I advanced quite a bit in Alan Wake 2:

Titan Station:

After finishing The Invincible for the second time, it reignited my love for space-themed walking simulators, and I had this one waiting for me. The storytelling is a bit awkward, and the voice acting is not too good, especially the main protagonist, who sounds like an amateur person with a regular mic recorded it. In fact the credits give a nickname, not a real name, unlike the rest of the cast.

But it’s a chill game and it looks quite good on my CRT, and the story isn’t bad in itself. Just the way it’s told. Now I’m looking for more similar games, we’ll see if I find more.

Still playing Caves of Qud. Probably will be playing that for quite a while (relatively speaking… I mean I tend to lose interest in most things after so many hours).

Unpacking and Hungry Horrors. Both great games!!

I’ve also been doing one Sonic Generations stage a day :D When I’m done with those I’ll move into Shadow Generations!

Gave away shadow complex after I saw I had a key for it but it was already on my account. So I’m kinda playing through it with the person I gave it to.

I’ve started a monster taming game called Anode Heart and it’s good stuff so far. There’s a lot of depth to the gameplay, somewhat nonlinear with a strong story anyway. It came out about three years ago. Comparing to other indie monster tamers I’d definitely put it above Cassette Beasts, not sure about Monster Sanctuary but it’s much less well-known than either and deserves to be.

I finished The Drifter yesterday. It took me three weeks to get through a 10-hour game, that tells you a bit about how little I’ve been gaming lately. Anyway.

Game is absolutely great. 9.9/10, a must-play if you like the genre of point-and-click adventure games, and a game you should seriously consider even if you don’t.

I’ve already waxed lyrical about it in past weekly threads, so I am not going to repeat myself here. All I can add is that the game does stick the landing.

From what I have played, this is the most logical puzzle game ever. There were only something like 5 convoluted puzzles over the course of the whole game, and even those did make some sense in retrospect. Besides those five I got stuck on, I was able to figure out the rest of the game without outside help, and everything felt like it was logical and made sense.

The story is a lot of fun, it was more sci-fi than I expected but I don’t really mind it. It’s a breakneck pulp thriller and it keeps throwing curve balls at you, there is always a twist and turn and you never know what to expect. The writing is super sharp, it’s witty and fun and the dialogue is great. In the latter half there were a couple of voice actors that were only okay, but the rest of the cast is absolutely top shelf and the protagonist especially is great.

Overall I can’t say enough good things about it. The conclusion is satisfying, the main theme of the OST hitting with its heavy synths at a climactic moment was epic and there is even an emotional arc.

Play it, it’s fantastic. Even if you don’t like puzzle games, the story and presentation is great, so if you have to look up a few hints or solutions then so what? You’ll have a good time regardless.

Patient gaming, Blasphemous. Not much to say about it. I enjoyed the pixel art and the world building but found the gameplay somewhat janky and maybe partly because of it also hated most of the boss battles. I haven’t fully completed it, the in game progress meter gives me around 70% done and I’m just looking if I find the motivation to push it to the finish line. But I’m more stuck in my not so patient gaming game.

Not patient gaming, Witchfire. Blasphemous left me with a dark fantasy itch so I was looking for something to scratch it with and I remembered Witchfire had a major update a month ago. Now to talk about Witchfire itself. Witchfire is a game by the former developers of Painkiller (for those who are ancient enough to know about Painkiller) and is about a fictional church vs witches war where you’re the church assigned “preyer” (witch hunter) who has to go and recover a lost relic from an area controller by a witch that may change the tide of war. Thematically it’s a dark fantasy and while I’m getting some Dark Souls vibes in some of the gameplay elements I feel like there’s much bigger inspiration taken from Bungie with the emphasis on verticality, impressive vistas and tight gunplay.

