Ah, it’s by the My Friend Pedro guy? That makes a lot of sense. I’m probably never going to touch a game that proudly extols itself as a precision platformer, but the gameplay looks great and tight if you’re into that sort of thing!

I love the vibes, big STALKER energy which is a personal weakness. But ho boy, those Steam reviews tell me to just wishlist an wait for a year or two.

Oh fuck me I managed to exorcise Dota from my memory like the cancerous tumor it is. Yeah that might be my most played game overall actually, across Dota 1&2.

Not that I’m suggesting you starting to play again is a bad decision or anything. I’m sure you’ll have a great time.

I would think probably Diablo 2 over the course of my childhood, although it’s hard to tell. It might be EVE Online, I was very much into that for a few years between 2010-2015 or so. And it’s not exactly a game you play casually, or at least I didn’t. Over the last decade it’s probably been Football Manager. 17 is the iteration I have the most hours in but I probably have a thousand hours combined across multiple editions across the last ten years.

EDIT: I actually managed to exorcise Dota from my memory, probably because of all the accumulated misery it has accrued. Yeah, that’s the one. Easily the most hours combined over Dota 1&2.

God, I love Disco Elysium so much. For me it’s the best game of all time. It’s funny you single out what you call DM railroading, because it was one thing that was talked about a lot around the release, but they called it a “fail-forward” design philosophy. And it’s so important to the game because failure is such a major theme of the game, and trying and failing checks is a big part of that. That’s why there are several red checks right at the start of the game that actually have advantageous outcomes on failure - to teach you that trying and failing is okay. A lot of my favourite moments in the game comes from failed checks.

And the same goes for all those “wacky” dialogue options. A lot of people miss out on so much because they are afraid to “sound crazy”, because we have been conditioned by every other RPG that picking stupid options leads to being punished. Buy Disco doesn’t really work like that, it’s one of the least punishing games ever in that sense. You’re more often than not rewarded for picking those dialogues. There is even a loading screen tooltip encouraging them.

Anyway sorry my latent hyperfixation got awakened and I’m ranting…

That’s very fair, well explained! I think I may be underestimating the areas of DS1 simply because I know them so well. Some of them are treacherous and it definitely has more opportunities to get stuck for example, like accidentally touching the bottom bonfire in Great Hollow before the Lordvessel or whatnot. At the same time the bosses are so so simple.

Also yeah I know what you mean. I think the lack of rough edges is part of why some people don’t like DS3 so much and others like it the most out of the trilogy. It’s definitely the most “smooth sailing”. And I really don’t like how the game is just one long corridor.

You think it’s even easier than DS1? Those bosses have like three moves and punish windows for aeons, plus you have broken poise that lets you just facetank whatever you want if you feel like it. And pyro without mana costs. Anyway in typical Fromsoft fashion the challenge level is stepped up in the DLCs, so maybe those will satiate your appetite.

Also… Farron Greatsword my beloved <3

I finished Death Howl over the weekend. In the end I enjoyed it quite a bit, it’s probably a solid 8/10 for me. If you can pick it up on sale especially I think you’ll definitely get your money’s worth, at least provided you like both grid-based strategy and deckbuilding since it’s pretty much equal bits of both. I was a little dismayed at first that your freedom in deckbuilding is stifled by having the cards of one area cost an additional mana if you attempt to use them in another area, but that concern was alleviated a bit by the final zone of the game where - in the run up to and including the final boss - you can use all your cards from all your zones without extra costs. So you do even get a little bit of creative freedom at the end.

The story was so-so for me, but mostly because it was so predictable. It even tries to include a little twist, but unfortunately that twist has no impact on the overall story or moral of the conclusion, so it didn’t end up moving the needle much for me. I could see where the story was going pretty much from the get go, and that was exactly how it unfolded. That being said the message is good, the story isn’t offensively bad or anything and it’s not a story heavy game. 90% of it is gameplay, which is good. And the art is fantastic - some really great pixel art that I liked a whole lot.

“You’re a good man, Arthur Morgan”

Meanwhile the good man in question has a kill count that would qualify for genocide according to most international standards.

Has to be STALKER Anomaly for me.

God I wish the IP didn’t belong to EA. It has so much potential, I always wanted Alice 3 to be a Soulslike personally but I know American McGee himself had some ideas already for Alice: Asylum to be the next installment. Shame EA doesn’t give two fucks about the franchise.

Honestly for me, while I don’t like the UI and agree that it’s not good I could definitely get used to it. What irks me is feature removal. I miss getting more detailed stats during and after matches so much. Heatmaps, pass maps, touch maps, dribble visualisations, average positions, shot maps… All gone.

Also being unable to do much with your reserve and U18 teams. I don’t think you can even see their position in their respective leagues anymore? You used to be able to micromanage them, select specific players for specific positions (useful for retraining which I do a lot) etc.

How are you liking Mouse PI? I haven’t bought it yet as I just bought a couple of games recently and need to mind my backlog, but it looks really good.

