Finished Xenoblade Chronicles 1 a couple weeks ago and really loved it. There’s something about the story that stuck with me - the whole structure of a world where everything exists to feed one guy at the top, and the main character ends up rejecting the chance to become the new god. Felt like revolutionary potential even if it doesn’t fully follow through.

Tried Xenoblade Chronicles 2 right after and bounced off. Part of it was the sexualization, but what really started nagging at me was the Driver/Blade relationship - you’ve got this whole system where sentient beings are bound to serve and you acquire them through a gacha mechanic. It started feeling gross in a way I couldn’t shake. I ended up dropping it.

Now I’m playing Pokémon Leaf Green while my laptop gets fixed [I was playing Fallout 2 prior to it needing repairs]. As I’m typing this I just realized I’m sitting here catching creatures without a second thought after dropping XC2 for basically the same dynamic. Been playing Pokémon since I was a kid, so it’s easier to just fall into it without thinking. I also realize that thinking about games this way kind of ruins them.

Played a little bit of Total Warhammer MP as Greasus and now I have to deal with Tamurkhan. I am very scared.

Did a few more runs of Slay the Spire and got my first two wins. Would’ve had a third but got rekt by RNG on my watcher run and was 5 damage short of killing the third boss. It’s more fun than I initially gave it credit for.

As always, more Warframe. Follie’s mode really, really sucks so I’m waiting for the Operation before grinding her and her weapon out and then probably never playing it again. Picked up the three new adversary weapons and am slowly formaing them while doing ESO runs. Content aside, the QoL of the last update was pretty good, revamping a bunch of old loot tables to be less horrendous. It’s cool that a bunch of “starter” frames have had craft time reduced from 72 hours to 24, but they really should just do that for all of them at this point.

Oh, also I have Unnamed Space Idle going in the background. It really slowed down before zone 80 but then it picked back up. I’m curious if 90-100 will be similarly interesting.

I can’t remember if I said this in the last gaming thread, but I’m replaying Disco Elysium because I’ve only played it once, 5 years ago, and I’ve grown a fair bit since then so I figured It’d give it another go.

This game hits hard and doesn’t pull punches, it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s pessimistic while somehow being hopeful at the same time. Actual art.

Anyway I got Kim to wear the Pissf****t jacket

Still blasting through FTL: Multiverse. I’m encountering random new bullshit every run, and I’m a couple dozen runs in now.

Last playthrough I shot my ship out of a cannon pointed at the surface of a moon, that the game warned me would blow my ship up and is a bad idea. It blew my ship up and I got a game over.

I’m playing Deltarune, just got to the Queen’s mansion on Chapter 2. I had previously played Chapter 1 when it came out, then Chapter 2 a while after it came out and have now decided to play all the way to chapter 4 for the first time. I completely forgot about Jevil so I went back to chapter 1 to fight him for the first time ever. I also created a second save when I got to Noelle so I can do a Snowgrave route later.

I had forgotten how cool this game is!

EDIT: Spamton Neo is kicking my ass

Morrowind Hype! Once you get past the jank and denseness, you are richly rewarded with a very different fantasy setting and lore from others in the Fantasy genre.

I got sucked into Factorio again. I’m 100+ hours into my current map, probably because I chose the worst map both defensively and resource distribution. I haven’t yet played the Space Age expansion because I already have an addiction, and piling on those Rollercoaster Tycoon train additions would be the end of my free time.

Competed Look Outside and got the bad ending because only 1 of my offerings was correct. It’s probably my favorite game I’ve played this year.

Watched someone play RE9 to decide if I wanna play it and I think this series just isn’t for me anymore. Last one I enjoyed was RE4 but I admit I am old and don’t like action or jumpscare games.

The Mordheim campaign I’m in is down to only a few players and the pesky Age of Sigmar people don’t want to join (despite having warbands by default). It sucks because my Cult of the Possessed are finally starting to take off. My mutants are pretty well kitted-out and I got my first actual Possessed, who has four arms and double cloven hooves for spicy 7" movement. She jumped a skaven wizard from over a foot away and shredded him in seconds with her multiple attacks.

been going hard into rebel galaxy outlaw, really scratches the freelancer itch plus i love that you play as a woman in her 30s, don’t see that very often

I am currently 23 hours into Slay The Spire 2 and it’s a banger. Osty my beloved

Finished playing Resident Evil 9 (Requiem) which was very good. Now back to playing Stellaris with patch 4.3.

I wrapped up Scritchy Scratchy last night. Fun incremental game themed around scratch off tickets, good for about 8-10 hours of entertainment. I went for 100% which I do not recommend because it took a few hours of mindless grinding that kinda soured me on the game at the end.

I finally went back and finished Sonic CD. I wanted to go for the good ending when I started, but I kinda hated Wacky Workbench so much I don’t want to any more lol. Probably a skill issue but whatever. If I got good at the bonus game I could probably get all the Time Stones before then and not worry about it, but I’d rather destroy the machines and get to see all of the good future stages.

I’m also revisiting Crazy Taxi 3 for the first time since I was a kid. I loved it on my Xbox but barely remembered it. Unfortunately I had performance issues trying to emulate the Xbox version, but the PC port can be modded into an acceptable state at least. Really fun game, I haven’t played any Crazy Taxi 2 so I didn’t know what I’d think of the jump mechanic but I think it works well actually, I like that it opens up a lot of potential for shortcuts, and gives you a chance to save yourself if you get caught by bad traffic. I’ve mostly been playing on the Las Vegas themed level that’s new to 3, it’s really wide open which I’m not sure how I feel about, but the gorge area with the river running through it is pretty cool since you can take risky jumps to save time. The New York level from Crazy Taxi 2 is really hard, I’m still not sure how to navigate that one. I haven’t tried the Crazy Taxi 1 map yet but I’ve heard it’s been revamped a little which sounds interesting. I wish I could find maps of the levels online somewhere, trying to conceptualize where I am while playing has been a little tricky. I probably just need to play in 10 minute mode and drive around for a while to try and get a sense of where everything is.

Started playing Deadlock which is really cool so far, and Banjo Kazooie recompiled

Just finished all the events in SSB for Wii U (minus doing the Kirby one on hard) and did the special stages in Super Mario 3D Land (after only completing the normal stages like 5+ years ago; still need to go do the same for Super Mario Galaxy 1). So now I’m moving back to playing Tears Of The Kingdom using some GameFAQs guide that uses coordinates and generally routes you region by region so it has a decent flow. Finally forced myself through the Depths section early on that was stressful since the monsters and stuff are tricky early on without grinding supplies (needed like 100+ arrows). Playing the mostly-finish Zelda mod because I think the story makes more sense for Link to be missing and to play as Zelda as a mirror to BOTW.

Learning how much better the game is in restrained spaces rather than the overworld because in the overworld problems are too easily solved. Wish the entire game was the sky islands.