What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening on the Switch. The kids had left it in, I started a new game last weekend and have been hooked since. It is huge fun and kind of an eerie trip to childhood, which maybe always was the intention. Such a sweet game.

Looks like I'm a little late to be the first to hype up MONSTER TRAIN, but hell yeah I'm aboard. The 5th faction is so wacky that I can see why they're last. Currently liking Awoken (Green) and Umbra (Black/yellow) the most.

As I've said before, my life is littered with partially finished CRPGs, where I played 5-10 hours and then quit for different reasons. But tonight I can finally cross one off the list, having just completed Planescape Torment. I've been chipping away at it for about nine months or so, putting it down for several weeks at a time, but never really losing interest as such. After finishing the Baldur's Gate games last year, it was a genuine pleasure to play something not set in the Forgotten Realms, or that was nearly as combat focused. I maintain that almost no stories are interesting for 35-50 hours, but Planescape Torment definitely came the closest I've seen. I liked its ambiguities, weird darkness, and the feeling that it was a bit closer to an adventure game than an actual CRPG. I can totally see myself playing again in a couple years, since I know there are huge chunks of the game I never actually completed or even saw. I'd love to try it with a genuinely evil playthrough as well, because while I'm not normally one for that kind of thing, this one feels a touch more nuanced than some others. Anyway, loved it to pieces and would highly recommend it for anyone who missed it until now.

I think eventually I need to revisit Fallout 1 and 2, since the first one is one of those uncompleted ones lying around. But first I'll put in some time on Titan Quest, which I just got from the GOG summer sale. Looking forward to playing an ARPG that isn't about dark things being evil and dark.

I need to play this one too. I started Planescape years ago but fell off for one reason or another. I have the updated version and just need to decide to play it.

I have played some of its spiritual successor, Torment: Tides of Numenara. It's definitely worth checking out.

Tides of Numenera is on my list, but I have so many CRPGs that I've accumulated over the years that I can't really justify buying it for the time being. I should probably be playing Fallout 1 or 2, or Wasteland 2, or Tyranny, or Pillars of Eternity, or Divinity: Original Sin 2...

Man, I'm in way over my head.

I bought snowrunner and started playing it. While it's horribly documented and a bit janky the fundamental concept is pretty zen with a touch of insane frustration.

One Step From Eden came out on the ps4, so I've been playing that. It is really fucking cool, but also just BRUTALLY hard. its a run based deck builder ala Slay The Spire, but the encounters are real time and take place on a grid. If you ever played the Mega Man Battle Network games its exactly that, but about a thousand times harder. If you never played those, enemy attacks will target certain squares on the grid, and you have to avoid them. your attacks target certain squares, so you need to avoid attacks while also lining up your attacks. its very very fast and difficult, buy also extremely rewarding in the same way that hard shmups are. plus you get the fun deckbuilding aspect. its even more impressive that the whole thing is by one guy. its been out on steam and switch for some months, and if you like rock hard twitch action stuff you should definitely check it out.

I've been playing far too much Space Haven, like 2 a.m. questioning the quality of my life choices overdoing it. Despite being early access it's already a rock solid crafting/building/tactical RTS where you build your own spacecraft and traverse the stars hunting down pirates, taking prisoners, shooting down bugs in derelict hulks, with some slightly less glamorous asteroid mining thrown in on the side. Multiple factions to schmooze and trade with, build a single ship or a BSG style fleet, backstories and crew interactions add a little RPG spice, modules coming down the line to build and run space stations instead of ships, plans for an endless mode so that you can keep on boldly going - pretty much every space fiction trope crammed into one place. They made the perfect game for me and I might never get out of this rabbit hole.

That's a nice feeling though, isn't it? To have a game that seems made for you? I got that from THE WITNESS and FEZ most recently. Just, hard-wired into my serotonin center. So happy for you, Mezike! Remember to get sleep though.

You can watch me get massacred at one step from Eden if you're bored



Edit: the second run here actually went pretty well. I made it to the boss right before the last, which is the farthest I've made it thus far.

I remembered I have Divinity: Original Sin II on my Switch, and I don't remember anything after that.

I almost grabbed Divinity when it was on sale the other day, but I'm worried that it would really strain my eyes on the small screen. Isn't the text really tiny?

It hasn't given me in any trouble in either mode. I believe they scaled up the text size to make it more readable, so it's a good sight better than, say, Skyrim. I would say the biggest sacrifice are the graphics, which are fine but not nearly as nice looking as the other versions.

The interface was rejiggered too, and while I would prefer a mouse-based control scheme, especially when managing inventory, it's still perfectly usable.

I have really enjoyed the game a lot this time through. It really feels like it has the rhythm of tabletop games, where you go into a "combat" mode when it starts, and it feels good. The combat is great too, because of how it uses the terrain so heavily. My party is pretty heavy with pyros right now, so I feel like I'm constantly setting everything on fire.

Thanks. I wish more games offered a demo so I could judge how it plays. I have the Switch Lite which is even smaller than the regular Switch.

Took a break from Destiny to justify playing something else.

Titanfall 2.

The Pilot aspect is fucking phenomenal in Campaign. More guns to shake a stick at, the cat and mouse sneaking about while the enemy tries to find you. The satisfying thud of bullets shredding the enemy.

The Titan side? MEH. Underwhelming and boring. Blowing popcorn (enemy soldiers) to Kingdom Come is enjoyable, but the Titan combat is boring as shit.