What have you been playing

I heart the Last Door is very good

Portal Reloaded, great add on for the series and free.
Deadcore, i love this game, a very hard first person platformer i guess but so good.
Aven Colony, a very good and stress free colony sim.

Hm.... Bioshock Infinite has some mechanics which are identical to the previous ones... but I would argue it is essentially a different experience for a few reasons... and it contains some of the best moments in gaming I have experienced, and some memorable dialogue... I vote for "give it a shot"! :D :D

(I guess it shows it is one of my favorite games ever.)

Cheers!

P.S.: I also played a bit of Thumper, and, yes, it is quite impressive. I did not finish it, but I always think I should try to.

Recently I've played Persona 4 Golden and Monster Prom. P4G because I've wanted to play it for a while and I finally found the time to do so and I loved it, and Monster Prom to do one of the craziest achievement hunts ever (I'm actually only ONE outcome from having all of them in the base game and I'm going through the logs to find it).

Just now I play the campaign of Defense Grid: The Awakening which is still the gold standard of tower defense genre.

I'm still pretty deep down the Hacknet rabbit hole but I am alternating with other games to come up for air.
I started Half Past Fate today. Not my usual kind of game but I needed something light hearted this week and it seems to fit the bill so far.
It's pretty linear though. Could have used more interaction but it's a short game so it's ok.

Finished 6 more games in the last 10 days. Here are some impressions:

Zero Escape: Zero Time Dilemma is third and last entry in Zero Escape series. It is generally considered the worst in trilogy, and I can agree to that, but it is still awesome game, this kind of story can only be concocted in the mind of Japanese developers, weird and unexpected. They wanted to appease to western audience because series is much more successful there than in Japan, and because of that we got a lot of gory scenes and characters are fully animated this time. Don't know why they expected that we would like that approach, but it makes game worse experience that previous titles. Animations are atrocious, dear lord you have to see it to believe it. Characters are stiff and move like robots, facial expressions are funny and make some scenes laughable instead of scary. Lipsync shares the same quality... Puzzles in escape the room segments were worse and easier for me than previous game. But the story is all that matters in this series and it is good, some great twists are foreshadowed throughout the game, and generally it was awesome experience in that department. Well done Mr. Uchikoshi.

Klei Entertainment is like Supergiant Games - they only make great games and Mark of the Ninja: Remastered follows that rule. Never played the original, but this is basically the same in gameplay department, only game assets and cinematics are now full 4K. One of the best stealth games that you can play, you unlock new gadgets and moves throughout the game, and have highscore system which reward stealth play, exploring the level for some unlockables and completing optional objectives.

The Last Door: Season 2 is interesting p&c adventure that continues the story from the first game. I liked it, but last chapter was a letdown for me, little convoluted and not that great as the rest of game. In general I liked the first game much more but it is all right, we don't have many p&c games with horror thematic anyways.

Gunpoint is interesting little game from Tom Francis who has excellent track record. It is a stealth puzzle game where you are playing as freelance detective who breaks into buildings to hack computers and steal what he is asked to. Puzzle aspect is great, for example you can rewire switches to open doors instead of turning on the lights to enter another floor, or set motion sensor to call the elevator instead of trigger the alarm, guard will turn to check what is happening and you can surprise him from the other side. What surprised me the most here is the story and its humor, dialogue was hillarious and was best part of the game for me. From technical standpoint it is not so great, since the recommended resolution is 1280x720, when you set it and quit the game your desktop stays at that resolution. If you try to play with native resolution everything is just smaller and almost unplayable.

Next were two puzzle games from excellent Czech developers, Amanita Design. I finished Machinarium 10 years ago, but decided to play it on Steam for the first time. It was as good as I remember. The game has no dialogue, instead of it are bubbles where you can see in cartoon fashion what you need to do, which is an Amanita trademark for sure. Animations are awesome and puzzles are not hard. The game also has unique hint sistem implemented which is in form of drawings.
Botanicula is much more abstract game but also filled with humor and beautifully animated. I wouldn't know how to explain what it is about but I know it is awesome. It is short game and doesn't overstay its welcome, puzzles were weird and interesting.

