Gaming

This week I started Final Fantasy Tactics, but I've played it only for a few hours (a bit less than 10h). I think I prefer Fire Emblem's gameplay, this one feels too grindy and the combat seems a bit shallow.

Finished Raging Loop, the first ~20h were great, but I'm shocked at how bad the finale is. It was still worth it for the rest of the story tho.

Played through Resident Evil 4 Remake during the weekend. I think Village realized the action horror gameplay better, I found neither the action to be good nor the horror to be scary in this one (I have never finished the original RE4, but from what I played of it, it seems the same). I am excited for Requiem tho, which I'll play next.

Finally, I just started Utawarerumono Prelude to the Fallen, but I've played too little to say anything.

Finally in the underdark in bg3

Secret Agent Wizard Boy and the International Crime Syndicate updated their beta branch with a new castle layout so I explored that a bit this weekend, it's bare but has good bones. I'm looking forward to seeing how the rest of the game fills out the space, especially now that there is a tank

Other than that I've mostly been playing the Marathon Server Slam, and it's fun! The guns feel like Destiny (very good) and the time to kill is short which feels hectic and weighty. This is the first extraction shooter I've really tried and I like it! Rounds are usually 5-15 minutes so it's not too hard to hop on and play a round or two

I started Pacific Drive, which I think I like so far? It feels a little tedious getting into it, but I'm sure I'll have a better hang of it once I get the mechanics down.

Edit: After a good few hours of playing, yeah, I like this game so far lol.

Just restarted Core Keeper after it got a huge update. Had to decide between Core Keeper and Terraria. Will be busy for a few hours.

Finished Spider Man 2 early last week. Just as great as the first one. I really like how lived in the characters and the storyline is, so they can do the bigger city-ending type stuff. Now I'm really curious to see when they'll make a third one and whether that will come to the PC eventually too (considering Sony's looking at pivoting away from PC single player).

Started The Seance at Blake Manor and oh man is this thing scratching that Curse of the Golden Idol itch. Still don't feel like I have my head around all the systems but I can feel it sinking its teeth into me.

Played a ton of Steam Demos, most of which I enjoyed....

• Everything is Crab - Vampire Survivors + Evolution/Spore + crabs obviously

• Australia Did It - Little tower defense to protect a train, then more Vampire Survivors-y as the train is in motion

• Titanium Court - Match 3 strategy with a weird quirky vibe to the humor

• Sniper Dan - Use a sniper rifle to solve lots of problems in this hidden object game

• The Eternal Life of Goldman - Gorgeous hand-drawn style to a metroidvania. I tried enough to know I'd like it then set it down.

• Let's Build a Dungeon - Design an MMORPG, manage the studio, hire testers, and get rich.

Rise of the Ronin

Open world slop brainrot hit me just right (been over a year since my last game in the genre) and I've been thoroughly absorbed. After some stressful months I guess I really needed the free dopamine of collecting cats and clearing out the map.

That being said, the combat in this game is actually fantastic and just as good as people have been saying. I'm only at the very start of it and haven't even begun to master the intricacies, but I love that there is a dojo you can train in and I will probably spend some time there practicing stance- and weapon switching. While the movelist seems restrictive at first, it expands quite significantly once you unlock the skills that let you seamlessly flow between stances and weapons and I need to sit down and memorize all the moves I actually have available in my loadout. Add to that stuff like jump-parrying to vault over the enemy, using the grappling rope or shurikens or the handgun...

It's only been a couple of fights so far where I managed to get into some kind of flow, but those felt absolutely phenomenal. Great, satisfying parry in this game, too.

Demon Tides. The sequel to Demon Turf. It's an open world 3D platformer with a pretty deep move set. Definitely has some Wind waker influence too.

Also been dabbling in Hades. It's good and fun, but I'm not quite as blown away as I expected to be based on all the hype.

GeoGuessr. I'm both better and worse than I expected to be at this.