General Game Discussion for March 2026

[dxchase]

Thats a dope lookin skin for that deck. I still havent bought one yet.

So, heading off to Kentucky tomorrow for the louisville game expo and will be playing my heart out on some old school consoles and pinball machines all weekend. Im excited for it. Its about an 8 hour drive from here which isnt terrible imo. There might be some old pc setups to jump on. Ill try to get some pics! Ill also be livestreaming a little bit of it.

As for gaming...

Well its been mostly Diablo 4 and Arc Raiders. Diablos new season isnt all that great, its cool to turn into the butcher and destroy the town hubs you spawn in, but it gets old quick. My biggest reason to play right now is collecting all the Doom crossover stuff they have, along with the usual seasonal rewards/cosmetics etc.

Arc is arc, just cant get enough of that pvp! I pve too but that games pvp keeps me going.

I bought Crimson Desert and wanted to wait a week or 2 before playing it because of the patches that have been added since launch. By now, i know where i need to go right in the beginning w/o having played more than 5 hours yet.



I had a review set up as a draft for the Gallon 100 SD keyboard Corsair released. Seems the system deleted the draft so i gotta re-do it, no biggie. But its a great keyboard to say the least. Worth the pricetag tho?

 

[neogunhero]

Speaking of my Steam Deck, it'll be 4-years in my possession very soon and I've finally decided I wanted to give it a makeover. I bought this skin, which was $20 and came with two applications, as well as these textured grips for the buttons and sides (which I didn't put on ABXY) and I'm pretty happy with it; I enjoy the colorful look and the grips feel quite nice. Still love this thing.

That looks awesome! Love the textured grips. I can't use a controller without them anymore, it feels like my hands are slipping on smooth surfaces.

I played another Archipelago world with two of my friends yesterday. This time I was playing Pokémon Emerald, while my friends were playing Civilization VI and Dark Souls III. Also, this time we turned Deathlink on, which means that if one of us dies, everyone dies. It was a lot of fun, but it also showed that you have to pay good attention while choosing games and picking the randomising settings for each game.

I'm always so fascinated at reading your Archipelago sessions. It seems so complex yet so much fun.

So, heading off to Kentucky tomorrow for the louisville game expo and will be playing my heart out on some old school consoles and pinball machines all weekend. Im excited for it. Its about an 8 hour drive from here which isnt terrible imo. There might be some old pc setups to jump on. Ill try to get some pics! Ill also be livestreaming a little bit of it.

Have fun! I've always wanted to go to a game expo, but can't justify such a long drive as yours 🤣 After about three hours on the road I start to fall asleep.

 

[Pifanjr]

I'm always so fascinated at reading your Archipelago sessions. It seems so complex yet so much fun.

It's really not that complex, but it is really fun. I ended up playing until 2 AM and I've already set up 4 other games to play and one of my friends got 2 or 3 other games he's setting up as well.

Neon Chrome, a rogue like where you play as a hacker and you're trying to overthrow the Overseer who has gone crazy with power.

That sounds great!

*looks it up*

Oh... it's a twin stick shooter. I thought there would be something closer to actual hacking.

 

[Zloth]

I did play through all of Portal and started on Portal 2, which I like a lot and has been many years since I played. I finally got to the Cave Johnson stuff, which is by far the best part of the game and I'm slowly putting in time there.

The lemon speech was awesome!

...though I'm thinking about running around in my undies.

I didn't even switch because it promptly started snowing. Awww, pretty! And snow even covers the ground! And... oh, I'm getting cold? I'm still getting colder and colder? OK, easy enough to start a fire - though not very fun to just stand there waiting to heat up. Just as I nearly got out of the 'cold' body temperature, I caught a cold!

I finally saved up enough to get blue sand armor. Combined with my halberd-with-hyena-teeth, it's getting safer to travel - but the snow is still falling and the places I've found to explore seem pretty rough, so I think it's time to skip town and seek a warmer climate.

The thing is, my stash chest is in my house. Wherever I go, I won't have a house for a long time, so how do I get into my stash? Will I be locked out of it?? How much will it cost me to get home? This whole one-save thing is getting on my nerves.

 

[Pifanjr]

We did another Archipelago session yesterday. This time one of my friends decided to play Kingdom Hearts 2 and the other one played Outer Wilds. Since Kingdom Hearts 2 does not support Deathlink, I went with Yu Gi Oh 2006, which is the only game I have that doesn't have Deathlink either.

For Yu Gi Oh, I get rewards for winning duels with specific win conditions, while I have to unlock new opponents and new booster packs to buy. It was a lot of fun making different decks from a limited selection of cards to get the various win conditions.