PUBG only because you can easily play anytime without some long time progress somethings, talent trees, lot of cutscenes and... just play and relax. (if cheaters/scripters doesnt make me to rage-quit)

When i was teenager Wolfenstein Enemy Teritory was a thing for me, i played it for years & thousands of hours with my uncle and clan... sometimes i wanna play agin but its not very friendly with new PCs and esp with wide screen, it looks weird and playing isnt good.
I also played WoW TBC like 12 years ago but just because my friend had private server with big playerbase and i got items i asked for and simply enjoyed battlegrounds... raiding or making quests never was fun for me. I also used to be event game master, it was fun to build for players jumping maps or pvp events.
Yes and also as great kid i was playing CoD MW1 and MW2 years ago too but i left due too many aimbots and toxic community.

Nowadays i cant enjoy anything for some reason... i got Fall Guys... played 3h and didnt played it agin ever (8 months since last play), i also liked Wreckfest... after 13h i uninstalled it, pressing left and right arrows hours over and over wasnt funny anymore. Then i wanted to try Rock of Ages 3... uninstalled after 10 minutes maybe... same with Kill it With Fire. Thats how i enjoy games :D
For example i really wanted to play Arma 3, when it was on free weekend i tried it and after 3 deep breaths and like 1h of gameplay i uninstalled it...

I have 2300 games inc. lot of great games but i play PUBG, rarely stunt maps in GTA V and even more rarely RL when friends wanna play it and we are tired of PUBG.
Basically every game i try ends up with eyerolls and bored deep breaths...
Iam gamer? :D

Are you writing short stories or are you playing games? 💪🧡 Jokes aside I thought the pandemic and lack of getting out would push me deeper into the crusts of my backlog also but I keep finding myself going back to the gems I've come to learn to love and others I am still trying to finish from years prior.

Been working on the original Binding of Isaac and just learned about the eternal update. Really hard going back to the first iterations of some games where they just feel so clunky and old. I'm a sucker for pain though.

May substitute BOI for some Mark of the Ninja Remastered and/or Hollow Knight, Shovel Knight, Salt & Sanctuary, Dead Cells or something similar.

Suspicious Downpour was a really neat, but extremely short point and click puzzle game. Only about 5-15 minutes but was more for the atmosphere/ambience.

This game was created as an entry for the 2021 Aotearoa Game Jam

Castle of Illusion & Duck Tales: Remastered are on the chopping block next I believe!

I have continued with Amanita games from the previous post. CHUCHEL was hilarious. I enjoyed its humor and cartoony animations and was laughing at all possible outcomes. Puzzles were trivial, you click on all things on screen that you can and stuff happens, so from the gameplay point it wasn't that great, but really fun experience nevertheless.

Samorost series was next. First part was released in 2003 and only appeared in remastered form on Steam 2 months ago as F2P game. It was short, only 15 minutes, but good indicator what we can expect from the sequels. Samorost 2 came out two years after the first one with similar gameplay and game length prolonged to an hour approximately. Puzzles were pretty easy, not much thinking required. Samorost 3 is much larger game than previous two - it took me about 6 hours to beat it and I was stumped on some puzzles which are harder and better than the predecessors. And that would be it for now as far as Amanita games go, don't have their newer titles Pilgrims and Creaks yet. It would be nice if they apper in some future Humble Choice.

LISA: The Painful is an extraordinary game. When you look at screenshots you would assume it is just another RPG Maker game, and we certainly don't lack those. What sets it apart is serious story which revolves around violence, suicide, rape and drug addiction. Game is set in an apocalyptic world, where after some unexplained event all women die and chances for human survival are bleak. You play as Brad, drug addict who suddenly finds a baby, female baby, and is determined to protect her from everybody, no matter the cost. Earthbound was one of the inspirations for the game, but bear in mind that this is second game in series, LISA: The First being its predecessor, and LISA: The Joyful concludes the trilogy (it was released as DLC). Although setting don't get more serious than this there are a lot of funny moments in the game, humor is excellent, with my favourite being Nern's story about his wife near the beginning.

We don't get much games like Hob nowadays, Zelda was obviously the biggest influence and I think that we don't have anything closer to it on PC. It is pure adventure game set in a mysterious world, with some light puzzles to solve, mediocre combat, but great exploration which is the focus. It is a shame that the world is not more diverse; it looks kinda the same throughout the whole game. Thankfully there is a map, otherwise I would be lost all the time. There are a couple of dungeons, but unlike Zelda series puzzles are not that interesting and pretty trivial.

