Lots and lots and lots of Pinball. I picked up Pinball M (horror-themed tables, such as Dead by Daylight and The Thing) and a vintage table pack containing a few digitized versions of tables that actually existed when I was hanging out in video arcades as a kid. (Most notably, Funhouse, which had a ventriloquist dummy head that mocked you during the game.)
I also picked up Yet Another Zombie Survivors, which is a Vampire Survivors-styled game with a zombie apocalypse theme. It is a BLAST.
Total cost of all of these was $14 bucks during the sale.
oh man. I remember Jeff Bakalar of Giant Bomb had a real-life version of that Funhouse table (he was indefinitely “borrowing” it from someone who was sick of it taking up space). The stories he told on the Giant Beastcast about that dummy head staring at him in the dark of his garage…
For some reason I can’t put down Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire. I’m playing it on my handheld emulator so it’s very easy to just pick up and play a round when i have some spare moments. Pinball has never been my favorite genre, but the loop of actually catching Pokemon across sessions has been weirdly compelling. Idk if all pinball tables are this way, but most of the time when I lose a ball, it feels like I did nothing wrong and the game just decided to bounce off a pixel the wrong way and shoot into the out lane. I will probably put it down when I get the retro achievement for catching 100 Pokemon, because I seem to be getting worse the more I play. lol
Also finally playing Jedi: Fallen Order whenever I have more than just a few moments to game. I’m a big Star Wars head (in the non-toxic way 😅), so I will go in and out of phases where a Jedi video game sounds super compelling. It finally hit me, and man is this game fun when you’re just playing and mowing down Stormtroopers. My only gripe is that the game still feels buggy and hitchy, even 5 years since it came out. I don’t mind it most of the time, except the game is quite fond of in-engine cutscenes. and when these happen, I want to shut my brain off and enjoy the story like a Star Wars show. But little tiny bugs and glitches (jittery cloth effects, characters facing the wrong way) keep taking me out of it. I definitely feel like i’m committed to seeing it through, though.
To be fair, Twitter needs very good infrastructure to be usable (e.g. caching) and obviously content moderation is as robust as their investment in it (those could be contract workers though)
Oh, sure, I didn’t mean to compare the two really. Just pointing out that although Twitter is simple and easy to replicate in concept, trying to scale to support all humans as users (theoretically) is difficult
Redundant, like the server staff who told Elon it would take 6 months to move the servers… so he decided to move them himself on a whim… and it took 6 months to finish making them operational again?
Or redundant like the content moderation staff, whose redundancy has turned X into an even bigger dumpster fire?
Moderating and serving the content from 300 million users, worldwide, in near real time and no downtime, might seem like a simple task, but it really is not.
Some more Powerwash Simulator. It’s neat, but has two super annoying issues. First is the water jet aiming, which just loves to jump around a bit on its own, because the game thinks there’s something in the way. This is basically only an issue up close, so just moving away a bit helps (although not always possible). Second you get stuck constantly, if the ground isn’t super flat, like on a roof or one of the levels is a skatepark with a bunch of ramps. That one just sucks.
Then I pretty much finished the current content in Slime 3K: Rise against Despot. It’s a Vampire Survivors-like which I usually enjoy, but I’m not really sure about this one. The current Early Access version has 10 levels, that kind of try to have a gimmick or theme, but most of them are the same. They all look the same too. The final level is definitely the most Survivors-type thing. Just tons of fodder enemies, coupled with some stronger elites, with more than enough time to get all the items you want and upgrade them. It’s not like it takes a long time to get there, but if those earlier “gimmick” levels are what the devs aim for in the finished release, I’m not a huge fan.
Next I tried Maniac, which is GTA 1 (or 2), but as a rogue-lite, Survivors-like game. It’s just you, running and driving around a city, causing mayhem to get points and try to survive for 20 minutes until you get nuked. So far, I’ve done a couple of runs and won once, but it’s not really that fun. The upgrades and weapons are also pretty boring. I unlocked a few more characters, which I’ve not yet checked out, so I’ll give it a bit more time. I just hope it’s not just a difference in starting weapon or something.
Finally, I’m really in the mood for a CRPG again, and thought about Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, but I know it’s gonna take me like two months or more to get through, and in a few weeks the new Diablo 4 season will start and the World of Warcraft expansion after that, so Pathfinder will have to wait. So I chose another game, that hopefully won’t take as long, Solasta: Crown of the Magister. I played through the tutorial a few months ago and started the game proper earlier today. I’m still at the very beginning, just left the first town, but it’s a turn-based CRPG I guess.
We got AoE 1 on the computer as a demo when I was a kid. Think the CD came in a cereal box or something. Played through the same beginner campaign a bunch of times. Was fun.
AoE2 changed the game though. Absolutely amazing. The controls felt so much more fluid and the campaigns were so much fun to play though and see the story. We managed to network all the family computers and would have big family multiplayer battles against the computer (dad carried us kids though).
My brother loved Mythology and while it looked pretty I never really got into it. Something about it felt slower paced and kinda hand-holdy.
AoE3 was just weird. You had a home base that persisted through games, how is that fair? And playing cards were involved somehow? The ragdoll physics was cool though.
AoE4 is okay I guess. I participated in the beta program because I was so excited for them to produce something that might surpass AoE2 but… Naah. It just doesn’t have the right feel to it. Very pretty though. They keep coming out with new content but until it feels right (something about the way the window scrolls and zooms) I just cant enjoy it.
As I am now more in “jump in, jump out” mode, CS2 from time to time, but mostly The Hunter (COTW) with friends and family, mostly as a background to talk and hang out, eventually some solo missions if there is more time or on a rainy day.
I’ve been working through a replay of all the original mainline Ace Attorney games, via the trilogies on Steam. Played these all on DS/3DS back in the day. I just finished Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, and now I’ve started Spirit of Justice, the last game of this second anthology. Love this whole series. Can’t wait for the release of the “Investigations” spin-off games in September!
Otherwise, still playing FFXIV. I started Dawntrail, but I haven’t gotten too far into it. I put a pin the MSQ (Main Scenario Quests) a couple weeks ago and just kinda left it there. I have enough other things to work on. Class/Job leveling, finishing up some Alliance Raids/Normal Raids from Endwalker, trying to suck less while healing on Sage, and whatever else side stuff I find.
I figure that it’s gonna be at least a few months til the next big content update, and at least two years until the next expansion, so what’s the rush? I’ll get back to the MSQ eventually.
gaming
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.