What are you playing?

[Cartagia]

I've made up to the "bad" or "false" ending in Hollow Knight: Silksong afterv45 hours of playtime.  I don't think I'm going for 100% completion, but I am definitely going for the "true" ending now.  Just a truly phenomenal game. I only have a few quibbles, mostly with the size and scope of the game.  I'm very happy that there's more to play, but there is so much here, and the map is so big that it is easy to forget about characters or totally miss them altogether.  The story is also much more straightforward and easy to follow than the first game.

[kamikazekeeg]

Played abit of Tormented Souls, its free with Twitch/Amazon Games right now, and got like...15 to 20 minutes into it, died, never found a save spot, and it kicked me to the main menu with nothing saved.  That's a mood killer lol I never saw a save point as far as I can tell.  Possibly the film reel is the ribbon from Resident Evil, but no clue where that is at right now to use.  There is a safe room, but I didn't see something that could use the reel in there and you get the reel eventually in a completely different area from the safe room if it is in there.

The game itself isn't bad, it's a classic Resident Evil throwback, but it allows you to play it with either straight tank controls using D-Pad, or smoother modern movement with analog, either one done with fixed cameras and the modern controls work totally fine.  I've long been against tank controls, so having smoother movement helps a lot.  It gets very creepy, great atmosphere, pitch black areas throughout, and your only light is a lighter, so they nailed that...which is an inadvertent pun, because the games main weapon at the start is a nail gun lol  Creatures are interesting so far, almost remind me of an enemy that would be in like The Suffering or something lol

I might go back and redo the beginning again, such a silly start.  I'm fine with a game being a throwback to games like Resident Evil, but it's also a modern game and I think you can still have some simple checkpoints throughout, or at least let me restart at the beginning of the game, not the opening cinematic if you are to die before you can save.

[kamikazekeeg]

Back to I'm On Observation Duty 4, realized I only did one level before out of the three and that's a perfect game for the season.  Was gonna jump into 6 initially for the sake of color visuals, but went through another level of 4 and its pretty good still.  Just that right bit of quiet, unsettling, tension as you try to find all the things wrong in the room.  I still hate the random voice stuff they use, the game is creepy enough on its own to not have like a voice quietly say something, or have crying, but it's not related to anything you need to find.  That's what drives me nuts about it, its there for the added creep factor, but to me it just takes me away from the game itself when I know it's not something in the room.  They are reasonably sparse, maybe a couple times during a run at most, but still, wish they'd stop with that.

[kamikazekeeg]

Realizing why I kept hearing that people generally don't like Five Nights at Freddy's 2, because despite some fan favorite characters in this, the gameplay is garbage lol I like not having to worry about power, and while the music box windup is a little tedious, there's a decent bit of gameplay for the most part...until you have to deal with the Withered's.  They can just show up in your room out of the blue, and you have something like a literal second to put down your Freddy mask, but I keep missing the window.  I might not be the snappiest player ever these days, but the timing is ridiculous and makes no sense and it draws things out, because it'll disappear for a second when you think you got it, just to jumpscare you, it's super frustrating and it's so weird, because most of the other characters have clear audio tells and seemingly make sense to deal with.  I've died 3 to 4 times now just from Withered's because of the timing window, it's so bad.

I hate that these games are so barebones, because there should be controls I can change so that I could make camera and mask flip a button press and not a mouse over move, and there's a slight delay to the controls, or its very easy to accidentally bring the tablet back up instead of mask and that screws you.  I'll try a few more times, but this isn't the sort of difficulty I like in a game, because it feels arbitrary, more than like I'm genuinely doing something wrong.

*EDIT*

Kept banging my head against FNAF 2, the timing window is the worst, any bit of hesitation, and the Withered's get you, it's frustrating, because it's not an issue of "Oh, that was a mistake on my part, I'll do better", it's "I didn't have perfect reaction timing, and if I don't have perfect reaction timing, I'll never win".  It's not good, which is a shame as mechanically it's fine even if the cameras are entirely pointless in this game lol

I decided I might jump into FNAF 3 and...god this game is ugly.  I understand the idea is that the location is basically a cheap garbage dump with crappy old systems, but I hate that it justifies horrible camera visuals that also have annoying audio stuff happening, and then having to flip up two panels on either side is awkward after doing the side to side tablet stuff of FNAF 1 and 2.  It's clunky.  I'll give it a shot, I just need to figure out what I have to do with Springtrap as I know the Phantom's are just hallucinations and can't hurt anything, they just cause system issues I think.

[bizzgeburt]

SpongeBob Squarepants: Revenge of the flying Dutchman (Game Boy Advance)
https://vgcollect.com/item/229025

After getting a little frustrated failing to climb the Tower of Temptation in Grandia or beating my best highscore in Tetris, I started playing SpongeBob Squarepants: Revenge of the flying Dutchman. This is the last of the 6 SpongeBob-GBA-games I own that I haven't beat yet, so I thought I give it a try.
This game is very similar to other SpongeBob titles on this system, yet it introduces some gameplay mechanics exclusive to this one, that make it a quite playable platformer. Though some special challenges bring some serious challenge I must admit.

I hope to beat this one soon 

[kamikazekeeg]

Battlefield 6 - It's mostly what I wanted, the only real negatives I have setting aside light bugs or mild annoyances, is that it doesn't have the best maps, a couple are decent, one or two aren't great (I haven't even played one of them to know if it's good, but I think it's a smaller map, so I probably won't like it).  It's not like BF2042 bad where the maps are big for the player count and otherwise are just boring, they are just abit bland other than Firestorm which is a BF3 map.  I don't think anything is gonna be considered all the notable from this game afterwards.  We'll get more eventually, but not the strongest launch maps, and the lack of water vehicles/maps is kinda lame how the series has kinda had to reset itself after BF2042, but is lacking stuff most previous games had.  I'm still enjoying myself though, I'll be playing this for a long time.

