The last game you completed

[McStabStab]

I finished Mouthwashing a couple of weeks ago. A great game to make you feel super depressed! PCG just posted their review:

Mouthwashing review

A game about letting your worst moments define you.

www.pcgamer.com

Currently just beat Commander Gaius in Shadow of the Erdtree and also started Space Marine 2 last night. Happy gaming, folks!

 

[isleepinabed]

As I'm getting heavy into Eric the Unready I decided to pip off The Caribbean Sail, which is a rogue-like that is a bit different. You play a Captain who takes possession of his first ship and crew. There are two skeleton story modes, one more grounded in reality, the other more on the realm of fantasy, both involving pirates.

One of the main aspects of the game has to be its presentation. Retro-looking, with strong white on black features and great use of colour, it strikes a note between DOS and late Apple II games. It’s clearly inspired on some classics. Obviously Uncharted Waters and Sid Meier’s Pirates, but also The Oregon Trail.

You are then tasked to explore the few ports of the world, taking merchandise and attacking or being attacked, at the same time trying to keep alive at sea over hunger, disease, mutiny or just plain cruel luck.

For its retro presentation the game is surprisingly deep, with a few subsystems like fishing, keel sounding, ship upgrading, character upgrading, a reputation system, a “Mexican” standoff, among others. By themselves the systems are simple, but as they interplay, things get interesting. As in any rogue, luck and random events has a lot to do with the challenge. How you deal with them and how well you've developed your game will play a lot into success.
Unfortunately it also commits the usual sin of rogue-like game design. Playing more is as rewarding as playing better. This means that the longer you play the less challenging it gets as you progressively unlock better ships and character backstories which have better skills or deeper starting funds. Thus, there is no scaling of the challenge, as what was unfathomable at first becomes trivial later. There is a long list of upgrades but, in the end, they do not impact gameplay significantly. The challenge then ends up falling on luck, as a bad spell can have devastating consequences - in the standard mode death will erase your save (keeping of course everything you’ve unlocked for subsequent runs).

You can take it not for more than what it is. Sooner or later you’ll realise you’re just playing with chance algorithms, random events get repetitive and upgrading for the sake of upgrading will feel like ultimately a waste of time.
Yet, on the other hand, the game is perfect for what it is. The setting is fresh and the presentation inviting. This is a small, ambitious game that provides quite a bit of play within and, as you explore the world and deal with tough, split-second decisions to try and brave through just those few more nautical miles and into harbour, there is that spur to keep your save going, try for one more run from Belém to Shanghai if your ship will take it.

 

[Frag Maniac]

I finished Mouthwashing a couple of weeks ago. A great game to make you feel super depressed! PCG just posted their review:

Mouthwashing review

A game about letting your worst moments define you.

www.pcgamer.com

Thank God it's not a sim on how to use mouthwash. With all the simulators out there these days, I actually wasn't sure!

Nothing against actual mouthwash btw, I use it daily, or nightly rather.

 

[mjs warlord]

So my latest contribution to this posting is that i have just completed Dungeon of the Dragon Knight.

Ok so the reason i am posting this is because some players are saying it is bugged , missing grids ??? , unplayable , its broken ??? .... some say its abandoned .... no its not its finished.

I have locking finger syndrome that causes me problems with a mouse .... i press to click and my fingers dont always move , so that means i die a lot , the steam tag says it took me 85 hours but i dont think thats accurate because i know how many days i spent on it and roughly how many hours per session.

 

[isleepinabed]

Eric the Unready is a very well developed game, a fact that is betrayed by its sarcastic and comical setting. Having coming out at a time when text adventures were quite passé (came out the same year Myst did), it takes that fact by making it perhaps one of the strongest and most streamlined games of its kind. Apart from the interactive and well-made graphics, the game accepts parser, clickable hotpoints on screen and a drop down menu, as well as a text only mode. Complementing the pictures, the descriptions are plentiful and endearing and there is even a Beyond Zork-like map. I wouldn’t say every joke is a hit, particularly some which are even for 1993 were already past topical, but it is well written, the rhythm well paced and even something that falls flat might still originate a low chuckle.

