What are you Playing Now? - the man sez Video games are bad for you - fight the man!

[Hawke64]

I have played and finished Creepy Redneck Dinosaur Mansion 3. It is a heartfelt story about game development. It is also a Match-3 game. And a visual novel. And a horror game.

The protagonist, J.J. Hardwell (the name and personality are hard-coded and not customisable), former Postal Inspection Service agent and the newest agent of the ATS, is on his first mission to investigate the mansion of a suspected super-scientist, Duncan Dockright III.

Generally, the game is well-written and technically well-made, with the diverse dialogue options, victory conditions, and “battles” (not all matches are battles), the trait system based on the story branches completed, and the quality-of-life features, such as the fast-skip function and highlighting the previously-chosen options (which may have other branches behind them).

There are a few issues, most notably, the UI for the Match-3 sections seems to be controller-focused and rather uncomfortable, which is odd, considering how smooth and responsive it was in the demo. The skip function does not work for some animations and, as mentioned, the highlight does not take the post-option branching into account. The few keys that are used are not possible to rebind. While it is possible to replay from any unlocked checkpoint (usually every 1-2 matches), the game uses auto-saving into a single slot, so Windows Explorer is the only option for save file management. It is not unusual, but nonetheless disappointing.

The graphics, music, and animations are expressive and fitting and the game is VA-free.

---

I have also finished Homebody. It is an excellent puzzle horror game in the modern setting with a time loop - each time the protagonist dies, the evening restarts from entering the house, which the group of friends rented for their trip. It is also a remarkably accurate representation of social anxiety. The house is a closed system with a specific schedule and everything needed already being there.

The puzzles are logical and reasonably straight-forward and there is an optional hint system starting from “Have you noticed A?” to “To do A, do B first”. The dialogues are well-written with several options and can provide hints for the puzzles as well along with more background story, such as the relationship between the group members and their lives prior to arriving at the house. The relationship progress persists between the loops and most of the puzzles are not random (I think, there is only one exception).

The graphics are expressive and easy to read and use the PS1-style aesthetics. The music and sound design are fitting and build the atmosphere and suspense. The game is VA-free, allowing a smaller size and requiring less processing power.

The controls are comfortable and rebindable, offering both keyboard and mouse controls. The game uses auto-saving into a single slot, with 3 slots total, meaning that one has to utilise their file management system should they want to have hard manual saves. Considering that the cut-scenes are not repeatable, while the difficulty increases as the game progresses, the lack of manual saving is unpleasant. Additionally, upon continuing the game, the player always starts from a new loop, with the position in the previous loop lost. While the loops are short and the memories are saved, it is still undesirable.

I am also unsure whether interpersonal interactions should be considered universally better than seclusion. Each person is different and what works for the extroverted neurotypicals can be extremely uncomfortable for a neurodivergent person (see the gamers during the 2020 lockdown meme). The social systems were built by and for extroverts and must change to accommodate everyone, not only them.

Overall, it is an excellent horror game with the above-mentioned technical flaws.

[Malcador]

Finished Kathy Rain 2, good game the ending is a bit abrupt but so was the first one.  But ties in nicely with the first game.

Bored so went back to GTA V, never did the Epsilon missions - having to wear the robes for 10 days and walk the 5 miles : good trolling of players a bit.

[kanisatha]

5 hours ago, BruceVC said:

Did you install any mods?

I played DA:I about 3-4 years ago and it was fun but I wont play it again 

I thought the War room mechanics were well done and a good feature and I enjoyed the exploration part of the game

No mods. And I did complete the game back in 2016. But now, replaying it, it's just too damn tedious. Maybe I just don't have as much patience anymore.

[kanisatha]

Following giving up on DA:I, I decided I needed to return to a good, old, classic cRPG. So I've started a replay of Pillars of Eternity 1.

After playing PoE2, I thought I wouldn't ever want to go back to PoE1. But after one day, things are looking great. Playing a talky wood elf paladin.

