at, too.

Chugging along with "Kena," which has been cute and modestly challenging so far. But I just hit a really tough boss that seems to have wandered in from a From game, ugh.

slayaway camp 2 is surprisingly long and good. i "beat" it but i still have almost 100 stages left.

Warhammer Darktide continues to be a fun co-op space murder experience

Finished the main story of Control. This one is an all-timer for me in terms of style & world-building, but the core mechanics grew tiresome by the end. Luckily, it's a short game. Now I need to finish BG3. Then it's on to the rest of the backlog...

Fair assessment, imo. Same with Alan Wake Remastered. The games are so cool and creative, even the fights, but they do get a little repetitive, secondary to the style. But that style!

OK, saying again, these Kena bosses are From level. It's such a weird disconnect to go from cute adventure with occasional fun battles to top tier boss challenges.

Been stomping through Thimbleweed Park (finally!) and it's pretty great. The moment it switched to having to control 5 different characters was a little daunting at first but settled in now, think I'm near the end.

Kena’s bosses definitely hard but not ridiculously so. I played it when it came out and really enjoyed.

Hmm, I dunno, I think a couple of them have been really hard! Not all of them, most have been predictably OK, but there's been a couple that have been real skill checks so far, either due to the amount of damage they do or the other enemies cluttering the arena. There was one (Corrupt Woodsmith) I lowered the difficulty for, because 1) this game lets you and 2) I was getting pretty bored and wanted to move on. Something related that I like about this game is that you gain helpful skills, but even in what must be the last third of the game or so I still don't feel remotely OP. Almost every fight poses some challenges, bosses or no.

But anyway, yeah, especially for (I think) a first effort from an indie studio, this game is really impressive and fun. And they kept the price low and allow an upgrade to PS5 for free.

Now that you mention it maybe I did have to lower the difficulty once or twice! It’s been a bit. Kinda want to play through it again once I finish Elden Ring. Again.

I was struggling with the Hunter, and after I got lucky and finally beat it I realized I still had my settings on lower difficulty, lol. Ok, back to normal! For now.

I'm not playing anything recently and I miss it :(

Start a Dark Urge playthrough?

about 25 hrs into FFXVI
feelings are ... complicated
it's a good game, but not much of a FF game? FF has changed a lot over the years, but the FF elements of this game feel very much like window dressing
music is excellent, story & voice acting is decent, feels a lot like FFXIV crossed with GoT grimdark type fantasy
battle system is basic tho like a dumbed down DMC/Bayonetta and magic is way too overpowered (I haven't died once, playing on the highest available difficulty)
also there are these sort of super boss fights that verge on marvel movie bullshit, I hate them
much better than XIII and XV, but in the lower half of FF so far

I've decided to not purchase anything new until I've gotten through my existing backlog. Starting with the shortest games first and then working my way up to the longer ones. Just finished Abzu, 2016's underwater vibefest from some of the Journey devs (it was fine). Up next: Pony Island. I literally know nothing about this game except that it's the same guy who made Inscryption.

Tracking things here: https://www.backloggd.com/u/zchyrs/. If any other ilxors are on Backloggd, hmu!

really wish those game logging sites were as pretty as letterboxd...

xpost I wish I had your restraint! My downfall is too many 30-100 hour games in my backlog.

finished spider-man 2, playing a little returnal now

I thought I beat the final boss in Kena, then it turns out there's another final boss right after it which is one of those epic two boss fights, like the end of Elden Ring or Sekiro. I was so psyched and now I am so bummed.

I've been playing Dave the Diver, because I guess Dredge alone didn't satisfy my need for 2023 games about fishing.

It is an extremely thoughtfully designed game. On the surface it's a fishing game, but it introduces new concepts and content at a regular but gentle pace - quick enough to keep it interesting without being overwhelming. It turns out it is also an Overcooked-lite restaurant sim (you serve what you catch in a sushi restaurant) and farming sim (fish farming, crop farming) and adventure game all in one.

I wasn't entirely sold on it having boss fights, but the mechanics for each are different enough and they're all doable, so I didn't mind too much by the end (about 40 hours of 'main game' play). They just disrupt the otherwise chill vibe. The only other fault is the half-baked side quest of running a restaurant branch, but once set up it can be largely ignored.

And the developers just released free DLC that riffs on Dredge and lets you catch and serve mutant fish.

I finished Resident Evil Village, it didn't always feel like much of a game, but that parts that did feel like playing a game were fun (the escape room bit where don't have any guns, a few of the other self-contained mini-boss zones). The whole RE4-style shop and weapon upgrade thing felt a bit bolted on and not very necessary.

Then I started Blasphemous 2, which really has me hooked so far (never played the first one). I like how there are three weapons and each acts as a Metroidvania upgrade, so whichever one you start with lets you go certain places in the world, then you find the next one which will unlock other places in conjunction with your first weapon, etc. Lots of cool time-based platforming puzzles.

The text is gibberish, but the religious imagery has a vibe and the gameplay feels great.