I have decided on a theme for a next couple of games - detective/mystery, and the first one was The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. It is a decent walking simulator, still looks great in Unreal Engine 3, although there is Redux version also that is in UE4 (but I haven't noticed much of a difference really). Story is interesting, but I expected some puzzles to solve in the way, and game simply doesn't provide that. Good from the narrative side but I just expected more in the gameplay department.

Continuing with the theme next game was Murdered: Soul Suspect. It started strong, idea where you play as detective who dies at the start of the game and tries to solve his own murder as a ghost was something refreshing. User interface where clues are sorted and categorized was done really well and I was really into the game for the first 2-3 hours. After that novelty started to fade and flaws started to show. There are A LOT of collectibles in game, but trying to collect them all was tiresome and in the end I just gave up. That was probably that significantly impaired my enjoyment in the game, but it was my fault for giving the damn in the first place. Pieces of story that gave you was somewhat interesting in some cases, in other completely dull and boring and not worth the effort collecting it. There are also some optional missions where you talk to ghosts and help them in solving their problem (why/how they were killed). Dialogue in general were not interesting and the game drags to get to the conclusion. After 2 hours I thought that the game will be a strong 8 for me, but after finally reach the end I was not surprised that it had 60 on OpenCritic, that score is right on point.

After being disappointed with previous game, I have decided on Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments to be the next one. Never played it before, but whereever I read about it it was regarded as the best SH game to date. And they were probably right, this is exactly what I expected when I play as Sherlock - solving murders that are interesting which include collecting evidence, interrogating suspects, researching topics and doing experiments to prove hypothesis. What is different here is your deduction mechanic. You can come to the different conclusion than expected and accuse completely innocent party. Also independently if you have right person or not you have a choice to forgive them or arrest them and send them to the gallows. You can check at the end of the case if accused is indeed guilty and replay the last part of the case if you want to do it right. Would recommend this to everyone.

428: Shibuya Scramble is a game I choose to play for Maya's 2in20 event and I'm delighted I did so. I already played a couple of games from Spike Chunsoft (Danganronpa and Zero Escape series) and this stands equally among them as best in the genre. What genre? Well, Danganropna games are visual novels with murder solving and debating parts. Zero Escape games are visual novels with puzzle solving. 428 is purely a visual novel (or sound novel as publisher calls it) with no other gameplay elements like previously mentioned ones. What connects them all is excellent story, where murder and depression and silliest humor you can imagine are mixed up and it all works out extremely well. Only Japanese can make something like this.
You play as 5 main characters where the decision you make as one that seem pretty irrelevant can impact the other character significantly and make them killed. All stories are interconnected and are divided in one hour chunks and decisions you make can only impact characters in that time period. It was fun finding all bad endings (85 of them). Game has real actors instead of classic game characters and it was all captured on location in Shibuya, part of Tokyo. It was challenging filming there because it is actually forbidden, and you need special permit for it which is really hard to get. So developers had to be a little creative in order to not get arrested. :)
Story was better than I expected it to be and I couldn't wait to see how it will turn out at the end. I predicted some things, some caught me completely off guard and the end was satisfying. 10/10 no questions asked. Too bad that the game sold badly when it was released over a 10 years ago as Japanese-only title and it didn't do any better with 2018 worldwide release for PS4 and Steam. Game has sort of prequel, Machi, that happens in the same location but with different characters. It was released long time ago for Sega Saturn and Playstation and later for PSP, but unfortunately no english translation.

After last game I was up for something less story-heavy, and decided on installing Slay the Spire again for couple of runs. It is one of the best deckbuilders on the market, so it was a blast to play it again after more than a year. I wanted to try something new also, saw that Monster Train is on a sale and since it was overwhelmingly well recieved I have purchased it. Oh boy, that was such a great decision. In a week I have put more than 40 hours in it, it has the same "one more game" feel like StS and it is polished like an AAA game, user interface is designed perfectly - your run history, logbook with unlocked cards and artifacts, searching them by cost, type and class etc. It was clearly inspired by StS but it adds a lot of new elements, like units that fight on multiple rooms on train, and decks that are combination of 2 different classes (one primary and one secondary). Every class has 2 different champions that have different starting cards and dramatically different playstyles, so the number of combinations is astonishing. Game also has DLC that adds a completely new class and their cards and some gameplay changes and additions, as well as new final boss. You can also select in the menu if you wish to play with all those changes or not. Game was also recently released on Switch, with DLC and all updates included.

