What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

Got sent a review copy of Precipice for a different site. It's pretty board gamey, but uses the fact that it's digital to allow both players a whole ton of hidden information that otherwise wouldn't work.

It's kind of weird? Thematically it nails the cold war pretty well. The problem I'm having so far, and this may be alleviated with more plays, is that it makes thematic strides at the cost of fun in some cases. There's a lot of very slow escalation, response, and deescalation through the "I'm telling the UN!" mechanism. Progress can get undone a lot. If players end up coming to direct blows it almost always ends in a stalemate, which is really unsatisfying. "No one wins" is a very realistic outcome after 40-something turns because the USSR player just launched their 5th invasion in a row on Thailand and god dammit, I'm tired of this shit.

That said there are some really cool ideas at play here. My favorite is how spies work. You have 3, and can deploy them anywhere for 2 of your 5 APs. They enable unique better actions as long as they're there, but the other player can spend 2 APs on their turn to counterspy a country. If they succeed, that spy is DEAD. Permadead. Now you only have 2 spies. Should have had them run when that coup went bad, ya greedy fuck.

Basically it's neat but it's competing with a lot of really good Cold War games. We'll see.

Jumped back into Ghost Recon Wildlands to play the new free mission starring Jon Bernthal (Punisher, Walking Dead). The mission is pretty easy but was fun. Then I stuck around and played a few more missions. That game is enormous, I can't imagine wanting the DLC for it.

This was all very timely since they just announced a new full game that also stars Jon Bernthal. I doubt I'll grab it day 1, but I'll definitely play it.

Got Age of Wonders III for free and dived in to see what the fuss is all about.

Strategic portion is so so, but the tactical combat is great with only 2 flaws for me (I-go-you-go and reduced units deal the full damage).

It has zone of control, action points system (the farther you move the lesser number of attacks you make), facing (and flanking), attack of opportunity and retaliations eat up AP for the next round, and excellent battlefield generation. There's enough open space and some chokepoints. Castle battles are _actual_ castles with walls, parapets, and gates.

You can potentially bring a LOT of units into battle since if you attack a hex in the strategic maps with your armies surrounding it... all of those armies will attack the hex at the same time.

Could use a better feedback system though (ranged attack has no... range indicator).

Terraforming Mars on Steam. The latest patch seems to have fixed a lot of the multiplayer issues - I haven't had an online game lose its mind since the patch. The AI still sucks.

It's biggest unaddressed problems are that it's very poorly designed, and I'd be surprised if that gets fixed. it looks like its UI was done by someone who hasn't played the game.

At this point, if you're a hardcore TM fan, it'll scratch that itch. But not well. Be prepared for some disappointment and frustration.

ETA: in the past couple of days a new bug has appeared: you can get duplicate corporations. I've seen it twice in two games in the past couple of days.

Finished the main storyline of Ghost Recon Wildlands. You get a "better" ending if you get 100% completion, which I didn't get. I may chip away at it, we will see. The last mission is staggeringly anti-climactic, of course.

Also pre-ordered Borderlands 3. I had no intention of pre-ordering until right before release, but Epic has a store-wide (which sounds bigger than it is, since they only sell a handful of games) sale that gets you $10 off. Couldn't pass that up.

Some free DLC came out for Dead Cells on the Switch, so I downloaded it. I had fallen off of the game a while back, but loaded it up and tried it. Perhaps they made it easier, because this was my 92nd game and I finally won. Took over 90 minutes.

Also got Dark Quest 2 for Switch. This is basically Hero Quest. Good stuff!

Yeah, I finished DC too with DLC. Try playing with boss cell

I just started playing Thimbleweed Park, based on a recommendation from a podcast. I don't have much to say except I like the retro feel and the oddball theme.

I hit prestige master in Black Ops 4 yesterday. First COD I've ever done that in.

Unrelated, I picked up Slay The Spire on ps4 the other day since that finally came out. That game seems pretty great. Really fun mix of rogue like run based gameplay and deckbuilding ala Ascension. Think this one is going to have real legs.

Ah_Pook wrote: Unrelated, I picked up Slay The Spire on ps4 the other day since that finally came out. That game seems pretty great. Really fun mix of rogue like run based gameplay and deckbuilding ala Ascension. Think this one is going to have real legs.

That comes out on Switch in a week, and I believe I'll finally jump in.

One Deck Dungeon. It's been on tablet for a while but I ignored it for some reason until it dropped on the phone last week. A super fun experience, a little puzzly. Great campaign mode. I bought the physical game and the expansion already.

I’ve been playing that too. At first I was kind eh whatever, but it got its hooks in. It’s really pretty compelling, but I can’t imagine ever wanting to play the physical game.

All female characters is a nice touch.

One Deck Dungeon is really fun.

I’ve been playing the living hell out of Horizon Chase Turbo on the Switch. I’m a big fan of arcade racers, but good ones are few and far between these days. This is a GREAT one. It’s along the same lines as Outrun, TopGear, with just a dash of Daytona USA (in that when you hit the car in front of you, you slow down and they get bumped ahead). There’s a ton to do, tons of variety in tracks and locales, and so much to unlock. I got it on sale for $11, but I would have been happy with the full $20 asking price. Absolutely killer game.

I have all intentions on double dipping on Slay the Spire next week. That game game on a handheld system? My life is over!

As part of my Sekiro post-mortem I decided to play Bloodborne again. Finished it last night.

Bloodborne is just amazing. Best souls game, best FromSoft game, one of the best games I've played in recent memory. Last time I played I rocked the Hunter's Axe almost exclusively. This time I went in intending to play a skill (dex) build and use weapons that lean into that. Turns out speedy short range things are just not what I'm into, so I pivoted into a str/skill mix and used Ludwig's Holy Blade from the moment I got it.

I hadn't done the DLC before. Those bosses make the original endgame ones look like absolute chumps. Ludwig is the best beast fight in the entire game. Maria is better than Gehrman though neither is all that hard, Orphan of Kos is the hardest parts of rampaging boss fights squeezed into a humanoid enemy. When I beat him I went back to the main route and beat the last 3 bosses in a row with 1 death between all of them. It wasn't even close.

My only real complaint with the game is that there's no way to respec. If I could reset all my stats on NG+ and run strength/arcane to take the DLC weapons for a spin I'd start that playthrough tomorrow. As it stands that's not an option and it makes starting a new playthrough feel like an undertaking.

Still, that's basically my only gripe and it's about not being able to play even more. What a game.