If by "playing Tabletop Simulator" you mean "watch the hilarity that results from the disconnect between audio and visuals when watching a totally normal by Rammstein standards music video through the in-game tablet", then yes I'm playing.
Ridge Racer 7. My brother bought it recently and I had to give it a go. I can't believe that the game is 15 years old. I'm not big on arcade games but this one is different; it has a lot of character that many games lack nowadays. Most arcade games these days are put together by lazy developers who have seemingly lost their creativity... Ridge Racer 7 is fun because it doesn't take itself to seriously and does a lot with the relatively small amount of content.
I briefly played GTR2 again. Namely, I wanted to test my new XBOX One controller with various games. This was the first game where I utilized using the Advanced Gaming buttons. For reference, my XBOX One Series X controller is a PowerA controller, and you can map two buttons for advanced usage. I took it upon myself to map them to what would be the L3 and R3 buttons. Funny how a very old game can recognize a very modern gamepad. Originally, I thought of using the Advanced Gaming buttons as my gear selecting. I can probably still do that, but I'll have to make the original ones first and then set up the advanced gaming buttons as my alternates.
I am still playing The SIMS 4, namely to get inspiration to develop custom content. Mostly clothing at this stage. One streamer I follow on Twitch asked if you play through the life of a SIM or if you try to make houses and such. You can kind of do both based on your level of creativity. There are still SIMS I want to create, even as prototypes for original characters of mine.
Ridge Racer 7. My brother bought it recently and I had to give it a go. I can't believe that the game is 15 years old. I'm not big on arcade games but this one is different; it has a lot of character that many games lack nowadays. Most arcade games these days are put together by lazy developers who have seemingly lost their creativity... Ridge Racer 7 is fun because it doesn't take itself to seriously and does a lot with the relatively small amount of content.
I've just finished Disco Elysium. I've finished some really good games this year - The Witness, Hitman 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, In Other Waters, A Plague Tale: Innocence - but I think Disco Elysium is definitely way up there, I'll remember it for a long time. It's definitely left me feeling the exact same as I felt when I finished RDR2, What Remains of Edith Finch and Soma, like I'm not sure how games can get much better than that... Might need to take a break for a few days, I look forward to playing it again someday.
I started back playing Horizon Zero Dawn and Avengers. They are bringing out the Black Panther DLC so I need to level up my people. Hopefully they bring in some more villains as fighting against AIM has gotten old reaaaal fast.
I tried The Ascent for some hours. I tried to like it, it has great aesthetics, but ultimately is rather unbalanced and infuriating if played solo (unlike Outriders which can totally be completed and enjoyed solo). Also, let's be honest, the whole cyberpunk aesthetic is getting really cliche at this point, so it's a dud.
Raji, also another dud (for me). Loved the Hindu mythos and art direction, but again cheap, unresponsive combat and so-so platform mechanics (dear indie developers, invest in those.)
Omno, is rather soothing and easy, good style and music.
I just gathered the whole crew of Yakuza Like a Dragon, probably the must lovable bunch of losers in Yakuza (or JRPG) history.
So instead of taking a break after Disco Elysium I played through Wolfenstein 2: The New Colossus almost immediately afterwards. It has one of the best shotguns ever. I loved it, I mean the story was beyond dumb but enjoyable for that exact reason, it was just a thin excuse to kill a lot of Nazis and that part was ridiculously cathartic. Also it ran at a mostly stable 144Hz at 1440p for me so played as smoothly as anything while also looking great.
I also started Broforce and Westerado: Double Barrelled from scratch and The Wolf Among Us too, all this week, and finished all three today. All good games but I'm in no rush to play them again; Broforce started off being the most fun and ended up being the least, that last mission was unbelievably tedious. I get that they wanted to keep the gameplay interesting but it was just too much of a shift away from what made the game fun in the first place. I also tried Bulletstorm again but still can't be bothered with it, I think it has just aged really, really badly in almost every way, more modern shooters just completely put it to shame.
