It’s time for V’s depression arc. After botching the gig of her life, nearly dying and losing her apartment due to unpaid rent during her recovery she’s back to minor jobs and turning tricks just to survive. Things are looking bleak but that’s the Night City way, isn’t it?

I enjoy this role-play heavy playthrough more than I though I would. There’s a lot more downtime and conflict avoidance, making me feel more like part of the world than a normal playthrough. I also get to familiarise myself with the city better thanks to the lack of car and disabled fast-travel forcing me to walk more.

I still need to force myself to not slip back to my usual way of playing (unlimited hacking works) but I’m getting used to it. I’m sure it’ll lead to some painful encounters while I’m still figuring out what to focus on but it should be worth it - if only for variety’s sake.

Last time I mentioned the secret videos being kinda meh - well, the one on level 9 (Keyes) was pretty interesting. I missed 2 videos so there might’ve been something else but that’s where I’m at with them for now.

As for the game itself… I appreciate it from a historical perspective but I don’t think I’ll be coming back to it any time soon (unlike Reach). As game progressed, both level design and many of the encounters turned from “it’s neat” to “there’s more?! just let me progress, please”, turning a fun return to a classic into an exhausting experience.
I feel like this is one of the few games were age really affects my enjoyment of the whole thing, which is funny because I didn’t have similar issues with ONI (and that one is even rougher as a product).

I don’t regret it but I’m glad it’s done.

This game feels very different right off the bat. Even disregarding the Anniversary version improvements, the bombastic opening and light-hearted dialogue make the whole thing feel more like an action movie than an unnerving wannabe horror experience of the first game. I’m not saying that the original didn’t have cheese or that this game won’t have more serious moments but going through the start suggests a very different experience. Also, that Miranda Keys voice acting… it’s not great. Everyone in the game sounds fine except for her, no idea what happened there.

I really like Halo’s take on future earth, especially with the updated Anniversary art style - it looks great! One nitpick here is that the moment you look outside the designated arena (even places you can easily walk to) things start getting real empty pretty much right away. It’s not a huge issue and doesn’t really take away from the atmosphere but it did catch my attention.

Just like with the first game, I think they did really good job with the remaster. Refreshed art style, updated music and sound effects, new cutscenes - it all combines into a great package that feels awesome even today. I was a bit sceptical in terms of what to expect from these updated versions so I’m glad I was wrong.

Secret videos are another improvement - they are way more interesting than the ones in the first game. Maybe it’s because I don’t really care about the Forerunners storyline or perhaps because these ones are more directly relevant to the games I played. Either way I liked them more than Guilty Spark’s monologues.

One technical issue that’s bothering me (also happened in ODST) is that game mostly works fine but sometimes it registers my mouse input as if I clicked on the second monitor, losing focus until I click back on the game. Doesn’t happen often but it can be a huge pain in the middle of combat. I could understand if this happened all the time due to window mode setting but nope, it’s completely random.

Last week I said I won’t be pausing my Halo 2 playthrough to play ODST… well, I ended up doing just that.

I liked it quite a bit and found the hub based progression + multiple perspectives to be an interesting departure from the usual formula. I was expecting to feel a bit more vulnerable as a “normal dude” but considering how quickly you can die on Heroic in other games the difference is pretty much non-existent. What is noticeable is the gun feel - none of the weapons sound or feel as good as those in other games. I do like the pistol at least, not because it’s an exception or anything but it’s a perfect tool to thinning out the enemies from a sniping distance. It’s pretty crazy.

Despite great presentation, both voice acting and some of the cut scenes make the game feel just as light-hearted as the beginning of Halo 2 - it doesn’t prevent me from liking the characters and their interactions but it’s not really a grunt experience I was expecting it to be. I don’t have a problem with Holywood Halo but I do prefer the atmosphere and tone of Reach and the few books I read. There are still some beautiful, melancholic moments however they feel like a bonus rather than a main goal.

Unlike the anniversary versions of CE and 2, this game has secret audio logs instead of videos which I like quite a lot. They’re actually my favourite of the secret logs so far. They have great voice acting, simple but engaging story and good pacing (no weirdly placed sudden cut offs like in Halo 2 videos for example). I missed about half of them so I’ll have to go back and fix that - something I didn’t really feel compelled to do with Halo 1 & 2.

My new playthrough is slowly progressing. Just finished act 1 as I was focusing on “easier” jobs (fit to role-playing my current character) and simply enjoying the city.
I haven’t stumbled upon any difficulty spikes that would make me question what I’m doing which is a positive sign. We’ll see how things go now that I got to the “real game”.

