Video Games You've Played Recently

The Game Room
1759

I do intend to continue playing Cyberpunk 2077, but I keep getting distracted. First with Pizza House Simulator, and now Iron Nest: Heavy Turret Simulator, which is freakin’ awesome.

Picked it up on sale from Green Man Gaming for $14.99. Played the demo, loved it. Steampunk mobile artillery game in a dystopian world. The sort of game you’re given limited instructions, have limited inputs, and are tasked with basically just figuring it out. They show you how each station in the turret works, and the procedure to work that station, but you are expected to triangulate your targets from spotter reports of bearing and distance. The sound in particular is excellent. Targets and results are not shown explicitly; like a real turret operator would, you only get recon photos and descriptions of the results.

I highly recommend it.

1760

I’ve been doing casual and puzzle games lately as there’s not much time for other stuff.

First I did Arcane Library which is literally shelving magic books into their appropriate categories. The book titles are humorous. It’s not perfectly balanced, once you start leveling up you become instantly ultra powerful and then it’s just spamming magic spells. But I liked it.

I just finished the first story for The Roottrees are Dead which is a detective story where you have to put together a family tree for the famous Roottrees, and figure out their names and photos and occupations to uncover the story. It’s a deduction game similar to The Return of the Obra Dinn. It’s charming. The setting is 1998 so you have to use dial-up Internet and electronic library archives for your sleuthing, reading articles and book excerpts and advertisements in order to figure things out. I liked it. I unlocked another story after solving the first one and I’ll play it eventually, but I think I need a break for now.

1761

Incident in the Galley House is also a good example of this genre.

1762

I think it’s by the same creators, because there’s an advertisement for it when I load up the Roottrees game.

It’s going to be difficult to ever top Obra Dinn, which was one of the best gaming experiences of my life.

1763

Roottreemania is pretty good, but not quite as good as the original story (in my opinion).

1764

I’m playing a puzzle game called Artisan of Glimmith right now. It’s just a tiling game with increasingly challenging rules, but it has a nice atmosphere with its stained glass art theme.

1765

I’m not sure I want to be talked into or out of something right now.

I recently replaced my CPU in my gaming rig, going from an 11th gen Intel i5 to an i9, so more cores, more threads and more powah. I also realized my 32G of ram was running at the baseline, so it’s now running at 3200 MT/s.

My performance has of course, improved.

Now I’m torn - do I continue my neglected game of Starfield (paused three weeks ago to prepare for the upgrade), or, to give it the best shakes, restart the game from scratch, knowing it’ll put me at least 40-50 hours behind?

I’m about 2/3 of the way through the main story, having done a lot of exploration and side quests, but haven’t done either of the dlc (which I own).

I may be unhappy either way. I’m leaning towards continuing, because, eh, not loving it enough to really want to revisit what I’ve done, but curious how much more I would have liked it with the upgrade.

1766

I’m a restarting machine, particularly in rpgs. I’ve probably started and abandoned dozens if not hundreds of characters for every one that has actually completely finished a game (which is something I do remarkably rarely). I love replaying games, rewatching TV shows and movies and re-reading books. But only ones I actually like.

If you weren’t thrilled with Starfield, I game I personally haven’t even bothered with because the reviews are such a turn-off, I can’t see how a modest performance boost will help. I’d either just write it off altogether or finish your current play-through and be done with it.

1767

Inspired in large part by Arrow Out, I’ve done something I haven’t done in a very long time… spent real money on mobile device games. As awesome as Touhou LostWord is, I never wanted that to be my whole world. Brief notes on what I’ve gotten, starting with two arrow-removal games a la Arrow Out:

Magic Wool and Maze Madness (I’ve seen the title for the latter change at least once; I think it was “Arrow Madness” at some point) - Anytime an idea gets hot, you can count on a host of clones to hit the Google Play Store. My general strategy is to play them until the ads start getting thick to get an idea of how they are, then, if I want to keep going, uninstall, reinstall, and buy the game right away. I was drawn to these two for being colorful and easy to understand. Magic Wool has a bunch of slightly annoying randomness, particularly in the daily rewards, but it has a nice mix of simple and complex and I never find it difficult to progress. There are a variety of tools to help if things get too frustrating, and worst case scenario, continuing after losing all lives only costs 900 coins (I’m closing in on six figures now, so that’s really nothing). I’m only slightly past level 100 in Maze Madness so far (mainly because I’m having too much fun playing all those old daily challenges), but it’s geared toward simple, breezy levels, with only occasional pauses needed to figure out the one arrow needed to open up a locked setup. There are no daily rewards, so no performance pressure whatsoever. I’ve made more than my share of dumb mistakes with both, and I’ll never completely get rid of them, but they’ve only very rarely resulted in outright failure and over time I’ve grown to accept them. No time limit of any kind for either, so can go at my own pace and get really careful when I have to. In all, both are exactly what I want out of mobile games: Simple, understandable, relaxing, satisfying, and no BS. In fact, I daresay that arrow removal games are the thing for me (besides LostWord, of course :wink:), and I’m definitely on the lookout for more.

