What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

BALATRO is simple, stupid, addictive, and maybe brilliant. Video poker with a roguelike element. Each hand, you have to get a higher score in order to progress. In between hands, you can upgrade your deck of cards. There's different "builds," like trying to optimize your deck to get full houses, and then finding cards to synergize with that and blow your score up every time.

I started Evil Within 2 on the Steam deck. It's good so far, pretty much what I expected.

But this post is more about what video games YOU are playing, and it's the just released demo of Office Nightmare, made by me. store.steampowered.com/app/2982840/Office_Nightmare/

Finished Drug Dealer Simulator story mission. Now, I'm just achievement hunting. Making good money with my labs and the Maui Wowie situation is doing well, but slower because it takes the plants so long to grow. I think it's hilarious that adding Viagra to some of the drugs makes them hella addictive.

Going through my previous purchases, I realized I had Midnight Heist. I got the game because Fooster played it with his friend on YouTube. So, I picked it up and love it.

Thanks to Payday 2, I absolutely love heist games. This one is a mash up of a heist game, like Thief Simulator, and Phantasmophobia. You're thieves breaking into businesses, hacking hideouts, etc. and stealing everything that isn't nailed down. Main goal is to hack computers to get data, which triggers your ability to escape. Simple, right?

Well, no. There's a supernatural entity that stalks the location. If it finds you, you're deader than Hell. There are several possible entities to hunt you, each with their strengths and weaknesses. One of the entities is Ogryn sized and trundles about quite loudly and slowly. Then there's the L4D Witch like entity that's blind as a bat but has excellent hearing and is ass kickingly fast.

At the beginning, you will die A LOT. Once you become acclimated to the mechanics and where the good hiding spots are (walk in lockers and bathroom stalls) it becomes a risk v. reward situation. The hacking mechanic is minigame based. They aren't too difficult (one of the games is punching in the numbers 1 to 10 in order), they are just there to waste time between entity appearances. It's still nerve wracking because you don't know when the entity will appear until you hear its footsteps.

It's still being updated and I can't wait when they add more locations.

For $10, it's a satisfying experience. https://store.steampowered.com/app/2204350/Midnight_Heist/

Evil Within 2 continues to be good. It has very strong Control vibes. Control was the best game I played in whatever year it showed up on Gamepass. I will probably replay it at some point. These two games are very similar in how they look and play.

I'm also playing Wall World, which is a roguelite that has you controlling a giant spider-like mining robot along a sheer cliff wall. You find mine entrances, and go in to collect resources by breaking blocks. Periodically you have to return to the robot to fend off waves of attacking aliens. Rinse, repeat. My description of it makes it sound bad, but it is decent mindless fun. It's held my interest longer than most things like it would.

I don't play video games often.For example, I got Cyberpunk 2077 a few years ago, but it doesn't run very well on my best computer, which is slightly below spec. So I haven't even made it all the way through the useless tutorial. Maybe in a year or two I will get a fancy gaming rig that can run any current game.

20 years ago, my ex gave me one of my all-time favorite PC games: Vampire: the Masquerade - Bloodlines as a Christmas present. It runs on a modified version of the Half-Life 2 engine, and offers an interesting mix of physical, mental, and social challenges, along with creepy visuals and a warped sense of humor. The game also features some great music, a combination of gothic and industrial music, plus above average background game music. The original release was buggy, but fans have since patched the game and added additional content. One significant fan project, ClanQuest, added one new quest per clan (7 vampire clans in the game) plus a few generic quests playable by any clan. A few years ago, I started playing through the ClanQuest version, but cut back to only very occasional play (once or twice a year) after getting about 2/3 through the game. I am playing the Malkavian vampire, a mentally ill vampire who gets odd and funny dialogue options that occasionally reveal secrets not available to the other clans. My vampire abilities give me supernatural perception, extreme stealth capabilities, and the ability to induce temporary madness in others. My current outfit is a big white fur coat and a floppy hat straight out of Dr. Seuss' Cat in the Hat.

Last night, I started back in at the threshold to a seedy warehouse in Chinatown. I checked my character log to refresh my memory about current quests in progress, and found that I was here to meet an informant. I get my tip from the informant just before a bunch of tong show up to shoot the place up. I then proceed to die five times in a row before realizing that I'm rusty at combat and my character is probably not quite good enough at combat to fight all these guys at once. So on the sixth attempt, I smash out the warehouse office window, jump onto high nearby shelving, go into supernatural stealth, and leave without hassle.

I then revisited various old haunts, including a few contacts and most of the bars in the game. I knocked off an easy side quest and declined another one that I found distasteful (betraying a friendly contact). Finally, I acted on the tip from my informant, which led me into a tong bar full of trigger happy gangsters. I die once, then locate a different entrance and prepare for a more stealthy approach. I remember successfully shooting up the place the last time I played this far into the game, but that was many years ago and with a Gangrel vampire that could become temporarily bulletproof.

I want to keep playing because I still haven't played through all of the new quests, but I may want to stop at some point before the end. Bloodlines promises players that you can play the game with a social or stealth character instead of just fighting through every encounter, but I seem to remember that the final stretch of the game is very heavy on repetitive combat, with few opportunities to sneak past enemies or talk your way past them.

I've started playing Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, and that game is pretty damn cool. So far it's a cross between Tomb Raider and Hitman, which is as good as it sounds.

I just got a copy of this and the elden ring expansion as well. Need to find some time for it.

After a real stressful last week, I spent the entire weekend decompressing and playing video games.