Monster Train is roguelike, not much of a story except reading lore on cards and some events. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of Gilgamech has a story and turn-based battles with deckbuilder elements as its core. You follow multiple characters, 3 in the beginning and later 2 more will join you. Every 'hero' has different set of cards, some will focus on damage dealing, some on healing, some on magic attacks with different type - fire, frost, wind, arcane. There are many buffs/debuffs in action which can be applied with different cards or fixed by using a potion. You can also equip stronger weapons and 2 different accesories per charachter when you receive them as a reward after battle or by buyint them in a shop. Active party can only have 3 members, so you will change them depending on opponents you face. Deck is consisting of 24 cards, and each hero must have exactly 8. Story and atmosphere is light in nature, with humor and puns (one in the name of the game itself) that will keep you in a good mood. I was playing in a normal difficulty and didn't have many problems after adjusting party and changing decks to accomodate current battle. After beating the game there is New Game+ where you can start from the beginning but keep all the cards you have unlocked, with stronger enemies that have some new skills, typical stuff.

And that would be it for now regarding deckbuilders, at least until I get Griftlands. :)

Nothing much, really. Decided to return to Hyper Scape (you've probably forgotten it by now) and I had a ton of fun.

Also started playing Star Fox and umm let's just say I'm not really good at it. That doesn't stop it from being insanely fun and chaotic though. My aim's wobbly so I doubt I'd get very far without crashing for the hundredth time, but the game's definitely one of my favorites.

Hollow Knight

It's so good. So so good.

I haven't been able to game as much over the last 5 years due to real life, and this game is so satisfying.

I can play it for 5 minutes and rage quit with a level of enjoyment I haven't felt in a long time.

Lol

I've also decided to play through the GTA games - finished 3 and then moved onto Vice City yesterday. 3 was a LOT shorter than I remember it being when I played it as a youngster. There's also loads of quality-of-life improvements that were made over the course of the franchise that 3 doesn't have which makes it pretty frustrating to play.

Glass Masquerade 2
It's even more beautiful then the first game, and the music is pleasant, but the puzzles are vastly over-detailed and not as fun to solve as in the first game.

Desperados 1 & 3

Haven't posted here for a long time, but haven't played that much either, was more in the mood for movies and tv shows. Arcane, The Night Of, The Chestnut Man, Squid Game, Spirited Away, The Sopranos, The Wire and Everybody Knows were the highlights for me. As for the games:

Unravel is physics-based puzzle platformer that I expected more from. It looks great with cute art and all, but as far as game mechanics go there are not much to see here. It starts becoming repetive fast, and after playing games like this you start appreciate gems like It Takes Two a lot more, with its gameplay variety in every level. Game has a sequel which is co-op, planning to play it soon with a friend and hoping that it will be better.

The Forgotten City was a masterpiece for me. Outer Wilds was one of my favorite games last year and this scratches the same itch with its timeloop mechanic. It was originally extemely popular mod for Skyrim and creator quit his job as a lawyer to make it into full-fledged game, there is a good documentary about it from Noclip. It has also very satisfying true ending (there are 4 in total) where everything is explained in detail and leave no mystery unsolved.

SteamWorld Dig is the first game from SteamWorld series that I played and it was great. It has simple gameplay loop - you dig for treasures underground, when your inventory is full you go back to the surface to sell it, buy new upgrades and abilities which will let you mine faster and longer, rinse and repeat. I was so into it that I have beat it in one sitting over period of 8-9 hours (happened to me with Yoku's Island Express also). It was not enough for me, so I installed SteamWorld Dig 2 the same day and started digging all over again. Sequel was better and bigger, added some QoL features, has much better level design which is not randomly generated anymore and even introduced some puzzles for good measure.