The setting is that of the bumbling unlikely hero in a time of medieval cloak and dagger along with a lot of humourous anachronisms and magic. Bumbling heroes are, of course, a dime a dozen in adventure games, a staple that has proven time and time again to be a good fit for this medium as the various interactions with the gameworld inevitably result in hilarity. There are of course many classic medieval games, especially King’s Quest and Defender of the Crown and Eric rips into them delightfully. One also imagines there is quite a bit of Spamalot in here as references are not just limited to computer games – later a whole episode on Star Trek and many other topical references that have lost relevance or meaning.

Despite the game being long and with many locales, unlike Zork or Adventure type games where you can freely roam around the map and have a few puzzles to solve at the same time, here you’re usually presented with a setpiece at a time. Think of it somewhat like an episode, as almost everything is self-contained, apart from some items. This makes the game a lot more focused and less frustrating. The absurdist setting might presuppose equally absurd puzzle solutions but it is not (always) so, at least at first. For the most part puzzles make sense and are not absurdly challenging. The story strings you along and what you need to do is clear and how to do it as well. The streamlined gameplay makes interacting with the gameworld a breeze. Even while I preferred to use the parser it accepted complex sentences and “understood” most of what was thrown at it. Nonetheless, perhaps due to the comical and magical setting, some puzzles do take some imagination to fathom and are occasionally groan-worthy in their solutions (in particular pun-based solutions). Some episodes, then, are quite harder or easier than others, and not in a continuous way. Apart from the very last one, which was more frustrating than hard, the second to last is quite accessible, though two of the middle ones were quite difficult to get through.

In all, a fun game to play, with many mechanics implemented to reduce frustation, a simple story that is most enjoyable as small episodes and varied gameplay. A note as well for GOG version (presumably Steam’s as well), which includes not only the scan of the original manual but an original hint book as well with both vague and specific hints. In all, a very complete package that, while making fun of its history, is at the same time one of the most accomplished and entertaining commercial text adventures I’ve enjoyed.

 

[mjs warlord]

Today i finished Control that i got as a freebie on epic at xmas

 

[February's Ghost]

Today i finished Control that i got as a freebie on epic at xmas

Love that game. Played it and the DLC start to finish three times.

I'm still bouncing around between games, making progress, but not finishing any yet. Almost added another game into the mix when I bought AC Mirage the other night.

 

[dianaadrr]

need for speed most wanted. I rarely play games now because I combine studies and work. I also had to find a verizon wireless phone number to figure out what was wrong with my internet. For about two weeks I couldn't do anything online at all because of internet problems. It's good that everything is fine now and especially I have a few days off

 

[isleepinabed]

Stars Die was an impressive début by Eric Juvi and his team. Mechanically it has lots of things that remind me of a mix between Outer Wilds and Sentient with the obvious fact that this is a necessarily more restrained experience coming from an independent developer. Having played it once before in 2022, and with 5 more endings to go, this was a game that stuck in the memory as one to replay in the future.

Immediately you’re off to a great start, with little information as to why you’re on a boat that’s heading into the strangest island you’ve ever seen. You soon discover this strange island is already a base for some sort of scientific research. How you get out is now your choice (fuel’s out, by the way).

The gimmick here is both the real time clock, as well as a conversation system that attempts to be very skeptical of what NPCs tell you and, for that reason, appears less game-y and more realistic. Being able to second-guess or operate in a way that’s different from video game logic gives you more freedom in how to rationalize your approach to the story even if the end result is more or less the same and sooner or later you are forced to make a decision and suffer its consequences story-wise.

The meat of the game, that warrants multiple playthroughs, are the interactions, motives and schedules of the 4 NPCs and yourself as the main character and, in a way, the island itself. For this reason the characters are complex. Even though you might only have one or two conversations with each, they have their specific reasons and motivations for being on the island, and for wanting or not wanting to leave it. This gives them a lot of depth and, in a way, you end up being able to relate to each and everyone of them. They all have specific schedules that happen at determinate times. You can make use of a radio to know where each character is, or even to set up a meeting somewhere at a certain time, and characters will traverse the island in real time to that destination.

One unfortunate aspect of the game that is needlessly confusing is traversing the world. The island is, of course, quite weird, yet your movement is more akin to a speed racer on a Wipeout track, and you glide away through confusing and quite long tracks (for lack of a better term) as you attempt to reach the designated area you are supposed to get to. Should you fall off a cliff, no problem, you just keep walking on – and feel free to take comically large jumps. This breaks immersion even though you might accept that perhaps reality’s rules do not apply in this place. I can understand this choice as a way to let you freely explore the strange world and to add time and distance between places but, in pratical terms, and because you’ll be replaying the game, you end up feeling like you’re doing laps following the other characters around the map. I feel, for this type of game, it would probably be beneficial to have a different approach to character tracking or perhaps better defined areas, like a text adventure.

