Topic: What (Non-PS4) game are you playing??

I think I've been playing too many horror games lately as I've been craving something fun and lighthearted now. It's been a while since I played a racing game, so I decided to start up Hydro Thunder Hurricane on Series X. This game is so much fun! I'm absolutely loving the single player mode. There are races, ring races, gauntlets (avoiding exploding barrels) and multi-race events. You unlock new events and boats by getting a good time and earning either a gold, silver or bronze trophy. The tracks are such a blast to race through as it's point-to-point (i.e. one long track) and there's stuff happening throughout the tracks all the time, like explosions or stuff falling into the water. This is just a pure fun racing game and it feels like a Dreamcast title. I just looked it up, apparently this is a sequel to the Dreamcast game Hydro Thunder, which makes sense! Either way, this is the perfect game for me to play when I want a break from the horror gaming.

@LtSarge I noticed yeah! You’ve been quite busy with both the PX and our club selections too xD. Can see how that would cause fatigue. Probably a break is in order but it seems you’ve at least been having fun! I’ll be attempting to ketchup with everyone else just so I can provide something beyond surface level commentary xD. At least Ln2 isn’t Jumpscare heavy so I’ll be good!

Never heard of HTH, so thanks for the shout!

@Yousef- Yeah, I've had trouble getting through The Evil Within 2 as it's been too much horror for me the past few weeks but I think I'll be giving it another shot today.

Definitely give the game a go! It's also exclusive on Xbox, so if you're looking for compelling titles only on Xbox then that's one.

@LtSarge worth adding that, based on word of mouth, EW2 is in and of itself a somewhat challenging game, but heres the funny part; I didn’t avoid it cuz horror, I avoided it cuz survival horror, I only VERY recently came around to loving stuff like Resident Evil, Onimusha, Dead Rising and what have you. As a result, I can very much actually get into Evil Within 2! When I find the time, of course.

Edit: I wishlisted HTH, always wanted a racing game rec, thanks again. : D

I know Metaphor is like a week out, and I'm gonna full main game that when it comes until Veilguard, so I have just been trying to find stuff to fill the time in between.

I picked up an indie on Steam called Halls of Torment, it is kinda like OG Diablo meets Vampire Survivors. Pretty brutal on the difficulty side, and the game tells you nothing about how anything works, you just gotta sorta figure stuff out through failure. Its also pretty darn addicting and if you focus on the quests less so on trying to actually finish runs, it has a really healthy sense of progression that I feel many of these rogue whatever games usually lack, which is why I usually bounce off these.

Also picked up both Relayer and the Blue Reflection games in a Steam sale. I am really loving Relayer, difficulty spikes are kinda crazy but dropping it down to easy is extremely forgiving. Has an absolutely awful suite of options for a PC game, so I have just been playing it on Deck. It is basically Fire Emblem with waifus and mechs. Story is told like a visual novel and maps are very small, it seems like 99 percent of the budget went into battle animations and its honestly the main reason why this game is so enjoyable to be honest. It does the fire emblem thing when you attack an enemy unit on the grid of zooming in to see a little cutscene representing the battle and man, the Fire Emblem team should hire these people for the next game cause these animations just go so damn hard. Every time I unlocked a new weapon or unit, I just had to do one more mission to see the attack animations.

Blue Reflection is a magical girl Persona-lite turnbased JRPG. I have only started on the first one and it is pretty jank to be honest and the story has big Persona from Wish energy. However, it has some nice visuals and it is doing some interesting things with progression / battles. Putting points into different stat collections (I can't remember what they are called in game, but its like the Strength, Intelligence, Dex you would get in most JRPGs called something else) unlocks different types of abilities on each character. I assume you will eventually unlock everything, but right now I can like pour all the points into strength on one girl to make her a DPS, all points into Wisdom to make another a support unit etc it gives each magical girl a light build of a sort.

Battles are also built around this push system, so the idea is to use abilities which push the enemy as far back on the timeline as you can, to get in as much damage as you can before they can attack. There are also other mechanics which allow you to stack turns, or pull in support characters for bonus abilities. It is not earth shattering by any means, but more work has been put into this than I really expected and I hear these systems get significantly better in the sequel. Oh and it does a thing where health and MP are reset after every battle. I know this will drive some people crazy, but grindy war of attrition JRPGs are such lazy difficulty design, this is way better to me.

Vessel of Hatred is officially here. The actual expansion is quite Destiny like in its approach. It offers a new location on the map, some new loot, a new class, and a couple of new story missions and that is about it. It really isn't that substantial of a package if you isolate it to just what VoH really gives you on its own, but as others pointed out, when you put it in the context of the fact it would cost you the same for two cosmetic sets as it would this expansion, it puts things in perspective.

