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Started playing Sifu, which is a very cool technical kung-fu game with some roguelike elements, but I can already tell that it's going to take some serious dedication to memorize enemy combos and get the deflect/parry/avoid timings down. The levels are structured with multiple paths where you can unlock shortcuts and then make decisions about whether to fight through more people for more XP, or take a straighter shot toward the end with less immediate risk (but also less reward, with fewer opportunities to upgrade your character), and once you dump enough XP into certain skills you can start off already having them on your next attempt, so it doesn't feel like you're wasting your time when you're getting creamed by tough new enemies.

The game's central gimmick is the magic bracelet you have, which allows you to resurrect yourself at the expense of aging the same number of years as your total death counter. The older you are, the more damage you do, but the less health you have. Also there are some upgrades that stop being available after you age past a certain point, so it's generally in your interest to stay alive and stay young. Defeating particularly tough enemies or clearing certain scenes also reduces your death counter by 1, so you can keep the penalty from escalating exponentially. Once you resurrect to age 70 or older, that's it, and if you die again your game is over.

Shortcut unlocks and permanent upgrades (and progress toward permanent upgrades) carry over from one game to the next, and you can choose to start the game at any level at the lowest age where you entered that level, so there's some incentive to go back and replay earlier levels to reduce the age at which you can start the later ones. At its best it really does feel like a good kung-fu movie, and it looks like there's a replay editor for capturing cool moments from your best runs, though I haven't played around with it much yet.

It also looks like I'm finally going to pick up Elden Ring, since the PS4 disc version grants a free upgrade to the digital PS5 version, and the PS4 version is going for $20 in multiple Black Friday sales.

Still slowly picking away at Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners on PSVR2 and Phoenix Point on PS5. Some interesting PSVR2 titles are also getting good Black Friday discounts (Red Matter 2 and Synapse), so I might add even more stuff to my backlog, though if I wait for the first anniversary of PSVR2 I bet there will be a broader sale on VR titles.
 
Now that it's been out on Steam and has several DLC and some good mods, i'm playing MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries. I'm using my Thrustmaster T160000M HOTAS to play the game, and it's awesome good fun! Takes me back to when I was 15 and MechWarrior 2 came out for PC, my friends and played it constantly.
 
Onhell said:
One of the things I'm liking about Harmony of Dissonance is I just look at the map, see where I haven't been and go there. Can't reach it? Look for the item that gets you there.
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Ok, never mind that, I've reached a point in the game where I've explored everything I can with what I have and can't progress any further. There are areas in which I need the Griffin Wing, but can't get it because it's in the luminous caverns and I can't get there in Castle A, because I either need the freakin Wing or open a rainbow door, which is locked, and again I've explored everything possible thus far in both castles. Time for a youtube tutorial to see what I'm missing/not seeing.
 
Alright! I finally beat Harmony of Dissonance and got all three endings. Currently playing it as Maxim, already explored all of Castle A, just started Castle B. Playing as Maxim has its pros and cons. On one hand exploration is a breeze as you have access to the entirety of both castles from the get go as all doors are unlocked and you have a triple and perpetual jump (as long as your mana lasts). On the other hand, however, you can't use any potions, even to heal, so I'm beholden to save rooms to replenish health. I initially wasn't going to explore both Castles in full, just wanted to get to the throne room key and go straight to the battle, but seeing this tiny detail I chose to explore them both to gain all the life and heart upgrades.

Also, yesterday put up Deliver Us Mars for free! I was VERY excited since I had played Deliver Us the Moon a couple of years back and really enjoyed it. I'm a sucker for "walking sims" like Gone Home, What became of Edith Finch, Don't Knock Twice, etc. I love just walking around, interacting with the environment and slowly piece the story together from the environmental clues.

