Now Playing (Video Games)

[Jer]

They finally discounted the 512GB LCD Steam Deck to under $400, so I decided to order one. I was originally going to wait for a CPU/GPU update, but I’m easily 20 years behind on PC gaming, so the launch model should cover any immediate needs for sure.

Now I’ll finally have a PC gaming option without having to give money to Microsoft, which was my main reason for abstaining all these years…

 

[Jer]

Got my Steam Deck configured and downloaded three games from three different Deck compatibility categories — Line War which was listed as “unknown”, Kenshi which was listed as “playable”, and Marvel’s Midnight Suns which was listed as “verified”.

Line War is obviously the diciest of the bunch — it generally runs fine, except the tutorial videos won’t play (though I can watch them on YouTube), the font size can’t be increased, and there’s no default or community mapping of the controller buttons to different keys or game functions. So for that one I’m creating the controller mapping as I go, and once I have something solid I’ll upload it as a community mapping so others have a better starting place for it.

Kenshi is fully functional on the Deck, and there’s a community mapping that seems pretty good out of the gate. The game allows me to increase the font size, but unfortunately the UI elements don’t resize to accommodate the larger letters, so things get cut off if I make them too large. That said, everything else works, though there are places where I may have to manually invoke the virtual keyboard to type in text rather than having it come up automatically. Still, “playable” is a very accurate description.

Midnight Suns is fully Deck-aware and shows the controls as the native Deck buttons in-game with no weirdness. The controller mapping also ties buttons to game functions rather than keys, which is nice. So far it’s been a seamless experience, which is what I’d expect for a “verified” title.

I expect to use the Deck plugged in most of the time, so I can’t speak to the battery life, but the LCD screen is large and bright, the speakers sound good, and the ergonomics are pretty good too. It’s impressive that they managed to stuff an entire PC into this form factor, and that semi-recent games appear to run pretty well on it. This thing appears to be a steal at its current sub-$400 sale price for the 512GB model.

 

[Meliegree]

I've just finished Borderlands 3 and Robocop Rogue City. While Borderlands 3 was great game that started to be boring (but maybe it is me - I was overleveled and at the end was somewhere near lvl. 50 while recommended was 35 for this stage - this is my normal problem with RPGs) the Robocop was real delight to play.

Yes, it is AA game (not AAA) and sometimes it shows. Yes - they are using same locations BUT you really feel like robocop. In general - with discount - it was fun experience.

 

[Shmoolikipod]

I went ham on the Steam sale. Finally bought Slay the Spire, already I think it's my favourite of the bunch and I only played three runs so far.

Darkest Dungeon is great too and does a splendid job in making me hate my characters more and more each quest I send them on (other than my Leper which keeps saving the day. Can't let him die!).

Cultist Simulator which is very cool and I've never heard of before, there's no tutorial and you need to figure it out for yourself which I haven't yet done. Gameplay-wise it's on a board with actions and you place cards in those actions to do... stuff. Somehow it's more stressful than Darkest Dungeon.

RIght, a friend also gifted me Spelunky 2, he really wants me to play it because I love Noita so much and it's kinda maybe similar if you squint very hard.

 

[Jer]

Darkest Dungeon is great too

Loved this game until the final mission, which auto-kills a random party member every time you retreat. This was so demoralizing that it eventually bounced me off the game without ever finishing it.

 

[Meliegree]

I went ham on the Steam sale. Finally bought Slay the Spire, already I think it's my favourite of the bunch and I only played three runs so far.

Darkest Dungeon is great too and does a splendid job in making me hate my characters more and more each quest I send them on (other than my Leper which keeps saving the day. Can't let him die!).

Cultist Simulator which is very cool and I've never heard of before, there's no tutorial and you need to figure it out for yourself which I haven't yet done. Gameplay-wise it's on a board with actions and you place cards in those actions to do... stuff. Somehow it's more stressful than Darkest Dungeon.

