What game are you playing now

Daisy the Swimmer is kind of embarrassing to admit to dling and playing a bit. It's mostly about the sexy motif and really is just pure jank. It runs badly, choppy play, no way to turn off music or even volume down, controls and fights are just annoying japanese style kinda like the older yakuza fighting but nowhere near as polished. It's just a sexy game that seemed so absurd as to be entertaining and it is but it's repetitive and runs terribly, you're better off grabbing sexy mods for say elden ring or some other much better game. It's a badly made unity game to appeal to horndogs lol Deleted pretty quick.

 

Fallen Aces however is fantastic. An old school noir game that has shades of Max Payne 2 and also Jazz Punk simple graphics but is well done. Pulpy comic book stuff with beatem up type of game play with some real use of stealth since you're outnumbered. It also has a built in console to add god mode and such if you're more interested in just seeing it all rather than management of your health and such.

It's an Early Access game so it only has the first of three parts but it's pretty long. I've played for over 2hrs and still not done with the first part. Great game.

 

I finished the 5 chapters in Fallen Aces part 1 and it was about 4hrs my guess, you can easily get lost in the levels though as there is little handholding for where to go so there's an exploration part of it. The only problem is that a lot of the levels are very samey so you can get turned around and lost pretty easy. Also some have a gimmick like needing a tool to get by things you're not aware you are supposed to be able to like fires. I'd hope the next two installments drop soon.

EDF6 a big run of missions up to about 50 of 147 in the main missions. The first dlc missions pack actually crashed on me in the 2nd or 3rd mission. Idk it's a grindy game of lots of the same levels of 5 and a few major new enemies but it's always been a grindy game. I use cheat engine since there are no trainers for it right now. Trainers, including Flings, are most likely all just cheat engine base then wrapped in fancy GUI and many of them don't bother to even do the work just lift the ct files and do the GUI part then ask for donations. Anyways trainer 1 hit kill takes a lot of the grind out of it but you still have to play the filler missions.

Admittedly the filler missions have dialogue for the story part but it's all the same besides the time travel part of it which is just edf5 missions. Every 30 missions you'll get new enemies and such and I'd just lookup the final mission of the game as I don't know I'll have time or interest to do all of them. 5 was enough tbh.

 

Tried Gloomwood and there's no controller support on a still early access game from 2019 and the studio has released several games since that do support controller like fallen aces and ultrakill, EA is just a way to have plausible deniability for years and not have to adhere to as many rules as normal releases, it's a scam that steam allows.

Another scam steam allows are games that promise things as they get paid but never follow up on or take years to do or not at all. The Long Dark is classic scamming. So it was out in 2017 with Wintermute story mode of FOUR parts, well it's now 2024 and we've got THREE so far, that's a scam that steam allows. In between we've got other paid dlc which are minimal TFTFT and the effort should have been put into finishing the story.

And Star Citizen is just another level of scam, over a decade of taking in money and paid dlc for an unfinished game. Although a lot of people play it that's not the point and they do have Squadron 42 or something which I guess is a part of the game that's finished idk.

The scams are rife in the vg field not to mention the gimmicky trash that nvidia does every few years to jack up prices and get some buzz. Physx, RT etc

Grinding EDF6 about 80 missions done of 147.

 

Just finished Earth Defense Force 6 and it didn't disappoint. It has a twist in the story part of it which was interesting. I finished it in 28 hours or so but I used cheat engine the whole game so it was a no die etc situation and I def spammed through a lot of missions bc this game has a ton of them and it's an endurance game more than anything. 147 missions over 5's 110 or so. And I've not done the two dlc mission packs yet so there's a lot of game from a sp pov and a lot more from a MP pov.

 

Dungeons of Hinterberg is a casual enviro puzzle and lite combat game w a nice art style. Many have compared it to a simpler zelda game which I could see. It's just a casual game that has smaller levels and probably won't be too long idk. It does overuse hardware for what it is though, when you talk to people in the game my cpu usage goes way up for what is shown and done and then my laptop fans rev up like when I play rdr2, not good optimized coding by an admittedly indy dev. Nice little game that likely has no replay value unless you wait a long time between runs.

