[Mentalist]

About 44 hours all in to wrap up The Last Faith with the True Ending. A few tricky bosses towards the end, but nothing overly frustrating.

Need to wrap up Blasphemous 2 now.

Edit: killed the last boss in Blasphemous. Playing Rusted Moss again. Probably the most challenging game in the genre due to bungee-based platfoming. Probably won't try to 100% this.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 15 December 2023 - 03:34 PM

[Mentalist]

The last climbing challenge in Rusted Moss is painful.

Figured I'll shelve the game, especially since there's supposed to be a big content update in a few months.



Finished "transiruby". That was fun, the game is pretty simple, but keeps things fresh for the duration. Although some points can be frustrating when I had no idea where to go next. The fact that you need to collect a certain amount of tokens to unlock the next part of the map keeps it more linear than most.

I wanted to play "Ebenezer and the Invisible World" for some holiday theming, but that game doesn't have control remaps (yet. The devs promised them in a later update), so that's on hold

So instead I started "Dark Water: slime invader", which is a puzzle platformer/collectathon. Nothing super remarkable, but it's getting more complex sjowly. You play as girl with a bow, and while she starts off shooting arrows to kill slimes and hit switches, you start learnign new tricks, like charged arrows, or arrows that allow you to teleport to them, as means of avoiding spikes and death.

[Maark Abbott]

Picked up a few new titles in the steam sale with birthday money from mum-in-law:

Lethal Company
The Karaoke
Night Delivery
Needy Streamer Overdose
Papers, Please
Black Mesa

Couple that with some additional Switch titles and I am eatin' good for a while.

[Mentalist]

Had some free time over vacation did a mini backlog blitz

-finished "Dark Water". Pretty decent, but the escape sequences it uses instead of boo fights killed my fingers- especially the ones that have escort elements to them with your second character.

started the year by finished "Laika". Had a fun bug when I finally unlocked Dash, and it was bound to the same key as "drift/change direction", so that was a bit of a WTF moment, until I realized I just need to rebind it. Final boss fight was neat, but that ending hits you straight in the feels.

Then I played "American Arcadia", which is a narrative story that's part 2d platformer, and part 1st person adventure game. Neat short game that doesn't overstay its welcome, and has a fun story.

Then played "Bramble: The Mountain King", which is a fixed camera action-adventure about 2 nordic kids that went walking the woods at night and ended up dealing with a lot of folklore stuff. You play as the 8year old boy whose older sister kets kidnapped, but you have a magic rock that shoots light, with which to fight off some (but not all) monsters. Gameplay's a good mix of platforming, stealth, some light adventure puzzling, and surprisingly fun boss fights. Overall, a really enjoyable game.


Currently working my way through "Erra: Exordium", which is a linear 2d soulsy platformer in a steampunkish Sumerian setting. The city is wracked by a plague and the serving automatons have gone crazy and started killing all humans. You play as a scientist that tried to transfer his consciousness to a robot body as way of escaping the disease. You wake up after the procedure in the destroyed city, and you try to make your way towards any survivors. Combat is stamina-based,with a parry and a slide, but you also have a gun. Actually, you change guns as you go, which is kind of what's screwing me atm, since I switched up my 11-round rifle for a sawed-off shotgun that can only shoot 2 bullets before reloading which is sort of not great.
The game's got some jank, but the art style is pretty gorgeous-- it's also got the most beautiful Steam trading cards I've ever seen. And oddly enough, apparently it's a project from a Ukrainian dev, which is something I didn't know until I decided to check the achievement list, but it's a cool

[Mentalist]

So I beat Erra: exordium. According to the credits, it was a Kickstater project, too, pretty neat.

The game has really, really nice art, and okay combat. Some encounter design wasn't great, and the final "boss" sequences are a bit underwhelming. Still, a neat little thing overall.

Currently playing "Tails of Iron" It's a basically a kingdom (re)-builder, with some occasional souls-y combat tossed in. there's no stamina bar, so it's all about dodge-rolling, blocking, parrying (block + attack buttons combo), and swapping 1-handed, 2-handed, and ranged attacks.

The combat is all-right, the presentation is just adorable.

I also played that Prince of Persia demo. It's quite nice, but the price point (70 CAD + tax) really isn't enticing. Will make a good summer sale pickup, though.

This post has been edited by Mentalist: 13 January 2024 - 08:05 PM

[Mentalist]

Jusant, the climbing game by DontNod, is a really neat, chill expereince. Sometimes a bit visually confusing, but nice.