RIght, a friend also gifted me Spelunky 2, he really wants me to play it because I love Noita so much and it's kinda maybe similar if you squint very hard.

Spelunky 2 is soooooo goood. Love it!

 

[Onhell]

Bedrest has been great for catching up on my gaming. Played through Wolfenstein The New Order and currently working through The Old Blood. Really fun pair of games. I'm glad I've gotten the hang of FPSs, because I'm playing games I otherwise wouldn't have.

I'm slowly working my way through Golden Eye, about a level a day, just to get through a good ol' classic. Pretty fun, even after all these years.

To take a break from the FPSs I'm working through Unpacking. It's a nice, relaxing game. It's also fun to play with my niece. She came over with my brother about 3 weeks ago, I started playing it without saying anyway, and she sat next to me watching how I opened a box, took out an item and placed it somewhere. So I started asking her, "What box should I open next? What do think this is? Where should we put it?" Then I handed the control over to her after showing her how to play and she didn't say a word for like an hour and half. When I went back to the game I thought I was going to have to move a bunch of stuff around, but she did an amazing job for a 5-year-old, very impressed. So now I usually play it when she comes over, because she really liked it and my brother actually wants her to play a few games to work on her hand/eye coordination, problem solving and practice her English.

My brother and I are still working through the playoffs on NHL18, once we finish this bout I'll get NHL24 from Gamepass so we can at least play the most recent one. I figured the monthly subscription is worth it with that alone. We play a couple of matches a week, sometimes 3 if we're feeling adventurous.

As for my backlog, which continues to grow thanks to sales and my weak will, I finally got through FEAR2 and it was fun and creepy. Exactly what I was looking for. Now i started on Dark Void. It's a game I got when Games for Gold was a thing and the 360 games were actually given away to own without a paywall. I had no idea what it was about so it's been a real treat to go into it blind. Not a classic like Halo or Gears, but still peak 360. The animation is somewhere between the OG Prey and Brutal Legend. The story is Ancient Aliens during WWII and you're basically the Rocketeer, no joke, the main draw of the game are the flight sequences in the jet pack. I'm like halfway through, but really liking it. It's a shame it got lost in the shuffle, but with so many great games for that gen of consoles it was bound to happen. Quite the contrast to the current gen with which on one hand, has the most games ever due to backwards compatibility, but on the other, actual games for this actual gen are very pathetically few.

 

[Jer]

These sales are going to do me in. I wound up grabbing TopSpin 2K25 for $30 on Prime Day since it’s never been more than 20% off its $70 MSRP before. Now there’s a PS Store sale dangling things like Dynasty Warriors 9 for $14, Great Ace Attorney Chronicles for $16, Crusader Kings III for $22.50, Aliens: Dark Descent for $20, Pacific Drive for $18, Viewfinder for $16.25, and Pistol Whip for $21 in front of me. My backlog is already way too deep for this, but a few of those are all-time lows that probably won’t return for a while, so it’s kind of a “now or never” sort of deal. Oh well. First world problems.

Midnight Suns is getting waaaaaay too talky, and the dialogue isn’t good enough to merit it at all. I find myself speed-reading the subtitles and canceling my way through the interminable speeches to try to get to the next fight. If this doesn’t improve it might wind up bouncing me off the game, though I’d at least like to trigger the Deadpool DLC before it comes to that…

 

[Onhell]

These sales are going to do me in...

Right there with you, a bunch of stuff on my wish list just went on sale, but the item I'm most excited for is Alan Wake II. 35% off and I'll be able to get a couple of gift cards next week to bring it down further.

In the meantime almost done with Wolfenstein The Old Blood. I'm halfway through Dark Void, stuck in a particularly tricky flying mission. Have no idea how much left of Golden Eye I have left, but I'm enjoying it. It's interesting not having a HUD, mini map, a map at all, no prompts as to what you can interact with/shoot and confusing level design. I'm liking it enough to give the Perfect Dark games a shot.

