Tried the Entropy demo. The art style is fantastic and the controls are rebindable. The lack of any QoL features, such as manual saving, and the RPGMaker-like combat are disappointing. Given that it's the developer's second title with the same single auto-save system (now with backups, fortunately), I have a suspicion that it is intentional.

Also, the thing I adored in GreedFall is that the skip line and the select response functions were different keys, so I could safely tap away on replays. Speaking of, should replay and try to get a better ending for one of the factions.

I have decided I wanted to replay all the Kings Quest games from 1-6

I found this website where the first 3 games have been remade in updated graphics and all the actions are now point based with icons like the later games. So you dont need to type " open door "

It creates a much better experience and streamlines the game around mechanics

You can also download all 3 first games for free, I am busy with KQ3

https://www.himalayastudios.com/games.php

I did use game guides and tips in KQ1-2 fairly often but for KQ3 I have decided to not use them as much and its rewarding finding solutions and advancing in the game through exploring and trial and error. KQ3 creates a really interesting narrative where you explore to find spell ingredients to free yourself from your wizard overlord

Overall its great playing these old classic games, lots of memories and a truly nostalgic experience

Hitman Absolution isn't too bad, not all that Hitman feeling though. Seems they watched too much Tarantino when making this

It’s the year of photography for me! After playing Viewfinder, here I am on Umurangi Generation, a title with a very simple concept: you explore small areas in a dystopian cyberpunk future to complete photo missions. There's no action or game over here, photography is the sole gameplay element. It’s a very chill game, where you have about ten objectives per zone (like photographing a "kiwi" or hunting for the 9 film canisters, etc..), which forces you to look at every single corner of the environment and sharpen your eye. I had a great time, and the OST is very, very cool!

Finished Hitman Absolution. Not all that bad, story is a bit out there as I mentioned earlier, but a fun experience, was definitely a 6 or 7 out of 10 game, but nothing as good as Blood Money.

Played and finished Avowed. Pretty good game overall, would give it a 7/10 "Good". I'd also probably pick up a sequel, depending on where they intend to go with it (there is plenty of the living lands we haven´t been to, certainly would not mind seeing more of it), though likely not if they're going to charge 70EUR again.

Forced dodge/parry based combat are not really my thing and just getting out of the way by just sidestepping an attack not being a real option kind of annoyed me. Aggro rules, if there are any, are rather opaque. There really did not seem to be any consistency on who mobs focus on. Even if you're in another room there´d be one that magically would chase you down to beat your skull in. Anyway, it obviously wasn't enough of a bother for me to not finish the game, but expletives were used at time.

I thought the overall story was intriguing, though I do feel they dropped a bit too much information too early, by the end of the first area, if you're a bit of a completionist, you pretty much know the gist of what is going on and it feels as if the rest of the game just fills in the outline.

The Scatterscarp major decision kinda felt icky to me, especially a scholar PC and/or Giatta should've been able to give more insight as to the consequences of one of the choices. It just felt like the devs were actively trying to rope you into a specific decision.

The whole political angle to things, on the other hand, felt like it turned out a lot more black and white than I had hoped, which was a bit of a shame.

Endgame choice

Notably I would have very much liked to see more speculation, in game, about the Emperor's role. He had a reason to send you there, specifically, so he clearly knew "things". To what extent Woedica was involved would have been something I'd have at least liked the PC, or the NPCs, to speculate on.

The Aedyran Empire being dedicated to Woedica was, at least for me, one of the main reasons to go it solo as the Living Lands. Even though the Steel Garotte had gone rogue, so wasn´t representing the Empire anymore, inviting in an empire that is dedicated to a goddess openly, and obsessively, hostile to Sapadal seemed like a rather bad idea, even when from a practical, and origin, point of view some sort of allegiance, like a grefram, might have made sense.

While you appear "stuck" with your companions I did enjoy the ability to "agree to disagree" with them. That said there were, especially later in the game, some jarring inconsistencies in their reactions, where they'd praise you for something when it is happening and then scold you when talking about it in camp, or vice-versa.

