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  • Hellblade II is almost certainly coming out this year, perhaps very soon, so I got Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice for a few dollars on the recent Steam sale. It's certainly a looker, but I would prefer if the mechanics were a bit more sophisticated. Maybe it'll get there, but I'm a few hours in now, and I'm pretty sure I've seen the entire loop. The combat and puzzle mechanics are both what I'd call serviceable, but it's really the presentation in this game that they knocked out of the park, yet I still don't know if that's enough for me to give the game a glowing recommendation, even if I am enjoying the game.

    I'm still making progress in Pillars of Eternity ahead of Avowed's release, finally getting into some of the White March content, around level 6. The game remains great, but my biggest criticism thus far is still that the intended player level for a given area or quest should be better communicated. I end up timidly doing the stuff that I'm confident is around my level rather than the content that appears to be most interesting to me at the time.

    Some friends and I started up a co-op game of Quake II in the remaster, and holy cow, this is so much better than our time in the first Quake, due in no small part to that compass feature they added. The era of FPS games I'm most into would be the era just beyond Quake II's initial release, and the biggest difference, I'd say, between those two eras in level design is that the older "boomer shooters" would let you get lost in a maze while their successors would close off access to most of the areas that you don't need to bother with yet/anymore, alleviating frustration. It also just feels so much better right out of the gate than the previous Quake, and the levels are somewhat trying to approximate a space that would exist in a fiction created for the game rather than just being a vague labyrinth with monsters in it.

    In another co-op group, I'm in the early hours of Titan Quest, as a way of dipping my toes into the loot game genre, which I hadn't really had a taste for in the past. I figured with the sequel on the way, and no desire to touch Diablo with a ten foot pole, this would be a good time to do it. We just had to fight a centaur that I'm not sure whether it counts as a boss or not; hopefully bosses in this game are more interesting than that one was, because with the skills we had access to in the early game (not many), the fight was mostly just running around in circles and taking shots at him when we could without getting pummeled.

  • I've been grinding that Diablo 4 and enjoying it a lot.

    After I finished the campaign, I made it to World Tier 4 (highest difficulty) pretty quickly, and I'm now level 97. I fulfilled my dream of becoming a bear that punches millions of demons, so that's pretty cool. Although I can't be a bear all the time though, which is pretty lame. In town, I'm forced to run around as a boring human.

    The next season begins in 10 days, and I don't know if there's a short break in between. Level 100 should definitely be possible, and a few other "milestones," but I don't know if I manage to do everything I'd like to.

    In Diablo 3, I'd usually play at the start of a season for a few weeks, and then take a break until the next one, so I never burned myself out on it. Since I started Diablo 4 at the tail end of the season, I'll probably end up playing a lot longer than I'd usually do, so burn out is definitely possible for me. A new character should hopefully freshen things up enough, and a friend might also play with me.

    Network performance was much better this week, although there are still some hiccups here and there, mainly during the Legion events.

    • Unless they change it with the upcoming season, there's no downtime between seasons for Diablo 4 like there is with 3, but they do give you the whole season to sort through your inventory in the eternal realm instead of just 30 days.

      • You mean when your seasonal characters become non-season and your items are mailed to you? In the beginning I was sorting through stuff, still keeping some items, but later I just destroyed almost everything, since I don't play non-season anyway, so I'll probably do the same here.

        It sucks, that there's apparently no rebirth feature, like D3 had. I liked playing essentially the same characters over and over again from level 1, and not having to delete them and make a new one.

  • Neverwinter Nights on my phone. Third or fourth playthrough (first ones were on PC). Absolutely cooks the battery, but entertains for hours while travelling as long as I can plug in. I really wish BeamDog would have spent a little more time optimizing it.

    Next will be Icewind Dale and will be my first playthrough I think. Then I might go back to NWN for some of the community quests.

    • Do the NWN games offer better combat feedback than the 2e Infinite Engine games? It was a real pain point in Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 (especially 2) that it would just tell me something didn't work without telling me why it didn't work, and modern RPGs will show you the full dice rolls so that you can understand why.

