Patient Gamers

I enjoyed Respawn's first Star Wars game, Fallen Order, a pastiche of present-day gameplay concepts on top of a venerable, popular IP. Eager for something with the potential to improve upon some of Fallen Order's shortcomings, I was interested in Survivor from the moment it was announced. There were damning reports about Star Wars: Jedi Survivor's performance on PC, so I held off until the recent patch. Happily, I can report a patient gaming win here.

This will be a bit of a hybrid review of both the digital edition of Scythe and the board game.

So after eight years since VI's release, it decided to get into Civilization VI. People were often talking about how innovative this game was, and it knew the Civilization Players League had a ton of cool balancing tools to make the game really engaging.

While a lot of people praise Chrono Trigger (and right they are! Play it! It's an often recommended game for a reason), its sequel Chrono Cross doesn't get as much love. There are valid reasons for that in my opinion, but I want to argue that CC is still a strong and good game, but it needs to be looked at separated from its ancestor. They didn't call it Crono Trigger 2, in order to separate it more from the first game, but people still expected a sequel to the characters they loved in the first game. And they didn't get that. Spoiler for CC now:

This one got a little longer since there are so many things to talk about. TL;DR at the end

I highly recommend this game to all those who want to have a more wholesome game and bemoan that so often we can just solve things by violence. In fact, that is one of the main ethical points of the protagonist: he doesn’t want to use violence. The problem is just, the world is ending and a hero is needed. And what is a hero who doesn’t wield a sword and uses that sword? Well, play this game and find out if the protagonist can stay true to their convication or not.

This game probably is not that unknown, considering it sold more than 1 million copies, but I still recommend it because it fantastically showcases the power of the human mind for anthropomorphism. The game is only made up out of rectangles. So graphicwise, a potato could run it.

The game is a 2D side scroller where you can create clones of yourself which mimic your movement and you can also swap into those clones to solve puzzles with switches and pressure plates to find out what happened on a derelectic space station stranded on a planet. Fitting to the central mechanic is also a bit philosophy about what is the mind etc. involved, but not as explicit as in Soma.

Eternal Darkness is a game for the GameCube and was the first Nintendo published game to receive a Mature rating by the ESRB. If you play the game today, I think most will agree that that rating was a bit too much. But the damage was already done, the game didn’t sell enough copies and was a commercial failure. A decade later, two attempts by the game director to finance a successor via kickstarter failed, so it seems the game is as cursed as its protagonists.

I highly recommend this game to all those who bemoan that all games are the same and nothing new gets released.

The Longest Journey takes apparently 17 years, because that is the time span between the release of the original game in 1999 and the last game of the series in 2016, which finally finished the story. The Longest Journey is a classic point and click adventure game, meaning it has a wonderful story and world but sometimes really, really, REALLY stupid puzzles. But luckily only sometimes, often they are both entertaining and brain teasing, but you should still keep a guide nearby to not get frustrated.

Let’s talk about a more well known game this time. Bioware is most known for their 3D RPG series Mass Effect and Dragon Age nowadays, but in the past they created isometric RPGs like the Baldurs Gate or Neverwinter Nights series. So how did that transition happen? Well, they published 2 games between those periods that helped them find their formula for 3D RPGs. While the first one was Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, which fits more to Dragon Age:Origins due to the pausable real time combat system with multiple party members (which I couldn’t play till now due to gamebreaking bugs), I want to talk about their second intermediate game today: Jade Empire.

This time I want to put the spotlight on a free game called Iji, named after the main character and developed by Daniel Remar. As the titular character, a nanomachine enhanced human, you are the last hope in the fight against alien invaders to rescue the last bits of humanity that survived the alien invasion. It is mostly a 2D action game with a little bit of platformer & RPG elements. You put ability points gained by finding them or killing enemies into different stats. Thereby you gain more health, more attack/kick power or can even use the weapons of the enemies against them. There are multiple difficulties for those who seek a challenge. The gameplay consists of you running and jumping through the levels and fighting against the enemies via weapons, kicks or tricks (like making enemies fight against each other by dodging a rocket and letting it hit the enemies behind you).

The Vale is a game like no other game I played before, because you see it through the eyes of a blind woman. Meaning you won’t see shit. Instead you rely on your ears to navigate and fight. The game was developed based around the thought to create a video game for blind people. This meant that at minimum a stereo speaker system (so at least a headset) is necessary, since the attacks will come from left, center or right. You have to block and counter them with the correct timing by listening to the sounds your enemies are producing. Menues are also visually presented in addition to being read by a narrator, so that you don’t need to select each option in order to know it, if you are not visually impaired.

Since I have time at the moment and in order to put a bit life in this community, I will post some recommendations for older games in the coming days.

