What have we all been playing recently?

Arknights roguelike mode is finally back and after wiping against the final boss a couple of times I realized that I'd get a thing for going in on easy mode and actually made it all the way to the end. To steal a joke from Tumblr user tainbocuailnge, who is better at this game than me:

*Soulsborne font* CATBOY RESCUED

 

Just got through .flow and Shoujo Kidan. I am now stuck on a maths puzzle in Shoujo Gidan. I am assuming this is going to be a running theme with me and the game because dear god am I awful at math puzzles that go beyond "Add number 1 and number 2 together to get code!"

 

And in FFXIV news, finally got my dark knight to level 50. Gonna be running through all the hard mode dungeons you pick up after the end of ARR to get these fucking quests out of my log. After that I'll go and continue the msq.

 

XENOGEARS

(also gonna be doing xenoblade chronicles 2 after i get through it i think)

 

Oh I cannot wait to hear your Xenogears opinions. They are going to be so good, you're a genius about everything and nobody talks about Xenogear enough.

 

Xenogears really is such a phenomenon of a game.

 

My thoughts on it thus far is that it feels like Gundam, Evangelion and fantasy JRPGs had one horrible baby and then Takahashi and Soraya Saga raised said child on nothing but Jung, Freud and Gnosticism. Complete with Fei going "But I don't want to get in the robot..." while people are like "Get in the fucking robot Fei". Which is what I expected of it given what I know of it and I am very happy to see this is the case with it.

Game keeps cockblocking me from learning more about Elly. Every time she's shown up she's been ripped away from me within like five minutes. Please game I just want to know what her deal is. Please.

The combat is. It really needed to have been tutorialized. Things like what's important for character/gear progression needed to have been too. It's fun after having read about it some but like it sucks that I had to because I reached Calamity and was like stonewalled super hard because I didn't know how deathblows worked.

As someone who dates someone with DID and who has known several people with it I am wondering how I'm going to feel about how that is handled with Fei.

Also I'm coming into this game with like, something of an understanding about the world and plot. Like not a Clear One but like I knew what was up with Solaris prior to starting. I'm also aware of the state of disc 2. I'm coming into it too with my first experience with the franchise being Xenosaga, a series I first became acquainted with when I was like 12 and had no idea what Gnosticism was. Which is a hell of a way to get introduced to it because god does Xenosaga not coddle you.

 

Game's also good about clearly flagging when horrible things are about to happen. Timothy being like "We're gonna be friends forever right, Fei?" was like. God damn. No one has been flagged for death harder within the first five minutes than you have Timmy boy.

And I really appreciate how Xenogears, like Xenosaga, began with a confusing inexplicable cutscene that then leads to something seemingly entirely unrelated. And I like how they are both projects that are, due to the sheer ambition behind them, ultimately unfinished and kind of awkward. Xenogears is really impressive for how hard it's pushing the PSX. Like god damn they are going for real cinematic shit with these sprites and chunky polygons. You can really see the origins of the highly cinematic, very cutscene heavy Xenosaga here.

 

Xenogears actually reminds me a bit of Vagrant Story, in that they both have these idiosyncratic flaws that come from having ambitious ideas that are ahead of the tech, but it's as much about the developments in design and coding as the hardware. Xenogears' camera control issues, for example, feel like something that just wouldn't have happened even a few years later because the video game industry as a whole had a much better idea of how to have a freely adjustable camera in a 3D environment without sometimes making it incredibly hard to see.

 

Oh yeah definitely. It kind of reminds of games like Ico honestly, except that team was able to postpone releasing things for entire console generations. And even then they were pushing things super hard and still had to cycle things back. Like SotC was originally meant to have 48 colossi and then 24 until at last it settled at 16. And you're still left with jankness in terms of things like control schemes and cameras, which remasters and a remake would aim to fix a bit.

I'm happy to see that Takahashi's projects since have been able to like. Finish? Yes, yes I know that content had to be dropped from both Xenoblade Chronicles 1 and 2, but the games themselves are very even experiences and that content eventually got added back in as DLC. And like as much as I love Xenosaga the thing is blatantly unfinished. It handled this far more gracefully than it sounds like Xenogears did but like. The series was meant to be six games and was cut down to three after the second one performed poorly. And it shows.

 

I've been playing Against the Storm, a roguelite city builder! If you like city builders but get bored or overwhelmed as you move out of the early game, definitely check this out - I think it's my favorite city builder I've ever played, even in early access. Very good for the ADHD brain. You essentially play the early game of a colony sim over and over, founding small settlements in a post-apocalyptic wilderness and building your reputation before the Queen gets too impatient and recalls you back to the city. If you succeed, you're called back to unlock upgrades and head out to start a new settlement. At intervals, the storm closes in and the world map is reset, but you keep your upgrades. Not on sale anymore, but well worth the full $20 in my books!

I also played about half an hour of Doom 2016 but the low framerate on my laptop made it basically unplayable. Which is a shame because half an hour was just enough to get me hooked lol

 

I bought raft and began playing it the week before Xmas, which is when I caught covid. It's a dang delight. I'm surprised I can play it, considering my fear of the ocean and boats. It helps to play on peaceful so the shark is kind of like a guard dog, and I do my best not to look up at the bottom of my raft or look down into the deep ocean XD

 

My sibling has been playing a game called Power Wash Simulator, and my opinions are:

1. Having used a pressure washer in real life, genius idea for a video game, no notes.
   
2. It does my favorite possible thing that a video game with a seemingly incredibly mundane premise could do: has a completely deranged story going on in the background. Time paradoxes, volcanoes, and kitten cults are involved.

 

...okay, now I'm interested.

 

It is pretty great. I prefer buildings to the more finicky jobs with all the tiny little parts and weird angles XD

 

My brain has been pretty consumed by Dwarf Fortress and Blaseball


eta: Last night I experienced an essential Losing is Fun! moment: a (small) outpost wipe

 

Played through Hi-Fi Rush with a friend.

Legit a GOTY contender. I am completely astonished that Bethesda would release a game with a pedigree like this completely without hype and then have it be this fucking good from start to finish.

 

i have been playing runescape because i don't need to use my right thumb to play it and dear god i am trapped. i've remembered why i love this stupid ass game so much. and apparently rs3's got nice quests? and like the quests were something i already liked about runescape? oooh. rs3's definitely a lot easier a grind than osrs but like that's fine i guess because i mean. quests and lore are the appeal there and if i want it to be grindier (which i do) i can just ban myself from the ge (which i am).

it's been 20 fucking years since i first played this game and it still fucks.

 

Tetrisweeper feels like it is absolutely targeted at me.

 

I finished Dredge, though there's one fish that I still haven't caught because it would require me to refit my boat gear and that felt like effort. I got both endings, and while I respect why the normal/bad ending has much cooler visuals, it still feels a little unfair that it gets a unique credits song and the alternate ending only gets a mix of music from earlier in the game.

Also I spent SO LONG looking for that DAMN OARFISH.