Also got back into Fallout New Vegas and noticing the buggy ness of this game on modern hw. I also don't like that the game does not hot switch between kbm and controller. You have to use one or the other and in a game where console commands are almost necessary it's a pain to have to go into settings and switch it then back. I get crashes about every hour or so likely some memory leak or something w the code. To not get those involves modding the game and all that goes with that. It's still a classic but I remember the campaign and most side stuff too easily it's not the same as a new game w mystery to it so I just mostly wander around visting places and eventually will do the dlc again which I remember but not as much details as the main campaign and side stuff.

I don't care too much about the muddy older graphics they work fine for me. The wasteland is a bit too empty though, there are mods for that but idk not into doing more then some dragndrop mods and console commands. I'm good with mostly vanilla game.

 

Was playing Dredge which is a very chill type of game and can get a fling trainer to make it even more of a just chillout game then it is, less grind more meaningful playing. Great game if you like the ambiance and subtle mystery of it, it does get a little too collectathon to further unlock character interactions though. 771mb complete edition without the bonus stuff.

Selfloss a UE game which has a nice art style and is a mostly puzzle lite combat game. It didn't draw me in much besides the visuals and is likely pretty short, it's about 3gb runs ok but has indie jank to it in controls and such.

Dungeons of Hinterberg a lite combat game I kinda got bored of but will keep it on here for a while to have a variety of games.

Fallout NV modded up and has the coito ergo sum dlc mod. I also have a few random encounters mod to have less of a wasteland empty effect. No visual mods other then Clarity to get rid of the orange filter they nonsensically have vanilla.

CP77 when I get a few mods I want to try out no reason otherwise to play anymore for me done for a long long time with it.

 

Dredge is fun, for a while, then it just gets old. The constant collectathon stuff doesn't do it for me. I can only do so much collecting for this or that to get this or see that type of game, it needs to have some interesting puzzle or combat or something to it. Dredge just has you searching a huge map for various things willy nilly so it eats up a lot of time and gets tedious with the constant cargo management stuff. Too much gatekeeping behind wandering around for stuff and I have the fling trainer to speed the boat and such up and it's still just too much. A lot of it expects you to keep this or that item or fish in your limited cargo for some far away objective that it doesn't bother to let you know you should keep this or that item for and there are a lot of that going on. The map is atrocious and there is no on screen markers and detailed info about what is needed where, no notes on the map which is not detailed. I just get burned out of it, the atmosphere and such lasts only so long before it gets boring. So I think I'll put down dredge for a while maybe just boot it up as a casual collectathon here and there. Thankfully it comes in at only about 800mb so it's not like I have to worry about the size.

 

Just started Caravan SandWitch which is a ue game that is typical to overuse hw for what is shown, but at least I can dial it down for not such jet engine fans and it still has a great art style and satisfying truck traversal and ok on foot and climbing mechanics. It is way too wordy on the interactions and thinks we all want the obnoxious texting instant chat culture garbage in a game. It's another small indy casual game that is a nice filler when there are no major games. It's mostly exploration of a small world and collecting stuff to unlock upgrades for your car and yourself to find more stuff. There is an over arching goal of finding a missing person though. Nice little game.

Still doing FNV modding and by now I've done a lot of the better cleaner DLC mods like Coito ergo sum, into the deep, dry wells legion, Zion Trail, and more. Salt Lake Stories is fun but very buggy and crashes at some point most of the time very buggy. I wish he had discarded the car traversal and just had a big map that is closer together or just fast travel via a static car but I get the exploration part of it, neat mod but needs to be cleaned up. Various little mods here and there to keep it going because all I have left in the vanilla quest is to meet caesar and then make some decision about what to do then finish it. The problem is that once you finish it there is no post game unless you want to grab a mod that allows that which seems buggy at this point to me. So I have to keep doing the DLC mods until I'm bored and want to finish this replay of the game.