A relaxed playthrough, pondering over the story and taking in the lo-fi vistas will hardly take an hour. In the end, most of the gameplay is centered around about 4 or 5 key conversations and travelling between where these happen. Even though the island is mysterious, it’s not overwhelmingly large. The characters themselves may have a lot to say, but they will only talk about matters at hand. There is also a decent amount of secrets, especially considering the scope of this game, that you’ll need to discover to see all endings. The story, perhaps because this game came out in 2020, focus somewhat on doom through life, on the unknown and on paradigm shifts. As you go through each playthrough and explore different options you get the full picture and realize a lot about yourself – and by this I mean not only your character, which is as mysterious as the island, but your own self as a person.

This is perhaps the game’s biggest virtue and the one that made it so interesting. As you peel away the story you discover that people are indeed complex, that perhaps these 5 characters are 5 personality traits, 5 little voices in your head, that all are valid and that are not dogmatic, they second-guess themselves. This perhaps shows, in the end, that we can only solve complex problems and go through crises when we hear everyone out and understand each others’ actions and motivations. Notably, when faced with the same problem, people react differently, whether because they gauge risk differently or because of their own sense of self. Thus, as a message that could only be conveyed through interactive media, it’s become game as art.
What we have on offer here, then, is an intriguing, replayable, experience worth more than its price of admission. An inquest into personality when push comes to shove and, on a more base level, a satisfying exploration of a complex but contained sf story. For these reasons, and unless you need gameplay with more action than introspection, it’s hard not to recommend this one.

 

[isleepinabed]

I can't believe I managed to knock this one off in 3 days (must have been little over 4 hours). I guess it's because I was one my second time around it...

Cocoon was one of the nicest surprises of 2023. Developed by one of the designers of puzzle platformers Limbo and Inside it is a brilliant exercise in puzzle design centering on managing increasingly more complex moving parts within strange, bio-mechanical, worlds.

It shares with Limbo and Inside a few traits: the lack of written or oral context (although the story is not really as dramatic here), the simple controls with just directions and a single action button, the timing-based puzzles and the instant-kills that send you back to checkpoint, which here are more frustrating than they were jarring in its predecessors. These last two features are a way to inject some action and tension into the normally more laidback procedures of puzzle games. Indeed, if anything, you zip along pretty quickly and progress quite rapidly with various puzzles coming quick and fast. There is rarely the need to pause for a moment of introspection and the action controls keep you always on the move.

Although the story explores themes of escape and transformation and the infinitely large and infinitely small, much like Inside, here the lack of context voids the story of a sense of meaning or purpose. Since there is not much of a story, the four worlds you explore and manipulate happen to be the main feature and the only unifying measure of context to everything that unfolds. You play an insectoid who, by an unknown reason, is granted a power to activate certain platforms and helpers. Pretty early on you’ll be able to dive into different worlds, which are thematically different and, even better, jump out of them, carry them on your back and while doing so jumping into another world, thereby creating worlds within worlds.

The puzzles are mostly platform based: activate a setter here, that’ll allow you to traverse a platform, then go and pick up a world to set it ahead, and so on. This mechanically satisfying progression (aided by the simple, zippy controls and a great amount of logic in execution) is punctuated by boss battles. These are similar to The Legend of Zelda type ones, meaning they’re also action-based puzzles, often relying on timing and with various phases, each trickier than the last. One wrong move and you’re booted back to the beginning of the battle.