CrossCode: A New Home is a dlc for CrossCode which adds a LOT of content for its low price and ends its extraordinary story in a satisfying way. If you don't know what CrossCode is - it is action RPG with great (and sometimes very hard) combat, a lot of interesting and very challenging bosses, MMO-like quests, beautiful story and HUGE dungeons that are mix of fighting and one of the best designed puzzles I have encountered in any game. Figuring how puzzle works is just half the job - the other half is action-oriented and requires good coordination and reflexes to actually solve it. If it is too demanding for someone there is option in menu to reduce its speed (similar to Celeste accessibility options). They are definitely highlights for me, haven't had that much fun solving them since The Talos Principle and The Witness.

I was in the mood for some boss fights. Thought about going for S rank in Cuphead, but noped out of that fast when remembered how much trouble I had for achieving A+ for all of them. Furi was good substitute and decided to give it a go. Was not disappointed, variety of bosses is great and their individual phases different enough to keep your attention at all times. Battles are mix of melee-oriented combat where you have to memorize their attack frequency and have good reflexes in order to parry them and bullet hell sequences where you have to dodge constantly to in order to avoid projectiles, lasers and everything in between that is coming for you. I beat the game in normal (Furi) difficulty and it was hard enough to dismiss trying to do it on hard (Furier) right away.

When you have the developer team that is lead by creator and writer for Danganronpa series and director and writer for Zero Escape series it is naturally to expect a lot from their game. Well, some people also expect from Battlefield 2042 to be a good game, so there is that... World's End Club was a big disappointment, both in writing and gameplay. Game was first released for Apple Arcade so maybe it has something to do with that, but gameplay is pure garbage, uninterested, repetitive and buggy, and I endured it somehow just in order to see the story. Combat in it was... well, the worst thing ever, bad even for mobile game standards. Story was not good to compensate for it either, has 1 or 2 good reveals and that's it.

After bad experience from the last game, I decided to play some good visual novel that I bought recently. AI: Somnium Files was the chosen one, and it was the right decision. Story was top-notch, with unexpected reveals, emotional moments, good humor and quirky stuff if you have any doubts that game was Japanese. It also has flowchart like director's/writer's previous games from Zero Escape series. The story can go in different directions at some points. You will get to one end, and in order to progress further you will have to complete the other branches, although it there are not a lot of them, so you will not have to try to remember what happened in many other timelines like in ZE. Banter between main character and his partner (which is an AI that resides in his left eye) is excellent, and made me laugh more than a couple of times. The game is not pure VN, it also has gameplay elements when you go into victim's dreams to look for clues in order to solve their murder. You can spend only 6 minutes in it, the time stops when you are not moving but with every decision you make in there certain amount of it is spent. If you run out of it you can go back to previous segment with newly acquired information how to solve it, or you can start from beginning. I am so excited for the sequel which was announced a couple of months ago.

If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers is a free short p&c adventure that follows 3 characters that found themselves on the train with no knowledge how they got there in the first place. It has some really dark themes in it so if you are ok with that I would fully recommend it as a 3 hour narrative experience.

Mahjong Soul. I hate the game, and somehow I always go back to it. It's a vicious cycle.

After finishing BioShock 1 and 2 couple of months ago decided to play the last one in trilogy (at least until the next one, hopefully in 2022). BioShock Infinite was not much different than its predecessors. The story is happening in the city in the skies instead of underwater, you still have supernatural powers that are called vigors instead of plasmids, you can upgrade both them and weapons gradually throughout the game, audio logs are here again etc. What is different is you now have an AI companion, Elizabeth, who will be with you for majority of the time, talking to you, make remarks, helping you in battles by giving you ammo and health. She was the highlight for me, such a loveable and greatly written characters that you legitimately care about. Game looks beautiful, same as previous ones, architecture and art direction is superb. The story is excellent, some things I didn't manage to put together in the first place, but after finishing the game I watched some explanations/recaps on youtube and my opinion got even better. Game also has one of the best DLC content ever, continuing tradition that Minerva's Den has set. Part 1 is similar to the main game, only big difference is that the story is now set in Rapture from the first 2 games instead of Columbia, with a glimpse on the beginning how the life was there before all went to hell. Part 2 was a big surprise for me because Elizabeth was the main character, and the gameplay was changed considerably to be stealth based, with sneaking and silent takedowns. Story connects very well with some events from the first game, was genuinely surprised how they managed to put it together.

