Playing games!
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Currently playing:
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- The Legend of Zelda: Tears of The Kingdom
- Star Trek: Resurgence
- Valheim
- Vampire Survivors
- Citizen Sleeper [Rolled credits]
- L.A. Noire [Stopped a handful of cases into the Vice section]
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Recently walked away from:
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The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
Still adoring this game, but haven't gotten to play it much for myself lately, I've been mostly playing for my eldest, who at 4 hasn't yet learned to use a controller or read, so I've been doing both for him while following his direction, with his player profile on the Switch. It's a lovely way to hang out but it's making it increasingly grim for me when I go back to my own player profile and I have a fraction of the progress, hearts, stamina and collected resources. Hoping to get a run at it soon!
Star Trek: Resurgence
I have a long history of loving Star Trek games, even the lame ones. This one's not perfect but it's very polished, earnest and interesting so far. I'm also loving playing a story set in the DS9 era (at least production-design-wise).
Valheim
This was a fun one to take for a spin with some old friends. We messed around, made three houses – one nice, one incomplete, and one awful – and just generally shot the breeze while we chopped down wood and tested the game's systems.
Note: Not only did the Steam Deck run Valheim flawlessly (with a couple settings down to medium) switching between handheld and using keyboard and mouse on a 4K monitor, but I was also hosting the game over wifi, which is kinda cool!
Vampire Survivors
After feeling like I'd hit a bit of a wall a few months ago, I picked it up again and quickly had the best run of my life, going a full 30 minutes, the Steam Deck huffing and puffing through the uncountable entities on screen. The Unity version will be dropping soon, I can't wait to try it again, and see how the co-op handles.
Citizen Sleeper
It's no secret that I like narrative games, but I'm often a lil skeptical of visual novels. Citizen Sleeper was a triumph though. Fascinating, beautiful, simple and compelling. Every time I fired it up I felt like I was returning to a good book. Absolutely recommend for a small, rich story that asks some big questions.
And there's going to be a sequel!
The author/designer has been posting in-world serialised fiction to their substack – I've been too busy to dig in, but I've pointed my FreshRSS at it and have been hoarding the posts to read or send to my kindle when I have a little time.
L.A. Noire
I quickly fell in love with this weird, ambitious game from the 2010s but eventually felt my enthusiasm waning as I got into the Vice section of the game. Without spoiling too much, the game is structured as the career of Detective Phelps, who begins as a beat cop and then gets promoted through different layers of late 1940s LAPD. It hits an incredible peak at the end of what could be considered its second act, and then it gets seedy and mean, and the reportedly troubled production starts to show signs of affecting quality.