That daily game progress thread...

Still working on Jedi Survivor.
By the Force, this game doesn't want to end.

I'm treating this as a linear action game. I've ignored the sidequests it offers, and I don't mind that there are planets I've apparently only discovered 70% of. I'm not going back there just for the sake of it. Now, the big bad guy I've been chasing around for most of the game is dealt with, and just when I was expecting the credits to roll, the game throws up a plot twist and goes along its merry way again.

There's a character switch for a while, there's the almost-obligatory Darth Vader fight , then suddenly there's a new character to chase and then he meets his untimely end thirty minutes later... It all feels like massive runtime padding, where I'd have much preferred a tighter, shorter campaign.

I thought I was finishing this game tonight, but I guess it'll be another day.
 
Finished Jedi Survivor.

All in all, I think it's a really good game. It's a shame the technical difficulties ruined its launch. The campaign could've been tighter, I think, and there are plenty of little niggles that don't suit me. But it's a great Jedi quest, with lots of cool places and cool fights. Some moments of frustration, some moments of power fantasy.

Plus, while I've ignored all the side quests, I believe Jedi Survivor has some open world qualities to it that allow you to spend a lot of time with this game. There are 26 bounties for you to catch out there. I only got two. I think they're missions to unlock from the homestead, but I chose not to bother. I can imagine coming back to both Jedi Fallen Order and Jedi Survivor some day. For now, I'm glad to have seen Jedi Survivor through.
 
Finished Wagon Age The Veilguard. Really enjoyed it. The final mission was similar to the suicide mission in ME2, and done pretty much just as well. Thought the ending was quite emotional too, capped off with a tiny romance scene after the credits. (:heart: Bellara). Thought all the companions were great. Manfred is the GOAT. Enjoyed the combat from start to finish, although some bosses are huge sponges. I liked ME Andromeda enough and this is better than that game, so at least we're seeing improvement from BIoware. The writing is not quite Origins level (although the codex has some good stuff tbh), but the companion arcs are much better than most of Bioware's previous companion stories. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't do a lot of companion stuff.

I think it's really sad how people attack this game for being "WOKE" or whatever. That is such a small part. Taash is non-binary but actually a pretty decent character overall. I give this game 8.5 salamis out of 10.
 
Black Ops 6 still keeping me entertained. Only halfway through the battlepass, but plenty of time left. I see some people are prestige master already. Either they've played +250 hours or used glitches. Not sure which is worse. I've been playing a decent amount and only prestige 2 (nearly 3).

I put STALKER 2 on hold because of some bugs that broke progression, will play again when they release the patch.
 
Finished Wagon Age The Veilguard. Really enjoyed it. The final mission was similar to the suicide mission in ME2, and done pretty much just as well. Thought the ending was quite emotional too, capped off with a tiny romance scene after the credits. (:heart: Bellara). Thought all the companions were great. Manfred is the GOAT. Enjoyed the combat from start to finish, although some bosses are huge sponges. I liked ME Andromeda enough and this is better than that game, so at least we're seeing improvement from BIoware. The writing is not quite Origins level (although the codex has some good stuff tbh), but the companion arcs are much better than most of Bioware's previous companion stories. You're doing yourself a disservice if you don't do a lot of companion stuff.

I think it's really sad how people attack this game for being "WOKE" or whatever. That is such a small part. Taash is non-binary but actually a pretty decent character overall. I give this game 8.5 salamis out of 10.
My problem with Taash is that they wrote a 20-something year old character like a 15-year old one.

Anyway my thoughts on veilguard is that they made a really good mass effect/god of war hybrid with some modern final fantasy influences, but bad dragon age game as the roleplaying aspect are not up to snuff.

So, Dragon Age Veilguard: 7/10
Brand new action game called the Veilguard: 8/10

But they got a really good formula for future games, they just need to let the player have more control over what the rook/shepard says.
 
Finished the shattered space DLC, the achievement for the final story quest had a 1.4% completion rate, and the achievement related to the side quests had a 0,4% clear rate.

Anyway, I thought it was ok, felt like it should have been included in the shipping game from the start though.
 
Started the Quake II expansion pack The Reckoning. I think the level designers had fun placing difficult enemies, and then forgot about health packs altogether. I'm not in that much of a mood to play Quake 2, so I'm leaving it.
 
Getting towards the end of Indy's Ring and having a good old time. Unless they drop the ball, this will be one of the goty contenders for me.