As for the gameplay, if we were to be genre fluid it would fit in the extraction shooter genre. You go on expeditions into one of the 6 maps to gather resources, level up weapons, explore the maps, do quests or progress the meta progression and when you’ve completed what you set out to do or you feel like you no longer have resources to continue you go to an exit portal and effectively extract. The game very much has every aspect of an extraction shooter except for the multiplayer PvP and it will never get that because the developers have been very clear it will be single-player only. I guess technically there’s also no time limit for how long you can stay in the expedition but there’s a late game mechanic that you can interact with to ramp up the difficulty to a point where sticking around becomes extremely dangerous. The gunplay feels really good. Not as good as Destiny 2 but for me it comes very close because it’s one of the very few games where I can easily intuit how my character moves, where the enemies are and which shots will and won’t land. I have no idea what micro interactions are happening there but the moment to moment gameplay is so satisfying for me. The only exception is when enemies are so close that the particle effects are having a full-on rave on my screen and I can’t see if I’ve killed everyone or if there’s an enemy about to attack me.

It’s still in early access with a release around the corner (last roadmap that was released a few weeks ago had a late Q4 2026 release window) so it’s not patient gamers ready, but I think it’s definitely worth putting on your radar because I genuinely think it’s also worth the $40 price tag. I bought it when the 0.8 update came out and had fun but ultimately put it down because the late game mechanic (world corruption for those who have played the game) was a difficulty spike I wasn’t expecting and it sucked the fun out of it, at least for me. I was going to skip to 1.0 but like I said, Blasphemous gave me an itch and Witchfire was going to scratch it. And I’m glad I didn’t wait because I experienced it first-hand that the developers are taking feedback from early access and they’re actually listening because with the 0.9 release I was blown away how significantly they altered the the late game mechanic. It went from something that forces difficulty to ramp up to something you can choose to interact with and if you do it doesn’t just ramp up difficulty, it also gives you a few choices to power up yourself as well. So a mechanic that at first was just something to make the game harder became a mechanic that makes the game more challenging. This on a whim decision to play Witchfire has made it one of my most anticipated releases of 2026.

Beat Divine Divinity for the second time, first was in 2004, it’s a nice and simple rpg. A fine story and some diverse quests. The game still plays fine, missing some modern features and the pathing is not that great, but the writing carries it.

Now it’s over to Fields of Mistria as it is finally out of early access.

Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (original release)

I’ve played it before, though never finished it. After jamming on Skyrim for a couple of years, I wanted an RPG with some fresh content so I picked it up again. The graphics are so dated that they almost wrap around to retro again, but I’ve been having fun planning and then executing a build wrt stats, skills, playstyle, etc.

It’s been enough fun that I’m thinking of picking up the official remaster at some point, but I’m more interested in the community version made in the Skyrim engine, Skyblivion. Have been following the project for a while and it’s almost done!

Replaying Zelda: A Link to the Past this week. Been kind of a busy/stressful week, so whisking my way through a comfortable favorite to relax.

I beat Nine Sols earlier this week. Great game. Very difficult last boss.

I’m playing PalWorld now and it’s addicting.

Red Dead Redemption 2

This is probably the 5th time I’ve gone back to it after a long break. I was really tempted to restart from the beginning but decided to continue from where I am. It’s such a beautiful game and so far I’ve mostly spent my time hunting and fishing :D

Making my way through the last of my achievements in Hitman. I figured these last ones would all take a long time but I’ve gone through 3 or 4 in just a couple hours so maybe I’ll have it all done before I thought I would.

Heartless & Dreadful : Return by 72 Hours

First off, I hate that goddamn title: why the fuck is there a space before the colon… it upsets me every time I look at it 😂 The game has an unserious tone, but still WTF.

It’s a fun indie action game. In a nutshell, it’s a shameless Devil May Cry clone, which’s cool because we don’t get enough of those any longer. By that I mean: style meter, style button, d-pad to change styles, change weapons on the fly, unlocking new moves with in-game currency, and it’s even mission based.

Even the moves are identical to Dante’s and Vergil’s classic movesets.

There’s mild exploration for more items and whatnot, which I don’t mind, but the game is fairly linear. It’s about as linear as Devil May Cry 5.

I’m having enough fun with it to go on and beat it eventually, but IDK if I’ll be revisiting it for playthroughs on higher difficulties. I was always more of a Clover, Platinum, and Team Ninja fan than a Capcom/Devil May Cry fan anyway.