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’ve honestly mostly been vibe coding my changes to STALKER Anomaly mod TALKER and writing more backstories and personalities for it. It’s been fun, although frustrating at times.

I have played some Chaos Zero Nightmare on my phone. The game is fun, I just kind of wish it wasn’t a gacha mobile game. Also wish the character designs were a little less ridiculous, most are acceptable but some are playing to sexuality way too much making me just roll my eyes. All the usual trappings of daily energy and menial tasks to grind out to progress and level up your characters also feel extra annoying and needlessly time-wasting when the main gameplay is so good.

The actual roguelike deckbuilder gameplay is surprisingly good, though, and so far has kept me interested. The variety and versatility of builds is a lot of fun, with lots of specific or extra-rare upgraded versions of cards unlocking niche strategies and combos and stuff like that. Balance seems surprisingly good despite being a gacha and with the right builds you can make pretty much any character you like shine.

Also the story has a fast forward button that is almost like a skip, which is great because the writing is terrible and the translation is awful. But I’m not really here for that, so I don’t really care as long as I’m not forced to engage with it.

There are so many games to play and so little time. It’s a little suffocating.

• Persona 3 Reload.
• After Love EP.
• Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (just mindlessly fun).
• Trying out Constance game.

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.

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!

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.

Not really patient as i first played this on launch day back in 2006, but ive started playing zelda twilight princess again. Originally played on wii but playing the gc version now. Enjoying it and much i dont remember (i mean in a couple of weeks it is turning 19 and i havent played since then so no wonder). Just got the master sword today and done with the mandatory wolf stuff

I also had gta3 going on ps2 some time back. I had stuff going on so had to drop it for some weeks and when i got back i couldnt find my way out of some area (kept going round and round) so i gave up (super weird to not have a map, or maybe im just an idiot who cant find it?). About 60% completed. Was anyway abit disappointed in the story - i didnt think it was so thin. Loved gta4 and i also played bully recently which was great. I might pick it up to finish the story after zelda. Are vice city and san andreas equally story poor or did they improve for those?

Also been eyeing okami as a game i never played but always wanted to.

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.

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.

Timesplitters rewind isn’t technically an old game as it’s a new port of the ps2 era series, but it’s free and in open beta. It’s only got the first game but it’s crazy stable

Doom 3

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.

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.

7 Days to Die. Just started with a friend group of a decade after I first heard of it. Still buggy!

I finally started “Styx: Shards of Darkness”. A stealth acrion RPG. It’s been pretty fun so far. Better than the first one. I’m trying to go for the silent & deadly approach. No alarms raised in any level. So far so good!

The GBA Castlevanias. I’d forgotten how so incredibly good they are! Especially circle the moon! Fight me!