[LadyCrimson]

Tainted Grail:

---I had a long and intriguing conversation with a chicken who had a long backstory.
---some side quests (dunno about MQ) can have choice consequences too, which can alter rewards or access/who survives, or just offer different conclusion to a "tragic tale." More than MMO/Diablo questing, but not as in depth as some.
-- VA's are hit and miss, sometimes they're great (who voices Arthur? what a great voice) sometimes they're very mediocre.
---there is no level scaling within an Act area, so difficulty re: each one will be front-loaded. That is, could be super hard/die all the time in the beginning, then you're 1-shotting everything by the end of Act depending on how much you've explored and build/items/upgrades etc.
---loot appears non-random, at least the good loot. I suppose a deranged peasant randomly drops "fancy underpants" instead of "underpants" at times.
---I am told when the story ends, there is no "continue", but you can travel between Acts to finish things before that
---town stash box is infinite. Player inventory is weight based but there's ways to up it and it hasn't been a real issue even for a picker upper like me. If one *wants* it to be an issue, just don't increase weight limit.  (EDIT) items with 0.0 weight do appear to weigh something. You won't notice with a stack of 10 such, but having 1000 arrows and 1000 various picked herbs in your backpack will still weigh you down a fair bit. Dunno if intentional/bug. Just saying.
---Beyond jank, have run into minor glitches but nothing terrible (yet). Still just simple, old fashioned, tightly/fast paced crpg fun.

My current "concern" is the entire game may be "front loaded." eg, Act1 may have had the most time devoted to it, it feels full, planned out, interesting. I've played games like that where after that, it becomes less interesting, shorter, etc.  That said, there's 25-35 hours to be had from Act1 alone - more if you're the type to seriously linger.

Edited May 28 by LadyCrimson

[BruceVC]

Im making good progress in WoRT after about 45 hours  and Im busy with the siege of Drezen, its intense and I made a huge mistake last night

I decided on the Regill suggestion and targeting the giants but somehow I overlooked the part where you can select your party so I started the quest with only me and Regill in my party and I assumed other party members would join me like the Lost Chapel  quest

Imagine trying to complete Drezen with 2 party members  

And I did well considering my serious combat disadvantage, I barely  got to the 3rd gate  and then I realized  "  this cant be right  "

So I restarted the quest and I have added my full party, at least I have knowledge of certain enemies

Im really enjoying WoRT, it has some deep and thought-provoking narrative choices like the initial Worldwound choice and what to do around repairing it 

And the crusade battles are fun, they like mini-RTS features in the broader game 

I do have one conundrum, for some reason I can have more than 6 people in  my party. And I have decided to have 7 because I like all the party interaction and combat contributions 

Does anyone think its a form of "cheating" because it can unbalance combat in my favour or is it fine because its only 7 people?

 

 

 

 

[LadyCrimson]

7 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

there is no level scaling within an Act area, so difficulty re: each one will be front-loaded.

I'm apparently wrong. At least a couple enemies that only appear during the night-fogs do scale. One isn't a big deal, the other is. I see one of those, I run away.   Night = all enemies are a little stronger then during the day, but these two are night-specific spawns.

[MrBrown]

1 hour ago, BruceVC said:

I do have one conundrum, for some reason I can have more than 6 people in  my party. And I have decided to have 7 because I like all the party interaction and combat contributions 

Does anyone think its a form of "cheating" because it can unbalance combat in my favour or is it fine because its only 7 people?

I don't think you're supposed to be able to have more than 6 people in your party, but you can have stuff like animal companions.

[BruceVC]

1 minute ago, MrBrown said:

I don't think you're supposed to be able to have more than 6 people in your party, but you can have stuff like animal companions.

With mods like Bag of Tricks or Toy Box you can increase default party size but I never did that yet I can have up to 8 party members 

But you make a good point, I dont have an animal companion like I did in P:K with Ekun and Okbo so I did have 7 party members because Okbo was basically a tank 

Thanks, you have made me feel better about having 7 party members because I did have that in P:K

I am not "cheating " because 7 is not  unreasonable 

 

[kanisatha]

6 hours ago, BruceVC said:

With mods like Bag of Tricks or Toy Box you can increase default party size but I never did that yet I can have up to 8 party members 

But you make a good point, I dont have an animal companion like I did in P:K with Ekun and Okbo so I did have 7 party members because Okbo was basically a tank 

Thanks, you have made me feel better about having 7 party members because I did have that in P:K

I am not "cheating " because 7 is not  unreasonable 

Well, you're never "cheating," because it's a single-player game. It's your game. You can play it however *you* want.

[BruceVC]

56 minutes ago, kanisatha said:

Well, you're never "cheating," because it's a single-player game. It's your game. You can play it however *you* want.

