What games are you playing now?

Mech Armada: Skillfully done turn-based alien invasion of Earth with research for new units. Demo available.
Graphics is good. The engine is uselessly bogged down by what appears to be UE trash: slow rotation with much hated motion blur..
UI is exemplary!!! Probably because it was designed for small-screen consoles..
Worst feature of the demo is the annoying voice of the female narrator, who sounds like a character from a bad TV Show: good thing you can set her voice to ZERO and turn subtitles on, then you know what to do in the step-by-step tutorial.

I downloaded the demo for Wartales, a game where you lead a band of mercenaries which is expected to enter EA later this year. Had a lot of fun with it. Reminded me of Mount and Blade (but with turn based combat) and Battle Brothers. Definitely one to keep an eye on if you like such games. I don’t remember it being covered here but I might have missed it as the name is pretty generic.

I'm back from a month long hiatus from gaming, and not knowing what to try, I started a Sekiro playthrough without Kuro's charm. Basically, even harder mode. Now I need to perfectly time my deflects to not take damage. Previously, not timing properly, I only took posture damage. Now I take both posture and life damage without perfect timing. Just great.

Who am I kidding, I'll just have to see at which point do I quit.

I feel guilty, I have a third-completed (rough guess) run-through of Divinity: Original Sin 2 that I should complete. I just ran out of steam and had to take a break. So it's on to a couple of easy and relatively short games that I have in my backlog. The Fall Part 2: Unbound and Lost Planet 3, neither great games but both sequels to series I've been interested in. Lost Planet 3 is kinda weird as a Western reboot of a Japanese series, very different sensibilities. Though I like the "blue-collar work in on an alien planet" vibe, basically a future version of an oil-rig worker with your own mech.

Roundup:

Wildermyth is too easy. After the first few fights, I don't take a scratch. So that's put a damper on things. Instead of "incursion, oh no!" I'm more like "ooh, another incursion, yawn." The other thing is that while there's a lot of lovely turns of phrase in the writing, and I like its focus on characters/relationships, some of it is just too... twee, I guess I'll call it.

ATOM - haven't played this more since the last time I wrote briefly about it, but basically it wasn't a great first impression.

Bard's Tale 4 - Now this, on the other hand, made a great first impression. I still don't like Inxile's style of NPC graphics (playdoh people), but other than that this ticks a lot of boxes for me: interesting combat, ample exploration, great music and voice acting, good writing, good environmental graphics, etc, etc.

Elex - running out of steam after around 26 hours played, at level 17. It's a fine game, but I don't feel very motivated anymore. It's kind of hard to dredge up quests. There must be a lot more out there that I haven't found, but I kinda wish I knew where they were.

The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk

Much like the "comedy sidekick" of 80's action films, the term "fantasy romp" often brings a sneer of derision to my lips. It's seldom funny, often annoying, and not something I wish to invest my time in.

This game, however, is actually turning out to be quite fun. Beneath it's cartoony veneer, it's a solid turn-based tactical RPG with a nice amount of depth. I just mentally and emotionally cannot do grimdark right now - and this is fitting the bill nicely.

It's always been a bit expensive, but the steam sale finally took it down to a price that I can pay (24.00) without my backlog haunting me.

I still dont think i could stomach an 80's comedy sidekick tho

I've been playing Heroes of Might and Magic 3 as I've said before, but the Euro made me buy Football Manager 21.

I don't play this type of game much, but every 4 or 6 years I tend to get in the mood because of either the euro or world cups.

My interest tends to last just as long as the tournament does, but when it hits, I don't do much else gaming usually.

I started playing as a relatively good team in one of the UKs lowest leagues. I managed to get promoted in the first season and I'm now fighting for survival in the second season.

Funny enough, it's the first time I do so well in this game. I'm not sure if it's because this newer version is easier or if I understand football better now. It may be a combination of both. Still, I recommend to anyone liking simulation games and/or football.

Long time no see. After this year's totally nightmarish E3, my duties lessened, so finally I have some time to play games.

Scarlet Nexus then (XSX, also on PS / PC).
Hated the demo, loved the game, heh-heh.