Deliver Us the Moon was fairly low budget as these walking sims tend to be. You're a faceless first person explorer tasked with figuring out why the energy beam from the moon has gone dark. You're alone, exploring an abandoned Moon station just like in any walking sim. Deliver Us Mars changes the formula a little bit. You are no longer a faceless first person avatar. You are now in control of Kathy, the daughter of the scientist that caused the black out in the first game. You have friends/coworkers and a sister. They are all voiced and the voice acting is really good, while on clearly a bigger budget the facial expressions vary from spot on (like the look of terror or sadness Kathy experiences), to bland uncanny valley.

You accompany your sister and two other crew members, 2 of them make a return from the first game, to Mars as that is where they traced a distress signal from the folks that left the Moon in the first game. To say I'm enjoying it is an understament, last night I played from about 8:30pm to 2 in the morning lol.
 
Started playing Sifu, which is a very cool technical kung-fu game with some roguelike elements, but I can already tell that it's going to take some serious dedication to memorize enemy combos and get the deflect/parry/avoid timings down. The levels are structured with multiple paths where you can unlock shortcuts and then make decisions about whether to fight through more people for more XP, or take a straighter shot toward the end with less immediate risk (but also less reward, with fewer opportunities to upgrade your character), and once you dump enough XP into certain skills you can start off already having them on your next attempt, so it doesn't feel like you're wasting your time when you're getting creamed by tough new enemies.

The game's central gimmick is the magic bracelet you have, which allows you to resurrect yourself at the expense of aging the same number of years as your total death counter. The older you are, the more damage you do, but the less health you have. Also there are some upgrades that stop being available after you age past a certain point, so it's generally in your interest to stay alive and stay young. Defeating particularly tough enemies or clearing certain scenes also reduces your death counter by 1, so you can keep the penalty from escalating exponentially. Once you resurrect to age 70 or older, that's it, and if you die again your game is over.

Shortcut unlocks and permanent upgrades (and progress toward permanent upgrades) carry over from one game to the next, and you can choose to start the game at any level at the lowest age where you entered that level, so there's some incentive to go back and replay earlier levels to reduce the age at which you can start the later ones. At its best it really does feel like a good kung-fu movie, and it looks like there's a replay editor for capturing cool moments from your best runs, though I haven't played around with it much yet.

It also looks like I'm finally going to pick up Elden Ring, since the PS4 disc version grants a free upgrade to the digital PS5 version, and the PS4 version is going for $20 in multiple Black Friday sales. And also if you want to save on games, here are free spins for online casinos https://gambling-code.cz/bonusy-kasyno/freespiny , maybe you are interested in similar games!

Still slowly picking away at Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners on PSVR2 and Phoenix Point on PS5. Some interesting PSVR2 titles are also getting good Black Friday discounts (Red Matter 2 and Synapse), so I might add even more stuff to my backlog, though if I wait for the first anniversary of PSVR2 I bet there will be a broader sale on VR titles.
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Cool list
I'm playing World of Warcraft now, patch 10.2 has just been released
 
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Not much of a gamer, but we have a Nintendo Switch, I love to play some things on that (Skyrim, Fifa 23, Breath of the wild, anything Super Mario related). My kids play all the time. Right now I really like Super Mario bros wonder.

I was a hardcore fan of strategic games in my teenage years (Age of empires II, Warcraft II/III, Starcraft, Heroes of might and magic III, Diablo, Baldur’s gate, Monkey Island series) and very occationly I play some of those, bit kinda tired of the same tactics the computer use on these games. Before that again, I loved playing NES/SNES/SEGA games. Good times <3
 
Sth2112 said:
Not much of a gamer, but we have a Nintendo Switch, I love to play some things on that (Skyrim, Fifa 23, Breath of the wild, anything Super Mario related). My kids play all the time. Right now I really like Super Mario bros wonder.