There was also the one quest near the end that made absolutely zero sense (the one with the stolen books in the archives) as you're given absolutely zero context so you're just making a decision blindly resulting in companion reactions that entirely out of left field. Thankfully that was the exception.

Anyway, enjoyed my time with the game, would recommend (but not at the launch price).

Aside from that I played through what is available of Subnautica 2 so far. Mostly it is more Subnautica, so if you didn´t like the prior ones, well, don't bother, but if you did, good times!

The one thing that sort of annoyed me is the amount of hostile wildlife compared to the first one(s). I feel it cheapens the experience. It's a bit hard to explain, but feeling vulnerable and avoiding enemies as you didn´t know how dangerous they actually were felt like a big part of the earlier games. Having bits taken out of you on the regular kinda makes it less scary, if that makes sense?

Curious to see how the game develops but they're off to a good start at least.

Edited 18 hours ago18 hr by marelooke

Finished Chaos Gate Demon Hunters. I liked it overall, there was enough there to pull me towards the ending. Although I rushed through the last part of it and skipped some available missions that showed up. Missed the 500 days achievement by a couple of days, but apart from that nothing else that I really wanted to do. Could have gotten that too if I didn't prolong the game to get some upgrades, but w/e...

I don't see the complaint that there is not enough enemy variety, but I will complain about the boss fights. They are ass and don't feel like bosses at all. I played on normal, but I still should not be able to kill them before they get their turn. They had the idea with the last boss, which was damage gated. So that took some time at least, but it wasn't particularly challenging.

1 hour ago, marelooke said:

Aside from that I played through what is available of Subnautica 2 so far. Mostly it is more Subnautica, so if you didn´t like the prior ones, well, don't bother, but if you did, good times!

The one thing that sort of annoyed me is the amount of hostile wildlife compared to the first one(s). I feel it cheapens the experience. It's a bit hard to explain, but feeling vulnerable and avoiding enemies as you didn´t know how dangerous they actually were felt like a big part of the earlier games. Having bits taken out of you on the regular kinda makes it less scary, if that makes sense?

Curious to see how the game develops but they're off to a good start at least.

Yeah, they sort of seem to not know what they want with the threat mechanics. They did say they plan to expand on it and make it more interesting but so far I agree that it's a step down from the first part. Although I will say that the first part may have been better in that regard simply because it was new and people were interacting with it for the first time. Here, in part 2, people already know what to expect so the feeling of see it for the first time is lost.

1 minute ago, Sarex said:

Yeah, they sort of seem to not know what they want with the threat mechanics. They did say they plan to expand on it and make it more interesting but so far I agree that it's a step down from the first part. Although I will say that the first part may have been better in that regard simply because it was new and people were interacting with it for the first time. Here, in part 2, people already know what to expect so the feeling of see it for the first time is lost.

I've always avoided fighting the bigger wildlife in the first games, but it is kind of unavoidable in this one. We'll see where they go with it, I suppose, currently they feel more like a nuisance than a threat, which does not seem ideal if you are trying to create a tense atmosphere.

Familiarity indeed plays a significant role. I'd be extremely impressed if they manage to recapture that feeling from the first game, but I consider it rather unlikely and am certainly not banking on it.

7 Days to Die has released 3.0-experimental build for us to look at. There are 50ish more POI's, probably other changes. The "big" thing however is the game now has about 100 "sandbox" settings/options for players to fiddle with. Maybe half the small things I'd .xml-edit myself are part of those options, meaning less .xml-editing for me. Like, can turn the "heat" feature completely off, or make it so only "normal" level zombies spawn, none of the overtuned sci-fi zombies.

While I love having lots of options, 100 of them unfortunately leads me to analysis paralysis. What do I change? Is that the right setting for what I want done? Is 125% ok, or should it be 150%, or 75%. And ofc, bugs. At least you can save presets so once you find a few combos you like, you can just load the preset. I've barely even play-tested it tho, because the amount of change setting, test, change setting, test is overwhelming. It almost makes me just want to leave it "default" and just do the .xml edits I'm already familiar with. Haha.

EDIT: when 3.0 goes stable tho, I may save a copy of it. It may be the last version I care to deal with.

Edited 3 hours ago3 hr by LadyCrimson