This game is a superb fusion of kinetic gameplay, anime storytelling and modern action RPG trappings. Make no mistake, this is first and foremost an action game, despite the obligatory skill trees and equipment customization.

The gameplay is very Control-like: toss random objects to enemies with your super powers, but for me, SN' gameplay works better than Control's (which I found boring after a while). I guess this is because the game has a very confusing, but ultimately very rewarding psychic-power vs physical-power combo mechanic that requires switching your tactics constantly (Control's gameplay was surprisingly one-note for me).

The presentation is gorgeous. I really like this Astral Chain-style anime look, mostly because I am getting sick and tired of those big budget "photo-realistic" looks of recent AAA games. Also worth noting that several cutscenes are presented as some kinda digital manga: lightly animated comic panel stills, superbly composed. I really love this approach, because I feel this is more inline with video games, and less of a "movie-with-gameplay" (TLoU comes to mind). Also worth to mention is the utterly grotesque enemy design: I haven't seen anything like this in a video game, kinda reminds me of Silent Hill with a very bad LSD trip (if you are old enough, you might know what I'm talking about).

The story is very confusing at first (as animes do), uneven (as animes do), but give it enough time and it actually makes sense (as animes do). The lore (or "sekaikan") is extremely well done: small lore details really flesh out the bizarro setting, and ultimately it actually make some sense.

TL;DR: this is a very ambitious game, trying to do lots of experimenting at once. Although it mostly succeeds, the opening hours are very confusing. Give it enough time, and you might like it.

(and finally, this is something new and not a tired, safe bet sequel to some famous game, for crissake)

xSamhainx said:

The Dungeon of Naheulbeuk

Much like the "comedy sidekick" of 80's action films, the term "fantasy romp" often brings a sneer of derision to my lips. It's seldom funny, often annoying, and not something I wish to invest my time in.

This game, however, is actually turning out to be quite fun. Beneath it's cartoony veneer, it's a solid turn-based tactical RPG with a nice amount of depth. I just mentally and emotionally cannot do grimdark right now - and this is fitting the bill nicely.

It's always been a bit expensive, but the steam sale finally took it down to a price that I can pay (24.00) without my backlog haunting me.

I still dont think i could stomach an 80's comedy sidekick tho

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It's also a game I have been playing this week-end. A nice surprise for me. I really like how they have the original french voice of the podcast. That podcast was a really huge hit back then ('00) and it's great to hear them again. Beside the game humour (which I hope translated well to english), the game offers some pretty good tactical challenges. Of course, given the nature of the game, it's pretty linear. You can select how you upgrade your characters but you don't have much freedom beside this.

yeah dude, i was getting my ass kicked at first!

It looks all cartoony and cutesy, but they throw the kitchen sink at you pretty quickly with big encounters and RNG mishaps. Now my characters are leveling a bit, and I'm getting a better sense of the flow of the game.

It's enjoyable

Man, the lack of Kuro's charm, in Sekiro, is really the right level of difficulty. It's basically the same difficulty overall, but you really have to nail down the combat form to make it out in once piece. And that's the ideal way of playing anyway, so it just keep you honest about your deflects. But it's also difficult since it just causes even more fight restarts, even in the easiest of enemies if you're not laser focused on your timings.

And the heave wave we're experience is also making it more difficult than it needs to be.

xSamhainx said:

yeah dude, i was getting my ass kicked at first!

It looks all cartoony and cutesy, but they throw the kitchen sink at you pretty quickly with big encounters and RNG mishaps. Now my characters are leveling a bit, and I'm getting a better sense of the flow of the game.

It's enjoyable

Click to expand...

Really! I had to restart a few battles. You have to accept that your chars are going to receive "wounds" and that you will use those healing potions quite often.

Ragtag Crew

I wanted to love this so much as the graphics is excellent, UI is nice. Same as Iratus: combat is boring. Standing face-to face with enemies. The developers force the player to use weird non-combat related powers in combat.. This game is geared for chess-lovers. Peeps like me, who like to smash the enemy with gory strikes and hear them scream will be utterly dissatisfied by this strange game. I wanted a good bloody Wasteland smash-em to bits. Got a weird, roguelike, weak powers & abilities mish-mash, with lots of boring dialogues, party banters, status & mood changing choices that were soooOoOOOOooo dismal & tedious that I had to delete the bookmark for this game. (

Ah, well, I guess, I'll have to ask the developer of Urtuk, if he is finished already with updating the game, so I can play a HULK-SMASH'EM, combat-focused glorious gory massacre simulation!! AAAAAAARRGHH!!