Was my GOTY last year by a mile (and yes I also played E33). Absolutely incredible game, and also a super underrated but phenomenal OST, Trigg & Gusset really killed it. Great showcase of the bass clarinet.

Physical notes are absolutely vital, I ended the game with like 50 pages of notes and hundreds of screenshots!

Football Manager 26 was free on Steam this past weekend so my current playthroughs of other games got derailed as I lost a good couple of days to it, fully feeling the addiction seeping in again. I would still recommend FM 2024 over it all things told, but I have to admit the new tactics engine in 26 allowing for different formations in and out of possession is both realistic and a lot of fun to play with.

Otherwise before and after the weekend it’s been more of Death Howl. I’m having a good time with it so far. The art is absolutely beautiful, a gorgeous minimalistic but expressive pixel art in a very distinctive muted color palette. I have some complaints here and there with the gameplay but mechanically the turn based Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder genre soup is a nice mix and the combat is very challenging but doable. I’m constantly just about scraping by between bonfires. On the deckbuilding side it’s not a game that puts a premium on creativity so far, and instead it seems more constructed like a series of small puzzles. Each zone has its own set of cards and its own set of encounters and it’s up to you to find the “correct” deck and approach for each encounter.

The story has been pretty mediocre so far, which is unfortunate. It’s ostensibly framed as this Orpheus tale of a mother going into the spirit world to rescue her child from death, but it’s very obviously actually a tale of a mother’s journey towards accepting the death of her child, with each zone representing one stage of grief. Maybe it hits different if you don’t pick this up right away, but me personally I’m mostly drumming my fingers as the story unfolds, waiting for the penny to drop for the protagonist.

It’s not really been story heavy though in fairness, so the majority of playtime is spent in battles, and those are still fun.

I am so completely torn on this game. On the one hand I suck at platformers and don’t much enjoy them and also from reviews it seems this game can be pretty fucking hard at times with some extremely precise timings.

On the other hand the game looks like an absolute work of art that I am craving to experience.

True gamers make do with a single mouse button. Mac is the ultimate platform.

That’s fair enough, but I really do recommend going into NG+ after too even if you start over from the beginning. It’s a really fun twist, and also streamlines things quite a bit so the NG+ run will be much faster than your first playthrough. And it has an exclusive ending!

I’m so impressed with this game, I can’t wait for the sequel.

Did you do NG+? It had one of the best NG+ implementations for me, so much fun. God I love that game. I really hope the sequel is a banger.

I mean, I love atmosphere to be clear. Several of my favourite games stand on the foundation of atmosphere, like STALKER, Cyberpunk, Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, Dishonored… Withering Rooms that I played recently was dripping with atmosphere, which is part of why I had trouble moving on from it.

Limbo does have good atmosphere but… its atmosphere is kind of one-note, like yeah it’s spooky shadows but that’s all there is. It’s neat, but it’s not really wowed me to the extent that it really elevated the game for me or anything. From what I’ve heard Inside has a bit more of a story to it, a which makes me hopeful I’ll like it better.

Artsy indie platformers can work for me, I really liked both GRIS and INMOST.

I think we’ve already been over it before, some time last year when I played Limbo. I’m not a huge fan of puzzle platformers in general so it starts as an uphill battle. There were one or two puzzles I liked (like the anti-gravity stuff was cool), but most I didn’t for various reasons. Most were either frustrating or forgettable. The liquid stuff was a bit overused. Towards the end it got a little too precision platformy and timed for my liking, some with really tight and unforgiving timing. Although I recognise that some people might enjoy that. Story wasn’t really anything either. It’s a cool mood and some decent looking scenes at times but apart from the graphics and art it almost felt like a browser game.

I finished Withering Rooms last week, and finally managed to tear myself away from it instead of doing a third straight playthrough. I’m still low-key obsessed with this game and am now waiting anxiously for the upcoming sequel. What a piece of art this game is. Beautiful art direction, beautiful music (all composed by the solo dev!), great gameplay despite the clunky combat and just such an interesting world and story, with some thematic throughlines of morality and responsibility running throughout. Possibly also a commentary on generative AI. It’s a super well made, super interesting and captivating game and I can’t recommend it enough.

Death Howl

I moved on to Death Howl as my next main game. It’s a Soulslike grid-based strategy deckbuilder (yes, that’s a mouthful) and so far it’s been… Decent but mixed, I’d say. I love the art. Beautiful pixel art in a very minimalistic but expressive style and a distinctive muted color palette. The story is okay but very very obvious and predictable, so while it’s a classic template and theme I am not really excited about getting to the next bit of story as I can already tell where it’s going, what it’s about and how it’s going to end.

The gameplay is fine so far, although the game is quite grindy which I don’t love. You need to do a lot of trash fights to grind out your deck for each area, and there is a mechanic that increases the mana cost of cards from outside your current area, which means you have to regrind a deck for every new area. It also means creativity in deckbuilding is restricted, as you really kind of are just limited to building one of the two deck archetypes provided by each area’s cards.