I was a hardcore fan of strategic games in my teenage years (Age of empires II, Warcraft II/III, Starcraft, Heroes of might and magic III, Diablo, Baldur’s gate, Monkey Island series) and very occationly I play some of those, bit kinda tired of the same tactics the computer use on these games. Before that again, I loved playing NES/SNES/SEGA games. Good times <3
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I do miss some classic NES like Zelda. I like how some companies are releasing ports to modern consoles like the Mega Man, Contra, TMNT, Castlevania collections, but there are so many others still missing, mainly because they are first party Nintendo properties they will likely never part with.

I went back to Circle of the Moon and once again I'm stuck. Once again I'm sure I've missed something somewhere. I've killed Cerberus and the Necromancer, but now I can't traverse the rest of the castle. There are these Metroid like sections where these floating brains go back and forth on the screen, my gamer brain tells me I'm supposed to freeze them and jump on them, but I've only gotten the fire, clay and plant whip enhancements.... no ice. Once I'm done closing out the semester I'll take a look at a guide.
 
I found my Spore folder from 2010, bought the game on Steam on Black Friday. Wonder how much of my creations from 8 years old I'll recognize :D

Also been playing Dead Cells and Noita, and having a blast with them for different reasons. Dead Cells is a more standard platformer roguelike and very satisfying. Noita is basically my dream game come true, a roguelike with a fully customizable wand system and a ton of BS ways to die. I'm nearing 150 deaths and only "beat" the game once, a year ago, cuz I keep nuking myself while trying to understand how my weapon will work, or getting 360 noscoped by sniper dudes into pits of lava. 10/10 would die again.
 
Finished Deliver Us Mars. Great follow up to Deliver Us the Moon. To say it's gut wrenching is an understatement. The decisions and situations our three main characters find themselves in are very interesting, very human and far from black and white. They left it on a cliff hanger so I'm hoping for a third game, but if not, I'm glad how these two turned out.
 
Sifu is still monopolizing my gaming time lately. I’ve now permanently unlocked most of the earnable moves, and while a number of these are quite useful (focus sweep for guaranteed knockdown + damage against bosses, the big punch that lets you block incoming damage during wind-up, and the weapon skill that lets you keep using a broken weapon until it completely falls apart), the most important thing is still developing mastery of the fighting system itself, including memorizing enemy fight strings so you know how to counter them.

I managed to go back and beat the first level while only aging 2 years, and I locked in all of the weapon durability upgrades that you can only get when you’re age 25 or younger. These special upgrades that you can only get at in-level shrines carry forward to future levels if you lock in your best performance at the lowest age for that level, so now if I start at the second level or higher I automatically have all of them already, which is very nice.

I then went back and beat the second level while only aging another 6 years (to age 29), and that time I locked in all the “get more health for takedowns” upgrades that you can only get at age 40 or younger, so that gave me a very strong starting position for the third level, which had been giving me a lot of trouble before.

With that in place I was finally able beat the third level, because I had enough overhead left to die copiously at the end boss and still squeak through. I’ve also gotten much better at avoiding attacks, and I think my next shrine upgrades will mostly center on increasing focus gains from avoiding attacks, as this will allow me to use the sweep focus attack more often against bosses, which guarantees knockdown and follow-up damage if it connects.

I’ve gotten better enough that I made it to the final boss on the fourth level on my first attempt, but that lady has a big weight on a very long rope that she likes to swing around, and I couldn’t figure out a reliable way to close the distance on her. I’ll probably give that a few more shots, then maybe go back to the third level and try to complete that more efficiently so I have more age headroom going into the fourth level.

There are still some locked off areas in the early levels, and I think I have to get key items from later levels to go back and investigate these earlier places. Not sure if anything useful will come out of that, or if it’s just a curiosity for completionists.

I really need to get back to Phoenix Point sometime and finish that campaign, but at the moment I’m completely consumed by the pursuit of kung fu perfection!
 