True but what I mean by "cheating " is using a hack or mod that unbalances combat so you cant lose or it becomes very easy 

For example unlimited health

And it undermines the core design of the developers because there are limitations  for a reason

But Kanie do you agree that 7  characters isnt " cheating " because I had 7 characters in P:K

Its important that people agree with me because this is a personal principle for me?

 

[PK htiw klaw eriF]

On 5/26/2025 at 4:56 AM, Zoraptor said:

Did WotR ever get a dlc/ patch that upped the level cap? Because that's what did for my playthrough, not so much the slog itself but it being utterly pointless slog.

No, but you could use Toybox to make the level cap 40. You'd probably want to cheat for the Legend path if you did that though, as everyone now gets the most of its gimmick.

Hitting 20 way before the end of the game wasn't a deal breaker for me. I think for me what killed WotR was BG3 tbh. The Owlfinder games were easily 90%+ combat and most of it isn't very interesting, you figure out the buff spreadsheet and hope you win initiative before archers machine gun the back line. Kinda lost interest after doing the harpy fight and doing the dice rolls to solve conflicts in BG3.

[LadyCrimson]

10 hours ago, BruceVC said:

do you agree that 7  characters isnt " cheating " because I had 7 characters in P:K

I haven't played this game so know nothing specific, but in general terms, I'd say since extra party members are not the intended party size the game encounters "expect" and were designed around, I would put it in the unbalanced modded category - whether you want to call it a "cheat" or not is up to you. And in SP, who cares. Do what is fun for you, imo.    I mean, it's fun to alter rules sometimes, whether a little or a lot. Having all companions in FO:NV was pretty much a "win" thing for that game, but it was hilarious. Also, made for a better dance-mod line. 

[BruceVC]

2 hours ago, LadyCrimson said:

I haven't played this game so know nothing specific, but in general terms, I'd say since extra party members are not the intended party size the game encounters "expect" and were designed around, I would put it in the unbalanced modded category - whether you want to call it a "cheat" or not is up to you. And in SP, who cares. Do what is fun for you, imo.    I mean, it's fun to alter rules sometimes, whether a little or a lot. Having all companions in FO:NV was pretty much a "win" thing for that game, but it was hilarious. Also, made for a better dance-mod line. 

Thanks, this is good feedback but just to add some more context

The intended maximum design is 6 official characters, so think of other similar games like BG

In Pathfinder: Kingmaker it was also 6 official characters but then you could another permanent companion which was a wolf pet. So I ended up with 7 companions 

And Im concerned exactly for the reasons you mentioned which is about encounters and how the developers designed the game for intended challenge. I dont want to play any game where combat becomes too easy because that defeats the fun around achievement 

But since I made this post I have been busy with a part of the game called Drezen and Im getting hammered in several difficult battles despite having 7 companions 

So this confirms 7 companions is not a serious "cheat " 

 

[Lexx]

Bros, I have an announcement to make.

I have started playing Starfield and

I'm not hating it.

I know, this is madness. The writing is Bethsoft level dog poop as usual, the quest design is dog poop as well, it took me a while to get used to the weird visuals, but now it kinda clicked with me. There is a lot in this game that I don't like, pretty much everything I hated in Skyrim and Oblivion and especially Fo3 and 4 already, but still... Somehow I'm in it right now.

[BruceVC]

1 hour ago, Lexx said:

Bros, I have an announcement to make.

I have started playing Starfield and

  Hide contents

I'm not hating it.

 

I know, this is madness. The writing is Bethsoft level dog poop as usual, the quest design is dog poop as well, it took me a while to get used to the weird visuals, but now it kinda clicked with me. There is a lot in this game that I don't like, pretty much everything I hated in Skyrim and Oblivion and especially Fo3 and 4 already, but still... Somehow I'm in it right now.

Great news, I am definitely going be playing Starfield but once more mods are released and established as providing the best ways improve the vanilla game , maybe 8-12  months from now?

What are you enjoying about, its always good to hear positive feedback

I can probably guess, you using LoversLab adult  alien mods ...Im right hey 

[Lexx]

LoversLab adult alien mods is the only way to play games.

 

No. I just like the aesthetics. It feels very NASA. Also I like that robot companion from the beginning of the game. A lot of the writing is really cringe and bad, but occasionally you find a little gem that is interesting and you'll start to actually like that character. Also I like those big town locations that I have seen so far. They look really nice and do feel somewhat alive. Not as alive as Cyberpunk 2077, but still.. a lot better than in older Bethsoft games. 