Oh and I'm partially through the campaign, but yeah its not good, though I was kinda expecting that lol

Ball x Pit Demo - I hadn't heard about this one, but saw someone playing the demo and it's releasing soon, but its really fun.  It's abit Vampire Survivors, but by way of Breakout/Brick Breaker games, along with being abit of a vertical scrolling Shoot'Em Up.  Progress upward with ricocheting attacks against sliding down block enemies, upgrade/evolve random weapons and items you get, and when you die or beat the level, you go back to your little town you build up which is how you boost stats or unlock characters, by placing down structures.  I can see it being very addictive and great to get after kinda doing all I wanted with Megabonk.

[telekill]

Been enjoying myself this weekend. I'm halfway into the single player and it's... well, it's not great but it's not horrible. It just kind of exists. The multiplayer is where the game shines. I've had quite a few awesome scenes I've played through and can confirm the game is cinematic.

I generally run Engineer or Support. I believe my final standings was that I made it to level 21 last night. I acknowledge my K/D is horrible, but I also focus on the challenges and objectives instead of just trying to mow everyone down. Unless I'm in a vehicle... then I try to run them down at every opportunity.

Great fun to be had and I'm enjoying it far more than 2042. The dev did say they're aware of fan's wanting naval warfare and the roadmap for the rest of the year looks promising with a new map each month for free.

[kamikazekeeg]

Took a break from my Battlefield 6 time, to play something completely different...a shooter, but in third person lol Arc Raiders had a stress test I didn't know about but it was the perfect opportunity to check out the game as I didn't get into the last beta.  Right off the bat, this game looks fantastic and it runs AMAZINGLY.  Like even with Battlefield 6, a game that runs well, I'm doing around 100 frames on average, but I'm regularly hitting my current top 120 frames, it feels great to play.  There are some visual bugs here and there, but minor stuff like that isn't unexpected and on something that probably won't be the day 1 build of the game.

I'm not huge on extraction shooters, either they are far too in depth and immensely challenging to be fun (Tarkov), or are just don't do much to excite me, but this kinda works.  For one, there's an option to solo play if you chose "No Fill" for squad, and it prioritizes putting you into a match with other solo players.  I feel like they should say something about this in game, but I found out from the forums.  I think it means you could get into a squad match, but I played probably 4 or 5 matches in a row and all seemed solo.  This is rare for these sorta games honestly.  I think pub play grouping would be fine, I did two, but I'm not often one to enjoy team focused games like this without people I know when playing.

It's your standard extraction shooter with a retro futuristic feel, enemies are varying types of drones, which could get a little boring, but hopefully they have plans to add more and the gameplay is solid.  Weapons have a nice kick, getting a sniper shot on someone to watch their shield explode is super satisfying.  I'm kind of a loot goblin in games so just scavenging for junk and such that can be used for crafting and base upgrades is something I like.

I probably will play through the stress test, though might not grab it when it releases as I'll still be doing Battlefield 6 and I think it's rumored for the Battle Royale to come out with Season 1, but I think I'm just focusing on BF6 for abit, but I can see myself enjoying this game.

[bizzgeburt]

Still on

Grandia - Ubisoft Exclusive [DE] (SONY PlayStation)
https://vgcollect.com/item/285389

repeatedly battling lance swinging humanoid dragons and fire spitting wolves around Tower of Temptation to grind boost items for strengh and defense 

[kamikazekeeg]

Played the Cronos demo and it seems interesting.  I had heard it was kinda aggressive with its survival horror aspect, very tight with resources, which I don't love. I know that's a notable part of survival horror, but often it's not quite this bad, even Resident Evil could give you a decent ammo if you were careful with your shots.  There is like a charge shot attack, but even if you get a couple of those in, it can still take more, and I was not getting much more ammo.  The game feels like a mixture of Dead Space and Resident Evil, but I can see it being solid.  Not sure when or if I'll get it, at least not anytime soon, I don't think I'm getting much else other than maybe Arc Raiders soon, not sure.

Five Nights at Freddy's 4 - Struggling through this one now. I  thought I was gonna cruise through this one as mechanically it's vibes are very similar to FNAF 2, you just get a nice set execution of checking things and you'll probably be okay, but its hard even on Night 3 and not from timing.  There's way less to the audio cues I feel compared to like FNAF2 where you had things very clearly setup, you'll sometimes hear walking on either side, but it's not a guarantee of something being there, and then if Foxy gets into your closet, you now have a third door way to worry about and it's really annoying getting him to settle down as you can spend like 5+ seconds just getting him to back off, which can be enough to screw you on the doors, so far getting nailed by Chica/Cupcake is my normal go to.  I am frustrated, it's hard to tell what the path is for this.

I thought it was just rotating door to bed to door, and then put closet in the middle if Foxy shows up, but once Foxy shows up, he takes up so much time and leads to someone getting in, usually Chica for whatever reasons.  I did get one night that didn't get Foxy at all, but then I botched it by hitting flash light instead of closed door, great idea putting two important, conflicting, mechanics right next to each other with no keybind options.  I also swear there's points where the breathing audio doesn't play or is so quiet it's impossible to hear, because I've had moments where I sat for a good two seconds maybe, heard nothing, hit flashlight, dead.  So annoying.

I then tried to do the listening for just steps, but it's very clear that the steps don't always mean something is and I feel like that risks you getting something coming up both sides, specifically Foxy, and if they get in too soon, you just deal with him for too long.  Kinda curious if the idea is to try and calm it down a lot when you can, rather than calming him a little with every rotation.  I kinda just pop in for like 3 to 5 games, then get pissed and quit lol