Once again stuck on Circle of the Moon. decided to go back to the classics and gave III and IV spin, man, they are ROUGH. III in particular suffers from NES gameplay where I want to go up or down some stairs and I just walk off the cliff and die. the Advance games are a cakewalk by comparison. So I started on Aria of Sorrow and I've already explored like half the castle. I can see why people hold it in such high regard. It takes all the lessons from Circle and Harmony and really amps them up. I think I'll keep going with this one until I either finish it or get stuck and then go back to Circle. After that I have no clue which back catalog game to tackle next. I've neglected Prey (OG), COD III, Alice, FEAR 2, Mega Man 9 and 10, etc. Might just flip a coin at that point.
 
Onhell said:
Once again stuck on Circle of the Moon. decided to go back to the classics and gave III and IV spin, man, they are ROUGH. III in particular suffers from NES gameplay where I want to go up or down some stairs and I just walk off the cliff and die. the Advance games are a cakewalk by comparison. So I started on Aria of Sorrow and I've already explored like half the castle. I can see why people hold it in such high regard. It takes all the lessons from Circle and Harmony and really amps them up. I think I'll keep going with this one until I either finish it or get stuck and then go back to Circle. After that I have no clue which back catalog game to tackle next. I've neglected Prey (OG), COD III, Alice, FEAR 2, Mega Man 9 and 10, etc. Might just flip a coin at that point.
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Enjoying these Castlevania reviews. I will probably pick up the advance trilogy at some point although I haven’t tried any of the Metroidvania games before. I had one of them as a kid but never got anywhere with it.

The original Castlevania is probably my favorite NES game. The gameplay, difficulty curve, level design, music are all close to perfect. For me, it represents the most fully realized use of the NES’ capabilities maybe other than Mario 3 or Zelda. I enjoy the sequels (even Simon’s Quest) but they all have some weird quirks that make them inferior to the originals in some ways. III is really cool but I feel like it tries to do too much and is definitely way too difficult in places. I remember thinking IV was a really good spiritual successor to the original but didn’t really move the franchise forward the way other flagship Nintendo games on the SNES did. I would still rather just play the NES one.

Speaking of Zelda, it took awhile but Tears of the Kingdom is starting to click and I’ve been really digging it recently. At first I was pretty overwhelmed with the crafting mechanic and not really being into crafting wasn’t sure if the game was for me. It has started to click though and I’ve really enjoyed the explorations and side quests. Even the crafting components are growing on me. I’ve seen a lot of complaints online about it being too similar to BOTW, but it works for me since I played the main game back when it came out but never really did the side quests or explored heavily once I finished the main story. I intended to go back but never did, so this is scratching that itch to explore the world a bit more and enjoy more of the sandbox components that I ignored in BOTW.
 
Mosh said:
Enjoying these Castlevania reviews. I will probably pick up the advance trilogy at some point although I haven’t tried any of the Metroidvania games before. I had one of them as a kid but never got anywhere with it.

The original Castlevania is probably my favorite NES game. The gameplay, difficulty curve, level design, music are all close to perfect. For me, it represents the most fully realized use of the NES’ capabilities maybe other than Mario 3 or Zelda. I enjoy the sequels (even Simon’s Quest) but they all have some weird quirks that make them inferior to the originals in some ways. III is really cool but I feel like it tries to do too much and is definitely way too difficult in places. I remember thinking IV was a really good spiritual successor to the original but didn’t really move the franchise forward the way other flagship Nintendo games on the SNES did. I would still rather just play the NES one.
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So this never clicked until you just mentioned it. Before Symphony of the Night Castlevania was a linear experience. All of a sudden the moniker "Metroidvania" makes no sense since even Castlevania BECAME Metroid-like/lite.

Also, I've seen other people express disappointment with Super Castlevania IV as nothing more than a 16-bit remake of the original. It only moves the franchise forward graphically, but not storywise.

As for now, I'm stuck in BOTH circle and aria lol. In Aria I got to a new area where I'm a tad underpowered, so not stuck in the not not knowing where to go, more like I die two screens into the new area over and over.

