Steam’s Autumn Sale just started. So go check your wishlists. And here's a few things that I've played, while enduring my parent's poorly trained & incredibly exhausting doggo.

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VRChat runs like shit. (But this isn’t really a game.)

Perennial Order is left unfinished. Because despite liking its atmosphere, the dark souls-like characters and the challenge (in places). Some of the bosses were more obnoxious than entertaining. This one relying on multiple shitty gimmicks at once; fighting in an arena full of fog and requiring you to rely on sound cues to dodge attacks with terrible hitboxes. And I didn’t feel like I was learning anything with each attempt. (This game 100% needs health bars.) So maybe I’ll come back…but the challenge still needs to be learnable. And how do I learn to avoid attacks, if I can’t fucking see anything?

Drova:The Forsaken Kin is a competent ARPG. (Decent, simple combat. Decent rewarding exploration. One or two dark moments in the earlier parts that promise a darker RPG that doesn’t exist in reality.) With the most boring characters, quests, story and plot progression in anything I’ve spent over 30+ hours trying to like more. The pacing of this game is glacial and it does not respect your time. It does not surprise me that this was funded by the government. (And likely designed by committee too.)

Pseudoregalia is just a bit frustrating and dull. Not going to lie. (I enjoyed Cavern Of Dreams far more.) Hiding all the ability powerups in random far off places was not a good idea. When the game doesn’t start to have a good gameplay feel until you’ve unlocked nearly all the abilities. And it has a nasty habit of letting you get quite far into a platforming puzzle, with the very last part being impossible to progress until you’ve found another ability. The combat is pointless and doesn’t feel good. Making all the MP and health upgrades feel all the more hollow as rewards for exploration. Yet I will still likely finish it. (Thanks, sunk cost fallacy.) But this one doesn’t deserve the high praise.

Nairi: Tower Of Shirin is an enjoyable little puzzle game, thus far. Has lots of charm in its characters and the puzzles are decent (if a bit easy). I do wish the navigation through the map was a little less tedious. (Since there’s a lot of going back and forth between characters to do puzzles.) But it makes me interested in the sequel that just came out, with the caveat that it apparently *also* ends on a cliffhanger. So I assume this first part will not have a completed story either.

Playing Ghost Recon Breakpoint and having fun with it.

Looking forward to Monster Hunter Wilds when it comes out in a few months.

I liked Dragon Age: The Veilguard

I won't be replaying it anytime soon

I plan to stock up on Age of Wonders 4 content this month, the new DLC look very cool 💯

redirect.freestuffbot.xyz/game/T22f#P… currently free to keep on steam, get it while you can

I'm finally writing again. Huzzah. (But I am still playing a few games, and I do know what games I'm planning to play next. So I'll share that.)

Just finished Destiny 2's "The Final Shape" campaign. (For the most part anyway.) And it isn't going to change anyone's mind about how they feel about the game. The world's atmosphere looked pretty in places & the story is endless rambling between characters that I can't imagine many care about. I've always hated the platforming sections in this game. (This campaign is no different.) And adding yet another gimmick where more enemies are immune to all damage, is the only unwanted addition brought to us in the newest campaign. (The gunplay remains its strongest element. But I also think games like Titanfall 2 have it beat.)

Also, I've only just started "The Last Epoch". So my first impressions are all I can give. But the impossibly slow start up time for the game (that may have been partly due to my parent's lousy internet) made it hard to start and continue playing. And while I can already tell that the game will have a good variety of builds to play around with. (I'm the kind of person that likes to play a game to end credits and quickly moves on to something else.) So in terms of an immediate "I have to keep playing this" addiction, Grim Dawn clearly has this beat. (In part due to how the subpar voice acting/plot beginnings don't do this game any favors.) But most importantly, the start of the game is pretty easy. (Borderline challengeless.) So I haven't felt engaged in the combat yet...

Marvel Rivals is a little more interesting than Overwatch. (As someone with minimal fanfare for Marvel-related products.) But I don’t know how the balancing and everything else will hold the general audience’s interests. (I enjoyed Pokemon Unite when it first came out & that ruined itself pretty quickly.)

Fortnite’s season is more enjoyable to play than others. (Compared to recent seasons.) But it’s still plagued with poor balancing and the monetization has only gotten more egregious (it has four fucking separate battle passes) and they’re all slow to progress.

I plan to start the Rise Of The Golden Idol next. (Hoping it’s on par with its predecessor.) And then I’m finally giving Sekiro a shot. If I endured Lords Of The Fallen all the way through. Surely I’ll do the same for the game everyone claims is FromSoft’s best.

I think Marvel Rivals is fun but some baffling decisions (giving certain characters a seasonal boost, for instance) and their commitment to saying 'fuck balance' is kinda gonna hinder it from being a serious competetive scene before long. Like I can't imagine why you would ever want to have Black Widow on your team when Hawkeye can just do what she does but better in every way.

Also, some of the ults are just bullshit, like Luna's ult lasting fucking forever and Jeff's ult's hitbox being the size of the fucking moon.

I think Marvel Rivals is fun but some baffling decisions (giving certain characters a seasonal boost, for instance) and their commitment to saying 'fuck balance' is kinda gonna hinder it from being a serious competetive scene before long. Like I can't imagine why you would ever want to have Black Widow on your team when Hawkeye can just do what she does but better in every way.