Some of the largest changes to the game are actually in the big patch that comes along with the game that applies for everyone + the additional seasonal content. And as someone who thought Diablo 4 was just not in a great place at launch and hasn't touched the game in around 12 months, it has honestly been nice coming back. Getting to enjoy all the changes over that year to loot, progression etc Plus while the Spiritborn may not be the Templar many wanted, and may share some crossover space with the existing Druid, I think the SB packing effectively four playstyles into one character still makes for a lot of fun. Especially as the process for levelling is no longer as arduous as it was in its launch state.

No bother (: It is a still from Anby's ultimate animation who is the icon character from free to play Zenless Zone Zero (it is on PS5 and I highly recommend it).

So this weekend, I felt like taking out my Wii U from the storage and hook it up to my TV. I've been in the mood for some lighthearted games and so I decided to start up Rabbids Go Home on the Wii. I haven't played a Wii game in a long time, so I've missed playing with the Wii Remote and Nunchuk. It's a fun and simple collectathon game, I'm really enjoying it a lot despite the annoying Rabbids.

After wrapping up Persona 5 Strikers yesterday, I started up my next long game today, which is Fire Emblem Awakening on the 3DS. I've played it for about an hour and I'm really enjoying it. I've played Fire Emblem (2003), The Sacred Stones, Shadow Dragon and Shadows of Valentia thus far and while those games were great, I've felt that the traditional FE gameplay has hindered me from truly enjoying this series. It seems though that Awakening is going to change that for me as you can choose to save anywhere and not have perma-death on, which is fantastic. I feel less restricted in how I want to approach a battle. It just feels really good to play this game and I hope I'll feel the same way throughout the rest of it.

i'm just playing Splatoon 3 on switch

Started playing The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap on Switch. Was in a mood to play another Nintendo game after having finished Fire Emblem Awakening and I realised it's been a long time since I played a Zelda game. I've played it for about an hour now and I just finished the first temple. It's a lot of fun thus far, it's very refreshing to play after my last Zelda experience, which was Breath of the Wild. Looking forward to play more soon.

Started playing the remake of Super Mario RPG on Switch. Played it for an hour so far and it's really fun. It clearly gives off 90s Square Enix vibes, which is nice. I decided to play it because I needed something else to play on the side when I need a break from AC: Valhalla. I also saw that the game is around 12 hours long, which is really short for an RPG. Which is why I chose to play it now as it won't be another long game alongside Valhalla.

I do love that despite having installed my uncle’s RTX 3070 he gave us, I’ve essentially used it to play upscaled SSX Tricky and PES 6. Played a bit of Quake 2 RTX and it’s very silly but quite fun to see how they’ll try and show off ray tracing next.

Started playing Hyrule Warriors Legends on 3DS today. I kinda regret buying this version as the Switch one looks so much better but I bought it before the Switch version was announced. It plays fine though and it has all the DLCs, which is good. Anyway, I got in the mood to play it after my friend was over yesterday and we played some Dynasty Warriors, which was the first time I experienced the series, and it was really fun. This game is also really fun as expected but it's much more simplistic, which I appreciate. Can't wait to play more of it!

Checked out the Romancing Saga 2 remake, I'm probably less than five hours in but enjoying it a lot so far. It throws really interesting ideas at you really quickly, but not in a way that will leave you feeling lost, it is impressive how ambitious a lot of ideas are, especially for a game that originally came out in the early 90s. Like I am not sure if I even like all the creative decisions it makes, but just sorta remain in awe of them anyway.

I've also started up two games on Series X today: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Definitive Edition) and Solar Ash.

So I was planning on starting up Wolfenstein II today but last night, for some reason, I dreamed that I was playing GTA lol. So I've been in the mood play GTA all day and I figured it makes more sense to play Wolfenstein later as I really want to play GTA instead. So I started up San Andreas, which is the last of the PS2/Xbox main trilogy that I haven't played yet. So far it's so much fun. I've really missed playing GTA as the last one I played was Vice City a couple of years ago. It's also nice to be playing the Definitive Edition as the graphics are great, the controls feel more modern and there are checkpoints as well as auto-saving. I'm really glad I waited to play this version.

As for Solar Ash, I figured I'd play a short game on Game Pass while I still have one week left of my subscription. It's pretty fun and it's heavily reminiscent of Shadow of the Colossus, which is both good and bad. It's good because I think it's cool you're fighting on massive beasts. It's bad because the same issue I had with SotC is still present here, which is the controls. It's so wonky getting around on the beasts and I keep dying after only getting hit once. In other words, it's cool but it's also annoying. I'm still enjoying the game though.