This sudden flourish of collections has me hoping for a DS collection with Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia and Aria's sequel.
 
Finally finished Sifu, and while there are a ton of additional options for hardcore players to keep getting value out of the game (special goals, earnable gameplay modifiers, trying to beat every boss while sparing their life instead of killing them, arena modes, higher difficulties, etc.), I don’t think I’m quite that hardcore. But I enjoyed it a lot, well worth the $20 I paid for it.
 
For myself - Dave the Diver. Great and calm game for tought time of the year in my business. I like the gameplay loop that this game has. Not a big fan of OST but hey, you can't have everything.

With family - Bomberman Battlefest.
 
Onhell said:
This sudden flourish of collections has me hoping for a DS collection with Portrait of Ruin, Order of Ecclesia and Aria's sequel.
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One of my favourite games of all time. Played it so much I know it backwards but I'd love to see a re-release.
 
Onhell said:
So this never clicked until you just mentioned it. Before Symphony of the Night Castlevania was a linear experience. All of a sudden the moniker "Metroidvania" makes no sense since even Castlevania BECAME Metroid-like/lite.
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My assumption was that Castlevania brought in story and action RPG elements that remain fixtures in the genre. Metroid has the non-linear exploration/backtracking thing going on but is light on story and doesn't contain any robust weapons upgrades beyond very basic tools that are used to progress through the maze.
 
These past few days I've been playing Lies of P and it's a treat. Yep, it's "steampunk Bloodborne", but that's a praise, not a denigration. Very catchy, as usual with souls-likes.

Other than that, I'm playing Baldur's Gate 1 and Pillars of Eternity, for some isometric preparation before Baldurs Gate 3 and after I finish the last book, I'll be doing Witcher 1 and 2 and then revisiting the third one (which I already miss, to be honest)
 
Started playing Spider-Man: Miles Morales on PS5, and I didn’t even realize the game was set at Christmastime, so it’s especially appropriate.

I tried out the “performance with ray tracing” mode and was disappointed to see how much visual detail was lost vs. the standard performance mode, and I honestly didn’t notice any special lighting enhancement from it either, so I went back to the standard performance mode pretty quickly.

Otherwise it’s more Spider-Man goodness, but with Miles’ bioelectric powers mixed in to change things up a little. Figured I should play this one now that the sequel’s out so I don’t get too far behind (though I’ll probably wait for the inevitable GOTY edition with all DLC to get down to $20 before I buy the sequel).
 
So still taking advantage of being able to play some games for gold/game pass without having either subscription lol. Taking a break from Castlevanias and went back to Gears 5, finally finished act III and started the last act. It's been an exercise in frustration, because in my hubris I put it on "experienced" difficulty. I chose to do that since I beat the other 4 in the highest difficulty, something I've NEVER done with ANY other video game. I always play on "normal." Well.... Gears 5's "experienced" difficulty isn't even the highest one and it's giving me stress headaches lol. On the other hand, when I finally make it past a tough patch it feels incredibly rewarding.

Aside from that my brother and I are still playing an NHL18 playoff series. We let the computer set up the teams we each picked 4 east and 4 west. When we were kids playing NHL95, we would play the season and split all the teams, then play the playoffs. Since NHL96 you can only pick ONE team for season mode, which honestly sucks ass. But this has been a great trip down memory lane. I haven't purchased any game after 18, because they're all the same shit gameplay-wise. Sure you get updated rosters, but aside from that no gamplay or graphical reason to get the new ones. I remember when we went from 93 to 94 and could do one-timers and check against the boards, then in 95 we could play season mode, trade and create players and the graphics changed slightly. 07 intruduced the revolutionary skill stick and then...... not much. I think I got 14, 15, 17 and 18. I did tell him the other night that we should get the next one to have updated rosters and have a game with Crosby, McDavid, Draisaitl, Matthews and Beddard on it. So more for historical purposes than anything else.
 
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