As they’re so central to the game, it’s worth arguing about the puzzle design. In the end, perhaps because it’s my second time around, instead of the “ha-ha!” moments, there is a sense of just being led by the designers to see clever bits, but that are not rationally demanding. The world is contorted to conform to the puzzle design, instead of the other way around. This is perhaps hard to explain or ultimately unfair to the designers but while certainly well designed and, I’ll say it again, mechanically satisfying to manipulate, the impression most puzzles give is that the designers wanted to show off their designs and we’re just playing through them, as if the puzzles only exist for the sake of existing. They are perhaps too transparent, and more of a spectacle.
As I’ve started this month with two other puzzle adventures, in Creaks and Obduction, perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to compare these three. In these other games, there is more of the feeling of conquest of the fiendish puzzle – often times conquering it despite the efforts of the designer to stop you! In games of this nature it is a crucial effort. If it doesn’t feel earned, it transmits the feeling of pointlessness. Thus, while in Creaks and Obduction the game world was certainly as important as it is here, but the puzzles were a way to hide the world and every puzzle solved was a way to inch further, go deeper and unravel the mystery, here solving a puzzle is often rewarded by spectacle, but no real purpose. Our character’s certainly going somewhere but there is rarely a sense of accomplishment. Even with bosses it’s hard to understand why you’re being attacked and why you should attack back.

One of the most annoying things are some heritage from modern design, namely controller vibrations that are too violent and frequent (thankfully they can be turned off) and visual effects that are too intense. This is a game that has a certainly unique and interesting visual design but not cutting edge graphics. However, it makes the GPU whirr, which is surprising. There is then some sense that, while the graphics and animation give life to this strange world, there was no need, mechanically speaking, to justify all of these fireworks, and the game would probably work as well with simpler graphics, as flOw or Flower, or indeed Limbo and Inside have shown in the past.

Despite its failings, which might be more apparent for repeat players like me, when the spectacle and the uniqueness of the world and mechanics are not new anymore this is certainly a game worthy of merit. While losing narrative focus it is mechanically more ambitious than Inside and presents an original take on a rarely considered genre. Certainly recommended for fans or those looking for something different.

 

[McStabStab]

I finished the main campaign of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 last night. I had a blast from start to finish. The unrelenting action and detailed environments were an absolute treat. Additionally, the game ran beautifully on my 3070 and i7-7700K. I was worried because I had heard about performance issues at launch but those seem to be resolved now.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 review

After a rip-roaring first impression, the long-awaited sequel quickly runs out of steam.

www.pcgamer.com

The PCG review I think is a little harsh with the score. I understand that much of it has been done before and it's a little clunky, but coming from a AA studio and being this much fun doesn't give a 60/100 feel.

As a person who's completely new to the Warhammer 40K universe (thanks Amazon's Secret Level for sparking a new interest in me), this game is great, and I wholeheartedly recommend it if you're even remotely interested in the subject matter.

 

[Frindis]

The world is contorted to conform to the puzzle design, instead of the other way around. This is perhaps hard to explain or ultimately unfair to the designers but while certainly well designed and, I’ll say it again, mechanically satisfying to manipulate, the impression most puzzles give is that the designers wanted to show off their designs and we’re just playing through them, as if the puzzles only exist for the sake of existing. They are perhaps too transparent, and more of a spectacle.

That is exactly the feeling I got after playing Harold Halibut's demo. I guess it could also be because it was a demo, but the puzzles just felt a bit too out there, to the point of me being taken away from the world at some points.

Harold Halibut on Steam

Harold Halibut is a handmade narrative game about friendship and life on a city-sized spaceship submerged in an alien ocean. Join Harold as he explores a vibrant retro-future world in his quest to find the true meaning of ‘home’.

store.steampowered.com

I finished the main campaign of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2 last night. I had a blast from start to finish. The unrelenting action and detailed environments were an absolute treat. Additionally, the game ran beautifully on my 3070 and i7-7700K. I was worried because I had heard about performance issues at launch but those seem to be resolved now.

Happy to hear that as I am also using the 3070 with AMD Ryzen 7 5800.

 

[mjs warlord]

I just completed vaporum and the the strange thing is a well know site that says how long to complete said 10 hours , i put it on wrong difficulty and it took me 43 hours . My next challenge is the valporum lockdown , installed and ready to go.

I got them both on GOG for £1.63 and £3 60.
They just gone back on steam at £ 16.75 and £ 14.99 so i guess you could say i made 1 hell of a saving.

 

[Frindis]

I just completed vaporum and the the strange thing is a well know site that says how long to complete said 10 hours , i put it on wrong difficulty and it took me 43 hours . My next challenge is the valporum lockdown , installed and ready to go.

I had my eyes on Vaporum for some time, but need to finish my Legend of Grimrock game first. The thing is, I'm not so sure I like Legend of Grimrock, so I am in a bit of a conundrum.