Last year I picked up Fire Emblem Awakening during the slow period of the gaming release calendar. I got about 30ish hours into it, but then new releases came out, so I never finished it. I remember it getting really hard in the back half of the game too, so that helped motivate me to not go back. I couldn’t be bothered to start it all over again, so I picked up the special edition of Fates which includes the three routes.

After the first 20 chapters or so of Birthright were super easy, the difficulty spike since has been truly astronomical. I seem to run into the same problem in all Fire Emblem games where you eventually get to a point where enemies are so strong, trying to introduce and level new units basically becomes non viable and it's basically the same three Units you’ve levelled since early game that now solo entire maps for you. I got my very first gameover screen during Chapter 22 for this very reason, bringing my B-Team for the hope of some new promotions and getting utterly wrecked.

On a side note, it is weird cause Awakening is an older game but that lets you play in Japanese. This for some reason, does not. This would be fine if the dub was even serviceable but it's so bad it actually made me laugh out loud at times. It feels like a parody dub. There's an option to turn off the voice acting I'm not sure I've ever seen before, it's certainly the first time I've used it, that is for sure. I still have to listen to their post battle voices however and every time it sounds like a meme someone has edited in for a YouTube skit.

As such, I sorta have no feelings on the story at all. I suppose all Fire Emblem games have to be built around the permadeath modes, so that means they have to be constantly introducing new characters for you to repopulate anyone you lose along the way. But it feels like Fates absolutely barrels through locations, characters, story beats at such a pace that I just feel absolutely nothing for this story, or world, or cast. Possibly part of that is because I am playing with no voice acting, but I also think the writing is just kinda terrible in general, or maybe it is just the translation.

That being said, while all of that is true, there is something about these games is just so playable and weirdly addictive to me. Missions don't take very long, and you're constantly progressing something so it just makes it a real one more battle kind of hunger. The presentation for the battle animations still remains top notch, even if the overall visuals aren’t great being a ten year old DS game.

I also love all the weird classes they come up with, and while it seemed convoluted to begin with, using Heart Seals to go into different class branches to send characters in new directions became really fun during the later game when I really wanted to test the upper limits of my strongest units.

I dunno, this isn't necessarily a good game, but nothing else scratches the Fire Emblem itch quite like a Fire Emblem game. There are many imitators, and they may even out class FE in some areas, but that core FE gameplay is just unmatched for me.

Bought a new PC. Installed a bunch of games wanting to showcase my new hardware, but I haven't been able to play any of them, because I am hopelessly addicted to Marvel Rivals!

I have never really been an online PVP sorta fellow, but something about those early days of Overwatch really caught me. It is like a pocket of my life I look back on really fondly. My friends and I racing home from work or uni to sit down in front of the PS4 and spend our entire evening on Overwatch. These moments have become increasingly rarer as I've gotten older and schedules become harder and harder to line up. Overwatch was just in the perfect place for where my friends and I were all on our life journeys at that time, to fill a shared space between us all.

Rivals is the first time since those early years of Overwatch for a game to recapture that feeling for me, and my friends, and I am just loving it. A game so fun, my friends have to drop their other plans, and just jump on a Discord call and play a few rounds.

Marvel Rivals is extremely unbalanced and sloppy, but it is also mostly unserious too, even in Comp. There has been efforts to make every hero viable here, but there definitely seems to be a focus on first bringing these heroes to life properly first, and then doing whatever they can to bring it all into some semblance of balance. We can talk and argue forever about the benefits of what Overwatch eventually grew into, but it went into a direction that lost me as a player, and this is the first game of this nature to find me again.

Started playing Project Gotham Racing 2 on Xbox 360. The emulation on 360 is not good. The screen turns black when choosing cars, so I can't really choose which car I want. There's so much screen tearing during races and the sound cuts off when there are too many cars on the track at once.

As for the game itself, I'm enjoying it way more than the first one. Progression through career mode is better than in the first game. There are more difficulty options and considering this is an old game, the game is quite challenging so I'm glad I can play it on the easiest difficulty.

I'm unsure if I'll play through the career mode in its entirety as there have been moments where I just wanted to give up. But the races are so short and I'm progressing rather fast, so that's been motivating me to keep playing.

Tried Marvel Rivals yesterday for the first time on the Xbox. I only played for a little bit because of time but dang it’s so fun and I’d say it’s way more fun than Overwatch despite how much I’ve played that. It’s probably the most fun I’ve had with a hero shooter in a while.

I really like how the characters play and control, and one thing I appreciate the most was how all the heroes have a difficulty rating that shows how easy or hard they play, something Overwatch doesn’t do. So far I’ve played two matches and won both, even got MVP on my first match! Used Squirrel Girl for both of them and the way she plays is so fun. I love how bouncy and jumpy she is, and the fact she’s super easy to master too. When I play it a bit more, I’ll try to give some of the other heroes a try.