[Malankazooie]

What video games are you guys going to be playing over the holiday period? (if you have time off) I'll probably check out some seasonal stuff that comes around yearly in RDO, Destiny 2, AC Valhalla (but probably not spend too much time in those). RDO Christmas event is pretty neat. You get snow, the saloons play Christmas carols, stuff like that. Anyway, not sure what else to try, thought I get some ideas from you guys.

[Mentalist]

Malankazooie, on 23 December 2021 - 09:44 PM, said:

What video games are you guys going to be playing over the holiday period? (if you have time off) I'll probably check out some seasonal stuff that comes around yearly in RDO, Destiny 2, AC Valhalla (but probably not spend too much time in those). RDO Christmas event is pretty neat. You get snow, the saloons play Christmas carols, stuff like that. Anyway, not sure what else to try, thought I get some ideas from you guys.

Starting tomorrow, I'm on break until the 3rd, and then after 1 day at work, I get Xmass break and not fully back to work until the 10th,

So I'm gonna keep plugging away at Xuan-Yuan Sword, VII, and then check out some more hack and slashy or maybe shooty games from my steam library Dad of War 4 is coming on PC in January, and I'm already feeling the itch to be killing a bunch of monster in wide corridors. El Shaddai, Marlow Briggs, Edge of Twilight, the Lord's of Shadow games, Third Eye--I've got loads of options.

Or could get the RTS itch again, and dive into Age of Empires II for a few months. Or check out some of my weird indie purchases or demos.

Who knows? It's good to have options.

[Aptorian]

I'm planning on sitting down and playing through Guardians of the Galaxy next week. Should be a great narrative experience.

[Mentalist]

Aptorian, on 24 December 2021 - 09:54 AM, said:

I'm planning on sitting down and playing through Guardians of the Galaxy next week. Should be a great narrative experience.

See, I'm curious about that, but I would need to first sign up to Disney + and invest a chunk of time familiarizing myself with the MCU, which is something I don't quite feel like doing RN

[Maark Abbott]

GOTG can be viewed reasonably standalone from the MCU, being fair. It's not as integrated as the rest of it.

[Mentalist]

I FINALLY defeated the optional flying fetus boss!
Took some grinding for crafting items to upgrade all my weapons (the upside is, my party also levelled up to nearly max level. Since most RPGs I've played require some grind (I mean, I've spent entire play sessions grinding money, levels, and crafting bits in Sekiro), I really can't hold it against the game, as much as I may want to. The fact that the fucker would do the Wilhelm scream before each dive-bomb attack is really what kept me coming back, instead of giving up and just moving on with the story. But now it's DEAD- or rather, captured, and its attack is part of my arsenal- and it's actually a damn good one! The special strike basically clears mobs of enemy soldiers with a massive AoE strike, and the heavy attack does VERY decent damage to both HP and stamina.

I was looking forward to diving into Nier Replicant once I wrap this up, but then someone finally translated an Age of Empires II custom Hungarian campaign from Chinese that I've been practically begging for; So I'm definitely diving back to AoK now.

[champ]

Aptorian, on 24 December 2021 - 09:54 AM, said:

I'm planning on sitting down and playing through Guardians of the Galaxy next week. Should be a great narrative experience.

Game any good? Was bought it for Christmas but I want to finish Tales of Arise first before diving in.

[Aptorian]

I played about an hour between Christmas and New Year on top of the few hours I'd played before. Still enjoyable, very talky, very beautiful, well designed.

I've unfortunately run into my seasonal gaming slump, where I mostly just want to read during the winter period. Which is odd, you'd think summer would be for reading and winter would be for games, but I'm the opposite. Anyway, I've got Halo, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mortal Kombat 11 and whole lot of other stuff downloaded on my X-box. I just don't have the urge to play them right now.

Hopefully I get out of the funk before Dying Light 2, Elden Ring and Destiny's Witch Queen expansion comes out in february.

[champ]

Aptorian, on 04 January 2022 - 06:00 PM, said:

I played about an hour between Christmas and New Year on top of the few hours I'd played before. Still enjoyable, very talky, very beautiful, well designed.

I've unfortunately run into my seasonal gaming slump, where I mostly just want to read during the winter period. Which is odd, you'd think summer would be for reading and winter would be for games, but I'm the opposite. Anyway, I've got Halo, Guardians of the Galaxy, Mortal Kombat 11 and whole lot of other stuff downloaded on my X-box. I just don't have the urge to play them right now.

Hopefully I get out of the funk before Dying Light 2, Elden Ring and Destiny's Witch Queen expansion comes out in february.

I'm interested to know if there is any space ship exploration, that would be cool, I'll find out soon enough nearing the end of Tales now. It does look a quality game though, from just the installation and main page I got the feeling I was going to enjoy it.


I go through similar phases which alternate between reading, gaming and watching. My reading slump hit start December but I think it's more down to the bipolar than seasonal haha. Suited me as I had built up so many shows to watch and games to play.


