Tale

I'm torn. Baldur's Gate 2 is such a treasure to me. But Divinity: Original Since 2 was just... okay. I've got to hear more on the writing, particularly the characters. I've forgotten every character from DOS2 already. It's not impossible for them to accomplish it. Baldur's Gate 1 characters weren't so memorable either. Not until 2 made them so.

Okay, hear me out. DOOM by Obsidian

I can find no mods that make it so the loot isn't just piles of crap that's managed by horribly slow menus. It's mostly cosmetic mods, a few rebalances. Ooh, I see one that drops even more loot. That would just make the problem worse.

Dragon Age Inquisition's loot system is annoying the crap out of me. It's one of those games I feel is trying too hard with loot. You have three tiers of loot, 4 rarities, customizable upgrades, and loot progression that goes alongside character level. Then, if you're a mage, you have to sort 3 damage types for your weapon because this will be on the test. Which means you're constantly finding utter crap. And you have to navigate the slow menus one item at a time just to make sure it's crap. And even when it's not crap, you're now going into another slow menu to take off the upgrades from your old equipment to put the upgrades on the new one. Your equipment basically has their own equipment submenu that requires accessing through a special location. And if you want to keep your entire roster's equipment up to date, you need to do this process like 10 times. Because you never know when you'll need to take someone off the bench. Customization is desirable because it's supposed to reduce the doing of all this. Find something you like the looks of and you can keep it by upgrading. Find something with stats you like and you can make it look cool. Here we're just adding more loot, more stats, more junk, more menus. I'm not even saying that games need to stop doing loot. They just need to loot to not be an obligation. It needs to be an interesting game system. It should have the value of a good skill tree, representing a play style. And only upgrading when it changes substantially or when you want a player to try something out different. Not just be ups. Soulsborne games are great at this. Even many games with too much loot show they know how... in their endgame. But games don't need the earlier filler. If the end game is where the interest is, the whole game needs to catch up.

I should be playing The Last of Us 2 and finishing Final Fantasy XIV. I'm not. Instead I'm playing Dragon Age Inquisition. The weakest Dragon Age and the one I've only ever played once before. I actually really like it (I should, I bought it three times), but too much of it feels like filler. And the characters and plot don't engage the way they did in the first two. But I hear great things about Trespasser, so I'm going to push through. Crysis is probably my biggest example of better the second time. I didn't even get Crysis the first time I played it, trying to play the titles like every other FPS. Now I'm sprinting behind rocks to recloak and sneaking up behind people like a Predator who can't hide in trees and whose cloak only lasts 4 seconds. Is fun.

Finished AWE in Control. Super weak. Alan Wake is coming back! He has no role in the story, he's just teased in it. It's just chasing after a darkness monster in a new wing of the Oldest House with a few darkness gates from Alan Wake.

Was playing through Control. Got up to AWE before getting kind of tired of it and moving to Paradise Killer. Control is good, it's my second playthrough, but I just get bored of the whole metroidvania backtracking just to pick up an extra bauble thing it does. Some fantastic setpieces in it that sort of tie the whole game together, though. Paradise Killer feels like someone played Danganronpa 2 and decided to turn it up to 11 and really focus on the investigation. And I love it for that.

I played enough Remnant to know it was fun, but maybe a bit to small for my taste. It lacks the imaginative lore that I love about other Soulsborne games and felt over too soon without any real twists or reveals in the story, either. Otherwise I'm going through some replays of old favorites to see if they hold up. Tales of Monkey Island was once my favorite game. And it was still freaking incredible. I'm in the midst of Soma and it's simply only great. Honestly, great is a step down from what I remember.

Did a replay of The Outer Wilds. It's still great, but some of the magic is lost when you know how to do everything and go everywhere from the beginning. It's rather great that the game is ultimately only gated by knowledge, even if it hurts the replay. I've played a lot of Popup Dungeon. Kind of addicted, might make a campaign for it based off an old story of mine. And working my way through Tales of Monkey Island again. It was once my favorite game, so it deserves the revisit. First episode reminds me of why I liked it a bit.

Bought the new Wolfenstein games on sale. I played (and 100%ed) TNO on PS4 and thought it was just good. Not great, good. But I checked out reviews that seemed to gush over 2's story and seeing all the people upset about it for like pushing white guilt or whatever, I simply had to get it. Man was it oversold to me. It was just good.

I skip dialogue in lots of games. It's just Control is better paced then most games where they just blather at you. Log entries aren't really important, either. It's just a well made game. It's got interesting log entries to find, if I recall correctly. So if you're down for that, you'll find it. It's just not what makes the game good.

I played it when it first came out. Pretty awesome game. I'll double dip on Steam when it hits a good sale.

Anyone who says anything positive about the Bounty Hunter storyline in TOR is dead to me. I wanted to shoot people for money, not be a reality show contestant chasing around morons, then inviting them to my ship because my companions think the dude being obnoxious means he's useful.

Can't settle on anything. Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers has hit a lull where I need to start grinding levels. Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy is fun, but repetitive enough I don't want to overindulge. Cryostasis, an old horror game I never managed to really play due to high demand on systems. Well, it's still not hooking me even though it feels like an older Frictional Games title with none of the interesting backstory. Get Even has some interesting stuff going on, but not enough to feel like more than a Tom Clancy shooter with some horror/thriller bits. Those horror/thriller bits are what I like, but I just spent an entire level infiltrating an office building and there was none of it. Yuppie Psycho. Cool idea, but I'm not really sold by the moment to moment stuff. I gave up on Rime. Fascinating environs, but not much else going for it. Wolfenstein: The New Order, already played myself tired of it so it's not exciting to come back to. I did play Frog Fractions and rather enjoyed it.