I'm still on the fence about Mass Effect. Been doing some research and a lot of mixed reviews. The Most important being that in a game touted for choices and "choice matters," almost none do. I've played a few games like that already and most were still worth it. So I'll cross that bridge when I'm done with the current titles.

 

[chaosapiant]

Are we talking about Mass Effect Legendary? The choices absolutely matter, there's a whole ream of different outcomes to your choices in these games. Some things could've been done better, but overall "choices not mattering" is not one of them.

 

[Onhell]

Are we talking about Mass Effect Legendary? The choices absolutely matter, there's a whole ream of different outcomes to your choices in these games. Some things could've been done better, but overall "choices not mattering" is not one of them.

No, original 360 flavor. Most recent review states that the game was sold as a trilogy from the start and your decision across the three games diminish on importance. From how your allies to the council react to choices that are completely voided (something about killing a queen and she comes back anyway and fight her again) shit like that

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I'm stubborn and I've decided that I won't progress into the Elden Ring DLC (apart from killing Blackgaol Knight) before beating Malenia solo, no summons, no cheese, no consumables (i. e. the "shut up, Joseph Anderson run") and I'm getting progressively better at the fight, getting into the second phase rather consistently and about three times I almost had her and fucked that up.

And just now I found THIS.

WHAT.

I'll have to check it out, but if it's true, us fromsoft bunch are the stupidest, most tunnel-vision-crippled bunch I've ever seen. I mean WTF? After all that "you have to be far enough" or "you have to circle and keep unlocking and locking the camera" etc.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

Right there with you, a bunch of stuff on my wish list just went on sale, but the item I'm most excited for is Alan Wake II. 35% off and I'll be able to get a couple of gift cards next week to bring it down further.

Oh, and since I always feel in need of some horror stuff in summer (about ten years ago we were looking after the in-laws farm in the middle of nowhere while they were on vacation and were watching a horror movie every night - a perfect ambience; about five years ago I spent many hours playing Alien Isolation into the night (what a great game) and then about a year after that, Silent Hill 2 (and it was also awesome), as well as reading T. E. D. Klein's The Events at Poroth Farm - still one of the best horror short stories I've ever read - that same summer) and I saw the sale, I bought Alan Wake 1 and 2 the day before yesterday and started with 1.

 

[Onhell]

Oh, and since I always feel in need of some horror stuff in summer (about ten years ago we were looking after the in-laws farm in the middle of nowhere while they were on vacation and were watching a horror movie every night - a perfect ambience; about five years ago I spent many hours playing Alien Isolation into the night (what a great game) and then about a year after that, Silent Hill 2 (and it was also awesome), as well as reading T. E. D. Klein's The Events at Poroth Farm - still one of the best horror short stories I've ever read - that same summer) and I saw the sale, I bought Alan Wake 1 and 2 the day before yesterday and started with 1.

I'm checking that story out, haven't read good horror in ages. Did you get the original 360 Alan Wake or the Remaster? Also, don't forget Alan Wake's American Nightmare. Besides Alan Wake II I'm going to play Still Wakes the Deep. Lovecraftian horror on an oil rig.

I finished Wolfenstein The Old Blood. Really fun games. Most reviews of New Colossus are mixed, but I'll give it a shot. Still working through Golden Eye, Unpacking, Those Who Remain, and I have a few ignored games like Bendy. I'll get to that and some other back catalog stuff when I finally go back home in a couple of weeks.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I'm checking that story out, haven't read good horror in ages.

Oh, I hope I haven't oversold it, it is a bit derivative of King at his best (which was mainly in the seventies and/or when he was channeling Lovecraft and repurposing him for modern sensibilities), but he has a good reputation and I found the short story really great.