Before I jump into the proper playthrough however I still have a little bit of a set up to perform - purely role-playing adjacent things, not something affecting the game story or anything like that. That’s actually the more interesting part of playing RPGs for me and the reason why I rarely bother with main stories in series like (3D) Fallout or The Elder Scrolls. Playing a hero is neat by cosplaying as a normal part of the world is way more interesting for me.

I didn’t expect to play this any time soon but since I managed to catch The Master Chief Collection on a 75% sale I decided to pull the trigger. Why Reach? I wanted to play the games in chronological order, simple as that. Well… mostly, as I won’t be pausing H2 for ODST for example. Still, the core idea is there.

Game holds up really well both graphically and in terms of gameplay. I do think the space flight missions were some of the worst gameplay segments I played in years but other than that it’s great.

I wish I went into the story completely blind but even despite that it manages to convey the emotions really well. One thing I forgot about (and really appreciate) is the ability to customise your Noble 6 - it’s a small thing but it does a lot to make the character feel mine. It also makes me wish future Halo games moved away from the Master Chief and focused on other, less exceptional characters. There’s so much potential for drama, tension and even horror like segments if only we got to see the world from the eyes of normal(ish) people. It could be neat.
I just think that MC really limits the storytelling potential at this point - with him at the helm devs have to come up with more and more out there reasons for yet another world ending catastrophe instead of writing more human and personal tales. That’s just something I’m personally interested in though, I’m not sure if the general public would be interested in this kind of Halo game.

I played the original PC release years ago so I expected this to be mostly a refresher - boy was it. I completely forgot A LOT of the actual levels (except for caves not being a natural formation) so it feels more like a new experience than expected.

I feel like they did a pretty good job upgrading the graphics for this title, I keep switching between the two modes and while the OG art looks neat, it’s also pretty freaking dark and drab a lot of the time (in a bad way).

Difficulty wise the game feels a bit harder than Reach, despite playing both games on Heroic difficulty - I think some of it has to do with absolute trash enemy spawn points (so many spawns right behind you, in places that were empty when checked, it’s not even funny) but I’m not going to use it as an excuse for all of my problems. I also have harder time trying to keep an eye on my HP by that’s just general mind goblins making me distracted rather than game’s fault.

It’s still really fun overall, but I do have two things I’m not too fond of. The first one are the long sections of the same corridors (as in literally copy and pasted sections with minimal adjustments) on certain maps. They actually remind me of ONI, another Bungie title from that era. I won’t say Halo didn’t improve on that aspect but some parts are almost just as big and empty as the ones in that game, making them the worst part of the experience.
The second “issue” are the 343 Guilt Sparks videos you can find hidden on each level - I understand their purpose but I don’t find them particularly interesting to watch. Marathon (I think?) data pads from Reach were much cooler, even if I found them to be a bit difficult to parse at times - there’s something about how they’re written that just shuts down my brain so I end up having to read some of them multiple times before things click.

Last but not least: the flood. I remember this level being pretty unnerving in the past but playing it now I can’t help but see them as easily kiteable silly little goobers. There was zero tension this time, only routine. Oh well.

I finished the campaign. Most I can say is that I came out of it with more positive than negative feelings about this title. Main story definitely improved compared to the early parts, writing on the other hand… not so much. The final stretch of missions was pretty cool at least (even though the trench missions were the easiest I’ve played in these games so far).

All in all, my reaction towards the game didn’t change much - it’s good, it just isn’t right for me.

On a different note, I have a unique technical issue with this game for whatever reason. When playing with a HOTAS my system doesn’t recognise that input is happening (game reacts normally) which can lead to it trying to hibernate my PC in the middle of a mission. It’s not a huge problem but I’ve never had anything like this happen with any other game I use my controller with.

Don’t know if this counts since the game released some time ago on Oculus, I think, but the PC version won’t be available until next week but whatever.

I tried the demo and the first thing that came to mind was “cute”. It has charming writing, simple but pleasant art style, distinct character designs with great voice acting (at least the Japanese one) and fun VR controls. One of the rare instances in recent years when I eagerly want to experience more.

I’ll be keeping an eye out on how the full release turns out as so far it’s pretty promising.

I’ve been trying to power through the game since last week. To be completely honest I’m not having a great time with this one (key word being “great” here).

It’s fun at times and a good game from a production standpoint but I end up playing in pretty short session because it can’t keep me interested otherwise. It’s a stark contrast to Project Wingman, where I pretty much binged through the whole thing twice (including DLC) and still want more. I’m slowly progressing but man, it’s night and day between the two games.