I was planning to play Batman: Arkham Knight when I buy a new GPU, but as that isn't gonna happen anytime soon I decided to test it on my ancient R9 380 and it was pretty good, stable 60fps on 1920x1080 (although textures on low because of 2GB VRAM). It also has in-game benchmark which is awesome feature that we rarely see anymore.
Gameplay is the best in the series - fluidity and quality of animations and traversing through the city. It doesn't change much compared to previous games - good story is here as well, large number of collectibles and challenges, funny dialogue, exceptionally well voice acting. I personally liked Batmobile which was the biggest and most controversial addition, although it overstays its welcome a little bit with large number of tank battles. I am only disappointed that Rocksteady's next game will be online-only and not some other top-notch singleplayer experience.

So I am playing 3 games. Dark Souls remastered, Elder Scrolls Skyrim and The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia.
So finished dark souls 1 and immediately started a new save to try sorcery. Played a little bit up to the gargoyles.
Elder Scrolls Skyrim. Not really happy with the quest quality. But it's just so much fun just exploring. Only location I hated was Soul Cairn. It's just bad. But I am having fun just going to dungeons, clearing out bandit area, mining, enchanting, smithing. And becoming vampire isn't as bad as oblivion. Removing the constant sun dmg was a great decision. The weakness to fire means nothing because of enchanting. But conjuration could have been so much better. No clannfear, wraith. Only cool thing is dremora lord. Dead thrall sounds really cool but it needs lv 90 conjuration and there seems to be a lot of problems with it. It's possible that you get a good thrall and you lose it permanently cause of bug. And skyrim has so many minor bugs. It's just shocking.
Also started the textorcist today and I already have a headache. Basically you type with 1 hand and move character with another. Like, that's such weird way to play a game. It is possible to type with 2 hand and move character at the same time. But for that I have to use shift+wasd and slight pause between attacks to type with both hands. My brain can't cope with this yet.

After a long, long marathon of adventure games (a lot of story-rich stuff including some brilliant titles like Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo or The Forgotten City) I decided to play something primal and primitive for a change, and Dying Light seems to scratch this itch. I mean, the writing is very basic unfortunately (to put it mildly), but infinite parkour-zombie-murder is fun! I don't know why, but killing zombies has always helped me relax.

Unravel 2 was much better than the first game in my opinion, although it is very similar to it. Maybe it was the fact that I have played it in co-op with a friend, we completed it almost in one session. Puzzles were pretty basic except in 2-3 cases where we had to think for a while. It is interesting that Steam went nuts in reporting his playtime - 9.4 hours in the last 2 weeks and 8.7 in total, while my stands correctly at 4.6h. Since my friend was host via Remote Play I didn't get any achievements, so I did another playthrough solo. :p
After completing it there are 20 greatly designed challenge levels with harder puzzles which also require much better coordination and reflexes. Main game is generally easy, but those will test your skills for sure.

Yooka-Laylee and the Impossible Lair is a sequel to Yooka-Laylee that received much better critical reception, but have sold much worse. Guess mixed opinions on the first game were detrimental to it. They also changed the genre, from 3D collectathon similar and influenced by Banjo-Kazooie to 2D side-scrolling platformer, in the vein of Donkey Kong Country and Rayman Origins/Legends. Pure gameplay and level design is great, one of the best in the genre, although I would argue that there aren't enough variety in enemies and general themes for a 40 level game (20 but each one has a variation). There is also an overworld, game world hub where you will solve some lite puzzles to unlock levels and tonics which when equipped change some game mechanics or add a filter which can make your game pixelated, black&white, change aspect ratio, saturation etc. If you are into puns you are set for life here, there are a ton of them. There are 48 bees to save in total and each absorbs one hit when you attempt to beat the final level which is hard, but also the most satisfying part of the game for me. It consists of 4 platforming sections with boss battle in between and it takes 20-30 minutes to beat. There are 3 checkpoints after each phase with saved number of lives (bees) you have left at that point which they added in an update which is great because you can easily practice later parts of the Lair. Soundtrack is on another level, so many catchy tunes that I will keep listening from time to time. I will probably give the original game a chance in the future, I played Banjo-Kazzoie for the first time only a couple of years ago and loved it, despite some shortcomings.