 

Kinda bored lately w games prob need a break. After finishing Silent Hill 2 Remake I tried to do a replay of it but it's too early I got bored early replay of that game.

I loaded up Disco Elysium and I just don't get this game, it's a weird DnD dice roll thing that's narrated constantly and has some pretty nasty stuff which gets boringAF to me. It's more of a visual novel combined with one of those old choose your next action books to then move to another page to get this or that so different endings. I just kinda get bored w the "edgy"-ness of it all the style is like dried snot imo. I've tried to get into this game before and didn't have anything too appealing to play.

Maybe I need to give more bethesda games a replay like FO4 or Skyrim since I modded the heck out of FNV and FO3 and had a blast but don't really want to start new games there, just play the save I had from years ago.

I also tried to start MGR Revengeance again but it won't start on my computer for some reason, never had a prob with it before. So I just grabbed a newer version of it might work better on this OS install, just havne't bothered to install it and fire it up. I'm not a big fan of QTE stuff though, huge prob w that game imo.

 

Apologies for not replying in a long time, I am rarely on here now and Ive just come on to see what is what, it looks like youve been playing a lot of different stuff after reading through it all. Daisy the Swimmer seems like a game that Ill be avoiding more than any others on that list haha, so thanks for mentioning that one.
I was actually looking at Dredge for the Switch, is it really that bad for collecting? Ive heard nothing but good stuff about it.

Bethesda games are great for replayability, I would recommend Skyrim and Fallout 3&4 to anyone looking for a longer game with a lot to do - and the mods make it so much more fun.

 

Ok sounds good, no I sort of regard this as a personal blog more then anything, this is just easier then getting one I guess, prob should check into it maybe get a bit of ad money out of it at least.

 

Playing RDR1 PC version lately, of course runs a lot better then ryujinx emulation I played through last year. The chief benefit of the pc version is mods, which I have a few qol ones so far, holding back on the textures mods until they get more developed. It looks fine to me and really it's amazing this game is like 9.5gb total, versus 117gb or so for RDR2. Of course 1 is a straight spaghetti western simpler action game VS. 2 being more sim like and epic. So one is spaghetti western the other is more like Dances W wolves or Open Range-unforgiven type of thing. I like 2 better but w mods to take out most of the annoying sim aspects like gun cleaning, horse feeding, food, drink all that annoyance.

1 is a much more direct and fun game but has less to offer of course. Undead Nightmare is also pretty fun I also finished that with the emulation version last year. The saves from the emulation also transfer over to the pc version. It's of course a cash grab at 50$ for a 14yo game with only marginal work done, like a straight port similar to the switch version. This does seem to look better then the switch version no doubt and runs better, it does have dlss and fg and other stuff but the mods are the largest benefit apart from the much better native pc performance.

 

I also grabbed Bully Scholarship Ed from archive and installed it, then grabbed mods for it and it works ok I just can't get the first "bully" you fight at the boys dorm to go down. I'm not sure if it's a bug or something to do with the trainer I use or if it's to do with one of the mods. The mods are for controls, save anywhere, and silent patch for modern systems so it's hard to think it's that. Idk but it is pretty funny game, I played it on ps2 when it came out and vaguely remember it.

 

Booted up Smurfs Dreams a new platform game which def takes a lot of inspiration from Mario 3d World and similar mario 3d games, like the Galaxy series. It's just ok after about 30mins of play not sure I'd go back to it, it's not the quality of the mentioned mario games that's for sure, kinda janky. For one you can't move the camera at all, it's auto and fixed so I had a hard time figuring out what where to go next to get the next bauble to unlock the next area. I think the combos for running floating etc are awkwardly done and strange control schemes. It's serviceable but not that great, even at the "epic" settings I'm playing at.