I more or less got my input settings to what I’m used to (sans deadzone and sensitivity settings but it’s still better than nothing) and got over most of my issues with how it plays so things are a bit better now.

Concepts for the missions are interesting and varied so far which is great, I’m a bit mixed on the execution though as there’s not a single mission that didn’t have something annoying in it. I have a similar sentiment towards ship upgrade tree - a neat idea, alright execution. I don’t hate any of this at least.

Story is… fine. The constant waffling about “sins” and how “you’re all expendable”/“you can die for all I care”/“you have my permission to crash” (that’s why we put you into extremely expensive machines armed to the teeth) mixed with the pretty common Japanese way of writing dialogues (person 1 say X, person 2 repeats it) got grating pretty quickly. At least it’s not a permanent focus of the game so there’s that.
There might be something a bit more interesting lurking in the background but I’ll have to see how things play out first to be convinced.

On the “good” good side of things I really liked the thunderstorm mission gimmick, where getting hit by lightning is not only possible but it also affects gameplay in a significant way (disrupting the HUD and temporarily cutting off your controls). In general, the way they treat clouds as part of gameplay is actually pretty cool (targeting wise, not the icing). They also look pretty great.
Besides the already mentioned mission variety, I also liked the callback to AC04 - it was a nice surprise as initially I didn’t realise both games are connected (it’s been a few years since my playthrough of 04 and even then my familiarity with AC franchise is pretty limited).

All in all, the game constantly edges on the brink of clicking with me, only to pull something annoying that brings it right back to making me feel mixed about it. I want to like it more, I really do but alas, so far it wasn’t meant to be.

Not much to write about today as I mostly focused on AC7 and only did some light grinding to get all current party members to the same level. I’ll most likely switch full time to Persona once I’m done with the fly-boy campaign but for a few more days it’ll have to wait.

I hopped in to unlock all the gear and achievements (all except for “Speed runner” since I can’t be bothered with downgrading the game just to unlock it). Went pretty fast since levels are small and requirements simple but it was fun nonetheless.

I’ll have to jump back in to do some proper photos of the DLC stages but that’ll have to wait a bit.

Progressing pretty slowly with this one as I treat it like a “play before bed” type of game. I really like Kotone and enjoy the new events written for her, hopefully they keep their quality throughout. Social links seem to have the same problem as the original ones for the most part (agree with people to make them like you) but whatever.

There’s one thing that’s bothering me and that’s lack of audio settings - the sound effects (especially crit hits) during combat tend to be slightly louder than everything else and quickly become rather grating to hear.

All in all, it’s pretty fun so far. While I don’t expect much differences in terms of the main story I’m curious where the rest of the writing ends up.

I’ve decided to take another stab at playing this thing in VR. My initial attempt was a bit weird as even though my PC is close to being bare minimum to run the thing in VR it didn’t seem to use all of the available resources during gameplay. After some searching I found multiple claims that VR performance got kinda wrecked with the release of patch 2.0 so I decided to give the old version a shot. Boy was it worth it! Well, kind of.

Both performance and hardware utilisation are definitely better, giving the speed and smoothness I didn’t see during my previous session. It’s super fun to play and gives me hope I might be able to finish the campaign before I finally manage to upgrade my PC. It’s also has a functional menu controls in VR unlike the 2.0 version.
It’s really fun and being able to look around makes planning your moves way easier (I should look into non-VR head tracking for my normal playthrough).

At the same time, 1.0 is 1.0. The anniversary update brought with it various improvements, including: better control of cloud settings, visual improvements to stages and updated HUD. It’s also the only version of the game you can play the DLC with which is unfortunate since I really want to play the “Express Lane” in VR.

It’s an acceptable compromise overall but far from ideal way to experience the game. Oh well…

I honestly didn’t expect to play this game any time soon due to price but it’s currently 90% off (or 84% directly on Steam) so I decided to take this opportunity and compare it with Project Wingman while it’s still fresh in my mind.

I haven’t played much yet (only 5 missions so far) so I’ll stick to first impressions, with more thought out writeup probably next week. Here are the things that stood out the most so far:

• Not being able to rebind HOTAS controls in game is a terrible choice and whoever decided on that should feel bad. It can be done by editing an ini file but that shouldn’t be necessary in this day and age. Also, no mouse support for menus - seriously?
• Speed control doesn’t feel right yet, I’m sure I’ll get used to it though.
• Flares are so limited you might as well not have them. Not that they’re as necessary as in PW but still.
• Not yet sold on voice acting, prefer Project Wingman on that front so far. It feels a bit too… clinical (or slightly less natural), I guess?
• I have similar feelings towards writing in general. It feels a bit too sterile, corporate and unnatural, with lots of “lordumpy” narration. Not the worst thing ever but it’s definitely noticeable.
• Game looks great, more dynamic elements in the cockpit are always a plus.
• The idea of music fading out when flying through clouds is cool but gets annoying really fast. Decent way to push people away from flying into them, I guess.
• I’m playing on hard but it’s not particularly challenging so far. I hope things pick up or there’s an unlockable higher difficulty after completing the game.