I've also been playing Forza 7's campaign here and there, extra long races and AI on Pro. It's good but too variable, the AI either drives itself off the road or brakes in places where you really should be flat out, or it drives absolutely perfectly and I struggle to keep up. Also I was quite happy to be done with it at "the end" of the last cup, but when I got there it was like "only joking, you won't be finished until you complete all the series in all the cups" and I can't really be bothered. Maybe I'll just reduce the race distance...
Oh and Star Fetchers - that name comes home and puts on jeans. Not sure how that one eluded me for as long as it did, but it was pretty funny.
I've been playing Flight Simulator almost exclusively since it came out on Xbox.
However, I've been away from home (on vacation) these last few days, so I'm only playing through Cloud Gaming at the moment.
While cloud gaming, I've finished Yakuza 0 and I'm currently reliving some fun moments in Katamari Damacy, as Reroll entered Game Pass recently.
Fun times.
I've been playing Flight Simulator almost exclusively since it came out on Xbox.
However, I've been away from home (on vacation) these last few days, so I'm only playing through Cloud Gaming at the moment.
While cloud gaming, I've finished Yakuza 0 and I'm currently reliving some fun moments in Katamari Damacy, as Reroll entered Game Pass recently.
Fun times.
Playing my first visual novel game Angels with Scaly Wings since it came to Switch.
Its a Visual Novel so there isn't much gameplay to talk about and is just s bunch of multiple choice options that lead to paths. Although I do find it annoying if you don't answer correctly your character says something out of nowhere to rudely end your friendship instead of that character responding to your terrible choices. Every character has a romance option but I avoided them as that was too much
I was intrigued with the story as it became a police investigation story, engaging with the characters as you go along. I was enjoying myself but then it starts going on and on about unnecessary world building and detailed lore and the fun investigation interacting with characters just falls by the wayside as you then instead have to use time traveling to stop the meteor from wiping out the dragons that are actually mutated dinosaurs from an experiment. Story just got immediately more lame when it thought the lore and worldbuilding took precedence over the characters.
Goes for the Shadow the Hedgehog approach where theres a True Ending that you unlock by going through every other Ending. I don't like this approach. If a game has multiple endings I don't want to be forced to playthrough all the endings to get to a "True Ending" that just negates any choice I make to being irrelevant abd story might as well be linear. I rather not have a true ending, get the ending I get after playing then go through other endings out of curiousity and see what it's like and not because of obligation. When it was all said and done, the only ending I wanted to get and not out of obligation was Lorems ending as he was my favourite character. The rest felt like a waste of time (also Bryces ending was really bad and mystery mongered into nothing) and the True ending was underwhelming
After playing ~10 minutes of Alan Wake back in 2013 and finding it boring, I decided to give it another shot as I've enjoyed Quantum Break and Control a lot in the intervening years.
Does it get good? I've played up to the bit just over an hour in where you use a log crane to cross a gap in episode 1 and I'm so far just not seeing what people seemed to love about it. I'll keep going for now but if it doesn't grab me soon it's going on the shelf with Sunset Overdrive and a few other games I can't quite see what the fuss was about.
And before anyone says it, I know it's 11 years old but that's not normally an issue for me. The controls make sense, it runs fine and looks great, that's usually enough! It's just dull both in gameplay and story (so far).
After playing ~10 minutes of Alan Wake back in 2013 and finding it boring, I decided to give it another shot as I've enjoyed Quantum Break and Control a lot in the intervening years.
Does it get good? I've played up to the bit just over an hour in where you use a log crane to cross a gap in episode 1 and I'm so far just not seeing what people seemed to love about it. I'll keep going for now but if it doesn't grab me soon it's going on the shelf with Sunset Overdrive and a few other games I can't quite see what the fuss was about.
And before anyone says it, I know it's 11 years old but that's not normally an issue for me. The controls make sense, it runs fine and looks great, that's usually enough! It's just dull both in gameplay and story (so far).
I've found that people who likes Alan Wake really likes it whereas people who doesn't really doesn't.
I personally really like the game, but yeah the gameplay is pretty dry once you boil it down to the basics, and the story itself is super convoluted, so the game won't work unless you can soak in and enjoy the spooky atmosphere.