Thief Puzzle - Got the proper game, as planned; price was very reasonable. Not much to say. It’s charming as ever and the mechanics never get old. (I especially like that you’re occasionally trying to foil a thief or otherwise do the right thing, so this isn’t just Parasitic Jerk Simulator. Variety is good.) Hardest level so far has been the treadmill; gotta be really precise here. I found that the alternating boxing gloves with the malfunctioning outlet (the level that gave me so much aggravation in Playables) was a piece of cake now that I had the solution. With 780 levels, I’m not going to be done with this anytime soon, and I’m content to take it a few at a time whenever the urge arises

My Mini Mart - Another game that’s much bigger in its proper medium. It’s more an activity than a game, as there’s no failure state of any kind, but I liked seeing the different types of shops, how they’re set up, and the individual resources each required. It unfortuately has the “prestige” padding where you have to build everything up from scratch to make the shop more lucratvie, a sure sign the programmers knew the gameplay was short and didn’t have any good idea of how to lengthen it. The slightly annoying thing is that it constantly tries to upsell you on better workers, which seems pointless as that really only serves to reduce playtime. With just six prestiges to go, I may be done with this one soon, but I’m glad I got to see it and it’s a perfectly good deal at $3.

Suck It Up - One of the numerous drop-stuff-down-a-moving-hole games on Google Play; I chose this one specifically because it promised untimed levels where you could just relaaaaxxxxx. Also there’s no star rating after each level; I don’t like that kind of performance pressure. The catch is that you have to play quite a few normal, timed levels to earn those “Zen It Up” levels, and the ginormous catch is that time limits range from generous to SUPER SUPER SHORT STRESS AGGRAVATION PAIN MISERY BLOOD PRESSURE AAAAAAAHHHHHH!!! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: You know, I don’t even have any beef with Dark Souls and the entire galaxy of freakishly diffcult and repetitive torture devices masquerading as “games” that have followed suit. At least they’re completely upfront about what they are. But when a game pitches itself as relaxing and then throws in head-crushing, vomit-inducing, artery-bursting difficulty COMPLETELY AT RANDOM, that is downright criminal. One time I ran out of time with one item left to collect. You have any idew what that does to a person? Right now I’m in collect-daily-powerup-rewards-until-I-have-enough-for-peace-of-mind-again mode, and I am planning on trying again someday, but geez, talk about a disappointment. Well, it’s like Vegas, ya pays yer money and ya takes yer chances.

Cube Land - And speaking of which… :angry: The premise is pretty simple, there’s a 3D pixellated shape in front of you, and you need to select colored shooters to destroy the respective colors of the shape, layer by layer. Your shooter row can hold five shooters at a time, each of which disappers when it runs out of shots. Destroy the entire shape before your shooter row gets jammed with shooters who can’t reach any more pixels, and you win; get jammed and you lose. The task is further complicated by mystery shooters, frozen shooters that thaw only after a certain number of shooters have been used, tethers which keep empty shooters on the row far longer, and obstructing locks that can only be opened with keys. The moment I bought this game, I got jammed within the first few seconds and had to retry the level twice to beat it, which was an evil omen if there ever was one. This is one of those games where failure is not only common and necessary but can strike like lightning. Seriously, there have been levels where I’m breezing for like 70% and then oops, that color’s blocked, and that color’s blocked, andthatcolorandthatcolorandthatcolor JAAAAAMMMMEEEDDD!!! :face_with_symbols_over_mouth: I’ll admit that I got this game mainly because it looked cool and shooting lots of stuff looked fun, proving that decades of experience is no guarantee against boneheaded mistakes. I definitely would’ve given this up by now if I hadn’t put money into it, and right now I’m just trying to stock up on powerups to have a semblance of a fighting chance. This game is absolute BS garbage, avoid.

Gossip Harbor - Not sure about this one. It has no ads (so no need to pay anything), and its pitch is “No, this game really is about a hard-on-her-luck divorcee rebuilding her life, we swear!” So far the only task I had was that binary-combining deal, you know, where you put two things together to make a more valuable thing. I like that this one’s pressure- and hassle-free, but I haven’t played enough to say if it’s really good.

