What games are you playing atm? V2

When you finally managed to count to 3?

Before we began, I need to explain borderlands franchise abit. This franchise have been in close for a while, perhaps almost 10 years since last entry. While borderlands 2 / the pre-sequel was something unique at that time, there are many more shooters already released in the market.

Story of game pretty much the follow up after couple of years since that extra DLC in borderlands 2. Suddenly there is 1 new faction lead by group of bandits & evil villain twins that seem like to do livestreaming? Anyway, the story dictate that we would need to go from 1 planet to another plane to gather several vault keys, in order to stop the villain from obtaining them. From there you will met couple of new npc, fight boss in varied level, drive new kind of vehicle as well as mastering couple of your own skills on the skill tree.

My disappointment with borderlands 3 not because it is a bad game per say, but make me question why you create this entry when you already have good package from previous 2. You already have nice mechanic / skill design / weapon balance that it feel threw out of window this time around. Because of the multiplayer bugs, the enemy level became inconsistent that it show low level for both of us, which made the game super easy to go through. No more interesting set pieces, or story that made me care about the characters. Not much of goofy stuff either.

If you have friends you can play this, go ahead and buy it. Personally i just disappointed because this game are stuck in 2012. New additional stuff wont push me to keep playing game (unlike previous 2) so i just uninstall immediately after finish.

Forspoken... More like ForWoken. This feels less than a game and more like a tech demo and a really bad one at that. The voice acting is cringe, the action is fine I guess, but holy shit, overall this game is pretty much a garbage can. Do NOT but this overpriced trash. If you hate yourself and your life and you still gonna play it wait until some scene group cracks it first. Save your money for something worth it instead.

F word count per minute = Too f**king high.

This game i got from humble bundle, which i already know is a boss rush type of games. Seeing its high score and gorgeous pixel, surely there is something fun in this game. I already play couple of games in this style before.

One thing that i guess this game get right is how menacing the boss in the game despite there are only about 10 (+3 from DLC) bosses total. Each of them have their own unique mechanic, which you really need to be super careful especially this game are more methodical than many other similar games. The game doesnt have stamina or potion system, instead you have lifesteal which required you to do charge attack as well as 3 bars for dash, which recharge faster if you dodge masterfully.

When you design difficulty for a game, you need to design it to be fair so that player will be happy once you overcome the challenge. However, the game is super clunky especially with its hitbox / collision detection. You will taking damage randomly despite the graphic missed you, boss than block your dash as well push your super far away, heck even can lock you to corner if you are not careful. I tried to do all those "parry dash", but it will randomly failed despite i feel timing already correct.

I hate this game, like super duper hate. I could at least try to beat the game on new game plus, since there are couple achievements but i have enough and i rather save my sanity. I suggest you watch the gameplay, if you have gluttony for punishment, then feel free to suffer.

Dead Space Remake. Man, they nailed it. Everything about this is just old Dead Space but better. There are now side quests too, they voiced Isaac on this one rather than him being the silent protagonist of Dead Space 1, but at least he speaks only on cutscenes and during radio chatter, not like you enter a room and he makes a 10 page monologue about what he sees. This is really good and i'm glad they stuck to this vision.

Finally. Some good fucking food!!!!

really good 2d soulslike/metroidvania. on release it was good, but had its issues. after the free Afterlife expansion/overhaul it kicks so much ass, huge improvement over the original.

Had some free time for gaming and got 100% on Dead Space Remake, and there's only one thing to say about this:

The Callisto Protocol is worse than a 14 year old game.

By the power thor... What do you mean i only play as normal viking?

This is another game that I "researched" so i can play with my friend with its coop mode. Impatient as I am, I straight speed through the survival mode just to see what the game can offer you in term of content. OWSC is Open World Survival Crafting.

The game selling point is actually the saga mode, where you are given 15 days time limit to kill as many bosses as possible while trying to survive endless horde of enemies during the night. Survival mode is more a chill experience where it is kinda like more open world where you can move from biome to biome to gather resource as well as tackling difficult bosses. As you level up & kill more bosses, you will crafting even more powerful tier of gear that allow you tackle all environment challenge more easily.

Despite being unique hybrid or concept, i feel like this game is not deep as I thought. Despite i feel it designed for coop gameplay, the option you have is very limited from your class & ability option, your armor, weapon / playstyle as well as biome (despite they seem getting frequent seasonal upgrade). Also because it is design around replayability and grinding, the game have typical online monetization with seasonal exp farming as well as unlock new cosmetic. But i think the biggest issue is how boring the boss fight are (at least for solo)

I can only recommend you this game if you have friend to play with. The game just a mash up of several genre at shallow level that you better buy other game. Im not sure if im want to continue playing, but probably i will grind achievement or wait for when my friend is ready to play together.

Did i just tried to invest into a simulator game?

If you noticed lately, simulator have become popular on streaming website because it allow streamer to chill while communicate with their audience. On my side as solo player, I will look from my solo enjoyment from start to finish of the game.

This game is abit different than most simulator game i played since unlike most of them which are "level-based", this game is kinda like single level with ability to upgrade the gas station as you invest more time & money doing all objective. Hence why I kinda hooked at beginning especially with the way story are delivered using phone & email, which is kinda unique for a simulator to have narrative. As you upgrade your station, you will get more option to service costumers to get more money.

However the game also suffered from usual simulator game which is the usual unpolished state especially regarding its AI & physic. The game performance is so terrible when handling large amount of cars & person crowds that it went slowdown whenever an event happen. The game also crashed to desktop several time, which probably because of memory leak according to forum. But my biggest disappointment is that good narrative at beginning ended up with 1 grindy & tedious mission at the end up with terrible ending.

At the end, despite i enjoyed the start of the game, I dont think i can recommend this. Im aware the developer are still developing more content, but i already seen many other simulator which have better depth about subject matter they tried to simulate.

Returnal PC port.

It's a decent port. Good optimization, though it could be a lot better. Frame drops are real, though normally last maybe half a second only, but in large arenas where you have to dispatch 5 or 6 enemies at a time each of them shooting bullet hell projectiles at you, it's noticeable.

But yeah solid port.

Atomic Heart.

Kinda disappointed with it. The game isnt bad but from something that was obviously very inspired in Bioshock and Fallout it fails on so many marks in not implementing systems seen on these games. Also the story is kinda mid. Combat and movement can be hit or miss, depending on how you feel about pacing and having to endure slow scripted movement (always walk levels of slow)

First disappointment of 2023!