I am playing something really old. Dark age of Camelot. Got some IRC friends who got me into this (again) because they were talking about them playing it again on a free server.

This game does MMO so good. This was the peak before WoW changed the market (to worse). The game design in DAoC is genuinely unique. There are almost no instant stuff. No global cooldown. Melee skill speeds are based on the weapon as you apply styles on the swings. Some of the abilities need you to hit from a certain direction and they have follow ups. You have 9(!!) second stuns and 40 seconds mesmerizes (kind of like sleep) so even small groups can kill larger groups in PvP. If you play a caster and get hit in combat, well… there goes your spell to nothing. Spellcasters are strong but once in melee you are pretty much screwed.

You really have to group up to level since regen is so slow and you get xp bonuses from doing this and also able to take down harder mobs giving more xp up to a cap. When pulling, depending on group size the mobs do “baf” (bring a friend). Afaik not many games does this today. It is such an easy thing to bring people together. Make it harder to solo play, give bonuses from teamwork. Make people talk to eachother.

Everything is just… Awesome. Except the slow movement without movement buffs.

ReTHAWed, a Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland overhaul mod (really, it’s own program). Love putting in my own custom soundtracks and putting on clothes from the mod website.

Also, playing as Shadow The Hedgehog, with the OST playing, and the voice lines, while playing in the dystopia map is just 😙👌

Rimworld. With 300 mods.

Space Engineers. I’ve never fought a running game as much as this one. Autosaving causes the game to hang for 10 seconds and it saves every 5 minutes. For a game made in 2013 I had to lower all the settings to medium and off to get a decent framerate. The first playthrough I barely got anywhere in nearly 20 hours of play. The learning curve is pretty high. I felt like Dr. Malcolm tapping on the screen yelling 'there is ‘space in this game right?’

All that being said I still enjoy it. The learning curve tapers off pretty quickly after the first playthrough. Now it’s about learning how to build ships and experimenting with different part combinations. It’s a clunky mess of a game, but I am enjoying it.

That being said I also picked up Avorion as a comparison game. I also wish listed Empyrion to complete the voxel space epic trilogy. All this to find a game better than No Man’s Sky and X4.

The Toaplan Arcade Collections were on sale. 16+ games (if you count the different releases of some games).

I also played Thank Goodness You’re Here. Good fun.

Just finished Death Stranding. WTF is this ending 😂? Felt like having to sit through a movie, c’mon I’m playing a game for a reason. Anyway, still liked it a lot, it only started to feel like an epilogue too early. And thankfully I’ve been mildly spoilered by the artwork of DS II, otherwise I might not have finished (like Enderal, the decision at the end was so shitty that I could not finish it).

Next up: A Plague Tale, but I haven’t started yet.

Heavily modded Stardew Valley with twin again! We unlocked the bridge to…whatever that mod is called and we cleared out all the junk. Twin put down a winery but that’ll take a bit. I think that’s my job, the wine, but I forget.

We started another Minecraft server with our friend group, hopefully this time it lasts a bit longer than a few weeks.

Wasteland 3. This game is really good, but super whacky. We just fought against a tribe of Reagan worshippers with a giant articulated bust of God-president Reagan that shoots lasers out of its eyes.

Bloodborne

Having played this through including the DLC years ago on my PS4 I recently find that this can be emulated quite well on the PC now. When I say quite well I mean 3440 x 1440 at 60FPS, it’s incredible!

I’m going for an Arcane build this time which is quite a different pkaystyle from the more frantic parry and dodge that you would normally have, but it’s lots of fun.

Just killed the Bloodstarved Beast and got the first Chalice, so I’m entering the dungeons next.

Replaying Silksong for the first time. Dove in and dumped like 90 hours into it the first time around, wanted to take an extensive break to go around again so it would be a less fresh on the brain

Unreal Tournament 2004. Someone made a post about a reworked version free to download a few days ago and I’ve been hooked ever since. I’ve mostly been playing story-driven single-player RPGs lately and having a game that you just boot up and play three action-packed matches in ten minutes is a breath of fresh air.

Chrono Ark

I’m at the true final boss, but got wiped. Felt a little deflating as the fake final boss was a super hype fight with awesome cinematic mechanics and presentation and I was all set to see the credits roll, only to stumble at the finish line. This is the downside of having a large story focus on your roguelike deckbuilder, I felt ready to see the (first) ending and now I just felt a wave of frustration. I need to take a break for a few days to reset and then come back with a better build, now that I now what the true final boss demands mechanically.

Ninja Gaiden

Been playing more of NG4 and NG2 Black. I keep going back and forth between them, and I can’t shake the feeling that NG4 is a great action game, but I wish it had more Ninja Gaiden in it rather than more Platinum Games in it. Also I hate the fact that NG4 is checkpoint autosave only and you never now when the last time you saved was, so you just kind of have to guess. I can’t understand why it didn’t use save statues like the previous games.

Rise of the Ronin

A comment on here last week got me interested enough to acquire this from Fitgirl to try it out. I’ve been somewhat curious before as I do like Team Ninja and have heard good things about the combat, despite the otherwise mixed reception. But after reading about it on here I suddenly felt the Open World Slop urge hit me out of nowhere. This far though I’ve only gotten so far as to halfway finish designing my characters in the very extensive character creator…

Fable Anniversary

I haven’t played much this past week but did finish up the main story and now I’m almost done with the extended storyline in the Northern Wastes area. Also found the Darkwood Bordello quest and did a couple more demon doors/silver keys.

I think one more session and I’m done so looking forward to starting Fable 2 straight after.

edit: completed it this evening :)

Taking a break from Skong & No rest for the wicked.

Playing Octopath 2 in the mean time. It’s such a contrast I think I consider this relaxing game. The vanilla gameplay is too easy to cheese, not that it’s bad. Though I personally find the story uninspiring most of the time, most of the dialog is so generic I just glossed it over.

The spooky Mansion sidequest is a nice surprise.