I bought Far Cry 3 on sale. So many people raved about it, but I never played it before. But I absolutely have played it before. Climbing towers to uncover the map, hunting animals for upgrades, clearing out enemy bases for ZOC. I've played this game lots of times... I somehow managed to skip Ubisoft formula outside of Assassin's Creeds until I abandoned even that at 3. And to run into it again is kind of disappointing, because it's just so heavily present.

Final Fantasy XIV and I occasionally take breaks to play Elite Dangerous. Trying to earn money in ED and it's not going so great. Just equipped my ship for core mining and can't find anything. For LTD mining I basically end up spending an hour to earn 6 mil. So that's not been tops either.

The hardware is subsidized. That and the exclusives are pretty much it. I can blow $400 easier than I can build PCs whenever it comes down to it. But it's usually a specific game that's the decider for me. Once upon a time that was the Metal Gear Solid franchise. I'm not sure what it might be next gen. If anything.

I'm onto Stormblood in Final Fantasy XIV. I enjoyed Heavensward a good deal.

I'm sticking with FF 14. So many people have said it gets better in Heavensward. And playing Gladiator/Paladin instead of Thaumature/Black Mage has resolved the feeling of monotony. I finished Astroneer. Fun game, I might go back if I clear other stuff off my plate. But the same thing that makes me want to go back has me eyeing Satisfactory instead. Also ended up buying a game on itch.io along with that bundle of like a thousand games. A Hand With Many Fingers. It's a conspiracy theorist simulator, only not racist or mentally ill. You get two white boards and an archive and you use that to unravel a mystery. I'm not very far in, but I'm intrigued. I love mystery games where you unravel it.

Still Astroneer. It's slowed down a lot since the final two planets have ridiculous energy requirements. I'm basically about to start grinding out RTGs just to meet the last one. I can do it, it's just boring. Maybe I'll build my base connected to a tower so that the second I hit the requirements it'll activate without extra effort. Or maybe I'll build generators. They're easy to make. I also enjoy walking down to the core, digging tunnels only as necessary. It takes a little longer, but it feels more adventurous than building a mining rover and pointing down.

Destiny 2, not really an MMO but aspiring that direction, hooks their story early. The city is attacked by the bad guys and now you've got to regroup with you rallies to take it back. It's not like it's super deep, but it's interesting and exciting. It makes you want to see what's next. You're introduced to the big bad right away and are motivated to defeating him. I have no idea who I'm supposed to be against in Final Fantasy 14. I assume it's that Empire who was featured in the opening cinematic and my character has yet to encounter.

Final Fantasy XIV, the MMO, was free on PS4 recently. And it was lots of fun for a few days. Until the story completely failed to present a hook after like a dozen hours and I looked stuff up and saw there was nothing cool to look forward to in abilities. At that point it just started feeling like every other MMORPG I played and got tired of. It's cool to have the Final Fantasy brand, but sucks that it has none of the Final Fantasy coolness and power fantasy. As a Thaumaturge, all I have to look forward to is eventually getting Flare. Limit Breaks can only be used in parties. I have precisely 0 interest in spending dozens upon dozens of hours doing nothing but a blizzard/fire juggle. Thunder, my favorite of the three common FF spells, has been turned into a dot. As to the story failing to hook, the entire story so far has been about a criminal gang out in the desert who aren't even worth giving names. I'm level 30 with a 50 cap and I've seen one cutscene of some Empire I know nothing about doing nothing I care about. So I bought Astroneer and I'm exploring space. And it is good to explore space.

Halo 2 Anniversary. It runs much better than I expected a current gen title to run on my computer. Just have to set it for performance and turn V-sync off. Looks kind of like a 360 title as a result. Or maybe that's just how it always looked. I also just bought a new computer, should arrive at the end of next month. Found like $250 in discounts on one I'd been eyeing, so I snatched it up. Come September I'll be able to play Cyberpunk 2077 with mouse and keyboard.

Trying out Breathedge. And I love it. It's a good chuckle from the very start. Only complaint I have is the low amount of air you have, so you constantly have to run back. The only place I know to expand requires me to set up two oxygen stations just to reach.

I played Final Fantasy X. I wanted to give it a second chance after all these years and it was much better than I remembered. But I still see why I disliked it when released. Tidus acts like a child, his performance and Yuna's are both lacking. And the random encounter chance is simply ridiculous. But I actually really enjoyed it. I also rushed through The Forest. Building a base is too tedious for me to enjoy building. Have to chop down like a dozen trees and fight off half a dozen cannibal attacks just to build a log cabin. And you still don't have any defenses up. I'm not a fan of fighting off cannibal attacks on your camp. But spelunking into caves trying to find your lost son and fending off mutants living down there. That was my jam. Final boss sucked, though. I'm on to The Long Dark. The Forest reminded me that I do enjoy story stuff in these survival games. But this one is trying a bit too hard at that. So far the story is people talking way too much without giving any insight into the greater disaster. I guess it's more exploration, unraveling a mystery, and environmental storytelling I enjoyed. But it's still interesting.