What are you playing this weekend/these days?


I'm not playing. I'm buying, now that I have a gaming PC in my life again. Though, it successfully testran CP 2077 PL already, there's still setting up to do. Nice enough of ASRock to give the X870 Taichi Creator generously fine-grained IOMMU grouping. :)
So far, I've got 66 games for 240 EUR on GOG - or rather 65 for 200 and CP 2077 incl. PL for 40. Mostly not very current games, but all have a good user rating. What does one need Steam for? I already don't know how I will ever find the time to play them all. :)
 
To my surprise I finished Half-Life Episode One last night. I hadn't been playing it recently for fear that the audio (gunshots) might be annoying to my family. Immediately my daughter asked what I was playing. I got excited thinking she's into video games....
 
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To my surprise I finished Half-Life Episode One last night. I hadn't been playing it recently for fear that the audio (gunshots) might be annoying to my family. Immediately my daughter asked what I was playing. I got excited thinking she's into video games....
Probably a good place to play Lost Coast, as it's was cut from Episode One. It's very short and it was used as a demo for HDR.
 
Just completed Half-Life 2 Episode 2. Hmmmm... lame ending. But a well curated adventure. I was never that sensitive to frame rates but it was a bit choppy. I played on ps3. My HL2 cravings have been satiated.
 
Just finished Ratchet & Clank. Went into it without expectations and it really surprised me. Very entertaining game. I'll definitely play the sequels. And PCSX2 is really good nowadays, emulation has come a long way.
 
CRT filters! Heh, we're throwing a lot of computing power at this.
Not as much as we're using for dumbass Artificial Intelligence though.
 
Finished Prince of Persia: Lost Crown on the Switch. Great game. The tutorial focuses a lot on combat but once in the game proper I was reassured to see that the platformer and puzzle parts had not been forgotten. And the platforming isn't just there to break the pace between combat: from the beginning it goes hard with traps requiring precision and good reflexes. But it's never punishing or unfair and you never have to die and retry until you learn it all (except maybe in the challenge levels) and I appreciated that a lot. The combat is very fun too, especially once you start unlocking a few things. Because of course it's a "Metroidvania". I was afraid it was going to be one of these games where past some point/unlocks you're just too powerful for the game to be challenging but it never felt that way. Every new option leads to new challenges and once you have unlocked them all movement and combat is a joy and you do feel powerful but not "broken" (except maybe for the last two bosses but I suspect it's a design choice because they're clearly easier than the earlier ones). I also appreciated the fact that, compared to many other games, it makes you wait quite a bit before giving you the double jump. Having to pass the early platforming session without it felt more rewarding. Exploration is fine, there's some backtracking, especially if you want to find all secrets, I feel like it sometimes broke a bit the pace of the game.

It looks great, sounds great (I also appreciated the Farsi language option, felt better to have everyone speak in Farsi rather than in English or French). The story is not mindblowing but it's decent. I played it in the "hard" difficulty level and while it was mostly fine, bosses really felt like they weren't tailored for it: they took very little damage (at least until I unlocked enough damage boosts) and I had to go through many repetitions of their complete movesets before they died. So it was a lot of die and retry (especially for early bosses). When I tried to face them again in the "normal" difficulty level, it felt a bit more right. Some of the challenge levels are really tough and more in a "die and retry" mindset. I'm still happy I kept trying because they helped me master some aspects of the game and some were fun to master, but it sometimes feel like I spent more times on them than on the rest of the game.

It's one of the rare recent games where I wouldn't have minded playing a bit more after reaching the end (and finding all secrets and completing all challenges).
 
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