Silent Hill F. The combat’s pretty easy and I’m enjoying my time with it.

I finally finished satisfactory! I’ve played during early access but there wasn’t really an ending for it then. 2,600 hours total in game, 550 of those were this last factory. It’s done!

After 20 hours of manually placed footsteps… Baby Steps is complete! Probably one of my favorite games this year, the story was thin but the writing was hilarious and kept me climbing to reach the next cutscene. The credits screen shows a dotted line of your path as you went and, since I played with my partner, we were constantly laughing as the dot rolled down hills and reminded us of our tumbles. If you have patience and are okay with occasional immature humor it’s worth a play. I thought the ending was perfect for what the game was.

I also finished Sniper Elite V2, it was good but showed its age. The new games were still too expensive so I got the Zombie Army Trilogy (an offshoot of the Sniper Elite series) for $5 as the autumn sale ended and have been having fun kicking skeletons apart

What’s Dying Light like? I played the first a bit and had fun, but haven’t been following the series lately

Silksong mostly. Game is hard.

Slogging through Cronos: The New Dawn, probably around the 60% mark now, maybe a bit more? I’m at the Hospital area, which I think is the final main area out of three. I have a lot of things to say about this game, and not too many of them are positive sadly. I’m really on the verge of dropping it and have actually taken a break from it today playing other games.

And it’s a shame because Cronos does have its qualities. It’s beautiful to look at, both visually stunning and with environments displaying immaculate art direction. The atmosphere is on point, and both the alternate-reality Poland with its brutalist nightmare architecture and the sci-fi future tech is fantastically realized - with the caveat that the “Travellers” the protagonist belongs to might be a tad derivative of Bioshock Big Daddies.

Where the game falls flat, sadly is the gameplay. First of all it’s a survival horror with a heavy emphasis on survival and a very weak “horror”. The game is not really particularly scary, even accounting for the occasional cheap jump scare. Instead it’s an absolutely gruelling action slog where the real horror is inventory management and ammunition scarcity. And this would have been fine if the action gameplay was good, but it’s just… boring, stale and uninspired.

The enemies are just the blandest garden variety zombies you can imagine, the touted “merge” mechanic feels cosmetic at best and doesn’t factor in as much as you’d think and without a dodge button a lot of the fights are just running around kiting and waiting for a chance to charge up a shot and repeat. Most enemies are slow enough that it doesn’t even feel particularly thrilling, you’re not really in danger and are just waiting for them to go into an animation you can punish.

On top of that the ammo scarcity is so ridiculous that I often feel compelled to reload my last save if I miss more than two shots in a fight as I don’t want to risk getting soft locked. I know I’m not a god gamer and my aim isn’t the best, but it feels too harsh. And yes, I’m charging every shot to conserve ammo already.

On top of that the body-burning mechanic combined with the restrictions on flamethrower fuel dispensers leads to repeated situations of running back-and-forth between bodies and a dispenser for like 10 minutes straight, which feels like an enormously unfun waste of time and just adds to the endless tedium and frustration the game delivers constantly.

And it’s a shame because the story is actually kinda intriguing. It’s what’s kept me going this far. I do like the world building, the mysterious “Collective” you belong to has me interested still and when the story delves into some more philosophical musings occasionally I am enjoying myself. It could still all fall flat though, as this is a time travel story and those often devolve into timey-wimey messes full of plot holes that fall apart under close inspection. But so far I’m still wanting to see how it ends.

Cyberpunk 2077. I may or may not have developed a bit of a crush on Johnny. I also discovered photo mode and I may or may not have an issue.

I recently got the relatively new Hatsune Miku Mega Mix on sale on Steam. Not a big fan of how it was cheaper to get the song pack DLC and cosmetics DLC bundled with the game than just getting the game and DLC separate, but otherwise the game has been fun enough.

I also got Cloverpit and it’s fun enough, assuming RNG lets me get a good run going. Lemon meta for the win.

I also finally decided to move on from Hotline Miami 1 to HM2 despite not having everything in the first. Just wanted to play the second, and so far I am not disappointed.

The Xbox store had Middle Earth: Shadows of War on sale plus all DLC for like six bucks and I’ve been playing that nonstop for the last few days

Borderlands 4. Max leveled vex last week and am on the grind for gear now. Not a huge fan of the level of rarity of legendary gear tbh. It’s fine when you’re not looking for perfect rolls but if you are its kinda bullshit.

Continuing Fatal Frame: Maiden of Black Water, but mostly playing Ender Magnolia.

I'm currently playing The Forever Winter... and it is BRUTALLY difficult. Gorgeous game and worldbuilding though. It's in Alpha so things are very much in flux but I just can't seem to put this dystopian nightmare down.