Playing a bit of SnowRunner from Game Pass. It's nice, but I do think the starter pickup truck seems a bit slow on asphalt. Also the engine sounds don't seem to match very well to the speed, and I like that the hand animations are more involved than every other driving game, adjusting the position separatedly from how much you turned, but it's very twitchy. I just turned off driver's arms in first person.
I also don't like how everything is locked behind driver levels. If the game was like, "We don't have that part in stock and can't get more because of [whatever disaster happended in the area]", it would be fine, but it doesn't make much sense to just have 'em not sell it to me. I really struggle without some mud tires and locking diff. The truck you find in front of the garage is good, but I'm playing on normal mode, and not having to pay anything to fix it, and for refueling feels a bit too easy, whereas I was afraid of hardcore mode being too hard.
Really like the mod support though. Looking forward to this:
I've been playing Okami on my PC and Katamari Damacy Reroll on the Series X for past weeks.
Okami is a bit weird. You just wander the land as a dog and feed a lot of wild animals, and you kind of save the world while you're at it. Story feels a little bit aimless and disconnected, but the game's absolutely adorable in general and I like how well it uses its brush power gimmicks. There's something really soothing and relaxing about wandering around, feeding wild animals and helping random passer-bys.
I decided to try out Katamari Damacy because I wanted something relaxing to unwind - and, unlike Okami, Katamari Damacy has been anything but relaxing. That said, I love the quirky designs and insane level designs so much that I find myself keep going back to it again and again. Nothing like gluing a whole city in a sticky ball while some random J-pop is blaring in the background.
Both Okami and Katamari Damacy might be my new all-time favorites. Highly recommended.
I've been playing Okami on my PC and Katamari Damacy Reroll on the Series X for past weeks.
Okami is a bit weird. You just wander the land as a dog and feed a lot of wild animals, and you kind of save the world while you're at it. Story feels a little bit aimless and disconnected, but the game's absolutely adorable in general and I like how well it uses its brush power gimmicks. There's something really soothing and relaxing about wandering around, feeding wild animals and helping random passer-bys.
I decided to try out Katamari Damacy because I wanted something relaxing to unwind - and, unlike Okami, Katamari Damacy has been anything but relaxing. That said, I love the quirky designs and insane level designs so much that I find myself keep going back to it again and again. Nothing like gluing a whole city in a sticky ball while some random J-pop is blaring in the background.
Both Okami and Katamari Damacy might be my new all-time favorites. Highly recommended.
Just did a second run for the Back 4 Blood Beta. Was able to get through all of Act I. Our first run we were still learning, and we had a bot as a fourth, and didn't get to finish it. A couple of days later, on the second run, we had two friends who completed it once before join me and another friend. Things went a lot smoother on our second run. The last mission was bugged as the Zombies didn't come out at all, so we loaded up the howitzer and finished it. Also did a game of versus where we ended up winning 2-0.
It seems like a fun game if you have friends to play it with. Not sure how it'll be with randoms that you join with, but I'll probably pick it up, maybe when it gets on sale or something. Not sure if I want to spend $60 on it.
Been thinking about picking this up for the longest time and just haven't quite got round to it.
I've been playing F1 2021 a fair bit, 5 seasons in tot MyTeam career, doesn't have the same pull as it did with 2020 as it's very much a recycled formula. Waiting for the bigger updates with the new circuits now before starting a driver career.
Art of Rally has been my most played this week, very enjoyable game, awesome sound track and surprisingly good gameplay.
I've been playing Flight Simulator almost exclusively since it came out on Xbox.
However, I've been away from home (on vacation) these last few days, so I'm only playing through Cloud Gaming at the moment.
While cloud gaming, I've finished Yakuza 0 and I'm currently reliving some fun moments in Katamari Damacy, as Reroll entered Game Pass recently.
Fun times.
So, while on vacation (Cloud Gaming) I've also finished Katamary Reroll and then Omno.
Now that I'm back home, I've been playing Flight Simulator again, while pondering on what game I should start next... Hades, The Ascent, art of rally, Twelve Minutes...?