Find The Cat and Find the Cat 2 - There’s a scene with lots of cats in them. Find them all. Such a simple, cute premise, and it just works. Like most games of its ilk, about 95% of the kitties are super-easy to find, but you’ll need a careful eye to get the 3 or 4 that blend into the background. I haven’t run into any ads yet; both allow ad removal but require payment every week, one of those modern-day ripoffs I will not brook. I don’t mind the occasional break so long as I have my computer in front of me, so maybe these are keepers. Like Thief Puzzle, a little at a time works best.

Will be trying out some different, hopefully better moving hole games. Open to suggestions.

1768

It seems to me that that’s 40-50 hours that could be better spent enjoying your upgraded rig playing a game you’re more enthusiastic about. Also, in my playthrough I found that parts of Starfield felt very repetitive by the time I was done. Enjoyed it well enough, but not enough to go for a new game plus playthrough.

1769

I am leaning strongly towards finishing the game… it’s not terrible, and there are hints of brilliance from time to time, but between the tropes, the lackluster companions, and the jankiness of play, I gave it a C- without mods, to a B- with.

Though I did test Cyberpunk 2077 with the new performance and it was quite a jump, so I maaaaay have to play that again before I go into Outer Worlds 2, then Atomfall, then…

Well, First World Problems.

1770

They just announced Diablo 5.

Oh, for 2029…we’ll see if they even hit that date.

Stop announcing games unless we are in the final countdown for them to come out!

1771

Sadly, D4’s subscription model killed the franchise for me. The game itself looked good, was even mostly fun, and felt like a real Diablo story and game, but… I don’t need to make a new character every season or pay to be dolled out quite so many chapters of the story.

ESPECIALLY at the prices for both the “main game” or chapters. That was … insulting.

1772

I’ve never played a Diablo.

Are you saying you couldn’t just, uh, play single-player and keep your character the same?

1773

It’s an always online world (minus instanced dungeons), and when I was actively playing, it seemed designed to rush you through the actual story (my favorite part) to get to an endless power/level grind, much of which was heavily multi-player dependent.

So compared to earlier Diablo games (I own 1-3 as well, with 2 being my personal favorite) where making new characters to try the game in different ways feels secondary to World of Warcraft like gear grinding and meta-builds.

IMHO, YMMV, everyone likes different things and that’s fine, etc.

1774

I’ve never played Diablo, but it seems like they ruined it.

1775

You can absolutely do that, but you would probably be done with it before even the first season came out. The whole point of what they do is to get people to start over every few months so they keep playing, but its because people are used to playing diablo games for decades and don’t really have the stomach for the amount of grinding the old games took, so they basically reboot you every few months. You DO NOT have to do that, you CAN play the game as a single player game (it still needs to be online), finish it and move on.

1776

That’s how I played Path of Exile and I was perfectly happy with it; I played through the main story with a few different classes and skipped the endgame content (where the “real” game starts, ostensibly).

Of course, it helps that Path of Exile is free compared to whatever Diablo 4 costs.

1777

I started playing that when it first rolled out. It was fun for the first run-through and after that the enjoyment just tanked.

D3 had a bit of a rough start but ultimately became a solid game.

D4 has been a mess since the beginning, pretty much a textbook example of selling out customer satisfaction in an attempted cash grab. And it wasn’t even close to ready to go on Day 1.

And this is a personal thing but I hate PVP and MMO elements in a game. So many of the events in D4 revolved around these mass congregations of players.

Our experience was so negative that we’re not going to play another Diablo game until at least one year post-release and only assuming it’s getting good reviews.

We found a great game called Grim Dawn, kinda old but it seems to take the best of D2 and D3. It’s been called the spiritual successor to D2. No monetization hassle or messy PVP dynamics that I’ve seen yet. And I think it was $20.

Full disclosure: I have limited personal experience with D2. The game I played the most was D3. But it’s clear that every game since has tried to capture the magic of D2. My husband played it for over a decade.

1778

Watching The End of Oak Street and the stupidity of the family resurrected my zombie apocalypse itch. So after take a long break I downloaded Project Zomboid again. The newest build (42) is pretty sweet.

It’s by far the best apocalypse simulator at this point. It’s not quite perfect but there’s so much mod support the mods can get you 99% of the way there. I’m not a huge fan of the perpetual ironman mode; I’ll save-scum when I finally get a good run going. But there’s finally a decent mod to enable saving as well.

Well worth the price if you’ve never tried it.