What are you playing?

[bizzgeburt]

Almost finished with Final Fantasy IV Advance. All that remains is the Lunar Subterrane, an absolutely brutal final dungeon, and then a final boss I've never managed to beat before. I already made a run at the dungeon, but got wiped by a monster chest. Hopefully I'll have it finished in the next couple of days.

Make sure to pick up Masamune  there're some invisible paths in this dungeon.
Love Final Fantasy IV for it was the first game of the series I played. Have fun!

[ssj4yamgeta]

I've been playing a lot of Dragon Ball FighterZ lately. I'm now about 6 chapters into the 2nd arc of story mode. It's a pretty solid game so far, I really like the polished visuals and how robust the story mode is. My story completion right now is close to 50%, so I think I should have it done within a week from today.

Make sure to pick up Masamune  there're some invisible paths in this dungeon.
Love Final Fantasy IV for it was the first game of the series I played. Have fun!

I did end up getting the Murasame and Masamune for Edge, as well as the Holy lance for Kain and the Ragnarok for Cecil. I also got all of Rydia's major optional summons. Really the only big side quest I didn't do was the Adamant Armor, because I didn't feel like spending hours farming pink tails on the moon. I just made my party as overpowered as possible, overleveled everyone to at least level 60, and finally kicked Zeromus' ass. This game is also special to me as FFIV and FFX were the games my best friend used to introduce me to JRPGs back when I was a teenager.

[spyrofanx]

Right now, I'm playing Bubsy 4D! Yeah.

[kamikazekeeg]

Plaything through Yooka-Replaylee as their deal on the game if you are an owner of the original game was leaving soon, and I had been meaning to pick it up and so far it is definitely a step up from what I generally remember from the first game, which was a real rough time, it looks nice, it mostly plays well (Was alot more frame drops in the snow world than the temple world), but I'm also not 100% in love. 

It's fine, it generally does what it is supposed but it still has a little bit of the feel I remember of the first game where it never felt like it was a real big advancement of that N64 era of 3D platformer.  In some ways it is, but there are so many pagies to collect in each world, 50 I think, so rather than a handful of distinct challenges to collect the important stuff, they are just everywhere.  This isn't Donkey Kong 64 bad or anything, you don't have to switch characters or anything like that, I don't know...It just feels basic.  It's got kinda bad aim controls for shooting objects, where you come to a stop and have to aim and it feels awkward, rather than just allowing you a free move in first or third person like a shooter would have it.  It's an odd choice.  There's also little bits of jank, such as when you collect a pagie, it does the "I grabbed the thing" animation, that transitions very stiffly back to gameplay, it's odd.

I don't know, maybe I'm just less in the mood for this than I thought, it's not bad, maybe something like having played Astro Bot kinda spoiled me abit when it comes to a new 3D platformer.

[kamikazekeeg]

Started back into Monster Hunter Wilds as I saw someone say the last Title Update did some more improvements and I think it did some, but it did enough that I feel like outside of the toughest graphical scenarios, lots of effects and during a fight, the game is "okay".  Enough that I think I can stick around and play for awhile, get through all of the Title Updates, which I never played.  Still get rough frame drops in like the Scarlet Forest down to the 70's, but it's the drops that aren't as rough as they felt before.  Combined with a post-processing removal mod to clean it up abit more, it's very "fine".  Anyone saying the game is "fixed" is a liar, but the game has improved enough that I think I can stick with it for a time.

[ssj4yamgeta]

I just got to the Alexandria segment of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation Remastered, so I'm about 1/3 of the way through it. So far I'm liking it quite a bit more than the first TR trilogy. This might be the first pre-Crystal Dynamics TR to get a 6/10 or higher from me.

Also played a bit of Farmagia today. Very disappointed with it. The game is very hard, but unlike a soulsborne game where you can keep leveling up and upgrading your gear to make it easier, this game gates your leveling and progress behind story missions. So I'm often left beating my head against a brick wall over and over until I get lucky, because I can't buy the stuff I need to boost my monsters further until i beat the mission I'm on. Eventually I just turned the difficulty down to easy so it wasn't such a chore to play. It's a shame, because I really do like the character and monster designs.

I've been playing a bit of Minecraft survival mode, too. Not trying to beat it right now, just taking my time. I just got to the point where iron ore is becoming more common. It's a fun game to play when I just want to relax after getting burnt out while whittling down my backlog. It doesn't hold a candle to Dragon Quest Builders 2, though.

[kamikazekeeg]

Played a demo for "Cozy Games Restoration", it's vaguely similar idea to something like Power Wash Simulator, clean off the grime and stickers on old video games you buy, display them, build your collection.  You get to peel tape off boxes, peel off stickers, cleaner sticker residue, scrub grime and dirt and patch up scratches and then put the game up in your room when done.  It's that sorta mindless cleaner game that seems quite decent, I just played the demo for it, the game is supposed to be out in September.  The controls take abit to get use to, but it was like 5 to 10 minutes at most before you get a handle on how it all works.

[kamikazekeeg]

Put nearly 30 hours into Project Zomboid, but I think I hit my breaking point lol I actually would've quite earlier, but I didn't know I wasn't on Build 42, which is in beta on Steam and it notably improved the game for me.  It overhauls the gunplay to be way more enjoyable and even useful to me, along with toning back on what I thought was very obnoxious Zombie AI where it felt like they could see me from so far away in Build 41.  Felt like I couldn't really sneak around because of it.  The AI is a little wonky as I feel like it sorta loses track of you to easily, makes them abit too dumb, but I'll take B42 zombies of B41.  42 added some other changes, most of which didn't bother me, though I guess long term it could be more tedious to level up skills, though I never got far enough for that.