You really can't beat the classic 3d mario games and it's a real shame that those dicks at Nintendont can't see the killing they'd make if they remastered just the Galaxy series without the Wii remote garbage. I have played and finished both Galaxy games via emulation ages ago but had to use my controller in an awkward way to emu the annoying Wii remote. Releasing older classic games on several platforms is a gold mine for Nintendont sitting there. I know they have a cult following so it might eat into their hardware centric approach but idk, lots of the emulators would likely buy the games if they were available on pc imo, even doing an android iphone version of these games would probably be a mega goldmine for them so.

Can you think how awesome a remastered and modern camera Mario 64 would be, at this point you could likely just have some AI upscaling textures w the odd hand done stuff, a full 6 axis camera and appropriate control schemes, it would be amazing. I know Sunshine also has a big following, I wasn't gaming at that time so it doesn't hit much with me but man those guys are dense imo

 

Pure Rock Crawling which is a physics car offroad game, like those jeeps that go up walls and such. It looks pretty good as a UE game and is like about 5gb but has only 4 maps and they are all very small. This is a short game until they either add a lot more maps or we get modpacks of maps for it. I still have Mudrunner Spintires with all the dlc and this is a much better game and is only 1.4gb installed, I recommend this game over Snowrunner and expeditions if you like an old school version of this sort of game that is deeper then the others imo

Half Life 2 20th Anniv and I finally got the console code to get my xboxone controller working. Great game 20 years later. I had the box with the floppy disks back in the day, no steam. Great game. I haven't played Episodes yet and not Lost Coast. I 'm playing this vanilla, maybe mod it later on.

 

I finished HL2 and the two episodes along w the short tech demo Lost Coast and it's still a great game today 20 years later. I actually skipped most of episode 1 so need to go back to that, after reading ep2 is much better and I just don't have as much time to play games anymore so thought I'd circle back later on ep1. Other then textures in places it still looks great with the lighting and really great in certain places. The in game ui is a bit dated but it all works fine today, def some old school stuff. I only ever owned HL2 in the box w disks so hadn't really followed it since then 20 years ago. Never played the EPs until now.

And I can't believe they never went back to it after the open ended ep2 ending, they needed to strike then and I think Alyx VR game is the bridge to a future game which probably has some time travel etc involved to really forego any of the messiness of having to write to the ep2 ending. Sadly it would have been best to do it with the engine hl2 was made on because now you're going to have to do a lot more work to get to some ending. I guess they can use the Alyx vr engine there though. Valve is like Rockstar, they found a gold mine and it made them lazy content to stack gold rather then do new stuff. At least we got a full game with ending in GTAV before GTO took over and RDR2. Valve' Steam is their gold mine.

 

Also still have the og Borderlands 2, not the remaster, the original version which is like half size and still looks great 12-13 years later, plays fine with my xbone controller. I like the cinematic aspect and the humor still some funny handsome jack stuff and I'm still early game. With the cell style of BL2 it still looks great, maybe some textures could be better but I doubt the remaster version would make it that much better. The gameplay and story and such is the standout. Great game, one of the best.

Grabbing free versions when they come out and archiving them is really great if you are into preservation, these devs-pubs like to do remasters and then make it impossible to hard to find the original games even though they work fine with modern OS'. I much prefer originals especially in these games with custom art styles like BL series. The bloat isn't worth it with remasters. Alan Wake is another one where I skipped the remaster as I am content with the original which I still have installed, along with american nightmare which was never remastered. Same goes for Bioshock games all three of them. Infinite definitely still holds up well with it's art style to this day and I replayed it last year, classic game.

 

I was thinking about some GOTY that I've played this year and I really can't say it's been a great year for new releases tbh. Either they're way too big for my system right now, like over 80gb or so or I don't want to bother with most of them. Looking at what I've played that released this year that I like Silent Hill 2 Remake is a standout for sure. The other ones that I played are mostly remakes or remasters or just straight ports like RDR1. Half Life 2 20th was great. I did like Ghost of Tsushima just not that it's an all time great overall like most people think it is, very shallow and repetitive etc but it does look amazing and plays fine.

I haven't played games much for a bit, last one I'm still into is Borderlands 2 original replay and before that was Half Life 2 20th but I've not had time to play or really just taking a break for a while.