I've installed a bunch of mods already that fix issues and change things I don't like. There are bugs that Bethsoft still didn't fix yet.. and they are in the game since release a couple years ago. This is just so typical Bethsoft. They release something and then move on, not bothering about it anymore, because "the community will fix it" ... just terrible practice all around. 

Edited May 30 by Lexx

[EolVoid]

Just got into Hades again, forgot how addicting it is. Perfect after a long day. Also dabbling in Slay the Spire when I want something a bit more chill. 

[melkathi]

47 minutes ago, Lexx said:

LoversLab adult alien mods is the only way to play games.

 

 

It took me a moment to realize you weren't talking about XCOM.

[Mamoulian War]

Still alternating between Star Ocean 6, Fatal Fury: City of the Wolves and Mortal Kombat 11.

In SO6, I ended up for the first time in the space and had first encounters with main villain faction. So far, the story is the best out of last three games, but the difficulty on the Galaxy (normal) level is so easy, that I get bored once in a while and postpone my next session for later and later. I wish I knew that before I launched the game.

In MK11 I play once in a while against one guy from neighboring town. He is probably the best KoF player in Slovakia, and I can see his experience even in MK11, which he started like a month ago or so I am able to play very balanced matches against him, but he wins more often then I do.

I also keep playing against him in CoTW, where he pretty much destroys me in few seconds. Me winning a round against him is on par with a miracle But still good experience. I am now able to perform some basic high damage combos with Terry, but only in training mode. Sigh… I am almost never able to perform them against real players. As soon as there is some stress factor in the fight, my combo muscle memory just turns off, and I can’t punish the other guy properly . My winrate is still above 30%, but I am still at the Newcomer category despite seiing some guys with the same winrate in C+ category. Need to practice more vs fight to stay more calm to be able to perform my combos…

Oh, and I am slowly preparing regional “championship” in CotW and Tekken in my hometown for October. We’ll see if it will play out good. It will be very hard to get sponsors for it, as our government is tanking our economy faster than Trump can say “Tariffs”

[LadyCrimson]

@BruceVC    As long as the difficulty feels good for you/is what you want. Besides, if it starts to feel too easy with later game progressions, I assume you could just remove some party members then, when you feel like it? I mean, sounds fine to me - like turning up difficulty if a game starts to feel too easy.

Back when I was still more - motivated - I remember in BG1, after the first play, every restart I kept removing party members (4 max, then only 2), until I finally tried to solo run it (probably didn't finish but I think I got semi-far) and in MM7 sometimes I'd let party members die and never revived them, heh (had to create four, couldn't tell them to leave). Party members are just difficulty slider options.    Edit: and/or strategic challenges

Edited May 30 by LadyCrimson

[kanisatha]

21 hours ago, BruceVC said:

But Kanie do you agree that 7  characters isnt " cheating " because I had 7 characters in P:K

Its important that people agree with me because this is a personal principle for me?

I would play with an 8-person party. And I always have at least two animal companions. 

I've never cared about "balance." Party interactions, and having as many of my companions along for the ride have always been among the most important characteristics of the games I love to play. It's why I find it really difficult to truly enjoy solo-play games like Witcher or Elder Scrolls.

[HoonDing]

What annoys me in Bethesda games is objects flying all over the room if fps exceeds 60.

It's not that bad in Starfield but big problem in Oblivion remaster.

 

[marelooke]

Been bouncing around a bit, there were some events in Warframe, so went through those and hit Legendary Rank 4 now. 

Haven't really played much KC:D after the horrible broken "spy on the camp" situation, but I did finally kick off the Theresa romance.

Been playing some Stellaris, ran into some interesting situations, like when the Crisis spawned right next to a Fallen Empire and got absolutely crushed (600k strength fleets, wowzie). Didn't manage to win that game as I wasn't able to reach the Fallen Empire's score in time. Sad times.
Kinda starting to "get" some of the 4.0 changes so I might try and play one of the Crisis paths for my next game, probably the tech rush one as "wide turtle tech rush" is my default playstyle anyway...

Went through my gamelog to see what unfinished business I still had and turns out I stopped playing DOOM 2016 on the last boss, so cleared that so I can finally cross that one off the list (and free up some disk space).

[melkathi]

Tried that tainted grail demo thing. It really is not bad.