Let's Talk About Games

I've had a week off work so I've played a fair bit more than I would normally. Threw a few things off of my backlog that I didn't connect with and then spent a fair bit of time with....

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

Had a really good time with this one, especially in the first 10 or so hours. It did fall away towards the end, largely because it gets increasingly difficult as you go along. That's not a criticism of the game as much as it's an acknowledgement that I don't love super tough platforming in games. Ultimately I used the games pretty great accessibility features to knock the difficulty right down and got to the end whilst also feeling like a total badass.

Returnal

I've had less time with this as I only started it yesterday whilst waiting for Demons Souls to download. And I think it's safe to say that Demons Souls will have to wait. Returnal feels like something totally fresh and new to me. I've got no effing idea what's going on, and I don't really understand how the game works, but I'm having a total blast so far.

Been caught up in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. I always enjoyed tank control Lara, but never really got far as a kid. Now I'm well into the first one, and plan on playing them all! The higher framerate definitely helps a lot.

Playing the new Stardew Valley 1.6 update coöp with the kiddos and replaying the excellent original Slime Rancher in my solo time before starting the sequel that just dropped.

On mobile, nothing actively playing, just the "walking companion" Pikmin Bloom, which continues to actually succeed at gamifying active transit, daily walks, and exploring public art around the city.

I got XCOM 2 for $5 on the steam sale. Been playing that for a week straight and really enjoying it.

I enjoyed the first one in a very limited way before getting frustrated and moving on. For XCOM 2 I went in with better expectations and forethought about the strategy being crucial to understand for the harder difficulties to be beatable. So I elected to play on the "veteran" difficulty (one step above the easiest).

It's definitely still been a bit frustrating at times, and I've had to resort to reloading saves more than I'd like to admit, cuz I'm going for a no deaths run. But now that I've almost beaten it and understand the ins and outs better, both in the field and in the larger planning room, I feel like I could bump the difficulty up a notch on a fresh playthrough.

It reminds me of playing a game like civilization where the missteps made early on can crush any hopes of survival even with tons of save reloads cheesing the odds.

I've been playing on my steam deck hooked up to my TV, and it runs pretty well. Had to tweak some settings but got it running 1920x1080 without any performance issues. Controller support is pretty good although it never recognizes my controller on game startup unless I manually switch input to keyboard and then back to controller.

I also noticed some crashing start occurring on a regular basis whenever loading a save, but restarting the deck resolved it.

I've been playing a lot of Fortnite Save the World. My biggest complaint is that the traps take backseat to the combat in multiplayer. Even when someone builds a trap setup, it's often ineffective without studying the "proper" way to use traps, especially since some of the more effective traps have a multiple block range. Still, I've been having a good time with STW and Festival mode and Lego mode and Rocket Racing mode - I don't play much of the battle royale.

I have a Factorio "Lazy Bastard" run on the back burner.

Mostly Balatro, scratches that brain itch.

I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 last week. I thought it was good, not great, having enjoyed the first half of the game a lot more than the second. Really enjoyed the little Xenogears references. I wasn't intending to move right on to the Future Redeemed DLC, but I heard something interesting things about it and decided to give it a shot. Really glad I did; nine hours in I'm already finding it dramatically more enjoyable than the base game.

Before starting that DLC, I was nibbling at Unicorn Overlord and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. I'm running hot and cold on UO, a lot of that having to do with the item management. This might be the most customizable strategy RPG I've ever played, depth and breadth, and the UI/UX is absolutely not up to the task. I ended up dropping Darkest Dungeon for very similar reasons a while back, and I'm hoping that's not where I end up with UO. It's such a pretty game and the strategy is genuinely interesting. Not much to say about Wonder; it's a very impressive, refined product and I'm sure I'll keep coming back to it.

Those last seven days? Mostly vivid/statis (PC) and Shattered Pixel Dungeon (mobile).
In particular, for the former, I've been slowly improving myself in recognizing medium-to-hard charts and beating them, mostly of the Middle difficulty, although I found the Cyclical Rebellion one quite hard to maneuver, requiring extra reflex time to get through the tricky sections. Story-wise, I held off from experiencing the second-to-last episode of Chapter 3 until I can build up the stamina and patience needed for its corresponding boss song chart (of which I'm either gunning for Opening or Middle, owing to my rather newbie-status in serious, well-polished 4k rhythm games in general), but from what much I had gleaned out of, from the game's official Discord hub, there's a lot going on behind the scenes, particularly on the main characters' dimensional dilemma and the concept of "cycles". Gameplay-wise, I still am grappling over the fact I get more early notes, and less late ones, than a stable balance, but I attribute it mostly to my proficiency and a rather minor irregular rhythm/beat following.

As for my own backlog, though, I still have the unplayed demo for Until Then, as well as OMORI, and Disc Room, the last of which I haven't touched upon since my last playthrough some three years back.