Bye-bye, Ragtag Crew!

Good riddance!

I keep trying my hand at a new playthrough of Sekiro. I wanted to make this one as hard as possible, so I'm not using Kuro's charm. But I also want to get to the Demon Bell to also enhance the difficulty that way.

So I reached the Chained Ogre, who's the only boss I need to defeat before I unlock the way to the Demon Bell. So I've had 2-3 tries at the Ogre, and he just pummels me.

And I remembered again another reason why the fights in these are as hard as they are. Basically you have certain items that you can use to ease the difficulty, but if you use them and then die, you're shit out of luck. You can no longer get those items. So the more you try, and use the resources you have to ease the difficulty, the harder it gets since you lose access to those items. And then you end up needing to pull off the fight even more perfectly. So then you go the other way, and you chose to not use the items, but just make it hard on yourself. The ideal way is to try it without any aids, and if you suspect that you might have a chance of pulling it off, then you use the items.

After a good couple of retries, around 5, where I used up all my resources I somehow managed to kill the Chained Ogre, without using anything besides fire and my sword. Also, man does this game get my heart pounding. After I killed the ogre my hands were trembling again.

So, I then proceeded to activate the Demon Bell. So I'm now sporting both debuffs for the ultimate Sekiro difficulty experience. And it really feels. I tried my hands at a couple of random warriors, and they managed to take me out once.

I really doubt I'll have the patience to play like this. But it's certainly interesting, now that I don't actually have a very strong motivation, besides just ego.

Are you going start posting about Sekiro 5-6 times a day again?

As for myself, I'm still playing Dead Island Definitive Edition and enjoying it more than I probably should be. It's also a lot bigger than I realized.

JDR13 said:

Are you going start posting about Sekiro 5-6 times a day again?

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Probably not, since I suspect I don't have the skills or patience to go through all of it at this level. I'd probably not have the patience to go through it all at the same difficulty as the first time.

But if it bothers you that much, my frequent posting I mean, I could probably try to do it?

I've been playing Crisis 3. It's an 8 years old game, and it's been on my "bought but not played" queue for most of that. Looks damn fine for its age, though that's partly because I can crank the graphics right up, now that it's kinda old.
The story and protagonist are a bit meh, but I haven't played it's particular mix of FPS for a while, so I'm enjoying it.

Aside the wonderfully quirky Scarlet Nexus, it is time to dust off an oldie and spend some quality nostalgia time with
Dragon Wars (PC, C64, Amiga, ST)

Unnecessarily hopping on the LGBTQrandomalphabetletter bandwagon: this gem is created by Burger Becky, one of the early trans game developers, and she was heavily involved in the early Bard's Tale games by the name of Bill.
In fact, Dragon Wars was meant to be Bard's Tale 4, but certain issues lead to drop the brand burden and thus, a wildly experimenting game with a new identity was born.
Very much like the story of BB's life in a nutshell then.

Imagine fusing Wasteland with Bard's Tale, and you are nearly there what Dragon Wars is: a skillset driven party blobber with a heavy dose of non-linear choice-and-consequence gameplay. The game even has an automap!
Questionable old skool vibes served with well-written manual paragraph entries, and functional user interface (it even allows keyboard macros!)
Oh and Boris Vallejo, renowned macho fantasy artist created the cover art
for this gem, a slight irony now at BB's past and present.

Yup, all this goodness in the androgynous popstar ridden MTV era of 1989.

Seriously speaking, BB, you are a genius. Thank you for this wonderful game.

Dragon Wars is an excellent game. It's been probably at least ten years since I've replayed it, I'll have to schedule a re-visit sometime soon.

Yesterday I plucked a game out of my back-log to start on, called Celestian Tales: Old North. It's quite the change from Kingdom Come, and so far I'm enjoying the relaxed, take-it-easy style of the game. It reminds me a lot of the older turn-based games from the late eighties or early to mid nineties, in a very good way.