Xbox 360/One backlog on XSX:
Forza Horizon 1/2
RDR1
Midnight Club LA
Halo(campaign)
Battlefield Bad Company 1
Fable 2
Wolfenstein Young blood(done 3/5)
Hot Pursuit Remastered
Burnout Paradise Remastered
Sorry to say I gave up on Alan Wake, also gave up on Bulletstorm (another game I couldn't work out the hype for, but I imagine has aged poorly).
Instead, I've been playing a lot of Ace Combat 7's campaign, I have to say I love that game but decided I had to peel myself away from it to get on with some other stuff - I'm pretty sure AC7 would be a great game for the Steam Deck so it can wait for now.
Moving on from that, I started Osmos again on a whim; it was one of the first games I bought on Steam back in 2010 because there was an indie game bundle and I was really impressed, as a fresh console gaming transplant, that you could get five games for £15 or something. I've just checked and yes, it was legitimately the second thing I bought (after The Dig, one of the many games of my youth I only ever played the demo of) and it actually was £14.99. Anyway, Osmos is great, I'm sure there's something similar out there but as I've never played it, it seems like something that would've been a huge deal had it released in the '90s. Not to say it's not good now or hasn't aged well, I think it has, but I guess people just aren't that interested in games like it anymore. Thing is it can be really difficult and frankly a bit frustrating because it's quite slow, so...
... I've also gone back to Quake, which is anything but slow. It was on my list and the re-release was apparently what I was waiting for. That's also a great game, also one I only ever played the demo of as a kid, but the level design hasn't aged too well and it has given me trust issues. Not much more to say, really, it's Quake but slightly more modern in some ways and exactly the same in some others.
I've played a bit of Insurgency PvE too, it's been years but I've managed to keep some of the muscle memory and tactics... The community has gotten worse, though. I got kicked out of one game because everyone died and I tried to finish the level myself (the audacity), in another I was TK'd by someone who'd just joined right before the last checkpoint and in one last night someone kept saying "STOP BULLYING" every time someone friendly fired (even if it wasn't fatal) which caused someone else to just TK everyone. So that's boring. I have had a few good rounds though.
Finally, I just finished Stories Untold, which I thought was pretty good. Not breathtaking or anything, but a nice idea that was well-executed and a very good
deterrent for drunk driving
, I imagine. Also very short, always nice to play something short but well-crafted between a load of other games.
Oh and shortly before all these games, I played The Wolf Among Us. That was pretty good too.
Moving on from that, I started Osmos again on a whim; it was one of the first games I bought on Steam back in 2010 because there was an indie game bundle and I was really impressed, as a fresh console gaming transplant, that you could get five games for £15 or something. I've just checked and yes, it was legitimately the second thing I bought (after The Dig, one of the many games of my youth I only ever played the demo of) and it actually was £14.99. Anyway, Osmos is great, I'm sure there's something similar out there but as I've never played it, it seems like something that would've been a huge deal had it released in the '90s. Not to say it's not good now or hasn't aged well, I think it has, but I guess people just aren't that interested in games like it anymore. Thing is it can be really difficult and frankly a bit frustrating because it's quite slow, so...
Wow, Osmos! It's been a long time since I've heard about that game. It was one of the first ever mobile game I've ever played, and I used to absolutely love it. I was no good at it though - I was far too impatient for that type of game - but I just loved the calm vibe and how beautiful it looked, even on my phone.
Never knew it was on Steam though. I guess I'll keep it on my wishlist and try it again when it's on sale.
Just restarted Witcher 3. I haven’t played it since the last DLC came out. I’ve started a fresh and seeing as I played it on quite a hard difficulty last time, this time I’m playing it on its easy setting just to whizz through and enjoy its story.
Also last time I didn’t complete all the side quests so this time I plan on taking my time to ensure everything but Gwent quests are completed.
Just restarted Witcher 3. I haven’t played it since the last DLC came out. I’ve started a fresh and seeing as I played it on quite a hard difficulty last time, this time I’m playing it on its easy setting just to whizz through and enjoy its story.
Also last time I didn’t complete all the side quests so this time I plan on taking my time to ensure everything but Gwent quests are completed.