All in all, I think PW is a better game for me at the moment - not because AC7 is bad, but rather because it’s a bit more “safe” in comparison. I still like it and hope to warm up to it as I play but so far it kinda makes me want to go back to PW, not gonna lie.

I haven’t played much of P3D before so now that I have some fresh experience with both it and P4D I can safely say the latter is a better game - whether in terms of gameplay, beatmaps or soundtrack, P3D feels a bit less “inspired”, I guess. It’s kinda unfortunate as P3 is my favourite game in the series (I haven’t played 1 or 2 yet) but whatever, the important part is to have fun.

I’m slowly getting back in the groove. No full perfects yet but full combos are back on the menu and that’s exactly what I aim for.

Playing both dancing games made me go back to my unfinished pink playthrough of P3P. I haven’t touched it since… last year (I think?) due to mind goblins messing with my focus when playing RPGs at the time but I still want to see how things play out from the alternative perspective.

I don’t have much to write about this one at the moment as I’m still in the early parts (just got Akihiko a few in-game days prior) but I have to drop a hot take nonetheless - I really wish these games had no time limit. I understand why it’s there and that it’s important from the narrative perspective but it’s a mechanic I never really enjoyed in games (Persona or otherwise). Now that I got to experience a Persona title without one (P5X gacha), it made these feelings even stronger.

At least I’m playing on the easy mode (NG+) so I can skip most of the grind and focus on what I’m interested in (social elements). I’m really curious about the new stuff.

I’m almost done with the second playthrough, still having a ton of fun even if it’s not perfect. While I really like Prez, limiting your plane choices to two-seaters can feel really rough in certain missions and I probably won’t be doing that again in the future. It’s unfortunate that all the late-game planes are solo only as stat and load-out differences can make things way easier (or at least more fun).

I also took the time to read through all the lore documents available in the game and it only made me more interested in a direct sequel. We have new conflicts against the Federation flaring up around the world, a bunch of global players we haven’t seen yet (Periphery countries, West African Concordat, the European alliance). We could have Federation megacities as mission backdrops in contrast to the more natural and modern environments from this game.
There are some many interesting things they could do with all this world building, it would be a waste to stop here.

I’ve decided to finally set up PS Vita emulation on my Steam Deck and what’s better for that than Persona dancing games? Not like I have many other Vita games but still.
I had to change the graphics API to OpenGL as for some reason both games crashed with Vulkan (didn’t have such problems when testing on desktop), other than that they work great.

It’s been years since I last played one of those and boy am I rusty - even basic songs on normal feel overwhelming at times! I just started and should be able to get back into the rhythm soon enough but man, seeing how much I suck now was a bit of a surprise.

Finally got to it and after all this time I feel a bit mixed - both on the DLC and the game overall. I’m still mulling things over so here are the highlights:

• DLC keeps the atmosphere of the base game nicely. It’s cool to see how things were before the original stages.
• Music is once again pretty great if a little too bombastic compared to what’s happening on the screen. I don’t particularly care for the edgy dolphin in the club stage though.
• At times things feel like they were done in an afternoon (not literally but still):
  • There are once again objects without collisions and plenty of places where you can randomly phase through when walking.
  • I found a few spots where you can get stuck, sometimes in the open.
  • Lighting in the club stage feels messed up (everything is super dark except for blown out “lights” that don’t give any… well, light).
  • The skybox of the first stage looks completely misaligned (maybe this one was intentional, I don’t know - still doesn’t look great).

As much as I like this title it kinda depresses me. I’m someone who takes pride in their work and spends a lot of time on even the smallest details so seeing something with this many simple and easily fixable issues being released as a finished product (and a paid one at that!) pains me on a personal level.
I realise this game is intended to exude the grungy “I don’t care” and “everything is screwed” energy but that should not spill into the technical aspects in my opinion. There should be SOME bar of quality there.

I’m still glad it was created and had fun with both base game and DLC but man…

I finished the campaign, bought the DLC, finished it and started another playthrough using two-seater planes (WSO is an actual character and you don’t get to enjoy her when flying solo). I absolutely love this game and I’m happily planting it on my list of favourites from now on.