How is it in 2024 now that it’s finished? A lot of reviews I see are based on when it originally came out but I’m curious about the current state of the game. With it being on sale now it seems like it’s worth it even with flaws.

Earlier this year I posted some thoughts on the games I’d been playing. Here are the ones I’ve completed recently.

Mostly referring to the release of the latest WoW extension which isn’t discussed anywhere (or maybe I missed it)

I have added 2 Steam and 1 GOG game libraries to my HLTB account. Then I have categorized the games based on completion/pad controller usage etc.

Team Fortress and Counter Strike too. It's nice to jump on and play every once in a while and not have to deal with all the mobile game crap.

***Edit: deux ex

I have very fond memories of the first Halo on the OG Xbox. It was very cool to be able to do the campaign together with a friend.

Stumbled upon this video, which kind of summarizes the issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJxaIP8F3K8

The last time I touched Xbox was with the 360, and only because I needed to test used games to sell on eBay. But I've wanted to try out modern Xbox to see if things like GamePass and what exclusives they do have is worth it. Especially since on the used market, Xbox One games can be cheaper than PS4 games. With the loose justification of buying Conkers Bad Fur Day as my target price I bought Rare Replay and a Xbox One.

I have this loosely defined made-up genre I call "Summer Games".

Ever since it came out I have heard only good things about this game. And it sounds like a perfect fit for me. I enjoy figuring out puzzles, I enjoy figuring out lore and I love to explore.

Things have sort of come full circle for me. When I was younger, I recall playing a copy of Super Mario Bros 3 on Game Boy Advance and never being able to complete it (in fairness I eventually got to the final world). This was the case for a lot of games for me; essentially they’d have infinite replayability.

TLDR: I loved Borderlands two and I'm going to start a replay with a different character, which i almost never do.

Recently finally gotten around to playing Lies of P, and I've been enjoying my time a lot - I'd probably put it right between Sekiro and Bloodborne for my favourite Soulslikes. The boss fights have been pretty cool throughout the playthrough. However, the last few bosses, especially Laxasia and Simon, have been kicking my teeth in, so I used a summon to kill both easily.

I don't really like roguelites. At least I always thought. The only one I really tried was the Binding of Isaac. I never progressed far, I never really got the hang of it and had a lot of unsuccessful runs. I finally gave up on it. So I went for years without trying new ones. Until Hades. I played it quite a lot and had a lot of successful runs, but never fully beat the game.

I watched a YouTube video about this topic today and thought it was the perfect idea for a post here. It’s pretty straightforward, it’s games you played in the past that you’re still stuck thinking about, or games that taught you a lesson that you’ve held on to.

I’m not going to do a detailed write up on this but I’ve always heard that The Force Unleashed was a really good set of Star Wars games that are still worth playing today, if not for the game at least for the story. That wasn’t my experience at all.

We've got two big sales going on, and I'm currently deciding what I would like to pick up. I'm planning to get Expeditions: Rome since it's 60% off, and I'm trying to decide if I want to finally get Terra Invicta.

I grew up with goldeneye and perfect dark.

I'm born in 1992 so this game is a bit before my time. I started playing it and got completely hooked. It's an absolutely fantastic game that would still hold up as a quality indie game today.

A bit of a weird title, but basically what’s a game that’s more than a year old but still considered “modern” that you love? There’s no real strict definition for modern, I’d just like to see some discussion around great games that aren’t quite classics yet (but probably will be one day).

TL;DR: probably among my favourites in the action-JRPG genre, just for how consistently good everything is. None of the systems in isolation are "the best I've ever seen", but for a 35+ hour game, it's nice when everything is smooth and enjoyable.

Basically, title

I've been passingly interested in the Megami Tensei series for a while.

Recently I borrowed my partner's copy of Links Awakening for the Nintendo Switch. I understand that many people did not enjoy the remake due to the graphics but I am one of the weirdos who somewhat enjoys the cutesy round graphics with the intense depth of field / forced perspective look. From a pure graphical standpoint I think this is a really good way of remaking a top down GB / GBC game for a new platform. I similarly enjoyed Pokémon Alpha Sapphire's graphics despite many others not enjoying them.

This game was for some time in my watch list, but I have never pulled the plug, and oh boy, was I in for a treat.

One of the weird realization for me as I learnt English and listened to authors who contributed to these games, is that many remastered their tracks to exclude swear words and obvious mentions of drugs, or was it EA specialists? NFS Underground and Most Wanted games were filled with rap and metal, but still got rated for teens because of that. When I've heard some of these songs in their album versions for the first time and there were actual lines or even paragraphs I've not heard before it was very weird. I applaud whoever did this and still kept these songs bangers as they are, intact, hard hitting whenever you hard them back then or now like I do.