 

[mjs warlord]

I had my eyes on Vaporum for some time, but need to finish my Legend of Grimrock game first. The thing is, I'm not so sure I like Legend of Grimrock, so I am in a bit of a conundrum.

check out my new thread .... what do you think of dungeon crawlers...

 

[Pifanjr]

I just finished The Planet Crafter. Apparently there are multiple endings, but I got no indication inside the game that there were any alternative endings until the very last button I had to press was suspiciously specific, suggesting that there were perhaps other options. However, I had no idea on how to go about finding these other options and I was ready to be done with the game, so I clicked the button and the credits rolled.

I looked up the other endings afterwards and they didn't seem like they would be worth the hassle.

I can recommend the game to anyone who liked Subnautica (assuming they enjoyed its crafting system) or anyone who likes crafting games that don't expect you to automate (much). It is much more relaxed than Subnautica since there are no real dangers besides running out of oxygen, food or water. I only ran out of oxygen once at the very beginning of the game and I ran out of water once in the middle of my base because I was too preoccupied. I respawned on top of the chest containing the few items I "lost". I also died once from falling off a cliff while rushing to finish the game.

Now I can finally return to Baldur's Gate 3.

 

[Johnway]

Well thats Warhammer 40000 Mechanicus completed. A squad turned based strategy game similar to Xcom but sadly not quite as indepth as XCOM series.

The game pits the mechanicus who stumble across a dead world only to discover the looming threat of the necrons. With the entire necron dynasty slowly reanimating back to life, Magos Faustinius and his retinue must face the threat ill equiped and ill prepared. Right from the start the players are on the backfoot lacking effective weapons or resources (the ship was more fitted for research then for war). Players will have to under take missions to gather resources to enhance your squad of techpriests, get new units and new tech to fight off the threat - ultimately, defeat all 6 of the leaders and end the awakening.

Whilst the game is reasonably good it feels like a DND game as you explore the various tombs and come across various encounters that either reward or hinder you accordingly. Admittedly, i did come into this thinking this was XCOM which is probably the wrong way to go about it. its quite rewarding progression wise to see your team expand and and develop to the point where you potentially out number the opposition with the right points. Your priests in particular can do potentially 3 attacks each if you exploit the mechanics properly.

There is definitely room for improvement as i did find minor niggles. the awakening meter being a constant annoyance. Especially just exploring would restrict exploration as the long you spend, the more difficult a mission gets and the less time overall to beating the game. it may not be random like in XCOM2, but once its added to the global meter after each mission, there's no way to take it off. If the mechanics do bother you, feel free to mess around with them and ultimately configure it how to you want it. Just don't expect to unlock any achievements if you try to make it easier.

But the bigger concern is the repetitive nature of the game. yes, i'm exploring the same region (and probably the same tomb) but it could have done with a few more maps. There were several times i would play the same map twice with minor tweaks of placement here and there. It becomes practically rinse and repeat by the end game.

The game does come with one piece of DLC: Heretek which interweaves 5 additional missions whereby a rebellion is in the works and players are requested to do missions on the ship to purge them. There are a few other weapons and a new skill tree to play with. Much of it based on damage the more damage you take, the more you dish out. A risky strategy. But welcome none the less, and it does give you some breathing room as there is no time penalty and you earn more rewards.

overrall i clocked in 38 hours and that's with playing the DLC content as well. I won't lie, i saved scum like hell to succeed and that was more on the exploration front. By the end i could breeze through the combat. hell, it was piss easy by the end. Not even the final boss did much. Sure he got his 2 turns in at the start but once my techpriests had their turn it was over in one round.

I would say that if its on sale i worth a look, but its not exactly must play stuff. Maybe a high 7/10

 

[isleepinabed]

Steel Empire (1992; 2018) is a quirky horizontal shoot'em up that was originally released on the SEGA Mega Drive in 1992. It has a lot of things that set it apart. Starting with gameplay, despite being a horizontal shooter, apart from two short sections there aren't the usual environmental hazards. This is mainly due to, I suspect, its main gameplay feature: the ability to shoot backwards as well as ahead thus making level design usually with the player in a central position as enemies fly in from the right and left. Unfortunately, you can only ever shoot forwards OR backwards and never both at the same time. While interesting in theory, in practice it's a fiddly proposition especially in higher difficulties. The barebones button configuration does not allow using right and left triggers on a controller, which would be a lot less clunky and quicker to use than X and B on the Xbox controller configuration.