It has action, drama, surprises and challenge - all tied together into a neat little package. The story actually goes a bit harder then expected and served as an interesting mirror to Ace Combat campaigns. It went in a very different direction than I thought it would.

Mission design is pretty simple - fly to the AO and kill everything. There’s no time limits or special objectives for the most part. They do at least make up for it with varied map design and weather conditions. There’s also a healthy mix of air, land and water targets (sometimes at the same time) to keep things interesting.
I wish they’d make more use of take-off and landing sequences as they show up like 2-3 times throughout the campaign and once in the DLC (this one even includes a full taxi sequence from the hangar!). It’s a simple addition that most people would probably skip but I still love for a bit of additional immersion. Does anyone know if there’s a non-sim flight combat game that utilises these sections in a more regular way?

Is it a perfect game? Considering the price and size of the development team I’d say it’s pretty close to being as perfect as it can be given the circumstances. There are some issues like the missile spam and number of enemies at times but over all none of these are serious enough to dampen my excitement about this title.
Oh! Both final bosses, as in from the main and DLC campaigns, can be a bit much in terms of “spectacle”. We go from relatively grounded challenges to enemies that belong in Gundam rather than contemporary military game. It’s a bit of a whiplash compared to the rest of the playthrough.

It’s a fantastic title that will become a mainstay on my hard drive for a long while. I really hope these guys make a sequel some day. Direct, spiritual - doesn’t matter. I need more flight combat games from this studio.

Still playing Colin McRae Rally 04, mostly on Steam Deck this week.

I think I’m finally used to playing this game with a stick - not that this was particularly difficult but after years of doing so exclusively with keyboard it did happen easier than expected.
I didn’t migrate any of my progress from the desktop so I’m just slowly getting into the groove with 2WD Championship. It’s one of those games where I don’t really mind having to unlock everything again (maybe I’m just unconsciously worried there won’t be enough content otherwise).

Besides that I finally started playing Project Wingman. I got it during GOG’s summer sale but outside of testing it for performance as well as Linux and HOTAS compatibility I didn’t really touch it otherwise.

I’m 40-60% into the game, I think, so things might change but I like it a bit more than either of the Ace Combat titles I played so far (not by much but still). Game feels great to play, looks awesome and I really appreciate how they’re able to use the fantastic soundtrack to make even the early missions into extremely hype affairs.
I enjoy it way more than I expected to, to the point it became my favourite game in a long while.

I also decided to try playing it in VR. First reaction: it’s freaking playable on my machine?! Awesome! Second reaction: this is really cool. Feels less intense than anticipated but really cool nonetheless.
Bonus points for finally getting a chance to SEE the designs of enemy aircraft - I was never able to get a good look at them when playing in pancake mode (I’m talking about large support planes you can’t buy for yourself).

Unfortunately for me, this will most likely stay as a fun experiment rather than something I’ll continue with. While the game runs well enough, I can already tell the performance during later missions will take a dive to unplayable levels and there’s no point in dealing with that. I’ll most likely try a few more missions and just wait for a proper VR playthrough until after I upgrade my ancient hardware. One day…

While there aren’t any game breaking issues so far I do have a few small nitpicks about the game:

• Excessive missile spam in some missions - it’s not even difficult, just tedious.
• I keep getting tripped over my key binds as they differ slightly from what I’m used to in Star Citizen (my main HOTAS game at the moment).
• I wish there were more key binds for enemy targeting - I miss the ability to select the target I’m aiming at instead of having to cycle in whatever order the game decides to go with.
• Had an issue with enemy helis bugging out and not moving in one of the mission. They just hanged in place with their noses aimed at the sky.
• Navigating menus in VR is seriously borked. Mouse cursor doesn’t show up and when it does its visual position is completely unrelated to where it physically is. Aiming with my had is a complete guesswork as that too has no reticule to use as a reference point. Last but not least, keyboard works for the most part but can’t be used (or just doesn’t work for me) with certain elements of the settings menu (like trying to go through key binds to a specific position). Setting things up was a HUGE pain.
• Dunno if it’s just numbers magic or an actual mechanical difference but combat distances seem to differ between VR and desktop modes. I’m pretty sure distances during the latter are at like a third of what I’ve seen during my VR playthrough. I need to do some more testing.
• I miss the afterburner from AC, it was fun to use.

Finally, I have a question for those more familiar with the game: does the number of enemies change with difficulty? I’m playing on hard and the amount hostiles can be pretty ridiculous at times. It’s (mostly) fun and it’s properly challenging but it can look pretty stupid sometimes.