Also, some of the ults are just bullshit, like Luna's ult lasting fucking forever and Jeff's ult's hitbox being the size of the fucking moon.

I'm having considerable more fun than I was on OW, for the most part. That said, the game definitely needs role queue and team balancing. The former people just want to play their favorites, so no one plays tank/heal. The latter a solo player should DEFININTELY not be queuing into a six stack; six stacks should be going against other six stacks. Just played against a toxic full group myself in quick match thinking they were the absolute shit because they won against six uncoordinated randoms that never even talked to each other. It's quick play, my guy, I can smell your sweat stench across the internet. It's not that serious.

Seasonal boosts are absolutely stupid, though. I know some characters will obviously be better than others, but bonuses to healing/dps/etc shouldn't exist in that form.

Steam winter sale has started. It ends the 2nd of next year. Probably not going to pick up any games right now myself since I'm satisfied with what I have at the moment, though.

Rise Of The Golden Idol is a pretty tedious follow up to a game that had promise. The narrative is really lame and inexplicably watered down, compared to the prior game's murderous death cult plot. And unlike the last game's too long final chapter, I was getting a little sick of solving "How did bumblefuck steve hurt his leg?" mysteries past the first decent chapter.

Inspector Waffles was a more enjoyable narrative for its amusing puns and wholesome vibes. But its point-and-click adventure puzzle gameplay was *very* typical of its genre propensity for using moon logic.

Example: You need to give your female colleague a cinnamon coffee, before she'll give you a warrant for a murder case. (And you can't immediately call for her firing.) So you find a coffee machine in a unique painting and trinket selling shop, where the owner won't allow you to use it until you can find her something worthy of selling to her clients. So what do you do? Well, find an old love letter related to your murder case and spill some worse coffee onto it. Then seek help from a stranger in the apartment next door, that'll let you use their hairdryer to blow your soggy/ruined piece of evidence. And that...somehow...translates to being something that the art owner can sell...(Glad I looked that up, instead of wasting too much time on solving that.)

And I'm going to hold off on buying more games on Steam. (Tempting as it may be.) So I can focus on all the stuff that I got for Christmas. Last Epoch, you're next in line. Sekiro, you have to wait for the holidays to be over. I want to be happy for those...

If you enjoyed Helltaker, you should play Awaria.

If you didn't enjoy Helltaker, you should play Awaria.

It's free, so there's no reason not to try it. Especially if you like arcade "puzzle" action or ghost waifus.

Somehow I doubt the steam median for achievements is only 13 like the replay says. That sounds extremely low, even if people aren't achievement hunters.

I finished Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown recently. Surprisingly solid as hell Metroidvania. Of course Ubisoft are Ubisoft and have disbanded the dev team so don't go hoping for a sequel.
Controls felt super tight and responsive, feedback was great and gameplay was challenging without being too hard. Overall, highly recommend.

Finished Playing
Last Epoch: It’s okay. But I don’t think it does anything particularly well. (Skill and class variety aside.) The campaign is uninteresting, the difficulty is impossibly easy, until it’s suddenly not. The loot is endless trash to be used for its RNG crafting system, and the end game (doing monoliths ad-infinitum) sucks. So I’d recommend playing Grim Dawn instead.

Paper Trail: It’s a well made puzzle game. With nice visuals, no bugs, actual challenge and optional collectables for those who want more of it. With ambient tracks that my gaming group described as "Bloodborne music". But the narrative falls flat for me & I didn’t find the puzzles very fun to solve. (Too much trial-and-error & not enough variety in the puzzles themselves.)

Mercury Abbey: Gorgeous pixel art and very little else to recommend. I hoped to play a detective game, and I fought a giant spider boss from Zelda instead. A bizarre highlight (compared to the serviceable puzzles, the near non-existent deduction, and bad elements like a forced stealth section) in a poorly paced plot. With a narrative full of boring characters, stilted dialogue, and plenty of typos.

Currently Playing
Sekiro: Alright. I haven’t played enough of this game to give it a definitive thumbs up or down yet. But anyone who claims this game is the most polished FromSoft game. ‘Because it fixes problems that other Souls games have.’ Is absolutely full of it.

Between the camera that frequently has trouble showing the player on screen, the enemy mob spam, the off screen teleportation and weapon tracking of enemies, enemy attacks that go through the terrain, being vulnerable during deathblow animations, how the ‘stealth’ makes all enemies spot you from a million miles away - through walls - and takes them all five minutes to stop being aggroed, the early merchant NPCs being pointlessly hidden away within tiny corners. And all the other “meant to be frustrating” elements feel a lot closer to Dark Souls 2 than I think most will admit.

But there is still some fun (in overcoming challenges) to be had. So I’m going to “Git Gud” and keep going. (Though Lies Of P was both challenging and immediately engaging.)

Edit: After writing this earlier in my playthrough, I’ve defeated several mini-bosses that were giving me trouble. By spamming the Axe prosthetic and hit-trading them to death. (And I think it’s more than a little egregious that I’ve already fought three early bosses that require you to dodge all their attacks.) The NPCs feel less interesting than other Souls games. And I got to say, this game really isn’t impressing me. As I’ve spent so much time grinding mobs, that I’ve only just started to feel those “moments of interconnectivity” in Sekiro’s world design/and I’ve noticed maybe one notable background track in twenty three different locations.