Another oft-overlooked classic is Orange Is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity by David Morrell (yep, the literary author of Rambo) - I came across it many years ago in the sci-fi horror collection Between Time and Terror (though this particular short story is definitely not sci-fi at all) and it remained one of my favourites. That collection has several other great stories, like Ashton Smith's The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (an old-school weird-tale-type Lovecraftian story), F. Paul Wilson Soft (wonderfully eerie post-apocalyptic/disease/body-horror thing), Matheson's Born Of Man And Woman (which is just... disturbing), Campbell Jr's Who Goes There (the basis for Carpenter's The Thing) and Philip K. Dick's The Father-Thing. Along with weaker stuff like Shirley's Ticket to Heaven, Heinlein's They or Simmons' Metastasis.

Did you get the original 360 Alan Wake or the Remaster?

The remaster. I don't know if the remaster is OK or controversial, but then again - I have played Silent Hill 2 in the universally hated "HD Collection" - as the only option to play the game then - and it felt perfectly fine, one of the better games overall for me, I guess.

(Oh, another summer horror experience I forgot - in 2022 finished Resident Evil 7 and then played Village shortly thereafter - I found the latter not much scary at all, except for THAT part (if you know, you know).)

Also, don't forget Alan Wake's American Nightmare.

I know it exists, from what I heard, it's somewhat different in style, but I might squeeze it between the 1 and 2.


BTW, another horror game I played (last autumn, I believe) was The Excavation of Hob's Barrow - a rather short and easy point-and-click adventure game (pixel-arty, supposed to look like the old Indiana Jones adventure games etc.), like I said, it's short and easy, but the atmosphere was quite good and again, very much old-school weird-fiction style.

In that same vein, I'm still intending to play both installments of The Last Door. Game Kitchen's other game - Blasphemous 1 and 2 was excellent, so I expect the same here.


In other news, still getting closer to beating Malenia solo and now I've approached Godfrey in parallel.

 

[JudasMyGuide]

So, Malenia is GONE! No summons, no cheese, no consumables - just STR build and patience. Still took less attempts than Nameless King and Owl (Father) - and was, honestly, more fun.

Edit - finished the main game, Godfrey, Radagon and Elden Beast, started doing the DLC, but it's time for a bit more Wake before I go to sleep.

 

[Onhell]

Oh, I hope I haven't oversold it, it is a bit derivative of King at his best (which was mainly in the seventies and/or when he was channeling Lovecraft and repurposing him for modern sensibilities), but he has a good reputation and I found the short story really great.

Another oft-overlooked classic is Orange Is for Anguish, Blue for Insanity by David Morrell (yep, the literary author of Rambo) - I came across it many years ago in the sci-fi horror collection Between Time and Terror (though this particular short story is definitely not sci-fi at all) and it remained one of my favourites. That collection has several other great stories, like Ashton Smith's The Vaults of Yoh-Vombis (an old-school weird-tale-type Lovecraftian story), F. Paul Wilson Soft (wonderfully eerie post-apocalyptic/disease/body-horror thing), Matheson's Born Of Man And Woman (which is just... disturbing), Campbell Jr's Who Goes There (the basis for Carpenter's The Thing) and Philip K. Dick's The Father-Thing. Along with weaker stuff like Shirley's Ticket to Heaven, Heinlein's They or Simmons' Metastasis.



The remaster. I don't know if the remaster is OK or controversial, but then again - I have played Silent Hill 2 in the universally hated "HD Collection" - as the only option to play the game then - and it felt perfectly fine, one of the better games overall for me, I guess.

It just gave the game a facelift and the usual including of the DLCs. I also have the Silent Hill HD collection and I agree. The complaints I've seen are merely nitpicks.

(Oh, another summer horror experience I forgot - in 2022 finished Resident Evil 7 and then played Village shortly thereafter - I found the latter not much scary at all, except for THAT part (if you know, you know).)

Just bought them as a bundle.... I think I know. There's a couple of said places, at least for me.

Spoiler

Doll house and mutant baby

I know it exists, from what I heard, it's somewhat different in style, but I might squeeze it between the 1 and 2.

