Good evening, hope you had a great weekend!
I’m planning to do weekly or bi-weekly reports on the games I’ve played this week with a short “first impressions” or status update for each. Deeper analyses/rants will be reserved for their own posts. Not sure how to format it yet so we’ll probably see big changes going forward.
Anyway,
This week I…
Started:
Trepang2: A visceral, blisteringly fast-paced FPS where you play as an escaped [prisoner? supersoldier? research subject? all of the above? not sure yet] with the ability to slow time or turn invisible for short durations. Gunplay is flashy and kinetic (though I haven’t quite worked on how the recoil works), movement is fast and smooth and flows beautifully into the shooting and melee combat. Enemies erupt into comical amounts of blood and gore. Lots of explosions. I’ve only played the first two missions so far but will definitely be playing more.
Ghostlore: Indie ARPG with N64-esque early 3D graphics and a super intriguing build system where you slot skills and modifiers into a 2D grid. Later on you unlock the ability to multiclass and combine skills from different classes to create new ones Ă la Kirby 64. Regrettably only played for a few minutes; turned out I was craving the idea of an ARPG more than actually playing one. (Just need to hold out for Grim Dawn DLC 3… Surely we’ll get a release date any day now…)
Check out Seer’s review on YouTube to learn more- dude’s absolutely hilarious while still providing insightful commentary. The frankly batshit challenge runs he’s been doing for the Final Fantasy series come highly recommended as well.
Continued:
Hades II: Oh man. I picked this game up after its full release on September 25 and have dumped an honestly embarassing amount of time into it since. I wasn’t expecting to enjoy it nearly as much as I did given my lukewarm opinion on the original Hades, but the sheer level of polish and mastery of the sequel is genuinely mindblowing. Every single facet of the original has been honed and polished into a true masterpiece. Expect a larger post about this game in the near future. Oh and it’s a Supergiant game so the OST rules.
The Binding of Isaac: Repentance: Inching ever closer to Dead God but man do I hate some of these Tainted characters (looking at you, Lazarus). Hadn’t played in a while but figured I’d do a run to check out the new update which added item descriptions and some interesting buffs to a few items and trinkets. This game warrants its own post as well seeing as I’ve been playing it for 11 years now.
BLUE REVOLVER: This is a fantastic CAVE-esque bullet hell shmup that I picked up a few weeks ago. I’m quite new to the genre but have been really enjoying the gameplay loop, so much so that I bought this stupid handheld specifically to play it and other shmups.
Revisited:
The Elder Scrolls Online: This was technically last week but I reinstalled ESO to check out the PvP rework they were testing on live servers. Genuinely had a blast holding off EP zergs with a buddy of mine like it was 2016 again, even with the simplified skills and complete lack of gear customization. Looking forward to future tests and I sincerely hope we’ll someday see a full return to how PvP was back in the IC days. The weird battle pass stuff they’re doing with the game nowadays coupled with the aggressive monetization that has plagued it for years makes me hesitant to get back into it, though.
That’s it for this week. Got a few hours to unwind and prep for work tomorrow. Take care and talk to you later.
-Warren