The Cub, otoh, plays like an oldschool Disney platformer, but is a post-apoc story with a lot to say about late-stage capitalism. Also, really good soundscape.

[Maark Abbott]

I will hopefully be playing the Apollo Justice remasters soon. Just waiting for them to hit xbox store...

[Mentalist]

Forgotten Empires FINALLY fixed the bug where loading a save from a custom campaign scenario meant it wouldn't progress the campaign on victory- so that in order to unlock the next scenario you either had to ironman it (no save/load) or use a cheat (and not get a scenario medal).
So this weekend I was fully back into AoK DE. One of the best scenario designers released a new campaign in December about Mihira Bhoja- the leader of the Pratihara Empire, and it was pretty awesome.

And this week Steam Next Fest is upon us, and I downloaded like 50 demos.

Outcast 2 sold me. The game looks gorgeous, not really feeling the shaders stutter, and it looks like the kind of place I'd absolutely get lost in, doing open world stuff, talking to people and piecing things together. Haven't played an open world game since Biomutant, and I'll probably waste a lot of hours on this one.

Ereban: Shadow Legacy also looks and plays great. Nowhere near as dark as that initial reveal trailer suggested, and it's supposed to be out in the spring, so looking forward to it.

[Maark Abbott]

The remastered Tomb Raider trilogy came out today, so I've got it downloaded to play after work.

One feature missing is sort of bugging me. There's a photo mode in which you can position the camera, change outfit and expression and even held weapon - but for some reason no outfit selection when getting into a level or midway despite that from photo mode it's clearly very easy to do.

A lot of folks are chebbing online about it. It's minor to me but would have been nice. Game is buttery smooth at least.

[Tiste Simeon]

But does she have triangular boobs though?

[Maark Abbott]

Tiste Simeon, on 14 February 2024 - 05:25 PM, said:

But does she have triangular boobs though?

No - UNLESS you hit F2 which swaps you over to the traditional graphics, sorta like Halo 2 Remaster had.

It actually causes a little frame rate stutter in TR1 due to the fact it runs at like 20 FPS where the remaster runs at 165 FPS.

[Mentalist]

Been stuck in financial limbo.

Ended up going back to Heroes Chronicles, of all things. I blame all the videos for the new fanmade HoMM3 expansion pack that dominated my YT feed in January.

Making my way through Episode 2- Conquest of the Underworld atm. Actually managing to keep my supporting captains rolling over from one mission to the next this time around really helps. Having a bunch of high-level magic heroes makes a lot of early fights a lot more winnable

[Aptorian]

I just joined the Galactic War in Helldivers 2.

I'm doing my part!

Are you?

[Tiste Simeon]

Just finished playing through Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Love these games so much and because I never got the DLCs previously there was tons of new stuff to play as they're all included.

Made me teary, it's such a good story! Finished it with the Synthesis ending.

[Maark Abbott]

Playing Reverse Collapse: Codename Bakery.

It's an isometric strategy RPG; very anime but also set in a very detailed world with a history that is nearly Eriksonian in richness. The gameplay is also pretty damn fun. I gotta say I recommend this pretty heartily.

[Vengeance]

About halfway through AC Odyssey. Finished AC Origins in Feb. Really enjoying these games in the series.

[Mentalist]

still chipping away at Heroes Chronicles. Halfway through Ch 6, but these later chapters with only 5 missions each and smaller maps haven't been nearly as fun.

I also picked a copy of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga on Steam, and been dablling with that a bit, since it's basically AoE, but unlike AoE II DE, it actually runs well off my laptop.

[Mentalist]

BAck in town where my main PC is. Having so much choice papralysis, that I went back to the jank fest that is Crown of Wu.

Despite being considered one of the worst games of 2023, I actually sorta like it? The player character is ugly as sin, the double jump is finicky, and the combat is poor, but it's got some okay puzzle design, and the whole thing has that earnest old-school vibe. And combat encounters are infrequent enough so as not to become overbearing.

[Tiste Simeon]

Found my copy of Ghost of Tsushima which I'd set aside to play the Mass Effect trilogy and found I'd forgotten how to play so I basically restarted the whole thing. Which means there's so much ground to cover again as I was well past halfway through. But I love it so much I don't really mind, and I'm picking up skills etc a lot quicker then last time as I find myself remembering which techniques suited me best etc.

It's good to be back on it.

[Mentalist]

Biomoprph is pretty damn good.