But it goes on, this is one of the rare shooters with a life bar as well as the ability to recharge said bar via power-ups. Regarding firepower both ships just have one type of weapon. However, you can upgrade it up to twenty levels (by picking up 3 power-ups). As I alluded it to, there are two ships. One slow and strong, another fast and fragile. With these many options and gimmicks it's disappointing that the shooting never feels great. It only ever gets faster but as the enemies you face get harder, there isn't a sense of progression.

The final thing that sets it apart is the setting. This is a steampunk game so think trains, zeppelins, and biplanes. The planes especially are somewhat animalized as they flap their wings like birds. It's not exactly cutesy but somewhat toy or Disney-like and there's a similarity to Irem's In the Hunt, but not so richly animated. Then again this is originally a 16 bit console game, not an arcade game. For what it is, it's really quite good and very original. The character design is strong and charismatic. Yet the bosses are quite repetitive, and disappointing in their patterns, usually having you having to fly ahead or behind so you can shoot their weak points. The exception is the final (true) boss which is quite a delight and a surprise.

Presentation on this PC port is a mixed bag. On the one hand the graphics are quite overhauled from the 30 year old original. But the menus are bare and poor with very few settings available and cheap looking menus. It has, however, modest controller configuration (rather than none at all) and various difficulty settings. However, the game is very well upscaled for high definition, a tier above what most other smaller publishers have achieved.

In the end this is quite an original shooter, even if not everything makes sense as an innovation. Its different setting and replayability, having different difficulty settings and different ships, as well as a reasonably long campaign and hidden boss makes it a worthwhile investment of your time, especially if you're not into modern shooters or bullet hell. The game is very accessible to get into for newcomers too, perhaps an ideal starting point. Finally the original setting and presentation is still very fresh after all these years.

 

[isleepinabed]

Rolling Gunner (2018): This a doujin horizontal bullet hell shooter game. Presentation is excellent although not fully optimized for 4K. On the other hand there are plenty of configuration settings, including gameplay, difficulty, screen and controller settings.

You have three ships to choose from: one having a wider shot but being slower to move, another having a narrower shot and faster to move, and another in between. Despite the simple controls gameplay is quite nuanced and sitting through the minute and a half tutorial is a good idea. You always have a firing option that always shoots in the opposite direction from where you move (move left, it shoots right, move up it shoots down, and so forth). This is usually used in slower shooters (R-Type, Gradius, Gynoug) where movement is more deliberate. In a bullet hell you necessarily have to move a lot in small areas, so the option is rarely firing to where you want it to. However, you can set it with the power shot, thus mowing down enemies more effectively. Mastering the positioning of the option and maximizing shot power is key as enemies come from all sides. As always you'll face an easier time if you mow down enemies as they appear and don't give them the chance to fill the screen with bullets. If you get hit, you auto-detonate a bomb to clear the screen so you'll get a fighting chance to start over (as long as you got bombs in stock).

Environments are colourful. Every stage is interset with an impressive cutscene that puts many games with a bigger budget to shame: they look fantastic. This is especially exciting and also gives a sense of progression and journey to the action. The enemy designs are often forgettable, going for a generic science fiction, giant robot style, with bosses usually having imposing design. While visually impressive, the rivers of bullets end up giving the feeling of a very underpowered character, which is unaided by the lack of power ups. As most bosses are generally static, you're basically just avoiding their bullets for as long as you can as your own bullets ***** away at their vitality bar at a very low rate. Even in "casual" mode things get very tough indeed from the second stage on.

The patterns are fantastic and bullets are always very visible and not confusing with the background. The presence of a visual hitpoint on the player's character definitely helps maneuvering between bullets, and becoming better and more confident in weaving through. The setting is not as original as something like Mushihimesama but this is an incredibly solid package from gameplay to presentation to settings that, when you strip away its context, is the essence of bullet hell gameplay distilled to a very fine degree - here with the added bonus of excellent presentation and extensive configuration options that help improve one's skills, and even to apply said learned skills to other games of the same subgenre. Thus the game's small failings however are not its own fault but the faults of bullet hell per se. For these reasons it is otherwise probably my ideal recommendation for anyone wanting to get into bullet hell. Additionally, if you're already into bullet hell this might be one of the strongest examples of the genre. True that it isn't an arcade game originally but it has the fine weaving, the amazing bullet patterns, very impressive bosses in one of the most rounded packages available, especially from doujin developers. For those not interested in this subgenre it might be too much but still a solid game and worth a few entertaining attempts.

