Playing Neo Cab for no reason that immediately comes to me. For the sub $5 it's worth it, the idea is somewhat interesting to play as cab driver in a cyberpunk-ish setting, even if the writing is a bit cliche.

Oona is a fun character, wil replay it to finish the side characters as the main plot sucks - someone described it as an emotional abusive relationship simulator and it is.

Edited August 6Aug 6 by Malcador

Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. I have finished the main story.

Somewhere mid-Act 2, I irreversibly broke the progression due to the developers' brilliant idea to make an NPC's survival critical for the main quest (the next NPC would not spawn otherwise) and not give the player an indicator that it was so (no "the thread of prophecy is severed" message), while the said NPC very explicitly asked to be stabbed in the face repeatedly. Thus, 10 hours later, I completed 1 mandatory dungeon in the area, explored quite a lot, and in general was not anyhow inclined to reload, while hoping that there was an NPC-unrelated option to proceed, like it was in Act 1. On a somewhat related note, I admire that Obsidian games are quite resilient to the player's actions.

So, after a few more hours and a few guides, I realised that I got stuck. I used the console to respawn the NPC, but it still led to a black screen in a cutscene a bit later. Thus, the only remaining option was just to activate the following quest, which I did. The journal description for the main quest did not update, but it went reasonably well otherwise - the in-game story proceeded and the next area became accessible.

At that point I was getting quite tired, while the inhabitants of the final area were fairly spongy and extremely similar to the previously-encountered foes. So I decided to try running to the nearest settlement, asking where the McGuffin was, and going straight for it. After studying the fog-covered map and visiting one burnt down settlement which lacked any useful information, I decided to go to the largest roundish shape on the highest mountain. When I reached the door, the invisible friend helpfully pointed out that it was the point of no-return for the region. I was pleasantly surprised, hard-saved, and entered the dungeon. Every other room contained a locked fog door and a duo of mini-bosses, which made the progression slower. By that time, I was relying more on the bow (Robbie's bow which I never gave to the quest starter), than my daggers for the non-human boss battles, so it was more a matter of patiently head-shotting things and hiding, than actively running around. It was not the most exciting endeavour, but I got through and picked up the McGuffin.

As I exited the dungeon, I pulled out the guide and cleared the dungeons required for the secret ending. Ironically, the triple-lock cave I had found earlier was the end-game dungeon (the quest journal still did not point to it). After a lot of chatting, I faced the final boss who went down easier than a random corpse eater in the final snowy area. The slides showed some of the outcomes for the regions and NPCs, though I remembered only a half of them.

To summarise it, while the beginning and the QoL features are reasonably well-made, the quality falls as the game progresses and the narrative never truly grabs attention. Overall, it is a fun sandbox game and should one be satisfied with the first 20 or so hours, it should provide it.

The most positive aspects are largely the accessibility ones - the controls are rebindable, the saving system is well made (several rotating auto- and quick saves of very reasonable size of 1-2MB), and there are difficulty options. The system requirements are as good as they can be for an open-world game, and Tainted Grail uses Unity instead of UE5 (may that unoptimised junk be sunsetted soon).

There is a lot of exploration and it feels quite engaging in the first area, while the combat is surprisingly functional for the first-person camera. At the start, there are a lot of options for dealing with obstacles and freedom of movement. The visual style is appealing overall and the forest looks gorgeous. The range of abilities and their synergy with equipment provide a wide variety of builds. It is also incredibly convenient to be able to open the unlimited stash and fast travel at any point out of dungeons (there are 3 large open maps with smaller separate dungeons inside them).

However, as the game progresses, the cracks start to show. The boss arenas teleport you to the middle, forcing you to start the battle in the Detected state, the main quest breaks without warning when you kill an NPC, the ground itself does not have collision boxes in some places (the Unstuck button usually helps; if it does not, there are console commands and reloading). In terms of balance, a random undead in the final area was hitting harder than the final boss.

