Gaming

Technically finished out the season journey and "campaign" rewards for Diablo 4: Season 6, now I'm just going for 100% completion and the rest of the battle pass rewards. I'm thinking it might take me a while, since for whatever reason ancestral items don't drop that often for me, and the last thing I have to do is salvage 100 of them. It might have to do with the Torment level I'm on, but since the season doesn't end until the end of January, I'm not too worried.

Speaking of Diablo, I was going to complete Diablo 4: Vessel of Hatred with my OG campaign Necromancer, but I was having so much fun with my seasonal Rogue that I started working on and finished the DLC with her instead. Not sure how I feel about the ending of the expansion, since leaves a very big opening for more expansions (or d5?) and doesn't really feel finished as far as the story goes.

Since The Lake House DLC came out this past week for Alan Wake 2, I've decided to replay (most) things Remedy, starting with Alan Wake, of course. I'm playing the remaster, which looks a lot better than I remember playing it for the first time. And while replaying it after having played AW2, I didn't realize there were SO MANY references they stuck in referring to the sequel. Hell, even the QR codes that were just fun little things in the pc port have been turned into straight up references. It's been so fun to replay.

Dead Space via PS+

It's just a great horror game and the remake actually is quite enjoyable, even though I nevet played the original.

I am playing Witcher 3 so much lately it is starting to affect my dreams

Factorio space age. Can cracktorio got laced with space

Finished Metro: Last Light last week. Have to say I didn't really like it. Spoiler warnings below. The good bits were good, to be sure: the populated stations of Bolshoi and Venice were phenomenal and there were parts that harked back to the highlights of the first game - the early parts with Pavel for instance and some nice levels in the tunnels. Playing on Survival Hardcore there were passages that were phenomenally immersive and enjoyable, and I do love the world building around the communities in the metro.

The story just didn't land with me. The political war left me completely uninterested and the love story with Anna was so half-baked I almost wanted to stop playing right there when the sex scene happened. I also didn't really like the overly supernatural stuff like the River of Fate. It was also kind of hard for me to follow the logic of the narrative at times as it felt like Artyom was just kind of drifting around and happened to end up where he needed to be regardless. He also should have died like a dozen times, but I guess he's a superhero.

The moral system left me frustrated more than anything now that I knew about its existence (I played 2033 completely blind). Finally, the boss fights felt terrible and really out of place in a game that should be about tension, loneliness and stealth. Artyom was too much of an action hero here for my taste. There wasn't really anything like the great Library level in 2033. When he picked up a gatling gun at the end like a russian Rambo and fought off a horde of enemies I was rolling my eyes.

Still, I'm glad to have gotten through it finally - this was my second attempt - and I am interested to see what they did in Exodus as I've heard nothing but good things.

For now I'm taking a breather and tackling Bioshock 2, another backlog game to get through before being able to play Infinite, which is the game I'm really looking forward too.

No Man’s Sky

I thought I was done with the latest Diablo 4 season last week, but then I put in a bunch more hours this weekend. While the season and the expansion is generally fun, it feels like the devs took two steps forward and one step back. Progression seems a lot more tedious, compared to before. In earlier seasons, you could basically unlock the highest difficulty really fast and progress pretty quickly to the endgame content. Now, with everything a lot harder and a bunch more difficulty options, you take twice or three times as long, to get to the same point as before. If I didn't play the Spiritborn, who is completely busted this season, it might've taken even longer. I still gotta try the raid, which you can only do coop, although I rarely play with someone else.

Then I started HROT, but have only finished the first level, so I can't talk about it too much. It seems like it's basically just Quake with a different skin, I guess? I love the look, and it plays pretty smoothly, so I look forward to playing more of it.

I finished Silent Hill 2 too, the Mannequins made me jump so many times. They always seemed to appear when I least expected them to. The game created such a tense and scary atmosphere the whole way through but the prison area was by far the spookiest and of course I didn't understand the hanging part and kept getting punished for it lol.

I also played The Last of Us Part 1 it was no where near as scary but the story was so good, I even cried a bit. I'd love more games that focused on keeping quiet, I dont think I've played anything with that sort of mechanic before. I really hope they port part 2 to pc soon.

I tried to play Alien Isolation but I kept getting game breaking bugs and when I finally managed to get about an hour in, there were still no aliens?? Just more bugs so I've given up on it and maybe I'll try see if there are any fixes and stuff when I have more time since so many people recommend it.

Still playing Metaphor, I'm really enjoying it. I think I'm around halfway through. The story is going in an interesting direction, and the gameplay is still fun, altho I'm always feeling a bit underleveled.

Alot of Satisfactory

I've spent about an hour with "Drova - Forsaken Kin". The best way to describe it (and I'm not the first person to do this) would be "2D Gothic". It's quite neat. Exploration is a bit labyrinthian, but it's appropriately punishing and bleak, has meaty combat that becomes satisfying once it finally clicks with you. Just like in Gothic, you start out as someone who can barely swing a club and just like in Gothic again, you need trainers to level up your skills. Controls can take a bit of getting used to and I have no idea where the story will take me, but so far, I'm enjoying my time with it. Really the worst thing I can say about it so far is that the music is rather monotonous.

Drova is available on gog without DRM, supporting Linux and MacOS in addition to Windows (also on Steam and every current and last-gen console):

https://www.gog.com/en/game/drova_forsaken_kin

I've been playing retro games recently. Metal Slug X, Hydro Thunder, and trying to get into MGS1. Playing on either PSX or Dreamcast

A little bit of emulation but mostly minecraft. Though a friendly creeper turned my hardcore world into spectator mode. I have a save that is about a day before it but I will probably delete it since I think the point of hardcore is to not save copies. Plus it was before I built the nether portal or got a mending fishing rod. I am thinking of using the beehaw seed that I discovered before to give hardcore another try.

back on cyberpunk 2077 but I only have so much time to play so I can be on things and go back and forth for awhile.