

A gaming community free from the hype and oversaturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game. Whether it’s price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don’t meet the system requirements, or just haven’t had the time to keep up with the latest releases.
I decided to dust off the Xbox 360 and played a couple games that aren’t available on the new consoles. I also gave it a refresh with new thermal paste, bearing oil for the fan and a good clean. It’s running great now.
Burnout Crash, it’s a top down version of crash mode from the main games.
Swarm, you collect 50 swarmites and make your way through the levels using student abilities.
The 360 definitely has to be my overall favourite console. I’ve been meaning to give mine a good refresh but I’m not very experienced. How’d the process go? Any tips? Mine is put away right now but I’ll be moving in about a month and I’ll probably be setting up my 360 in the new place, so I’d like it in nice running order.
Also, do you know much about controllers? I wouldn’t mind getting a new 360 controller but something’s telling me Microsoft isn’t making the official ones anymore, have you tried any after market ones?
Arc Raiders. It’s a futuristic PVE and PVP extraction FPS. I’ve been playing with 2 buddies and we’ve had some really funny times. Last night we ran across a lot more hardcore PVP folks (great gear and tactics) so it wasn’t a fantastic night in my opinion.
Overall though, the noise mechanics is something I’ve never run across before (stealth is important in both PVE and PvP) and that can be fun. You can surprise people that way or stay hidden without them knowing you were ever there.
I’ve run across some very nice folks here and there (have helped me or that I helped) and the graphics are pretty.
Syberia 1 and its remake, in parallel. It’s a good story with interesting characters.
The remake is a mixed bag. Overall I do think it’s good. The graphics are beautiful and some quality of life is nice. It also changed some of the puzzles, usually (though not always) for the better. It’s mostly a faithful remake though.
There are two big flaws: the cutscenes were not remastered, and the game became easier.
Cutscenes are only upscaled as far as I can tell, and this is quite jarring compared to the beautiful new graphics. Worse is the difficulty. Syberia was never a hard game, but now it is just too easy. Hotspots are highlighted when your mouse gets near, as are required dialog options. I find this impedes the feeling of discovery.
But despite that, it’s still a pretty good remake.
I’ve been playing Soulstice, past the halfway point. Fun action game with a few weird choices.
Fixed camera gets too close in narrow hallways, which makes it different to see every enemy I’m fighting, some enemies are transparent, which makes it difficult to see what they’re doing sometimes, and startup animations for non-parryable attacks are a little difficult to spot.
I still have not unlocked all of my skills though, so I’ll be reserving judgement until I do that and play through NG+.
Recently picked up the DLC for Outer Wilds, Echos of the Eye.
I enjoyed outer wilds a lot the first time, but revisiting it with the more concentrated DLC experience has been fantastic. It’s such a good game, just constantly triggering feelings of satisfaction and discovery.
The only game where I thought the story was complete but the DLC proved me wrong.
I‘m wrapping up Crime Boss and I‘ve enjoyed my time a lot. Way more than with Payday 3.
Since we‘ve done all we could there, I‘ve been playing some Deep Rock Galactic with my friends and we‘ll probably hop onto Risk of Rain 2 soon as well.
I’m sticking with Morrowind still this week. I haven’t had much energy lately so I put my main playthrough on pause, created a new character, and I’m messing around with console commands to make him ridiculous (increasing speed and jump height so now I’m zooming across the map). It’s quite fun. I’m going to mess around with other commands soon too.
Before trying console commands I did briefly try using exploits instead but it seems either I messed up or OpenMW patched it out or something. I wasn’t too invested in the exploit, mostly just the result for this character, so commands work fine.
Enter the Gungeon. Fun little twin stick shmup with a rogue-lite progression system and fantastic pixel art and a very fun, silly theme.
Very addictive even though I suck. Runs are long enough that they feel like an achievement when you go deep but short enough that you can get to the “final boss” in a single sitting comfortably.
Absolutely full of stuff.
Borderlands 3.
Doom 3
BFG Edition or OG?
7 Days to Die. Just started with a friend group of a decade after I first heard of it. Still buggy!
Playing Animal Crossing New Horizons and it’s snowing on my island! I think this is the first possible day for it.
The little villagers are wearing coats and hats its so fucking cute!
My wife used to love this game! And then her mom started playing.
Part of the gift was my game is solo player even though my twin owns the switch. They won’t run around and do islandy things!
There are so many games to play and so little time. It’s a little suffocating.
Also debating to purchase Persona 5 Royal on Steam (on sale for €21) and play it with a Trainer on the Steam Deck. Already played the game on PS4 and… just so little time.
I’m not sure what I want to play at the moment so I thought I’d jump into Elder Scrolls Online for a bit. After spending a lot of time trying to play as a pacifist character I decided to make a new “normal” one instead - that took a while.
I ended up remaking my character 3 times as I couldn’t decide on who exactly I’d like to play as. Started with my usual choice, Warden, but I wasn’t really feeling the beast master skills and eventually settled down on Nightblade - the class of choice for my very first character, I believe.
I’m having fun so far though I do have some serious issues with the game. Both story and levelling feel WAY to fast, like they were made for someone with neither time nor interest in playing an MMO. Another big problem has to do with movement speed - my character feels like she’s constantly sprinting (even walking and sneaking are sped up) and the worst part is, this only affects my new, dark elf character. Jumping in as an old wood elf Nightblade has her moving like a normal person instead of an arena shooter protagonist. I don’t know why that is but I’m not a fan.
Main content is extremely easy and the writing is… not great for the most part. It’s not like I require some high art from the game but if it could be a little less generic and basic, that would be great.
While of the voice acting is pretty solid there are some real stinkers in there as well - you could tell me few of the characters are voiced by a decade old text-to-speech software and I would believe you.
I don’t know if the game changed so much since my last proper stint or if I didn’t really notice it back then (it’s been years since I played as a combat character). Either way, I might be going back to playing other stuff faster than anticipated. Oh well.
On a slightly different note… I like to listen to game soundtracks - old or new, action packed or mellow, there is something about many of them that just makes me want to put them on as a background for whatever I’m doing at the moment.
I decided to go back to albums from old Maxis games: SimCity 3000 and 4, The Sims and its expansions etc. They all have this atmosphere that makes them stand out and keep you feeling chill and happy. Well, after putting them on I noticed a serious problem - I can’t really listen to them any more, not as a whole anyway. Despite not having such problems in the past, nowadays some of the songs with higher tones sound extremely grating and unpleasant to listen to. I can do it for a bit but but things get painful rather quickly and it makes me sad. I love these soundtracks and not being able to enjoy them really sucks.
I have no idea why that happens but it’s not only limited to these old title. There are some newer games where I end up turning the music off completely since they end up being more annoying than atmospheric. I hate it.
It might be up my alley then. I have virtually no time these days for games. Most nights, by the time all the chores are done and my daughter is put to bed, I’m just too exhausted to play anything. I probably only get about 2 hours a week or so to play games. I played ESO off and on a bit a few years ago, maybe I should hop back in sometime.
It’s a quick and simple loop that’s easy to get into - just show up, do some super basic tasks and move on to other thing. Definitely a good fit since most of the quests take a few minutes to clear.
These 2 hours would be enough to make some decent progress, especially after unlocking Wayshrines to teleport to.
Very good to know, I’ll definitely look into it more soon. Thanks for the info.
Yoku’s Island Express. I’m still stumbling and rolling my way through some post game activities. Having fun and keeping my frustrations in check. It’s just too cute to stay mad at that little beetle.