It's a nice quick adventure and it being a 360 arcade title it's fairly inexpensive. I'm currently playing through Alan Wake again (already on episode 3), just finished Control's AWE DLC, I'll replay American Nightmare and then jump into AW II. I don't feel the need to replay Quantum Break. Sure Mr. Hatch and the whole time shifters are somewhat related, but it's more it's own thing.

BTW, another horror game I played (last autumn, I believe) was The Excavation of Hob's Barrow - a rather short and easy point-and-click adventure game (pixel-arty, supposed to look like the old Indiana Jones adventure games etc.), like I said, it's short and easy, but the atmosphere was quite good and again, very much old-school weird-fiction style.

I'll check it out, thanks!

In that same vein, I'm still intending to play both installments of The Last Door. Game Kitchen's other game - Blasphemous 1 and 2 was excellent, so I expect the same here.

I'll add it to the list, I still haven't made my way through Blasphemous 2, but I LOVED the first one, so like yourself, I expect good things.

 

[Onhell]

Just finished Alan Wake and Control. Main game for both, though the AWE dlc can be done towards the end, so I did. I'm about to start Alan Wake II. EEEK!

 

[JudasMyGuide]

I'm playing Shadow of the Erdtree and so far I'm loving it, visually and everything. So far I've only killed two humanoid bosses in the geols and the Dancing Lion, but the exploration and the combat are fun and it is all visually striking and rather atmospheric.

@Onhell
In Alan Wake I'm in the third chapter and... the bad first - it is a game that obviously tries to milk the horror atmosphere and it completely leaves me cold - I had similar feelings from Contol, another Remedy game that was very smooth and fun to play, but I just couldn't really invest myself into it (and didn't finish it). I will try Control again after finishing AW 1, like I said, the gameplay is mostly fun, just... I really hope Alan Wake 2 will be scarier. So far it's been ike this "things that are probably scary for the Americans", à la The X-Files or The Twilight Zone - so far there hasn't really been anything even remotely eerie or chilling, even if only to the level of... say, Twin Peaks (the original two seasons, I haven't yet seen the third)

It has the shtick, the swings in the dusk and so on, but it just doesn't really work for me. Shimmering, shadowy rednecks isn't really my idea of horror. As for the horror writer pursued by his creation, I find the obvious inspiration - Carpenter's movie In the Mouth of Madness to be rather excellent, brilliant even, for all its outward trashy trappings. This feels very watered down.

In fact, I found Remedy's Max Payne 1 and 2 to be more eerie and unnerving, with all the repetitive nightmares that really looked and felt like nightmares and the downturned, noir, desperate feel.
Also, it's fun that the blocked/barred doors make the exact same sound as those in Max Payne 1 and 2 have. Funny little tidbit. Now I want oto replay those two (although I don't think I've ever finished a game as many times as MP1 and 2, apart from maybe the original Black Mirror and the original Mafia).

That aside, the gameplay is smooth, the storytelling and narrative is well-done, for what it is, I just wish I could engage with the game more. Emotionally, intellectually.

Still bought the DLCs for the sequel, while they're still in sale.


Also, I've decided to let bygones be bygones and re-install Hogwarts Legacy. So yes, the open world aspect sucks. The story is pedestrian and there's loot spam everywhere. Nonsensical challenges and things to waste time in the open world, fucking Merlin Trials and million other things you don't really want to do.
BUT...
The design of the castle, the possibility to actually visit it. The care put into it. The atmosphere. It's just... magical. And the combat system is one of the smoothest and most fun I've played in a very long time (barring from soft games and Lies of P, of course)

 

[Meliegree]

Trying to push through Alien Isolation. I love alien movies (because they are not so scary + have great visuals etc.) but I don't have balls to go through horror games anymore. So probably I will go quietly back to Hades since I didn't finished it. After that I probably will finish splinter cell conviction. I love stealth games.