That new alien vr game they ported to pc, quite good

Finally started the Forza Horizon 5 DLC. First up, Rally Adventure. The DLC adds a new, small, but densely filled map (at least more densely than the base game). The new races also get a new game mode, a proper Rally mode (as you’d expect from the name). It’s just you alone on the track, trying to make it to the finish as fast as possible, while an NPC reads pacenotes to you.

As someone who doesn’t play normal rally racing games or watches real life ones, it’s fine. The game also asks you if you want to disable the visual racing line, which I did. That makes it a lot harder, since you can’t just immediately tell when you’re supposed to break, but with the rewind or just trying the race over and over again, it’s manageable. I also constantly switch cars, so I don’t get a consistent feel on how a specific car handles.

Then I also started playing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I wanted to get to this before all the GOTY-talk at the end of the year. I’m in Act 1, dunno how early, because I’m just running around, exploring everything, ignoring the main quest as much as possible. As you do in RPGs.

The game plays well, it’s pretty responsive, and hitting those parries feels good. The story is intriguing so far, but I haven’t seen a lot of it. Performance has also been fine for me, but I do have a pretty powerful PC.

A few annoying things are, every time you pick up an item on the ground a character has to comment on it, and there are not a lot of different voice lines, so that gets kinda annoying. Then certain parts of the game, like the cutscenes, are filled with pretty ugly post-processing effects. You can disable that stuff for normal gameplay, but then a cutscene plays that has just super heavy depth of field, chromatic aberration, weird artifacts around character outlines (that might be tied to the DOF), it’s weird. These are pretty minor complaints.

Also, in a fight it’s like Super Mario RPG, where you can hit specific keys at the correct time to deal extra damage or for the dodge/parry to avoid any damage. Hitting the offensive buttons is not much of a problem, but the game does some stylish camera angles and shakes a bit, which can make it difficult to time button presses for the defensive moves. There are options to disable these, but the camera shake option doesn’t seem to affect combat, and if you disable the camera movement option the battles look so much duller, with just a terrible, static angle. I think I just have to get used to it. It also doesn’t affect every enemy, some are definitely worse than others.

Still, I’m having fun, just gotta play more of the game.

I got Cult of the Lamb in the steam sale. Now playing it couch coop with my wife. It's been a lot of fun so far. Less frustrating than Don't Starve Together.

Taking advantage of Epic while it’s taking advantage of me, I’m playing Nightingale. It reminds me a lot of Return to Moria, also an ‘Epic’ adventure.

Character creation is kinda fun as you get to pick your family tree from preset models of any race, then adjust your own model to look a little more like them.

Tutorial is a bit lacking for anyone new to the genre and while the introductory map is quite large, it all tends to repeat. You can go around collecting the basic form of tools and some weapons, which then unlocks their blueprints for free in your progression trees. And boy there are many!
Wood axe, skinning knife, pickaxe, climbing dual pickaxes for climbing walls, umbrella for floating down from great heights, hammer presumably for advanced construction, sickle for harvesting and a watering can.
Then there’s the weapons, sword for slashing, maul for blunt, bow for piercing, slingbow/crossbow with FX marbles and found elemental ammo for rifle, revolver and shotgun.
All can be used to deal damage relatively. The wood axe is the first weapon given.

There are corruption enemies, there’s wildlife, giant spiders, puzzles, destructible environment with some secrets and flying essence point (universal currency so far) swarms that you can chase around. A lot of gathering and different crafting stations. Item modifications, food buffs, resting to change difficulty or day/night. NPCs to stay in base or follow you around.
A lot of little things that can get overwhelming.

But it shows it’s early access. Can’t say i recommend it wholeheartedly. I’m playing solo, so I’m unable to say anything about coop mishaps. If you don’t mind Epic and like the survival crafting genre, I’d give it a go now while it’s free to gain.

Space Station 14. I can’t get enough. Even just sticking to botany, the depth and complexity of what can be achieved feels limitless, let alone botanist+syndicate agent where I can buy “gatfruit” seeds and grow revolvers inside fruit.

Hands down the most fun multiplayer gaming I’ve ever enjoyed.

playing the witcher but I sorta don’t like it. thinking of dropping it and pal world and bringing in the next biggest (in disk size) onto my steamdeck.

Still grinding Hades 2. Just like the original Hades the game just keeps throwing new stuff at you, so you keep playing. One thing I do find weird tho is how quickly I managed to unlock the different weapons. And also that the initial staff weapon is by far my favorite, so every weapon unlock thereafter felt a bit underwhelming. I guess it makes sense that they provide you with the most all-round weapon first.

Silksong and helldivers 2.

I wanna try MGSV, but it hasn’t gone on sale since the 70 buck remaster came out.

Ghost of Yotei since launch day. I love it!