I always got the feeling that this game was seen as a classic. I never owned a Gamecube growing up, but I'm pretty sure I remember my friend having one and playing Sunshine a bit (although he was way more into Zelda and Smash).

I know older titles are usually the topic in this community but a lot of the popular f2p games are getting pretty old now too, and if you're like me you've been curious about some of them and even pleasantly surprised now and again.

I think my first Bethesda game was Skyrim and I love Skyrim. I’ve played through Skyrim when it first came out I played through it again in the DLC came out. I played through it again on the switch I have since played through it again on PC. I love Skyrim. I played it so many times and I know it’s a meme to keep re-releasing the game but it is just genuinely very good game.

I got into Civilization rather late with their fifth entry. I was hesitant because as I get older I need more time to game than I do new titles. Still I picked up six with all DLC during the last sale. I have to say I am liking the changes. It was good to wait because Civ does need its DLCs to feel complete.

There's a certain cheesiness and non-political-correctness that's refreshing.

As Cities Skylines II still isn't worth it (the sub has a regular thread about that, in summary: no it's not: https://old.reddit.com/r/CitiesSkylines/comments/1ch6lup/is_cities_skylines_ii_worth_it_megathread/) which games scratch your city building itch?

Having dropped New Vegas in the past due to lost interest, I decided to try this game out finally since a friend of mine was having a fallout 3 playthrough himself. It was it 8 bucks, so I figured why not. I have to say, I put way more hours into this game than both other Bethesda games I've played through (Skyrim and Oblivion) before even finishing the main quest line. The combat was excellent in my opinion, and I (seem to be in the minority of people who) really liked the story. The choices it forces you to make sometimes really had me feeling emotional at times. I also played it with some minor mods installed, just some custom outfits and real world guns for immersion. Nothing to break the story or anything, though there are a few DLC sized mods I'm eyeing up to play in the future. Overall I seriously enjoyed this game, I've noticed online it seems to be regarded as one of the least popular mainline games but I think it's become my favourite Bethesda game I've tried so far honestly. Seriously recommend anyone who hasn't played this yet to at least give it a try. It really pulled me in.

Have a win 7 mouseless laptop I'd like to put a game on and play for funs. Typically my go to game for olden computers is Heroes of Might and Magic 3 or maybe Civ 4. Any recommendations?

Era can be defined as a console generation, a decade, one specific year, whatever you want. I’d encourage you to give a list of your favourite games from the generation of choice and why it was the best to you. Nostalgia is a totally viable reason too.

How do you like to approach writing about games?

TL;DR: Mediocre and flawed game, still had fun.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/227200/Waking_Mars

Xenoblade Chronicles has been one of the broadly popular JRPG series as of late, particularly within my own social circles. I have heard mostly good things about the games, and some vocal criticisms about the second game in particular. After finally picking up a Switch last year, I have now made my way through most of the series.

After writing a lot about it referencing my last playthroughs, I started it once again via OpenMW with official expansions and nude mode only, for it became kind of a habit.

TMB has been on my wishlist for years but the price tag has been too high... this week I noticed it was in stock and a bit of extra funds had came in as well so I decided it was time to finally buy a copy.

I’ve been very busy with work the last few months so I haven’t really played any games, but things are finally starting to get back to normal a bit and I wanted to try this RPG. I played it a bit when it came out but decided to really dive into it this time. Just wondering if there’s anyone here who’s played it and has any advice? I’ve had the game spoiled for me already so don’t worry about spoilers.

Heia all! Do you have some recommendations on any strategy roguelites where you get bonuses that you keep between games?

I used to be a PC-only gamer but the older I get the more I gravitate toward very 'simple' platforms.

So, I'm a big JPRG fan and just playing through Mother 3. I love Mother 2 (aka Earthbound) as well. I love the music, quirkiness, style, pacing, simple yet rewarding tactics in boss battles.

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to finish this write-up for a while now but due to the combination of limited time and constantly changing thoughts about the game it was a rather difficult process. It should be good enough to communicate my feelings about D3 but get ready for a wall of text, lots of rambling and rough edges - sorry about that.

So I figured it's about time I gave this game a shot.

So I finally got around to trying out *Deliver Us Mars*, having never played the predecessor but having a fair few friends rave about it (the previous game) being this rough but amazing gem.

It has been a while since the last one. So...

Other than a slew of Nintendo titles that maybe hopefully will come down in price (the patient gamers' bane), I have my eye on the next time Divinity: Original Sin 2 goes on sale. A friend who never plays anything other than WoW loved playing Larian's newest with me and I'm trying to get her to pick this up. Pretty sure she'd like it.