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[itisnotlogical]

I played with unofficial fixes, so I never encountered that problem. Good to know though because I've been debating getting it again on console.

[ZeroGravitas]

baba is you

best puzzle game i've played in a long time, up there with some zachtronics stuff

basically you manipulate the puzzle by pushing nouns and verbs around, which then define how things work in the puzzle. like most puzzles say "baba is you" so you control the "baba" (a bunny thing). but if push the block "baba" or "is" or "you" out of sequence, you lose; you're no longer baba. but if you pushed the word "rock" in place of "baba", you would make it say, "rock is you", and then you'd control the rock on the screen. etc for other verbs.

it's pretty nice on switch but also available elsewhere

[itisnotlogical]

Corvega Assembly Plant was a short-and-sweet dungeon crawl on my first FO4 playthrough.

On Survival, it's become a week-long guerilla war against the very concept of raiding itself. I never thought much about Lexington moving through it, but I've picked out several landmarks, places to sleep, raider spawns and sniping positions in order to expedite returning after a death or retreat. I'm diseased, exhausted, shot full of holes and have been on fire at least once, but I persevere.

I can only imagine how annoying some of the late-game encounters can get in this mode.

[Mephansteras]

Was introduced to a fun little strategy game today called Islanders. Kind of a simple city builder where you build up an island with industries and little towns until you've scored enough points to move on to the next island. Not terribly difficult, but very satisfying. Not sure how much depth it has beyond what I saw, but even that was enough for me to see myself playing it a good deal when I want something low key to play.

Sappho made a review video about it which is where I learned about it.

Game is only $5 on steam right now, and I had a lot of fun playing my first run through. Well worth the price tag.

[Aoi]

A trio of EAs that popped up on my radar...

Xenomarine: A not particularly interesting scifi roguelike, despite how the reviews seem to be glowingly positive, for the most part. Maybe there's something in there I'm not seeing, but it sits as a hard pass for me. (On the other hand, Dungeons of Dredmor also didn't seem particularly worthwhile to me, and it seemed to be an indie darling at the time.) Also: "You fail to spot a secret door."

Deck of Ashes: Another entry into the list of deck builders, a la Slay the Spire, Blood Card, and who knows what else has cropped up recently. This one distinguishes themselves from the rest with a slightly more interesting world map, camp upgrade system like Darkest Dungeon, and some new card management shenanigans...

Your life and draw/discard decks are persistent across battles; at the end of a combat, you have an amount of time units that you can spend pulling cards out of discard, restoring life, or crafting cards (not recommended; you can do that without spending time in town). If your draw deck runs low in combat, you get free cards that trade life to shuffle your discards into your draw... which isn't necessarily a good thing: There's a lot of passive cards that are only active when in your discard, and there are debuffs that you might end up pulling again. There's a pretty good amount of RNG mitigation too: While you're forced to take a card recipe, you don't have to craft it; you can sell it. If you rely on cards in your discard, you can move them there in town for a nominal fee. Events that spawn recipes on the map let you see what the recipes are (and, I think, always include the resource used to craft cards, if you don't like any of them).

Gameplay itself feels kind of clunky; I have some trouble dragging and dropping my cards and it doesn't feature comprehensive keyboard controls yet. Over all, while it lacks the polish of some other titles, it's not bad, especially considering it's still very much EA. Either I'm really bad at it or it could use a bit of balancing with the bosses.

Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.

[Folly]

Speaking of EA's popping up on radar, I've had my eye on Pagan Online for the last week, seriously considering buying.

PO is an ARPG in the vein of Diablo and the like. First major notable downside, the Online portion of Pantheon Online is not yet implemented. Which is to say that you have to have an internet connection to play, but there's absolutely no interaction with other players. Co-op PvE is expected to be added soon. Another noteworthy issue is the design decision to use WASD movement, rather than click-to-move. There also seem to be some class balance issues, with some classes being significantly OP and others UP. And the skill tree is apparently a very early pass, with a much more elaborate version in the works.

All of that being said, amongst the mixed reviews seem to be some people having a lot of fun, and it's been far too long since I played a decent game in this genre.