I think I'll stop everything though for Elden Ring when it finally arrives...

[Mentalist]

Relapsed back into AoK hard,

spent 2 days playing the new version of Viking raids in "Ragnar's Saga"- now with even more places to pillage, since the Saxons and Frisians are no longer friendly, plus there's the whole Varangian zone explore as well.

After that, had some down time, replaying the first 4 scens of Genghis Khan to grind out some acheievements, and then also the first few scens of the Cuman campaign, which is basically all about running away from the Mongols. They are really pushing the Cuman Tatar rivalry angle, which is ironic, since modern day Crimeans (whom the Russians call Tatars) are actually descendants of the CUmans who didn't run away to Hungary with Kotyan.


Not sure what scenario to play next- I want to give "Legend of Mstislav the Bold" another spin, but that just happens to be the one that's not updating properly. Typical.

Edit: played the first 2 scenes of the Louis I of Hungary campaign. Scen1 was pretty basic "gather troops in the countryside, snipe some rebel leaders and then clear a few bases"- with said bases being passive and giving me time to heal up between attacks.

Scen2 had me deal with Venice over control of Dalmatia before moving on to conquer Naples. This is similar to a scenario from "Tomislav", the Croatian campaign, but here there's a lot more land warfare and navy is just support, whereas in Tomislav I kinda had to win water to make any progress.
Holding on long enough to pay off the Genoese to start attacking Venice was a bit tricky I win my first base and inherit a lot of really crappy towers that don't get any upgrades, so I had to basically let my defenses get knocked down, and then rebuild a chain of towers in the many small islands in the Adriatic; disrupting Venice's trade and fishing really knocks them off-balance.

Next I have a cool fight together with Poland against the 2 Lithuanian princes, who are trying for a Relic victory--so I gotta snipe some Monasteries before the timer runs out, AND keep them from taking back their Relics. And there are also some Serbs and Tatars to make my life more difficult. should be fun.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 06 January 2022 - 07:42 AM

[worry]

Any Metroidvania recommendations? Emphasis more on the Metroid than the vania, but not necessarily scifi. Dread was great and then I played Guacamelee 1 & 2 in quick succession. Kinda jonesing for more of the same.

[Aptorian]

Ori and the... 1&2
Steam world Dig 1&2

[Mentalist]

worry, on 10 January 2022 - 11:42 AM, said:

Any Metroidvania recommendations? Emphasis more on the Metroid than the vania, but not necessarily scifi. Dread was great and then I played Guacamelee 1 & 2 in quick succession. Kinda jonesing for more of the same.

For more Metroid-likes, check Axiom Verge 1 & 2.
I've also heard good things about Outbuddies

[Aptorian]

More Metroidvania

Hollow Knight - More souls like than Metroidvania.
Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
Shadow Complex
And Rogue Legacy though it's more of a rogue lite. I just really love that game. Rogue Legacy 2 is coming out later this year.

This post has been edited by Aptorian: 10 January 2022 - 02:50 PM

[QuickTidal]

Got a Switch for Christmas from my lovely wife, so I'm playing BOTW. It's probably going to fight with Skyrim as the best game I've played in a very long time.

[Malankazooie]

Kind of different from the others listed but give Mark of the Ninja consideration.

[EDIT] ^ regarding metroidvania-like games.

This post has been edited by Malankazooie: 10 January 2022 - 04:11 PM

[Dadding]

Anyone try Back 4 Blood yet? I've been playing on Steam with my old Left4Dead group and we're really enjoying the deck-building aspect.

[Maark Abbott]

We finished Astroneer. Generally low stress and chill. Has some segments that can be frustrating (namely the absolute lack of tutorial so good luck flailing about until you learn that you need to craft oxygen lines to not die) but overall enjoyable space exploration. Easy 1000g as well.

[Aptorian]

I played Astroneer for like a month straight during the first lockdown. Really relaxing and fun game but like you say there are some frustrating aspects.

Namely vehicle control and the fact that if you die in some random cave system, you'll likely never find your corpse or vehicle again. Driving the big truck with a mining drill was awesome right until you get stuck in the middle of a cave ceiling, have to bail out, drop to your death and then have no way to recover your ressources. Much anger was had.

[Khellendros]

Dadding, on 10 January 2022 - 07:53 PM, said:

Anyone try Back 4 Blood yet? I've been playing on Steam with my old Left4Dead group and we're really enjoying the deck-building aspect.

My group had the opposite experience. We found it okay but just could not get into the deck-building part, just too much faffing about for our attention spans. We moved on to Aliens: Fireteam Elite, which is not great but also not anywhere near as bad as you might think. The most odd thing about it is that it seems like it actually has a decent story and tons of lore, but a co-op shooter where you're busy paying attention to what your friends are saying rather than the world-building seems a strange fit for it.