  • Tribal Wars. They came over Steam.
    CastleClicker on mobile.
    Path of Exile and Blade & Sorcery over VR.

  • Diablo 4: Season 2 - Nightmare dungeons galore.

    Diablo 3: Season 30 - Season 30 started this week, so I've been working on leveling up my monk and completing Chapter 1 objectives.

    Alan Wake 2 - Finished the game, and now I'm debating on going thru again on The Final Draft (aka new game plus) instead of moving on to Dead Space. I heard the beginning and end were slightly different and that there were extra manuscripts and videos to be found, plus I only have two achievements left, so why not go for 100%? Besides, I loved it. Remedy has been building a universe, and I can't wait to see what they come up with next. There's nothing that I've played from them that I haven't loved so far.
    ::: spoiler 🔦💥
    There is a bit towards the end where you play as Alan and you're going through the forest and it had the original music from the first game. I didn't think this game would make me tear up, but it did during that section. I would love to see the original Alan Wake overhauled with the new engine. It would be phenomenal.
    :::

    • Diablo 4: Season 2 - Nightmare dungeons galore.

      I've only just started doing the dungeons, since I've only been playing for two weeks, but so far I'm not a big fan. It feels like there's only a few environments, not enough monster density, and the occasional backtracking is also boring (pretty short though, to be fair).

      Diablo 3 has technically even less variety with its rifts, since it's just kill demons until a boss spawns, but it's just packed, and I loved blasting through tons of enemies. Although in a multiplayer session, when one player is just destroying everything at mach 2, and you're just waddling behind them, that's arguably worse (I played mostly solo or some friends, doing public sessions to farm bounties or materials).

      The open world events, Helltide or Blood Harvest are a bit like the D3 rifts, just not as many enemies, but still really fun. It's a bummer that you can't just keep doing that, if you want to keep progressing your character.

      Getting better Sigils is kind of a pain, since it's just RNG drops. I could easily do higher tier dungeons, but have to wait for them to drop. At least you're kinda guaranteed to get at least one Sigil on your current level I guess, so you don't have to move down. Now that I'm writing this, I gotta check if I can craft some higher tier ones, last time I was missing some materials, maybe it's not as bad.

      • Yeah I'm not a huge fan of the Nightmare Dungeons myself; the only reason to go through them is get glyph upgrades. It seems they rotate which dungeons become Nightmare ones each season, so I've been slowly working on a list of which I can go through the fastest so I can focus on other stuff.
        iirc the Tree of Whispers is a guaranteed drop for sigils, but from what I've found they're usually lower tiered then what I want so I end up salvaging them anyway.

  • I finished Cassette Beasts a couple of days ago and now I can never go back to Pokémon.

    I honestly can't sing its praises enough.

    Don't even know if I can play any other monster tamers now. Still, I might pick up Coromon and/or Nexomon: Extinction or something else at some point, but man, Cassette Beasts absolutely spoiled me.

    Highly recommend to anyone who'd like some chill vibes (with some dark moments to make for good contrast) and no significant stress in terms of strategy. Like, yeah, it technically matters when it comes to type advantages, but sometimes it's just fun to fuck around and see what fusions you can come up with, regardless of type.

    Oh, and if you like games where you aren't restricted to gender norms and can romance anyone of any gender, also a good option.

    I feel like if you enjoyed the vibe of games like Stardew Valley or Spiritfarer or (going old school here) Chrono Trigger, you'll probably enjoy this, even if the gameplay is entirely different.

    Honestly, even if you enjoy Pokémon but might be sick of it for whatever reason, it's a nice change of pace as well. It has enough in common to feel familiar, but sets itself apart in a bunch of ways which make it stand entirely on its own.

    Music is also great, though you might get sick of one song that repeats. And repeats. And repeats.

  • @chloyster Guild Wars 2 World vs World and Ghost Recon Breakpoint (which was on deep discount). The latter appears to have been mostly turned around with regards to its release bugs but I am still in the process of gauging the capability of the enemy AI.
    The fact that you can tweak the gameplay details on a scale of "the division Style looter shooter" right up to "almost mil-sim" levels is quite impressive to me.

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