There are also some QoL features I don’t love, such as disabling fast travel while doing quests, which just means you waste enormous amounts of time walking. Overall it’s interesting but I don’t know whether I’d recommend it, outside of diehard deckbuilder fans who have already played everything else. It’s also fairly difficult.

Ninja Gaiden 4

I got derailed in my playthrough weeks ago, but have picked it up again and am probably in the final third now. I’m playing it in parallel for whenever I need something faster paced. Not much to add about it that I haven’t said previously. I have a ton of gripes with it, and it feels more like a half-brother to the older 3D Ninja Gaidens than a full blooded family member, but in isolation its combat systems are phenomenal, it’s fast and it’s fun and free-flowing and if you like action games you should absolutely play it.

It’ll probably be my next intermission artsy short game between longer titles. Did you play Limbo? If so how do they compare? I thought Limbo was only okay but I’ve heard people say Inside is a stronger game.

They did a pretty significant marketing push on Twitch for Crimson Desert, but in financial terms I don’t know if that is all that expensive, and certainly not in relation to 5 million copies sold.

I forgot that since I usually just check 6 months/1y/3y but they do huh. Even better!

https://isthereanydeal.com/ has 3 years of price history and tracks valid 3rd party stores too (not greymarket sites like G2A).

Ninja Gaiden 2 is calling.

Have you played STALKER Anomaly? It has the looting and shooting without being an extraction shooter, but still scratches a similar itch.

My condolences.

CDPR gambled for the masses and won with Witcher 3. I agree with you and would prefer the combat to be more methodical, require more preparation and be more visceral. I wish you’d have to actually manually brew the correct potions and oils in preparation, and then see those have a huge impact on whether you win or lose the fight.

At the same time, the super lightweight combat they went with allowed the game to be so approachable by the causal market that it sold millions and millions of copies and singlehandedly catapulted CDPR into a AAA studio. So it’s hard to argue they made a mistake not catering to players like us.

Some games have started to crop up that straddle the line between Souls and CAG, The Nioh series and First Berserker: Khazan come to mind. I’ve also heard good things about AI Limit, it looks pretty fast and it doesn’t have stamina.

Also not a Soulslike but I assume you’ve played Ninja Gaiden?

I tried playing it last year and really wanted to like it as it’s a classic and the comedy, art direction and vibe are all great. It just felt like the gameplay was ass. I don’t think it’s aged well.

If you want something with a bit more story I will keep proselytizing for Chrono Ark. If you enjoy roguelike deckbuilders like StS then this is one of the best ones from a pure game mechanics perspective, and it also has an entire visual novel baked in with a surprisingly interesting story.

Management games, strategy games, point-and-click games and isometric RPGs can all be played one-handed. Some might need spacebar (or whatever the pause button is) to a mouse thumb button for maximum comfort but that should be fine. Do any of these genres sound interesting?

EDIT: Card games should work great too, there is a vast ocean or deckbuilders out there!

Motorsport Manager is a banger, it’s a classic. Definitely recommend it if you’re into management games.

It can be a little moon logic at times and might be frustrating to play without a guide, but yeah it’s great and quite funny.

It’s a very fun series, they play very differently from a lot of other games so look up some video footage first maybe, but I think they’re fun. The missions are somewhat sandboxy and can make you feel pretty clever when you figure out how to set up a nice sequence.

While I think Rise of the Ronin has the better combat, the presentation for the duels in Ghost is much better for sure. I loved the fight amongst the lanterns too, was probably the most memorable part of the game for me as well.

I’m still deep in the Withering Rooms trenches - almost literally now (although I can’t say more without spoilers). The game is just absolutely excellent, and I am even starting to get used to the janky and clunky combat. I’m in Chapter 4 now and starting to get some kind of idea of a possibile endgame, although I’m sure there are plenty of more mysteries and secrets and twists to uncover. I also know there are multiple endings, but I am still unsure what decides which one you get as I’ve just been playing blind and I don’t feel like I’ve locked into anything yet.

I know it’s a completely different game and a completely different vibe, but this game’s exploration is giving me almost similar vibes to back when I was first exploring Dark Souls 1. An interesting and dangerous world, weird ass NPCs, distinct art direction, mysteries and secrets, world building and story in item descriptions, locations that connect through shortcuts and link back to previous areas… It’s just great.

Next on the agenda is exploring the extremely cursed attic, but I think I might need a dedicated gear loadout for it as my default set gets overwhelmed by curse damage after just a couple of seconds in there. After that’s it’s the endgame, I guess? Can’t wait to see how it ends.

I played some Desperados last year and tbh they hold up pretty well apart from some graphics/UI stuff. I don’t think I ever played Robin Hood beyond the demo back in the day, but I played enough Commandos/Desperados to know it’s quality.