Yesterday, I finished Moonlighter: Between Dimensions. It's Stardew Valley mashed with Legend of Zelda. You're a shop owner named Will, who runs the Moonlighter. Basically, a general store for the town. During the day you sell what you scavenge from the dungeons, and you go dungeon delving at night. From the gameplay, the art direction and animation, and the fun of trying to make a profit from bits and bobs made me absolutely love it.

Played a bit of R.E.P.O., the game you've no doubt seen. Solo play is okay, but turns into a cornucopia of hilarious errors when played with a group. Still need to coordinate with my Belgian friends to play again.

Speaking of them, one of them got me the game Prehistoric Hunt, It's multi-player Jurassic Park-esque dinosaur hunting game. It's fun, but it gets kind of tedious when you're running all over the place to hunt the dinos. They have fast travel, but it's limited in use to bringing you to a base on the map and not a GPS point and fast travel to it. The payouts for completing missions is also ridiculously low. Like, HUNT A T-REX FOR 40 COINS! No, I like all my body parts where they are, thank you.

They do get the dinosaur simulation down. Spinosaurs and T-Rexes actively hunt down prey. Occasionally, you'll come across a dead dino and when you interact with it, it will tell you what killed it. The most annoying, and scary are the Utah Raptors and Compys. Yesterday, I was tasked with killing one for its claw. After following the tracks, I started hearing their chirps coming directly ahead beyond some vegetation.

Of course, I followed the tracks and headed towards the bush, and not one, BUT TWO, of the fuckers burst out. I immediately started repeatedly yelling FUCK! while running backwards and unloading on them with my hunting rifle. Killed them both, but not without getting my ass handed to me. Compys act the same way. They're always hiding in bushes and when you get close, the ankle biters just straight up go after you. And, they hunt in packs. Cue me running away screaming, while firing my 1911 at them.

I've been playing Blue Prince, which I'd describe as what if Witness was a rogue-like, but with way less puzzles. It's mostly a secret-a-thon. As you draft rooms to a giant manor, you uncover little bits of history, letters, notes, etc. You use this knowledge to solve various secrets.

It's very thrilling when you get an ah-ha moment, but they are doled out slowly and it does not take long for repetition to set in. Due to the nature of rooms basically being part of a "deck" of floor plans, you may just not get the room you really want, making your whole run go down the tubes. That said, over time you will gain powers to help mitigate the luck factor.

It's on Gamepass, and you could definitely get your money's worth if you bought a month and just played the shit out of it.

UPDATE: I beat the main goal of the game. After looking into what it would take to tackle some of the other puzzles... I'm probably going to bow out. Knowing how to do something in this game is very different from actually being able to do it, since the stars really have to align in order for you to get the right room combinations.

Being this past weekend was the eve before long hours at work preparing for trial, I gamed my happy little ass off. Played a smattering of Payday 2, as by this time-it's habit. Helped out a lot of new players unlock achievements. Pulled out an old, crappy fantasy turn based game called Zavix Tower. Got pretty far in it when I played it in 2018. I'm going through my old uncompleted/never played games (I have over 103), and started clearing out the back log.

I also played a bit of Prehistoric Hunt. Played with another guy in Europe and just hunted dinosaurs for an obscene amount of time.

Then, I played nearly 12 hours of playing Ripout. A sci-fi horror looter shooter. Storyline is bare thin. Man leaves Earth to colonize. Runs into another alien race. Spicy insults are exchanged. Humanity is losing, so they start work with bio-engineering a property to allow cybernetic implants call the Cell. It goes well as expected, as the stuff spreads like a virus. Humanity loses and now seeks a new place to live called Sanctuary.

Anyway, you're a veteran of the war and you've woken up from cryo sleep to a world gone mad. Think Rapture in space. The fun part is you have a pet. Who's also a gun. A petgun. Take the secondary jaw from a Giger Xenomorph. Give it eyes and legs, then slap the business end of a weapons platform on it and you have your petgun.

The game consists of missions, where you can either follow the story line, or side quests. The side quests offer resources for crafting, as well as schematics to make improvements on your arsenal or create new ones. There's a leveling system, even for your pet, as the more you use them. Once you board a derelict, the mission's straightforward. Do X to move to Y. The thing is, the music is so atmospheric, that it causes me to be tense. There are jump scares abound. Like on overheard hatch opening, and you don't know whether a monster is going to pop out or the game is fucking with you.

The learning curve was difficult, but not impossible. And now I'm actually dying less than I was when I first started the game. The guns are satisfying and the further you go into the story mode, the more weapons are brought and an new creatures to deal with.

If I don't have to work late tonight, I'll definitely be playing this.

I found out two weeks ago that archive.org has a ton of old software, so I helped myself to a couple of old games I used to love and reinstalled the Scumm Virtual Machine.
Just finished The Curse of Monkey Island and am almost through Grim Fandango which still is one of my favourite stories anywhere ever. In the cue are the other Monkey Island titles and maybe Blade Runner. Too bad I couldn't find Fenimore Filmore in: The Westerner in a language I speak, I remember it to be hilarious.

Nodens wrote: I found out two weeks ago that archive.org has a ton of old software, so I helped myself to a couple of old games I used to love and reinstalled the Scumm Virtual Machine.
Just finished The Curse of Monkey Island and am almost through Grim Fandango which still is one of my favourite stories anywhere ever. In the cue are the other Monkey Island titles and maybe Blade Runner. Too bad I couldn't find Fenimore Filmore in: The Westerner in a language I speak, I remember it to be hilarious.

I ran across that, as well. A lot of the old games that I played on my C64 during high school. Made me happy and sad at the same time.