[itisnotlogical]

Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance is one of my favorite Metal Gear Solid games and it isn't even a Kojima title. It's the best argument I've seen for MGS' crazy and wacky side, which I never used to be a fan of. Probably because it has very little to do with the convoluted continuity post-MGS3, and it's extremely easy to skip a cutscene if it's boring.

[Aoi]

Interesting you mention Pagan Online as it came up on my Steam queue today, alongside Last Epoch. Unfortunately for them, Last Epoch captured waaaaay more of my attention, but it also looks more like a traditional looty ARPG, rather than some of the more... uh... arcade ARPGs like Victor Vran. (Incidentally, anybody that's kept track of LE care to weigh in on it?)

[Kagus]

Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.

Isn't that just the "big game" version of Right Click To Necromance?


As a quick aside, I actually quite enjoyed some of the mechanics of Victor Vran. I thought it took an actually different route than a lot of the clones out there, and I found wall-jumping up to secret stashes actually quite fun.

But... Something just wasn't right. Maybe it was the lack of character customization? The slightly-too-much comedy aspects? I don't know... But it's kind of a shame, because I think they had some good ideas here and there.

[Folly]

KurtzPel recently entered Steam Early Access.

KurtzPel is an anime-styled action game with pvp and pve modes. PvE is akin to monster-hunter, where the idea is to kill one big monster with lots of health and a variety of telegraphed moves.

I haven't played long enough to get much of a feel, other than to say it suffers a bit from being a small studio and early access, but may have some potential. Mild fanservice. Free to play.

[Cyroth]

KurtzPel recently entered Steam Early Access.

KurtzPel is an anime-styled action game with pvp and pve modes. PvE is akin to monster-hunter, where the idea is to kill one big monster with lots of health and a variety of telegraphed moves.

I haven't played long enough to get much of a feel, other than to say it suffers a bit from being a small studio and early access, but may have some potential. Mild fanservice. Free to play.

Also region locked. EU doesn't get to play for another month at least.
I'm so fapping mad about that, I've been looking forward to this game for months and now I can't even download it. 
Because of a goddamn region lock... what is this? 2005?

[Aoi]

I'm not sure which is more gripping to play with during character creation-- the physics-enabled swooshing hair, or the fascinatingly bouncy breasts. Even when you set it to minimum size/maximum tightness (I'm not quite sure that's the best descriptor.), there's still a lot of wobble... though it looks more like they're pulsating in and out, not from side to side. And later in character creation, once you have clothes on, the buttons on the outfit continue to jiggle from side to side when you turn despite there being absolutely no reason to.

I played through the first few missions, and based on that, I think Dauntless did better MH-esque combat. There are two opening weapons to start from, a sword and a bow, and I grabbed the bow... it mostly comes down to shooting a few times when there's an opening, hitting one of your specials if you have a chance, and running around in circles until your stamina's restored so you can keep attacking. Lots of clicking. The sole male NPC I've seen so far was decked out in full shaman/tribal gear and has a mask on, so the gender is indistinct anyways. So far, it's been mostly been duels against humanoid characters, though one had a panther-ish pet. No bodypart destruction yet.

Undead Horde: ARPG-lite for somebody who likes playing a summoner. Kind of reminds me of Pikmin and Little King Story, to some degree. First impressions are surprisingly entertaining, but I feel like it'll come across a bit shallow with more time. Art's kind of cutesy and over all worth a look though, I'd say.

Isn't that just the "big game" version of Right Click To Necromance?

Looks like. Wasn't acquainted with RCTN.

[Aoi]

So. Last Epoch. It's got a lot of potential... and that's about it for the short version. Frankly, I'd skip this for now unless you're sitting with a lot of extra room in your budget and like ARPGs. (Grim Dawn's pretty good, if you want something solo and now.) I'm going to ignore obviously beta issues, since it's still in early beta, and assume that people are used to ARPGs to some degree.

Skills are interesting*. You start off with a base class, and after levelling a bit, you spec into one of three branches of it, with their own passives and active skills (of which you have five slots to insert 10-15 skills into). Each active skill then has their own passive tree. While you can use skills that you haven't chosen to activate their passives for, they are unequivocally weaker, though their unique effects still work (teleports, for example). Skills can be respec'd freely, though it takes an hour or two to grind them back up to max level at endgame.

