games

Been playing some Skyrim - namely some mods that were recommended here, VIGILANT and The Forgotten City so far. The later was fine, nice concept that doesn't work well in Skyrim - might check out the indie game version of it.

VIGILANT however... Now that's a diamond in the rough, a heavily Dark Souls inspired Skyrim story that reinterprets a lot of the background material - and has genuinely engaging in-universe books. The strongest parts were where it went beyond either Souls or Skyrim's style - the cryptic in-setting books that are actually relevant, the memory sequences of ancient souls' greatest triumph or torment - a1nd the weakest were the various expy armour sets from other franchises stopping it from really settling into its own aesthetic (not that I didn't collect them all). A near railroad of a story, but the different choices made really do dramatically change the details, if not the end result (which itself is part of the story of reclaiming something from a vast and uncaring cycle of time and powerlessness... I think).

Just started Glenmoril, the sequel, which takes a different tack by having the prologue establish important ties to a few characters before getting all Bloodborne-ey. The mod maker's clearly experimenting more with it, and it's cool to see.

Started playing Path of Exile 2, looks great, plays great too, but I think the difficulty is a bit overtuned, I don't necessarily want it to be a breeze but I'm starting to really struggle and I'm barely into Act 2

Also playing Project Zomboid multiplayer with friends, it's a different beast from SP but I think it works even better

i was going to play indiana jones but didn't realized you need a ray traceable card so im outta luck there. still need to finish cyberpunk and wolfenstein the new colossus though.

cyberpunk has been fun, but im still in act two and have already reached max level; getting a bit stale. similarly to witcher 3 ive restarted this game about 5 times before finally getting into it. even after the dlc and multiple updates the game still feels half-baked. multiple ways to do some missions, but they all seem to lead to similar outcomes. atmosphere is pretty cool; very dredd/bladerunner. the story is fairly hohum but compared to most video game writing it's attention grabbing at least.

wolfenstein 2 gameplay somehow feels a bit clumsier than 1, but i am enjoying the story so far. to be fair i havent played 1 since near release. the contrast of blaskowicz dour inner monologue with the games silliness hits me well. ill probably finish it

playing cyberpunk i feel like i just dont have the energy for open world games anymore; however i still find myself going back to openworld games ive already played. not sure whats going on there

as always playing civ 6 and balatro when i dont want to get into a more involved game. maybe need to scope out some gpus to swipe from a truck; im not paying 500 clams for a new card right now

happy holidays to those that celebrate

I'm in a bit of a tangle with Outer Wilds (it's funny how much of this game is spent thinking about the game and figuring out potential solutions to puzzles while in the shower) so I got Balatro.

Full House gang. Best hand.

yakuza kiwami

i played indiana jones for a number of hours yesterday.. its not particularly the best game but somehow its just good enough to keep me playing.. kinda like some of the other bethesda games but without most of the bugs

though trying to jump through a window and ending up jumping through the window, sliding over a railing, and falling to my death is getting a bit old

Just finished the first Jedi fallen order game and just started the crash bandicoot remake

Finally got myself a new GPU a month ago and decided to give Cyberpunk 2077 another shot and... damn, it's actually a pretty solid game nowadays. There's a bunch of bugs here and there, it doesn't feel extremely polished, but I'm really into it now. It was absolute ass at release, but now that the major bugs have been squashed I'm having tons of fun with it.

The combat system really gives you that badass power fantasy. I went for a high risk high reward melee build with throwing knives and a katana and it's a blast to activate Sandevistan, throw a knife into an enemy's face then leap to the next one, swinging my katana.

Also, I think the writing is way better than I thought it would be. Not Disco Elysium levels, sure, but I like the worldbuilding and character development. Johnny Silverhand is a really fun character and Keanu's performance actually elevates him.

Technically not what I'm playing right now, but I recently played Nobody Wants to Die and while I didn't think it was a particularly good game, I was absolutely blown the fuck away by how unbelievably good that game looks. It's one of the few games I've played that made me literally go holy fucking shit out loud just looking at it. My jaw hit the floor about five minutes in when you get the full reveal of the game's futuristic cyberpunk noir setting. Just check this shit out at around 8:15, when the character opens the door of his car hovering over Times Square.

The aesthetic is like LA Noire meets Bioshock meets Cyberpunk 2077 and it's absolutely impeccable. It's a brand of art deco noir 30's retrofuturism that I don't remember ever having seen anywhere else, and it fucking rocks. A visual masterpiece that's sadly wasted on a game that's the definition of meh.

Overall it's a very mediocre game, the plot is pretty confusing and derivative, just a more noir version of Altered Carbon with a hundred different indistinct characters that I mostly did not care about or even remember who they were as your character does the murder investigation. You investigate by putting together a kind of puzzle visually connecting characters and events, but I have to admit that most of my progress was by trying random shit because I had no idea who anybody was and didn't care. The gameplay loop is repetitive and kind of annoying, but holy shit is it an absolute visual feast. Soundtrack's pretty solid too.

I've been playing a lot of metaphor! I'm loving every bit of it so far! I've also been getting back into Isaac since repentance + launched and that's always fun.