I'm giving up on Alan Wake 1 -- so tired of the sparse checkpoints where I get punted back to a section after I die, and the combat is IMO way more repetitive than Control. I'm not even sure I care enough about the plot to watch a let's play -- can I go into Alan Wake 2 without knowing how 1 ends?

absolutely, i played AW2 completely blind and it ruled. after playing it i speedwatched LPs of both 1 and american nightmare and the additional context isn't worth it at all

imo do not waste your time suffering through something you're not enjoying and, as you probably already know, AW2's gameplay is a different beast than AW1/AN's, it's more of an adventure game with survival horror trappings (scarce resources, not enough upgrade materials in the game to max out all your weapons so you have to pick favourites). i've seen it described as the best silent hill game since 2

it's also an infinitely better twin peaks game than deadly premonition, albeit to be fair to DP its NPC scheduling and free roaming investigation mechanics are absent in AW2. in everything else though, AW2 blows it out of the water

AW1 is kind of a weak game. I stuck with it to the end more out of stubbornness than anything.

Backlog report: Pony Island was amusingly meta, so it was fun to go into blind. It was a touch irritating at points (given the conceit of the game, that seems more or less intentional). That was leavened by the fact of it being nice and short. Apparently the developer uh...developed these ideas further in Inscryption, so I'm looking forward to getting around to that one.

Next up is Deltarune Chapter 2. I think I'm going to replay Chapter 1 since it's been a few years and I've forgotten about most of it.

Concurrent to this, I'm finally winding up Baldur's Gate 3. As much as I love that game, it will be a massive relief to finally be done with it.

Finished "Kena," thought it was pretty strong, especially for a relatively under the radar indie. Final boss battle was a bit of BS, but ultimately satisfying. What next? Hmmm ...

AW1’s dam segment was my favorite bit. The meta ending fight lost me at the time, though overall, liked the game’s scenery and atmosphere a lot. Will play AW2 eventually.

I've been playing Sifu. It's really hard.

As mentioned above, I thorough enjoyed AW1, but I (humblebrag) got pretty adept at combat, so it didn't feel like a chore to me even if it went on for a little longer than it needed to. Can see repeated checkpoint loading sucking the fun out of it. It succeeds as a ~vibes~ game above all, and I think they loaded it up with more combat than necessary.

AW2 is superior in every way. YouTube re-caps probably all you need to get caught up.

I think I'm going to (re)start "Rift Apart." I played a bit of it months ago, or at least helped a friend play a bit of it, but he was so bad it was a bit like helping my mom, so I'm not sure I got the full experience.

Alan Wake 2 is on sale right now, but not for a particularly deep discount. With DLC on its way I'm leaning toward putting on my patient gamer cap and waiting for a sale that includes the whole package, no doubt for a price (eventually) lower than this current sale price. In fact, there are a handful of games on my wishlist that are currently on sale for around $50 right now, and while I know I said it before, even though I understand video game pricing makes some kind of sense, when the sale price still feels too high it implies the original price was definitely too high.

that's the market baby, making people pay for impatience (or multiplayer)

Tried "Sable" (it was free with PS Plus Essential) - as people have pointed out, it looks like a Moebius comic, which is a great visual style. However the gameplay was too dull for me (go here, get this, give it to someone - and there's no combat, btw, and nothing so far was remotely challenging), so I stopped after 2 hours. I wanted to like it, but alas.

Tried "Mafia II" (also free with PS Plus Essential) - the volume of the opening credits (introducing the game company) was way way way too loud (why would they do this?! I had my stereo set to a normal volume), played the game for a few minutes, then uninstalled it since I never want to subject my speakers to that super-loud opening credits sequence again.

Now I'm playing (don't laugh) "Lego 2K Drive" (you guessed it - free with PS Plus Essential), which is actually pretty fun, coming from a guy who never plays driving games.

I noticed that "Dishonored 2" is currently an absurdly cheap $2.99 at the PS Store - I finished it earlier this year and really really enjoyed it. I played it with the non-lethal strategy (which relies on stealth a lot), and the game offers a lot of different techniques for incapacitating and distracting people, so for me, a lot of the fun was just trying out new ways to do that and trying to be creative with it.

Tried "Sable" (it was free with PS Plus Essential) - as people have pointed out, it looks like a Moebius comic, which is a great visual style. However the gameplay was too dull for me (go here, get this, give it to someone - and there's no combat, btw, and nothing so far was remotely challenging), so I stopped after 2 hours. I wanted to like it, but alas.

Yeah had the same outcome, pity.

Same. Making me nervous about Chants of Sennar which I was planning to turn to post-BG3 but all the same people who love that also seemed to love Sable. Might just go straight into another BIG game like Armoured Core or Mario Wonder.

I had heard OK things about Sable, but I'd also heard its performance on PS5 was patchy (no pun intended). Some person just asked the studio if they planned to address this, and their response was basically "sorry but no."

I haven't played Sable but Chants has pretty concrete objectives that are quite a bit more thoughtful and involved than fetch quests. I think the only similarity between the games is the art. It's my favorite puzzle game in quite some time, too.