Playing Subnautica this week. Having the slight problem that I find all the small fish so adorable that I feel bad about cooking and eating them. It’s also worth noting that I have thalassophobia, which is impeding progress a little because underwater caves are scary, deep water is scary, not being able to see the bottom is scary, and not being able to see the surface is scary.

Final Fantasy XV (Windows edition): What a strange experience so far. I don’t see myself as a fan of the franchise, but I’ve played many of its titles over the years, starting with the first one as a child.

The opening title mentions the game has been made for “fans and first timers”, so I expected some degree of nostalgia, despite it looking so different from its predecessors. I was served some… but in such weird ways. Let’s start with the composition of the Four Warriors of Light:

• The brat: Noctis, emo prince of teen attitude, as well as protagonist.
• The urban dad: Ignis, cooks elaborate meals and drives (always responsibly) the brat around.
• The country dad: Gladio, went to the school of life, must protecc the brat.
• The brat’s best friend that eats and sleeps at home so often he kind of becomes family: Prompto.

As Ignis was driving the warriors around in a fantasy rural North America, a desolate car centric landscape in which each road’s main destination is the next gas station, Prompto was making comments about playing video games. The car’s radio was playing FFIV’s Main Theme over and over again. Then it hit me: the nostalgia trip was not limiting itself to referencing lore from previous games, it was aiming to remind older gamers of how it was being a kid infatuated with classic RPGs. (A side note on the embarrassing haircuts the warriors are rockin’: back in the 90’s there were posters of these all over hair salons despite nobody ever getting one, but I guess this is really about modern jpop/kpop boy bands or something.)

It’s like FFXV is aiming for the worst possible kind of nostalgia: the kind that makes you glorify past experiences out of regret for the time when you were a pampered selfish kid.

Anyways I’m probably way off, but that’s my thoughts on FFXV. Oh also there’s chocobos so it’s not all bad. Thanks for reading.

Unicorn Overlord. It’s Ogre Battle all over again and I love it.

I picked up Tunic after wanting it for quite some time. I’m enjoying it a great deal. I was sure that it couldn’t possibly be that much like Dark Souls when it has that art style but, uhh, no, turns out it’s the opening is basically exactly Dark Souls right down to being told to go ring two mysterious magic bells in opposite directions from where you currently are

I got predictably burned out on RDR2 after trying to complete a bunch of challenges before proceeding (I wanted to look cool in all the cutscenes!), so that is on the back burner for now. I also had some personal events that made me less able to focus on story games. Or maybe less in the mood. Take your pick.

Found a good deal on F1 Manager 2023 instead, and that has been a perfect distraction. Not least since I’m not really getting my F1 fix from watching the races so far, this year.

I didn’t play the predecessor so I don’t know how much it improves year-on-year, but I’d say it’s solid if you are an F1 fan. The presentation is awesome, especially thanks to the official licensing, with stuff like radio clips of the actual drivers and engineers adding a lot of immersion during races.

As a management game it seems fine. As someone who’s put a lot of hours into Football Manager, this isn’t on that level in terms of depth. But it seems perfectly adequate. I’m having fun juggling the budget and striking a balance between long term investments and short term development. There are a lot of little considerations to fiddle with. The setup-sliders minigame is fun.

I’m playing as Aston Martin on Hard Race AI/Hard Development AI and it hasn’t felt too easy (yet). Red Bull is leading and I’m not catching them, Ferrari is thereabouts and I’m just behind, with Alonso usually beating Ferrari (but not always), and I even managed to sneak a win when Verstappen crashed out in Baku.

If you’re an F1 fan and can find it on sale I think you’ll enjoy it.

Doing my part in Helldivers at the moment.

That game gets my brain firing on all cylinders and although it has It’s frustrating moments, I’d say that overall I think it’s great. It’s one of the few 'Live-Service" games I actually enjoy.

Started Apollo Justice a few days ago.

At first I was a bit wary, not playing as Phoenix and missing some of the characters I grew to love and all that, but Apollo’s grown on me. He’s just as much of an idiot as Phoenix was, but in a bit of a different way.

Loved Trucy since the moment she was introduced. And I’m glad to see Ema Skye again, as well.

