I wasn’t patient this time around, so it’s Slay the Spire 2, early access.
It runs really well on my two core third gen ryzen laptop, and I will gladly recommend it to anyone who likes deckbuilders.
I’ve been playing the original EverQuest (real patient lol) but caved and got Slay the Spire 2 the other day because it’s relatively cheap and seems like a good one. So far I’m really enjoying it and it’s fun to finally be playing a new game that everyone I know is also playing. Usually something comes out and they’re like “what are you playing?!” and my answer is EverQuest 😂
Started playing Rauniot - a post-apocalyptic isometric point&click adventure game set in Lapland. Only few hours in and the vibes are great, although the voice acting and dialogue feels … I dunno, it’s not “bad”, but it feels a bit “off”, like it’s written by “semi-edgy artsyfartsy” type, and the dialogue is performed by aliens who only got the tldr version of how to act human.
Visually the game looks quite a bit like Fallout 1 and 2, just with higher colordepth and resolution. Sound (apart from dialogue) is pretty ambient. So all good in my books. And I gotta respect the absolutely slamming metal tune the main character is blasting in their car during the intro sequence. Hell. Yea. \,,/
Puzzles have been mostly “find a tool to do x”, some items (eg. a rope in the first screen of the game) do blend into the background, so hovering over everything on the screen is a must. Interactables are highlighted in yellow outline, which on some cases can be really soft and it blends to the apocalyptic colorpalette of sepia/brown/gray surprisingly well, but at least all interactable things have a soundeffect when hovered with a mouse.
Gotta play more, I do want to see where it goes with the story and puzzles later on.
Dragon Quest Builders 2, inspired by FOMO over Pokopia.
Also continuing Horizon Zero Dawn for the third time. Just hard mode, but I kinda feel like I could do very hard.
I just started my first playthrough of Horizon and a few hours in I’m finding it pretty easy on Hard. Does it get harder later, or should I just crank up the difficulty now?
Honestly, the difficulty curve on HZD feels like a sine wave sometimes.
Cuz:
- You do simply get stronger over time
- You also improve your use of tactics over time
- You also gain access to new tactics
- But they introduce much stronger machines too
- But a lot of a machine’s strength can be mitigated by approaching it with the right tactics
- But they also deliberately put you in situations where you can’t use the easy tactics
- But they also put you in situations where you can use the easy tactics, against a ton of very strong machines
So depending on how quickly you hit the skill ceiling on using your available tactics, how much you like to grind, how reliable your multi-tasking is, and your basic “twitch skills”, you might get a skewed perspective at any point along the way.
I don’t think there’s any harm in changing the difficulty back and forth (not sure). So maybe just go with whatever feels comfy at the moment?
Edit: I’ll say, overall, they do an excellent job of making you feel like the stuff that used to be scary is no longer scary, but for the right reasons. That is: not because of dmg++ and armor++ buffs (although there is some of that), but because you’ve become so much more proficient at handling dangerous situations. For the most part, even mid-to-late game, the simple stuff is still deadly if you let your guard down.
I said it before but I man, the duel races in Ridge Racer 2 (PSP) are the most miserable experience I ever had playing a racing game - they are WAY over tuned. I really feel like there’s a middle ground between smoking the competition on lap 1 and spending most of the race watching your opponent at the edge of game’s draw distance due to them using a car which is faster, has better acceleration and starts the race with a boost. I like a good challenge but this ain’t it.
I finished the three duels required to unlock the EX tour series of events and that’s that, I’m not touching the remaining 4. Ever. I don’t need a 100% completion rate, not when some of the remaining content sucks the fun out of the whole experience. I’d rather have fun with the normal races instead and I’m extremely happy the EX series exist - I was actually worried I already cleared (almost) everything with the ending movie and credits unlocking halfway through PRO tour. I’m glad I was wrong.
Still love the game but boy was that rough at times.
I’ve been away from my PC for a couple months, and I finished Fallout season 2 while I was away and it got me in the mood for some balls-deep Fallout playing. I can’t decide whether I want to play 3, NV, 4, or actually play through the first three games because I never have.
3 and NV via Tale of Two Wastelands
Fallout 1 and 2 were rough for me, I never really got through them. I have read that Fallout 2 really defines what the series is so I’ve been wanting to revisit it. Start out with 1! Don’t forget to hit save constantly.
Picked up all the Splinter Cell games on a sale and started with the first using the EnhancedSC Mod, on Steam Deck. That’s not technically a “Patience” thing as I’m revisiting games from my childhood, but it sure is fun!
My partner and I have also been playing Harold Halibut. The story and visual style are an absolute delight, simpler adventure games are awesome when you’re tired or burnt out! I had my eye on it since it was first announced, it sat on my wishlist waiting for a < $20 sale, and then the GOG version got included “free” via Amazon Prime Gaming. Always nice to have things pan out that way, there have been too many occasions where I bought a game, didn’t get around to playing it, and then it turns up free or “free”.
I’m playing King’s Field: The Ancient City via RetroDeck (I would never have the patience for that game without abusing the save states feature).
Having played the series back on original hardware, I can confirm it was a nightmare. Save states make old games so much better.
I just started Cult of the Lamb. I’ve tried so many roguelikes and struggled to enjoy them, but this one hits right. It’s not too too hard, and I like the style a lot.
I’ve beaten the first two bishops already, and am working my way towards the third.
Wall Street Raider, there’s a great solo dev working on moving the codebase to a modern framework, but the original still slaps.
Someone posted a great article about that game a while back. Was that what got you to try it?
How long does it take before everything clicks and you can play smoothly instead of constantly stopping to look things up? The core concept of a realistic investment simulator looks fun, but needing to know and follow all of the real life laws and regulatory minutia from decades ago sounds like a nightmare for a new player.
Uh i been playing since the 90s on DOS lol. I was a bored kid who loved reading the financial section of the newspaper.
You don’t really need to know the laws. the game just tells you you can’t do that if you try to do something like make a merger monopoly. There are tax considerations that can be tricky but I mostly ignore those. You get taxed on profits so you dont need to min max taxes to be successful in the game.
Uhh and yeah im constantly doing research and looking things up in the game, which i mean that’s really what investing is IMHO. It’s essentially a textbased game, you have to read a lot, even if it’s mostly numbers/percentages. The modern rework on steam has a much prettier layout and more charts graphs.
Finished Shadows of the Empire yesterday. It’s truly a game of its time (jetpacks!) and the control schemes suffer a lot from being a N64 first game. The last stage, Skyhook Battle, is a mess tho. Why did the devs think that having a never ending swarm of enemy fighters that easily kill you was a good “warm up” before the “actual” level?
Me and my friends are doing another run of Factorio space age. This time I chose Gleba, and I am actually having a lot of fun. Once you understand how to work with spoilage instead of around it, it gets pretty straightforward. It also helps if you have friends who have set up all the other planets so you can just request all the items that can help you haha.