Which goes to my next issue.  Melee is rough as hell in both versions.  The isometric right click to to hold the attack stance has killed more than a few times, because there have been moments where I somehow caused my character to turn around, basically just begging the zombies to end my life.  It's happened at least 3 or 4 times.  It's a questionable system and having to deal with often insanely long kill times (I've had zombies take like half a dozen to a dozen hits per a crowbar or axe.  It's insane), can make fights so frustrating.  So you then have to resort to gun action, which then means spending the next few ingame hours fighting off hordes.

At the very least, I like that I can make a new character who can basically just take the place of my previous character, it's kind of a cool idea.  It just sucks having a character die after you've leveled up a few skills, especially aiming with how long that takes to level.

There is a good game here, there's just also a lot of frustration lol I think with this game being in forever early access, I'll just come back whenever Build 42 sees some new additions and maybe hits stable down the road.  I got the new Deltarune chapter to play this week, and I got some other stuff I wanted to return to playing like Satisfactory, which is a whole other type of grind.

[kamikazekeeg]

Picked up Noita as it has a cool look to it, all pixelated, very physics heavy with how things fall, fire and liquid spreads, cool system built around wands and magic.  It's a roguelite, and it sorta reminds me how I think I prefer rogue-likes abit more lol The difference is that Rogue-Lites are random every time and there's no outside progression, other than maybe unlocking some characters, like Binding of Isaac, but Rogue-Likes are more like Hades, where you earn stuff from the run and can then get stats or things to help runs.  Otherwise you are just beholden to random chance every run and it gets hard to progress.  I feel like I've hit a wall where I don't think I understand how to truly make myself stronger, how to mix and match spells with the wands to create really good stuff because there's no tutorial or guide. 

It's a neat idea, but might have to find a guide for some help to figure out the best way to progress, because I can't find the one boss in the first zone and I die every time I get to this one layer of the map that's like...4 levels down because I'm not close to strong enough to handle the volume of enemies.  It's not a bad game, but much like Binding of Isaac, it can get frustrating.

[weirdfeline]

Having already completed the current battle passes for both Fortnite and Overwatch I've started going through PS5 demos and played SpongeBob SquarePants: Titans of the Tide.. twice! Everything about this works. Feels better to play than Rehydrated. Thankfully the previous game, The Cosmic Shake, was given out via PS Plus so I just installed that.

Darwin's Paradox demo has great visuals but the gameplay isn't really for me. It's basically Inside with an octopus. The demo is heavily Meat Gear Solid inspired but I don't think that's part of the main game. End of the demo got pretty challenging.

Some more demos I'll be checking out are Star Wars Outlaws, Gori: Cuddly Carnage and Dead Reset.

[kamikazekeeg]

A really cool demo I tried is for an upcoming game called "About Fishing".  It's a low poly game with photo real people on the models, kinda gives off that Playstation/N64 era designs like Goldeneye, with a pixel filter over everything.  It's a dark toned fishing game, which sounds odd, but it has very interesting fishing mechanics that feel really good to use. I don't know if there's another game that is like this, perhaps there is, this has nods to the Dreamcast specifically in it, but you have to use your mouse to throw the line, but there's a lot physics and control to it and then it has other mechanics like being able to use a fish you catch to move around in the water and grab things.  It's very interesting with a weird, dark, mystery to it that tonally comes off kinda like...maybe what little I've seen of Deadly Premonition? Not as outright weird, but some things in it can be abit odd.

It's supposed to release fully this year sometime and I'm actually really looking forward to it as it has some really cool potential.

[kamikazekeeg]

Another cool demo, "Neverway", it's a really neat game that is like the "dark horror" version of Stardew Valley.  Depressed girl quits her job, goes to a place that might give her a new chance, but there's clearly a lot of weird stuff going on around her.  It seems to have most of what you expect out of that sorta cozy farm sim experience, social connections to make, abit of land to farm with, while also having some basic action happening.  I think this is more story focused than say Stardew, I don't think it's meant to be as expansive of a farming game, I could be wrong, but the Prologue is out there, it gives you the starting intro and then something to show off what the combat will be like, it's about an hour of time.  It's coming out in October and this gives me another game to look forward to around that time frame, I feel like there's 2 or three I'm looking forward to around then at this point.

[kamikazekeeg]

It's interesting playing Pokopia after having played Palworld abit ago, because they have sorta similar elements, crafting stuff, building, finding new creatures to be your friend, exploring a world, having your creature friends help you with crafting/building, Palworld just took it more in the actiony Breath of the Wild direction, while Pokopia took it in the task managing Animal Crossing direction.  I should like Palworld more, but it's one of those games that's as wide as an ocean, but only an inch deep and it just dragged for me after a time and does a lot wrong.

Pokopia has such a distinct focus, there's no wasted aspects, each Pokemon feels like they have character, the Requests/Missions can be basic, but they make sense, and I really just want to keep doing the next thing, find a new item I can craft, up my Environment rating in each area, explore the areas that reward me for doing so.  I like it way more than its Animal Crossing vibes too, which I thought was a pretty middling game that Nintendo super half-assed, but I get to decorate, I get to build, and I get to craft.  The Ditto character you are is also amazing, it's such a good idea.

I put a decent bit of time already as it can be very addictive, deep into the third area, I think about to open the 4th, and it's just been fun.  Also nice to be back playing something Nintendo, which I haven't done in like...a year maybe since my Switch 1 kicked the bucket.