In terms of story, while the main plot is generally fine and leans towards environmentalism, the environmental storytelling and lore are lacking (I was pulling fresh fruit and alcoholic beverages from bookshelves in an ancient castle). Additionally, the drawback of having a lot of killable characters is that none of them can be central to the story and, in some cases, the range of dialogue options is baffling. The demographic of the human opponents is also puzzling, though the combination of the South-Asian PC who goes and gets things done and either incompetent or malicious NPCs amuses me.

More Tales of Hearts R in between work and vacation, I am about 15 hour in (maybe more) and slowly getting over my clumsiness with the controls :D I have defeated second big boss of the game and our party has grown up to 5 members. Story so far is decent, no issues with it's classical jRPG cheesiness, and some skits are pretty funny. Still there can be seen some issues with localization, which I've mentioned last time, but it felt less off between Boss nr.1 and 2.

Have been putting some time in to Shadow Gambit - The Cursed Crew. It's a real-time tactical stealth game a la Desperados. It's on the longish side, so I'm kind of losing steam on it. But I come back to it from time to time and do a couple of missions. Hope that I'm in the end game after the mirror.

I've been playing Oblivion Remastered. I've never really pushed through the main story, so maybe I'll do that. Or maybe I'll get distracted and just wander around until I lose interest. The possibilities are endless.

Also my daughter very sweetly bought me $100 worth of Playstation gift cards for my birthday so I could buy GTA 6. She thought it was releasing this month. I was still excited and I preordered it. Now I just need to wait until November.

2 hours ago, Hurlshort said:

I've been playing Oblivion Remastered. I've never really pushed through the main story, so maybe I'll do that. Or maybe I'll get distracted and just wander around until I lose interest. The possibilities are endless.

Also my daughter very sweetly bought me $100 worth of Playstation gift cards for my birthday so I could buy GTA 6. She thought it was releasing this month. I was still excited and I preordered it. Now I just need to wait until November.

GTA 6 is going to end up as the most popular Rockstar game of all time and its biggest revenue earner

But its going to be a while before I play it because they haven't even announced the PC release date

Played through Armored Core 6 in NG+. Boy did they nerf some of the boss fights. I still remember how some of them really manhandled me over and over and over and over again. Now it's like I'm breezing through half of it.

On 8/10/2026 at 1:16 PM, Sarex said:

Have been putting some time in to Shadow Gambit - The Cursed Crew. It's a real-time tactical stealth game a la Desperados. It's on the longish side, so I'm kind of losing steam on it. But I come back to it from time to time and do a couple of missions. Hope that I'm in the end game after the mirror.

I will be curious to hear what you think of it and changes Mimimi made compared to Shadow Tactics and Desp3.

I finished Fry Cry Primal after 60 hours and it was fun

The main narrative and objective is different to other Far Cry games because its really about ensuring your tribe can grow and survive. Yes there are 2 main enemy chiefs you have to eventually defeat but thats part of the overall survival of your tribe

So everything is about building and upgrading your village and the welfare of your people

Then there are some great mechanics like taming beasts and how you use them in combat strategically and you can go on these unique hunts for very dangerous animals

Its well worth playing as a Far Cry game and it gets a solid 65\100 on the globally followed " BruceVC game rating system "

Now Im playing the Pale Beyond. Its a survival game designed like a CYOA RP adventure game. You need to make constant dialogue choices around how you manage resources and survive

The narrative is you become the captain of a British exploration ship stuck in Antarctic ice in the early 20th century. So you need to manage fuel, food and the constant morale of crew and you have to make hard decisions about who will survive the terrible arctic conditions because of the limited resources

Its set over 50 weeks that are broken into turns that you need to survive before you get rescued when winter ends and the ice melts. And there is an overarching question about why you travelled there in the first place which is unclear. The initial objective was to find another ship that vanished 5 years ago but what are the sponsors of this latest expedition really after?