What are ya playin' in 2025?

[Tomi]

I finished one successful run of Balatro and I think that's enough for me. It's a good game that I'd recommend to just about everyone, and I guess I've only seen a small amount of what it has to offer, but for now I'm happy that I can say that I've beat the game so that I can uninstall it.

I also played Lil Gator Game with my kid because it's leaving the Game Pass this week. It's a poor man's A Short Hike really, it feels like they've just ripped a lot of things straight from it. Well, "poor man" may be a bit too harsh, as Lil Gator Game isn't too bad for a harmless game that you can play with together with a 6-year-old. There's way too much dialogue for such a game though.

Also finished Psychonauts 2 at last. It's also great and definitely worth checking out if action platformers are your thing. I was silly enough to get every single achievement in the game, but at least they were somewhat sensible and fun, unlike in many other games. Psychonauts 2 isn't too challenging and it doesn't take too long to beat (unless you try to get all these silly achievements, of course) so it felt like the perfect game to play after my KCD marathon.

And speaking of KCD marathon, I finally started KCD 2 yesterday! I'll post more in the KCD thread later.

[Tomi]

I started a new game in Yoku's Island Express, this time on the XBox. I'm surprised that I never posted about it in here when I played it a couple of years ago, because I remember really liking it. The whole pinball metroidvania thing still feels like such a cool and unique idea. I wish there was even more pinball stuff in the game, but it's already pretty great as it is.

Another new game of the week is Lonely Mountains: Snow Riders. It's good and pretty much what I expected, but I kinda liked LM: Downhill (the biking game) more. Snow Riders looks really nice (the glittering snow especially looks awesome!) and the animations are more smooth than in Downhill, but there's something about it that feels a bit dull. It's a game that I'll be playing for ten minutes every now and then, but I doubt that it'll become a big hit in this household.

[Thirith]

While I'm enjoying Aliens: Dark Descent, there are some things I'm finding frustrating. One is its general tendency towards difficulty spikes, but it's tied to other aspects: I think the various gameplay systems don't always work in favour of the game.

For instance, you can specialise some of your space marines into becoming recon soldiers, and these can use silenced sniper rifles. This is great when it comes to taking out individual enemies from a distance before they can alert others. The problem is that a lot of the level design works against this: you need line of sight, and if you've got relatively short corridors that either curve or have doors that open and close automatically, or if the spaces have a lot of clutter (which they do), your recon guy becomes somewhat useless. The game could counteract that by taking into consideration what direction an enemy is looking in, but it doesn't: a xenomorph may have its back towards you but it still can 'see' you. It doesn't break the game, but it makes the system feel like it hasn't been properly thought through.

The other thing is that I generally like that the game *isn't* XCOM and doesn't let you position each unit individually. It changes the game, making it more into a present-day Syndicate, gameplay-wise. But there are situations where this very much works against how the game is designed overall. Take the recon guy: in order to get them into line of sight, you have to move the entire group, and it's never quite clear who's going to end up being spotted by whom. You can't just have Mr Recon peak out and tap a xeno in the head. Or ambushes: your entire team just sits there bunched up, which isn't exactly very tactical, as opposed to splitting up. I could imagine various ways the game could address this, e.g. formations or allowing for the group to be split but at the same time increasing the stress they take, but all in all it does feel a bit like some systems work less well in concert with each other than others, and that makes some of the game feel clunkier than it should. Some of that clunkiness works in the game's favour, making you feel that your dudes are more vulnerable, but others just feel like lack of polish on a systems level.

[Renault]

I played a few hours of Blue Prince over the weekend, I guess I'm a little surprised at all the hype this game is getting. There are some interesting ideas here, but IMO the game just relies far too much on luck and randomness, it just makes the whole experience frustrating. I'm finding it difficult to locate ways to nudge the chances for success in my favor, and in the end, point blank, just not having much fun when I have to restart time and time again. I'll probably give it another shot at some point, it's very likely there are some nuances I'm missing, but it doesn't seem like the landmark title some critics are making it out to be.

[henke]

Yeah I also just did the first go-around in Blue Prince. The rooms come in random order and I suppose you gotta do everything perfectly eventually to get to the end, and I suppose that's where the Outer Wilds comparisons come in. Scouring every room for secrets made me think of Thief FMs and the way you build a mental map of locks and keys to look for feels survival horror-y. Anyway, it hasn't really grabbed me yet. I'll give it a few more whirls.

Oh, and I'd imagine it plays better with M+KB than gamepad, as a lot of the gameplay is just running your cursor over everything and hoping to find something interactable.

[Thirith]

Approaching the end of Aliens: Dark Descent, with two or three missions left. It's a good game that makes great use of the IP, but I also think that the level design becomes weaker towards the end, with too many narrow corridors that are challenging but not in a fun way. Definitely ready to finish this one before long, hopefully over Easter (what better time to complete a game that's all about egg hunts?).

[derfy]

The Long Dark. Survival in the Canadian wilderness as likely the last person alive... and stealing all the supplies from houses for myself. Hmmm... wonder why it interests me? :P

[WingedKagouti]

Purchased and completed Timespinner recently, very fun metroidvania. Fun enough that I did NG+ three times (including the Nightmare - Max Level 1 variant). Definitely give it a try if you like metroidvanias. Unless you're someone who can't handle non-hetero characters or female leads.

[henke]

I've played like 9 hours of Blue Prince now. I don't know if I'm enjoying it or not!

It certainly does keep ya hooked by dripfeeding you a steady stream of revelations and aha moments, but mostly I feel like the game just shows me these things rather than me having to figure stuff out. Running out of stuff to do in a day and having to reset progress for the next day is kinda a bummer and leads to me playing this at a rate of one day per playsession. Over time you learn exactly where loot is located in rooms and what to do to unlock certain things and it starts feeling like a bit of a chore doing these procedures over and over.

I think in general I like my puzzle games more focused on one puzzle at a time. Like Portal, Obra Dinn, or The Witness. Outer Wilds I thought was more "impressive" than "fun" and the way it split of into a million lil strands to follow eventually was too exhausting for me. I kinda worry if I let up on the gas with Blue Prince and take a break from it for a day or two I'll loose the thread, so for now I keep playing, hoping to eventually get to a point where I see what the big whoop is.