What Games Are You Playing?

Dai said:
Frostpunk
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I did finally get around to giving this a go. I love the concept but it has a bloody steep learning curve, doesn’t it? I’ve been exiled to certain death twice, I’m not used to ruler sims where I can’t assassinate people. Gonna have to do a bit of reading up on tactics before I try again.

Also got Cooking Simulator in the Steam sales, I’m actually really quite good at this. Started a second game just to see how far I could push things and found people will accept nothing but 100% liquidised tomatoes as tomato soup and still rate it at four stars. Also you can deep fry pretty much anything that needs cooking in a fraction of the time and still get a decent rating.

I did at one point get very fed up of people ordering the same boring dish and in a (futile) attempt to try and discourage anyone from ever ordering it again served them a bowl of cold, raw, liquidised onion and trout. Zero stars, but taste: “perfect”.
 
ayase said:
I did finally get around to giving this a go. I love the concept but it has a bloody steep learning curve, doesn’t it? I’ve been exiled to certain death twice, I’m not used to ruler sims where I can’t assassinate people. Gonna have to do a bit of reading up on tactics before I try again.
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That's interesting; what did you do to get exiled? The game certainly throws you in at the deep end more than other city management games, but I never found the discontent meter getting out of control on my playthrough. The game does give you enough rope to hang yourself with though, presenting you with laws and overtime options that will go down like a lead balloon in the long-run, even if they solve short-term problems. I went the faith route and tried to keep things in moderation, only resorting to public floggings when the Londoners started getting out of hand.
 
Dai said:
That's interesting; what did you do to get exiled?
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Well on my first try, I kept running out of resources pretty much every day and didn’t realise I had to research and build particular buildings in order to get more. With that in mind, on the second try (which did go better) I instituted longer working days and discovered you can shut the furnace down during daylight hours more-or-less safely. Unfortunately the illness and mortality rate then went through the roof and while I had resources, what I didn’t have was enough people to treat the sick or even to build more medical facilities, so I had to institute child labour to keep anyone alive at all. Which no-one was particularly happy with, but sometimes you need to take the hard decisions. So sure, send me to my death, best of luck you ingrates.
 
Completed Yuito’s side of Scarlet Nexus.

Did it in just under 30 hours but that’s because I didn’t do a lot of the quests as I wanted to just concentrate on the story. There could actually be a second game what with a possible conflict with those on the moon.
 
I finished up Horizon: Zero Dawn and its The Frozen Wilds expansion tonight. Though the gameplay is repetitive and not all the characters memorable I did like the story as it gradually unfolded with each expedition to the world of the past.

Now to wait for The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD to arrive.
 
In probably my best achievement playing Arknights I just completed Contingency level 12 on Operation Lead Seal's permanent stage!
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Contingency Contract is a seasonal event where you add risks to the stage to increase difficulty and thus increase the rewards. This involves increasing enemy stats, decreasing friendly stats and altering aspects of the stage itself.
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With contingency level 12 I've pretty much hit my limit for this stage. Will be referring to YouTube guides to bring that up to level 18 now.
 
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I decided to install and boot up Rayman Legends. Ubisoft gave away free copies months ago. I played it on the 360 when I was at Uni with my friends yeaarrrs ago and really enjoyed it so decided to give it another shot.
Holy poop I love this game so much. It still holds up well, still addictive and still looks beautiful. Having tons of fun with this one.
 
The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD. So far the free-roaming camera and increased frame rate have made a nice difference to the overall experience.
 
I never played it whilst growing up in my PS1/PS2 filled youth, but I am playing now the PS4 remaster of MediEvil.

I'm enjoying it! I do miss more confined action games where you don't have to free roam like you do in most games now.

That and its quite satisfying to go for 100% in each level to get weapons and other unlockables as those games used to have.
 
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Samurai Warriors 5

Been a while since I've played a musou game, I've missed indiscriminate slaughter.

For thos wondering its only japanese voices with English subtitles.
 
Super Mario 3D World
It's about time Princess Peach was playable again. I may be a middle-aged guy, but given the choice between playing as a plumber, a princess, or a squawking mushroom, hand me the damn tiara every time. Unsurprisingly Nintendo's gender politics are still trapped in the 1950s, so Peach plays as easy mode with her floaty jump, just as she did over 30 years ago in Super Mario Bros 2. Some levels can still be a challenge even with that ability, and for the most part it keeps the game on the right side of frustrating. That aside, level design is as imaginative as you would hope from a mainline Mario game, though its occasional new tricks (climbing walls and cloning yourself) aren't a game-changer in the way that Galaxy's approach to gravity managed. The only annoyance was the same thing that has irritated me about almost every post-SNES Mario game: gating progress with hidden items.

Bowser's Fury
This one plays much like Mario Odyssey, having a hub area that contains a bunch of objectives you can visit in any order. Its kaiju-sized boss fights are a neat gimmick, but aside from that this just felt like a tech demo, and didn't grab me as much as 3D World (not least beacuse it's back to being a plumbers-only club). The way to access it also isn't well signposted. I assumed I would need to complete 3D World to unlock it, but you just need to press right on the main menu. I had to search online to find that out, since the splash screen doesn't make it obvious.
 
I finished up The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword HD on Saturday and whilst the game still has its tedious parts the dungeons and story are great, and the gameplay enhancements make this the definitive way to play the game.

I also decided to finally delve into the Uncharted franchise with Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune and while the story was enjoyable the gunplay and platforming was very clunky, though I hear this was improved in the sequels.
 
I just finished getting all the trophies for Astro's Playroom - which was amazing. It's the free game that comes built in with the PS5, but I would have been happy if I'd paid £30 for it TBH.

It looks and sounds incredible and it's an absolute joy to play. The overall vibe reminded me a lot of Super Mario 3D World.

It's only fairly short (I got everything done in five hours), but it's an excellent experience!
 
Aside from dabbling with win 98 games I've mostly been diving back into the crash n.sane trilogy.
The psone trilogy are some of my fave games. I remember first booting up a playstation & playing the 1st game & being blown away by it.
I played all of them to 100% back in the day but this is my 2nd time attempting to dig into this remake as the 1st time it frustrated me so much that I sold it (xbone) because the jumping felt so off, along with enemy hit detection.

I'm finally trying it again as it was part of humble monthly a while back and struggled again so I went back & played through the original psone version of crash 1 again to see if I just sucked now & nope; I got through most levels without much loss of life (I finished the last boss with 47 lives banked).

I've now done the story in N.sane crash 1 & 2 now but probably won't go for all the gems. I've heard 3 isn't so bad because the collision detection is closer to the original but we'll see.

Once I've done with it though I doubt I'll ever play it over the original psone releases again. They still hold up pretty well graphically even today and the gameplay is better.
 
Poison Control
This one drew me in with its extremely pink depiction of hell and its striking sense of graphic design, and held my attention with its enjoyable gameplay loop. You play as a recently deceased individual who enters the personal hells of various women and helps them overcome the manifestations of their traumas. This mostly consists of switching back and forth between 3rd-person shooting and running around clearing up huge puddles of poison on the ground. It's an unusual combination of gameplay mechanics, which play off each other well, since you need to clear up poison to give yourself room to manoeuvre around enemies, and doing so restores your health. Poison Control clearly had a limited budget, which is most evident in locations that look Dreamcast-era, and slightly stiff controls, but it's all so abstract and appealingly stylised that it works. There's also a lot of jiggle, which is relevant to my interests.
 
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