The specialized skills can change quite a bit too; there's one skill that basically sends out a fan of homing bolts that does direct+DoT. You can change it such that it triggers-on-damage and launches a single giant bolt that does extra damage and debuffs. There's another whose default is a cyclone/whirlwind attack; you can choose to trade movement for increased damage/range and a pull effect. Golems have four pretty divergent specs: Lifedrain, Tank/Retal, PBAoE/DPS, and a fourth one that's slipped my mind. All skills are supposed to have equally flexible trees, though I'd estimate only a third are currently implemented.

Item crafting is something I'd say they definitely got right. All items have base stats and up to four affixes. Items can be broken down for something like one shard per tier per affix. (Or find shards as drops.) You can then throw shards onto other pieces of equipment to give them one tier of that affix... though the more you do so, the more that the item will eventually break, preventing you from modding it further, or if it's already heavily modded, it may downgrade. You can mitigate the risk, though not eliminate it entirely.

*Especially right now in beta for theorycrafters; with careful attention to the order in which you take skills and liberal use of respecs, you can get skills from other subclasses and use passives you don't have the prereqs for.

[Mech#4]

Here's something I had no idea was in the works or was expecting at all. An expansion has been released for Titan Quest...

Scratch that. Apparently there's been 2 expansions released for Titan Quest in the past 2 years.

Titan Quest: Ragnarök

Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)

KEY FEATURES
New story act with dozens of new quests

    Brave the realms of the Celts, the Northmen and the Asgardian gods in the largest act to date
    Revisit the other acts to find new items and secrets

New 10th Mastery

    Become a Runemaster, a magical warrior fighting with both, spells and weapons
    Combine newly learned with existing masteries for a total of 45 combinations

New experience curve

    Reach level 85 and maximize your character’s potential

New weapons and gear

    Find new and powerful gear, from colorful Celtic shields to famous weapons of Germanic legend.
    New relics and charms for crafting, and a new option to improve even legendary items.
    New thrown weapons strike the balance between range and speed!

New Enemies and bosses

    From the denizens of Germany’s dark forests to the forces of Asgard itself.

Improved character customization

    A wider variety of regional styles and color dyes
    Finally: wear pants!

Technical and QOL improvements

    New shaders and graphical effects
    Improved ragdoll physics
    Improved UI and combat feedback for total information
    Improved control customization
    Improved modding tools

Titan Quest: Atlantis

Spoiler: Details: (click to show/hide)

The Hero meets an explorer that is searching for the mythical kingdom of Atlantis, and together they set out on a journey across the western Mediterranean. The key lies in the legendary Diary of Herakles, rumored to be in the Phoenician City of Gadir, but their journey will take them beyond the edges of the known world...

Atlantis Quest
Play a classic Titan Quest adventure in single player or up to 6 players in co-op

New items and unique rewards

Tartarus Endless Mode

A wave based challenge mode, playable in single player or up to 6 players in co-op
Random elements change up the gameplay

Expanded Masteries
Unlock a new tier of skills for each mastery

Visual Upgrades
Graphical upgrades such as SSAO and color grading

Quality of Life Improvements
Quick cast, easier storage and other long-awaited perks

Casino Merchant
Spend your excess in-game money on randomly generated loot

It's not a game I've been looking at particuarly closely, since Grim Dawn has replaced it for my currently played ARPG. Still, it's nice to see a game still getting content so many years after its initial release.

[Mephisto]

Mechanic Miner. A game I thoroughly wiped from my memory until I received an email saying "go grab your beta key." Closed beta started today and goes to the 20th.

I'm going to say it looks sort of like Windforge but without the story (such as it was) and with infinitely-more ground-based vehicles.

Should you decide you want in, they do beta key waves using subscribers to their mailing list. It's called a mailing list but they seem to just be using it for key distribution if you're worried about spam - I vaguely recall signing up many months ago, maybe receiving an email saying "beta is coming", and then today receiving my key.