just got a budget handheld console and the first thing i have been playing is GameBoy Color game Hamtaro: Ham-Hams Unite! it is a simple collecting game with some puzzles, and very cute (i am terrible at the bowling & soccer mini-games though)
Witcher 3! A classic, and there’s a new expansion coming out.
Persona 2 Innocent Sin (PSP version). Compared to P1, the story has a lot more of the contemporary Persona beats and holds up surprisingly well.
Wife was gifted a 3DS with two games, so my ancient butt is currently playing Pokémon Y
Edit: fixed a typo
Nice! I haven’t played that one in years but I remember really liking it.
Vintage Story. Same as every week. I’m sure I’ll burn myself out eventually, but there’s no sign of that yet.
I recently got UFO50 after initially not thinking it is for me, but hearing about it in Grogpod got me interested. I was born 1990 so games from the 80s really have more of a relic character for me, but it is still really good! I got it on switch because I saw many of the games have a multiplayer mode and that is fun, too!
Some games from it I enjoyed so far:
- Porgi: submarine metroidvania where you need to collect fuel upgrades to dive/explore deeper and deeper
- Party House: roguelike deck builder / boardgame; bit like Dominion and fun game for wife and me but also fun alone
- Devilition: puzzle game
- Avianos: Turn based strategy / boardgame
- Rock on Island: Bloons style TD
- Magic Garden: snake like arcade game
- Golfaria: Golf 2d isometric metroidvania / zeldalike
- Onion delivery: 2d car driving kinda roguelike… reminds me a bit of GTA 2… hard as a brick though
I keep advancing in Cronos: The New Dawn:
spoiler
I’m at the hospital and already have the 3 chemical compounds needed for the antigen. I also just got the double barrel shotgun, exploring does pay off in this game.
I’m expecting a boss fight almost immediately, and I don’t think I have much longer left before I finish the playthrough.
One thing I’ve forgotten to mention is the cats you encounter around while exploring. I find it funny that they all seem to have fuzzy hair, like one of my cats, I’ve always considered this to be kind of uncommon for cats.
I started Alan Wake 2:
spoiler
I haven’t played long but the game seems interesting, I like the detective stuff, but I’m worried about how long Alan Wake will actually be playable in this game. I’ve read he has less play time than Saga, which I find a bit underwhelming.
The game is poorly optimized, it runs mostly ok without ray tracing except while traversing Bright Falls, where it drops to 50s and even 40s sometimes, and it also stutters a bit every now and then. I find baffling that FSR is mandatory, what in the world were they thinking? I don’t want to attribute it to laziness, but I don’t now what else it could be.
Maybe I’m CPU-bound for this one, I should just try it on my IPS monitor and see how it performs.
I’m confused by the claim that FSR is mandatory in Alan Wake 2. I played with DLSS but you can play in native if you want unless a recent patch changed it. What platform are you on? It is a very demanding game though, although funny enough I found the forest to be more demanding than Bright Falls. It does look amazing though, especially in HDR and with ray tracing.
You have also read wrong about the protagonist split, it’s more or less an even 50/50.
I’m curious to hear what you think of the double barreled shotgun in Cronos. I actually preferred the first shotgun that you can charge. Also, how intense was that hospital level? The morgue was such a tough fight, at least for me.
I’m on Fedora. Unless I’m mistaken, playing in native resolution still uses FSR/DLSS for anti aliasing, there are no other anti aliasing options. I would have liked to have a choice like in most games. The game isn’t a smooth experience, even in areas where I’m at 60 fps. Every turn of the camera makes it go 1-2 fps down breaking vsync, which is quite noticeable playing on A CRT. I also tried on my IPS monitor and the performance is more or less the same at 1440p. I miss HDR, I had an HDR monitor but it started breaking and got a refund, and I spent that money to partially fund my 9070 XT.
I haven’t played Cronos today yet, the hospital was quite tense, but for some reason for me the game isn’t as unnerving as say Silent Hill 2 remake or first person survival horror games. Still the atmosphere is incredible. I survived the morgue quite well, but I spent a lot of ammo and I was left with very few bullets, which is going to be a problem really soon. I already had to punch a mid-boss to death before arriving to the hospital lol.
To be honest, I find DLAA to be quite a good form of anti-aliasing, almost as good as DLDSR. I don’t have much personal experience with FSR though as I have an Nvidia card.
I guess that screen tearing is a result of CRT and being locked into Vsync? I used G-Sync and never had any screen tearing issues.
Shame about your monitor, HDR is addictive when you get used to it.
Yeah, Cronos is a survival horror that emphasises survival over horror in my opinion. It isn’t really too scary, just atmospheric and with cool lore and story. It’s more about scraping by on the edge of resources and ammo than it is scaring the shit out of you.
Playing through Subnautica and having fun with it. I just completed the Seamoth last night so I can delve into the deepest depths of the ocean.
I wish I could play it for the first time again, it impacted me a lot and I consider it one of the best games of the past decade.
I wish I was brave enough to keep playing. Even at 720p docked on the Switch I was just too stressed out all the time. The low rendering distance didn’t help, I’ll admit. Beautiful world though
It coincides with real life really well right now because my wife and I started snorkeling recently and it’s been a nice disconnect.