I think taking a break from the baggage of the Feys and Dahlia is actually a breath of fresh air, even if it’s just for this one game.

Also, much prefer the “Perceive” mechanic to the “Psyche-locks”, though I know people have differing opinions.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown

One of the reasons I replayed Dead Space (2023) was to get the ng+ ending. Did I get all the Marker collectables that I was supposed to gather? Yes. Did I know I had to put them in a special place before leaving the Ishimura? No. No, I did not. So guess who’s playing Dead Space again? (Yes, I know I could just YouTube it, but that’s not the point.) Anyway, still having fun with this game.

I had an itch to replay Resident Evil 5, so I did. I had no idea that there was an update that made all the QTEs optional (except for some of the bosses). But apparently there was. I’m surprised that almost 15 years later they made a change to it. But thank the elder gods they did, because the QTEs during the cutscenes always made me anxious, especially towards the end.

Played a demo for a game called Haunted House Renovator. It was actually kind of lengthy for a demo and pretty fun. It will be interesting seeing the full product when it comes out.

I’m back into Final Fantasy VII, which I’ve never finished before. I’ve been playing this game off and on over the past several years, and boy is that a rough way to play it. It’s very difficult to remember what I was supposed to be doing next, because that game often gives you one line of dialogue about where to go and then has no in-game reminder of it. As a result, I’ve got a walkthrough handy to reference whenever I’m lost. I just got to the bottom of the mountain after the snowboarding sequence, and those parts of the game where you’re trying to navigate the pre-rendered backgrounds are where you can feel its age the most. I’m hoping to finish this one up in the next month or so, ahead of the possible Rebirth PC port that we might be lucky enough to get this year.

I’m replaying Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC ahead of the Forbidden West release as a refresher on the story, though I’m not going to play the sequel on day 1. They made me wait several years for it already. They can keep waiting for my money until it gets a sale down to about $40, maybe this summer. I still really enjoy the combat in that game, especially on higher difficulties, but this is a game that still feels like I’d enjoy it more if I could select missions from a menu rather than going through the open world trappings. It may have made these games cheaper to develop at the same time. Oh well.

I finished The Outer Worlds and its DLC. I highly recommend it. I feel like this game gets overlooked often enough. Did you wish Starfield was better? Play The Outer Worlds. Did you want another Fallout: New Vegas? Play The Outer Worlds.

Now that I’ve finished The Outer Worlds, another Obsidian game, I’m back to playing some Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I only progressed one quest a little bit this past week, but I want to keep pushing forward and finish this game before Avowed comes out.

Other than the above, still more Skullgirls grind. My pushblock guard cancel skills have atrophied, and I need to run some drills. Also, Peacock zoning, even when I know the answers, is tough to deal with.

Sons of the Forest.

Together with two friends I play Nightingale. It’s buggy but beautiful.

And when I don’t want to multiplay, I play the old Command and Conquer Titles EA was so generously providing on Steam for super cheap.

GTA IV and NFS Unbound on Rog Ally.

I’ll be honest, I was too young to understand GTA IV’s lore back then, and I was mainly playing it for barely getting 20 FPS on my PC and the physics system of the game. But now when I actually listen to the dialogues and radio station, man it sounds like they saw what America would be like in 2020s a decade early. “We should reduce minimum wage and remove rights of citizens to fight against the illegal immigration crisis”. Damn.

After around sixty hours I finally rolled credits on Yakuza: Like a Dragon. Started to feel like a slog towards the end, but I wanted to see the story through to the end. Those last three chapters had to have the most Yakuza-style plot twists I have ever seen. Overall I ended up liking it a lot more then I was expecting given that its the series first JRPG. I think it handled the switch well, although it did feel a bit grindy at the end. There’s still some side content I might end up doing, but for now I feel like I need a break from it.

Metroid Dread, Stardew Valley, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

The former on Yuzu’s last build on a nice 32 inch monitor with a big controller that doesn’t cramp up my hands. It’s pretty hard, but I did just get past a part I hear a lot of people quit on, so there’s that. I can’t imagine trying to play it with Joycons. I’d probably snap them in half.