 

[McStabStab]

I beat Shadow of the Erdtree last night. Extremely difficult final boss battle but I did it without cheesing or respec’ing my character. If I could do it, anyone can with enough persistence.

Such an incredible expansion, it’s like a whole standalone game. Very detailed level design, the art direction continues to be beautiful, grotesque, and full of wow moments, and overall this gives you more of the game that is already one of the greatest of all time.

 

[mjs warlord]

Just finished the fall of the dungeon guardian it took me 68 hours.
A brilliant dungeon crawler but i thought the ending a bit of a let down.

My next target game is chicken police into the hive ... i get it at christmas but not tried it yet

 

[Zloth]

X4:Foundations completed... sorta. As a sandbox game, it doesn't really end until you build so much that the game engine gets crushed under the weight of it all. But I accomplished my goal of terraforming the planet in Oceans of Fantasy.

Terraforming that planet isn't at all easy. First, you need to mine ice asteroids and dump the ice on the planets. Then, you need to drop more ice. Then more! Seriously, you need to drop a LOT of ice because the planet's oceans dried up and you are terraforming it for the ocean-dwelling Boron. (The achievement is called "A trillion drops in the ocean.") Just to make things interesting, there is no ice to be found close by. It took me months to get through that part!

The other big step was plankton farms, to help establish life on the planet. Again, you need a LOT of Plankton, but you don't mine that. You build it out of water and energy, with water coming from ice - and I had PLENTY of ice miners on hand already. So, it was just a matter of making a lot of plankton modules on my station:

I'm sure the entire Boron faction had no more than 30 plankton farms in the game. That's well over 100 at the top of my station.

After that, it was just housing, which wasn't too bad. Especially since I could tear down all those plankton farms for parts.

Last week, a patch was released that opened up a path to a sector with plenty of ice right next door. Arg.

Anyway, run is done. Now I can concentrate on Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and then I really should get back to Baldur's Gate 3.

P.S. Total time in X4:Foundations is now over 1300 hours. I really like that game.

 

[Pifanjr]

I completed Dredge.

I really enjoyed it. It's pretty short, probably took me around 10 hours or so, but then it's also pretty limited in scope. You basically go to five different areas and do some fetch quests with some fishing in between, but the game adds enough variety in its areas and fishing mini games to keep it interesting for the duration of the game.

The story and setting are pretty interesting as well, the only downside is that it's mostly communicated through cryptic comments and messages and none of the mysteries really get resolved, making the ending feel a bit anticlimactic.

The game also hides a bunch of secrets around the islands, most of which I missed. I stumbled upon some near the very end of the game, by which time their rewards were meaningless, which was a shame. Then again, the rewards were pretty minor to begin with, so luckily I didn't really miss out on anything by missing them.

 

[McStabStab]

I completed Dredge.

I really enjoyed it. It's pretty short, probably took me around 10 hours or so, but then it's also pretty limited in scope. You basically go to five different areas and do some fetch quests with some fishing in between, but the game adds enough variety in its areas and fishing mini games to keep it interesting for the duration of the game.

The story and setting are pretty interesting as well, the only downside is that it's mostly communicated through cryptic comments and messages and none of the mysteries really get resolved, making the ending feel a bit anticlimactic.

The game also hides a bunch of secrets around the islands, most of which I missed. I stumbled upon some near the very end of the game, by which time their rewards were meaningless, which was a shame. Then again, the rewards were pretty minor to begin with, so luckily I didn't really miss out on anything by missing them.

I've got six hours into this game and I fell off. I felt like I was trying too much to go back and forth between islands without much guidance to what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually I got bored and left. Should I dive back in?

 

[Pifanjr]

I've got six hours into this game and I fell off. I felt like I was trying to much to go back and forth between islands without much guidance to what I was supposed to be doing. Eventually I got bored and left. Should I dive back in?

I double checked, I apparently have 14 hours in it. If you're already bored not even halfway through I wouldn't recommend going back, it doesn't get much better.

Though it should have been pretty clear on where to go, the game puts markers on the map for your active quests and you pretty much just go to each area in sequence, with a stop to the middle after each. There isn't much reason to backtrack except for a couple of side quests which aren't really worth doing.