One problem we ran into however is that Kingdom Hearts 2 is a far bigger game than either Outer Wilds or Yu Gi Oh 2006. It has well over 600 items, while Outer Wilds and Yu Gi Oh have about 80 each. This meant that the Kingdom Hearts 2 player was mostly collecting his own (useless) items and had to backtrack a bunch if he happened to miss a chest somewhere containing an important item for me or my other friend.

One way to prevent this is to specify a list of locations/checks that will or won't have important rewards. For example, in my Yu Gi Oh game I specifically excluded important rewards for finding specific ultra rare cards in booster packs, since opening a hundred packs in the hopes of finding the right card just so someone can keep playing their game sucks. However, neither of my friends did this, so if they missed any item they could risk missing something important for someone else.

 

[Tesxdrew]

Yeah, “followed” always felt like a weird metric compared to wishlists. I get that it shows engagement, but wishlists seem way closer to actual sales intent.
Also curious about that iRacing arcade game if they manage to keep the driving feel but make it more accessible, that could be a really nice middle ground.

 

[neogunhero]

As you guys probably know, I've been going very hard into Crimson Desert. We've been posting regularly over on the Crimson Desert thread. After 20 hours of gameplay, I can wholeheartedly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of open world sandbox action games.

It's not exactly an RPG, and the story definitely is the weakest part of the game, but the gameplay more than makes up for the entire experience. It gives off a great sense of exploration, there are even some slight immersive sim elements to it. You are given lots of tools, and often there is more than one way to complete an objective while using these tools.

If I had to compare this game to others, I'd say it gives off a mix of Skyrim, Zelda BotW and RDR2 while maintaining it's own unique gameplay style.

If you're a sandbox sicko like me who enjoys slaying tons of enemies in the most fashionable and mechanically complex ways you can think of, this is the game for you. Also, this game has a high tendency to make your brain go "I wonder what's over that hill" while on your way to an objective, only to be completely sidetracked for the next hour. This type of game was seemingly made for me and I'm loving every minute of it. Definitely something I can play for months to come.

 

[Zloth]

So, when I last posted, I was still in the starter town in Outward. Snow was falling. I had finally scraped up enough money for some OK armor, then I scraped up another 200-and-a-little to use the fast travel to get to the town added by the DLC, which I heard had an easy way to get your mana set up. I'm sure the devs wouldn't still have that option sitting right there if it was just trapping new players.

Yeah... I probably shouldn't have done that. First, it was still snowing in the new area. Second, I now only had a little money. I had hoped to simply go outside of town and do a little hunting/exploring to get some good food, but it was even colder than home and there was very little to find close to the city gates. I ended up scrambling all over town, opening every chest I could find, and even selling off a pitchfork I found. I got enough for the trip back home (odd that it takes 3 rations - it only took 2 to get here) and even some to buy a snow tent and a little training. This time, before getting my mana, I quit out and backed up my save.

I grabbed my mana (you get to pick how much you have by picking how much health and stamina to sacrifice), and - oh! I get a free spell! I have no clue what they are, so I looked them up in the Wiki as well as where you could get them normally. One was kinda far from home, the other was very far from home in a swampy town called Monsoon. OK, get the spell from the Monsoon.

I walked over to the caravan, paid my 200 silver, and got carted back... wait, this isn't home. Where am I?? <sigh> I'm in Monsoon. That's why I needed an extra ration. No house to stash my stuff in. Not a lot of point in having this snow tent out in a swamp, either. Well - glad I backed up my save.

Re-load my save from before the mana choice. This time, buy a nicer lantern and a cheaper tent. pick the other spell, and go to the caravan. Sure enough, it says 'Monsoon' right there, if I had bothered to read the prompt.

I pitch a tent in town, get some sleep, eat some of my cheap dried mushroom bars (ugh!), and head out in search of something better to kill and eat. That fire circle spell you can get here should be pretty cheap and it will change my wimpy mana spark spell into a fireball! I went out and found a monster that looked a bit like a velociraptor. Ummm.... I haven't seen one before in this game, but I've never seen a weak one in any other game. Well, so what? I can't really die and I'm close to town, so I might as well try, right?

I was pretty close to defeating the thing, but it won. Instead of getting dragged back to town by some nice person, though, the critter hauled me up to its layer! Just inside the door of its layer, thank goodness, not deep inside. Once I saw the door out, I turned around to try and see if there was anything good, found two more of these monsters coming at me, and ran out the door as fast as I could!

Now I'm out in some dangerous marshes with pretty bad health. It looks like town isn't super far away, but it isn't close, either. And I'm still very short on cash.