‘Blood Spear', ‘Boomeroad’, ‘Gravitas’ & ‘Sheepy: A Short Adventure’ were the best vertical slices of games that I wished were longer. But at least I found a few decent experiences during my housesitting venture. (Would’ve probably liked ‘Grimm’s Hollow’ too, if a bug didn’t reset one of my character’s most important stats.)
But in the absence of other good media, my efforts to find the next game that I enjoy enough to sink time into hasn’t been successful. Though I’m still trying.
Talisman: A game I’ve now wasted my money on twice. (At least it was cheap both times.) Friends all got this game on PS5 this time around, and no one liked it enough to finish a full match. (It also supposedly corrupted one of my friend’s PS5 and prevented him from redownloading it.) And the AI is such a cheating bastard.
Grounded: I can’t imagine playing this on my own. But it’s probably meant to be enjoyed in a group, and I suppose it’s about as fun as anything is with friends. Though the fact that this game has the option to completely customize/vastly improve the experience, just to punish you by removing achievements, leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
Monster Hunter World (Iceborne): I’ve realized that Monster Hunter World is only as fun as the people who tag along. Because loot isn’t shared, your resources that you spend an hour trying to collect can disappear (both after death and just before you kill them), and there’s a limit on what you can really “do as a team”. Also, certain environments and “knockback” attacks can affect your teammates in ways that break combat flow. So combine that with the inability to follow the story/join games during unskippable cutscenes, and it’s not all that enjoyable to play in a bad/uncooperative group. (Also, it might be just me, but I remember the monsters fighting each other a lot more often in my first attempted playthrough. As opposed to now always choosing to go after the player characters instead.) In conclusion: I spent $15 on a shitty grapple hook.
Laika Aged Through Blood: It looks great, and I really wanted to like this. But the PS5 controller lacked the ability to use the map or go into the inventory screen. Which feels like a massive oversight. So I had to keep setting the controller down, to see where the hell I was going. (Not very helpful for building immersion.)
But more importantly, the cripplingly punishing mechanics of dying in one hit and losing half your resources, do NOT mesh well with this movement system. Nor does its “Grace Mode” seem to change how easily you can inexplicably flip over and crush your own head in, while biking across completely flat surfaces. (So I might give this another try with a mouse and keyboard setup, when I’m in the mood. But it’s getting shelved for now.)
For some ungodly reason, I got Pathologic 2. And I downloaded Dredge, since it was on Extra. So those will likely be the next games that I attempt to play. (Then maybe I’ll go back to other games that I stopped playing, if neither of them manage to capture my interest.)
Otherwise, I’m holding off on buying anything else, in hopes that the Steam Summer Sale will healthily trim down my wishlisted games.
Edit:
>Play Dredge and realize it's a few dull minigames that remind me of when I tried Skull & Bones and was forced to chop trees down.
>Pathologic 2's in media res makes absolutely no fucking sense, if you don't know the original story. (And even then, it's borderline difficult to parse.) And after watching 3-4 NPC's running into walls, my ass got stuck in the terrain between a fence and a rock, while trying to find the door to a house. Effectively making me restart my whole run already. Quality port Sony!
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