Trying to force my way through the last few quests of Final Fantasy XVI. This has been my first FF since the PS2 era and wow… what a let down. It stinks of design by committee. I also started Final Fantasy IX again the other day to see if I’m just being an out of touch old person and no… that game is absolutely magical. Modern FF really is that bad.
FF16 was such a weird one, they tried so hard to make something that appealed to the western audience that it barely has anything to do with Final Fantasy. It’s wannabe game of thrones with wannabe devil may cry combat. Square have no idea where to take this series. That said Final Fantasy 7 Remake is solid and you should’ve gone with that imo.
Yeah it isn’t even a JRPG… not sure what they were thinking.
I grabbed VII remake in the sale so I will give it a go soon but my expectations are now pretty low. Maybe my nostalgia for the music will carry me through.
ff9 is destroying my adhd by the time i get to disc 3
I’ve never gotten through it all but damnit, retroarch cloud saves is making it easier to focus on one game
I’m playing through Skyrim for the very first time
Same!! Its been really fun. No mods for the pure 2011 experience.
I didn’t realize someone existed that hasn’t played Skyrim yet. /s
Enjoy! I’ve got 5,600 hours in it, there’s lots of content there. I hope you have fun with it. How far are you? What do you think of it so far?
A couple hours in, I’m level 4 I think. I’m pretty impressed by it so far, but I’m playing on a PS5, I can’t imagine how it felt to play this on the original consoles.
Very slow, that’s how. Load times were notoriously bad on 360/PS3. PC obviously depended on specs. It was a great time though, I do miss those days.
What race are you playing as? And what playstyle?
I am an Imperial named Gord, and I have a few playstyles, as I’m learning which enemies are weaker to certain weapons or spells: generally, though, I’m using a 2h sword as my main DPS, switching to a sword and shield for extra defences, or having flames in one hand and healing in the other for DoT (or against enemies weak to fire)
Just try not to slip into sneaky Archer. It’s overpowered.
I love 2H sword, it’s my favourite playstyle. Stealth archer is the cliché build but it’s a ton of fun too, and massively overpowered if you’re into that. It’s worth trying on a second playthrough for sure.
Have you done any major side quests or factions yet? Or just the main story?
The only side quest I did was returning the gold claw to a merchant, but I did that one by accident. Been doing MSQ so far, don’t really want to overwhelm myself with too many quests.
Although, I did find out the very hard way that you could be caught “trespassing” in shops.
Yeah that’s fair. I don’t usually play the main quest these days, just side stuff since that’s imo the best content in any Bethesda game, but on a first playthrough the main quest can be pretty epic. I hope you enjoy your time with it.
Still mostly playing on the 2DS and I’d recommend anyone tempted by 3ds.hack.guide to do it.
Nintendo Pocket Football
It’s a cutesy football manager game where you upgrade stats, choose tactics and watch your little players kick the ball about. I mostly lose.
I’ve been playing space haven. It’s Rimworld in space with some more story. The basics are a little more complex but at least on normal difficulty staying stable seems easier once you’re established, it doesn’t have quite as much depth I don’t think. I’m really enjoying it. Good cool music. Fun boarding mechanics. Great little game.
This one has been sitting on my wishlist for some time. Great art style and, unlike Rimworld, there’s gamepad support, so I could play this on my Steam Deck. What makes me hesitate each time is that games like this can be really hard to return to after a break. I get the same with city builders. You invest hours into slowly building up this complex ‘machine’, take a break, and upon returning realize you’ve forgotten what your priorities were and mess everything up.
The automation in this one is pretty good. I think the pawns are maybe a bit smarter than Rimworld so you don’t need to manually direct them as often.
Having a bit of a story mode also helps as you’ve usually got a mission objective you can come back to.
I’m like 20 hours in now and still very much enjoying myself.
I’m in between games. I finished Road 96, and was somewhat disappointed in it. It is occasionally funny, it has a charm and has its moments, but is mostly let down by too much subpar writing and too much terrible voice acting. Nice art, good music and some good ideas and concepts that fall flat of delivering the great experience it could have been. The political angle and story takes too much of center stage, especially in the second half, but the writers don’t have the chops to deliver anything other than a very superficial plot overall. It’s also just very uneven. If every character was written and acted as well as John, this could have been something great. In the end I don’t regret spending €4 on it, but I was expecting more based on the reviews and past recommendations.
I was planning on The Drifter next, but I might need something more action packed first so I’m also considering Wanted: Dead.
I’m playing The first berserker: Khazan. It’s fantastic if like me you have intense soulslike brainrot, it switches up the formula enough with the focus on skills and combos, it also has some nice parry and block action. Gameplay is really solid, bossfights are fun.
I’m moving at a snail pace though, I’m only at the 4th boss. I haven’t played much of anything this past month and some change but so far I’m having a blast.
I’m playing Starsector with some difficulty mods. Looking forward to the upcoming “Extended mode” which is supposed to make the game require more more logistical planning as well as making ships harder to come by.
