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

Tried out the new demo for Metaphor on my Steam Deck. Guess this'll be a main rig game. The demo seems to run at 20fps even on the lowest settings, lol.

For context, the Deck can play Cyberpunk at 45-ish fps pretty consistently with the right settings, so it's definitely a coding issue.

Hopefully characters have more than one outfit in this game. My fairy desperately needs pants and a pair of shoes.

@Ralizah rig game?
20fps looool Atlus need to get their sh1t together
Ran great on my series
The fairy character was really fun to talk to, you can throw some shades toward her

@Yousef- Main PC (aka "rig")

Bit disappointing after how perfectly SMT V: Vengeance ran on the Deck.

Pleasantly surprised how adult the game feels so far.

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.