Will need to play some more BO6 mp this weekend with the Double XP / BP stuff happening. Currently only prestige 3. Also want to spend a bit more time with Zombies since I enjoy that amost as much as the mp.
 
Finished Vanity Fair: The Pursuit. Pretty decent FMV drama with some romance (not really a dating sim). Lots of branching paths which is a little tedious at times.
 
Dark Forces Remastered. They did a good job upgrading the graphics and the gameplay is still decent.


Now doing the 3.3 mod (non official) remaster of Dark Forces 2.
 
Minami Lane is just a really chill game with a pleasant art style and nice music. Cheap as chips and worth playing.
 
Gave Balatro a decent go and it's not for me. RNG upon RNG upon RNG is just annoying. I didn't find it addictive at all. Sure there is a bit of satisfaction when your joker cards combo to massive numbers, but it's fleeting imo

Terminator Resistance wasn't very good. Didn't hate it but don't think it's worth playing. It has some decent elements but it's clunky and mediocre in a lot of areas. Wasn't a fan of returning to previous areas either and never really had fun until near the end when it just lets you go crazy with laser weapons.

The Riven remake wasn't enjoyable for me, which was odd because I greatly enjoyed the Myst remake. The differences may be subtle to some but they're significant for me. Myst is a very contained series of puzzles. Riven is just a big confusing world with barely any conventional puzzles to solve. Nothing was satisfying for me, just wandering around trying to find things to interact with, and the story just seemed pants. Everything Riven does differently compared to Myst is basically what I dislike about puzzle games.
 
I've been playing the FF7 remake, it's not the trainwreck that I was led to believe it was, but maybe I'm just used to unreal engine stutters after playing so many UE-titles this year.
 
I guess staying up too late and playing games has caught up to me because it's been a while since I managed to play through anything. I keep actually sleeping instead.

I played through Guacamelee 2.

It's fun. Good, but not great. Another Metroidvania. It's been too long since playing through the first one to compare, but I think it was basically the same.

Combat is melee-based with a lot of combos. You gain special moves (limited by stamina) throughout the game that let you build the combos. You can toss enemies which helps with crowd control. Ther combat is not very difficult, even on hard. After you gain all your abilities the combat starts to feel rote.

The special moves you gain can also be used for traversal. Most of the world map is a series of jump puzzles. Your special movies, like a jump uppercut, and a dash punch can be chained together to get through the jump puzzles. These are decently fun, but it can make back-tracking a bit of a pain.

The world map is mostly a seemingly endless, circuitous path for you to traverse with not much in between. As you travel, you occasional get locked into a fight scene where you need to fight a bunch of enemies to advance. Pretty much all the gameplay is a seqeuence of jump puzzles paced out with the fight scenes. For the story, there's a lot of dialog, but it's mostly a lot of goofy nonsense that's mildly amusing. The story and dialog is mostly a combination of references and memes.

I probably put in 35 hours getting all the acheivements and playing through twice. But I backtracked needlessly early on during my first playthrough, so that one took way longer than necessary. You probably only need to put in 15-20 hours to get everything. Which is a good amount. If it was longer, I'd tire of the game.
 
I finished Avadon 3

It's from a small indie RPG developer whose games I've enjoyed since the days of CD-ROM demos in PC gaming magazines. The graphics and sound are always a weak point, almost endearingly so. The game systems are generally good as is the writing. Old-school turn-based combat. Nothing groundbreaking. While the game is relatively new, I'm not sure how much it can stand out anymore now that there are so many games out there that having a turn-based isometric RPG doesn't really feel like it's a rarity anymore. I like them, but I can't be sure if I'd pick them up out of the crowd if I hadn't had a long history with the game developer.

It does suffer from a few issues. I don't know why RPGs do this (low budget or not), where they offer you 5 or 6 different party members, but then limit you to taking only 2 others with you. RPGs take so much time to play, and playing with the different characters doesn't offer enough replayability differences to make me want to experience it with the other characters.

Playing on the hardest difficulty sort of made it a bit reliant on getting good RNG luck in combat. But I guess that sort of happens on a lot of RPGs.

The game offers a lot of illusion of choice. You can say different things in dialog, but nothing really changes any outcomes. Decisions don't have much in the way of consequences. And you can have two different endings, but it's kind of an ending-tron where you can just select the outcome you want reload and try it the other way.
 
Finished DOOM 3 on my MacBook Pro 14" using the Mac Source Port.

The last time I finished it was in 2005. The game felt a bit repetitive for 3/4 of the way through. It was only in the last 1/4 that it introduced newer environments and situations.
 
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