Re: What Have You Been Playing... IN JANUARY 2025?

On 2/1/2025 8:19 AM, Spalls Hurgenson wrote:

 Oy, what a month. It just hasn't been conducive to gaming; in fact,
the few games I played were almost forced just to say I played
SOMETHING this month. But even when I had time, I just had a hard time
deciding what to play; I just didn't want to engage with anything too
long or involved. So I did what I usually did, and picked a game
already long-installed on my hard-drive.
 Next month hopefully will be better.

 Quick
---------------------------------------
* Eurotruck Simulator 2

Nope, still not quite interested.

* Fort Solis

Oof, I always like the idea of games set on Mars... but man, I've never read you lambast something this hard.

* Backrooms: Escape Together

Yeah, sounds like it's aimed at gen z, the sort of crap my kids played when they were slightly younger.
Though I did watch the 5 nights at Freddy's movie with my daughter recently and found it actually pretty good for a slightly higher than low budget horror film. Which falls into that area.
SCP is kind of interesting to read random things off of but the videos and games (all one of) I've played leave me scratching my head at what they're trying to accomplish as it doesn't seem to match the sources - which tend to be funnier.

Alright, that's it for me. Not much, but we can't every month be
playing the bestest-and-greatest. Sometimes it's just a slow month,
and that's January for me.
 But what about you? Was this a hot month of gaming for you, or as slow
as mine? See, I guess what I really want to know is:
 What Have You Been Playing... IN JANUARY 2025?
 

Quite a bit of things but fairly short plays.  I think My most played was Indiana Jones: The Great Circle at all of 15 hours.  I read far more, that might partially be do to still recovering from being sick, I had one day I was feeling good then it was immediately into a new and worse virus near the end of the month. I seem to be starting on the upward climb out of it today though.
TL;DR:
Earth Defense Force 6
Dark Souls 3
Indiana Jones: The Great Circle
Yakuza 0
Immortals of Aveum
Carrion
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
Route 96
(Book Addendum at the end)
VERBOSE MODE:
A couple of continued plays
***** EDF 6
I played a few hours of this with my daughter and we made some progress.   I thought we were at the end, but it opened up some secret levels after that and I didn't actually get to the end.
***** Dark Souls 3
Well, I only played 1 day of this in January, lack of other players and having been through it for 1800 hours total I just was feeling too much of retreading the same road again.
+++++
I spent most of the month on Gamepass, I didn't really play it a lot though. I gave most of these more time than I'd call 'flipped' Though S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 probably falls into that mode.
*** Indiana Jones: The Great Circle
Or as I claimed, Indiana - Old Man Tomb Raider.  I played 13 hours. It's a good game, but it's Bethesda so it's got flaws.  The controls feel weird,  I never quite got used to them.  Combat is best melee and best either ambush or parry + riposte.  Guns are better used a melee weapons lest you fire them and call all the enemies around.  I played on hard so perhaps guns are more useful if played on easier difficulties. Cut-scenes are long and frequent.  I'm not sure I care much for copying the actors into the game for everyone, but it works better here than most games.  I don't like the voice actor for Indy, he sounds slurred, numbly and old for the age of Indy here (I checked it's not Ford.)  I didn't care for traveling the same paths over and over in Rome, I must've knocked out the same blackshirt at least 8 times treading the same path between two areas.  On the plus side It's a beautiful game, though I guess I'm jaded as it didn't impress me all that much.  The puzzles were fairly easy and reasonable.  I did run into one about the time I was done with the game where I was supposed to take a picture of something, but I couldn't get the game to acknowledge it was pointed in the right direction/zoom, that's when I finally gave up.  I also had a few bugs with stuff like the screen showing only in a corner of the monitor for awhile, and stuttering when I crossed zones.  It's pretty good for a movie cross-over but not enough for me to keep with it.
*** Yakuza 0
Seems to be the best of the Yakuza games from people that like them. The story seems only slightly different than Like a Dragon, and the protagonist doesn't seem to be quite the chump, as well as being set in the 80s.  I think I like the action vs. turn based of it better though, but I had a hell of a time getting through an early fight where I had to face off against probably 10 enemies, then escape fighting off 2-3 more at a time escaping.  It took me a few tries, and it eventually asked me if I wanted to try easy mode.  I didn't give up and got through it the next time after that.  There's also the mini-games, I tried the cage batting one for must've been an hour, but I couldn't even get the lowest reward on the basic one. I'm ambivalent about it.  I was also quite surprised I was playing a completely different character after the first act, which made me feel all my progress was for naught.  I don't think I would buy it or extend my gamepass for it though.
*** Immortals of Aveum
Magic FPS, reminds me a bit if Hexen was made for more modern typical game.  The game-play is good actually, but it's kind of been-there done that, and has lots of stuff I don't like such as having to get certain abilities and go back to early areas to unlock different paths and treasure/abilities there.  Puzzles levels etc. in to unlock certain abilities, mostly nothing particularly hard.  There's some wisps you have to shoot to get certain resources to buy skill/item unlocks, and they're very annoying being barely noticeable and hiding most of the time in inaccessible areas and moving so quickly they're very hard to shoot, that's the worst bit and shortly after the worst of those I ran across is where I left the game.  The story is a unrelatable, uninteresting, and feels sanitized/corporatized, and the visuals a bit too 'high magic'.  I don't care for any of the characters, part of that may again be rendering the actors into the game, and them having weird 'fat lip' movements while talking.  That throws me much more in something not aping movies/tv.  Fortunately the cut scenes aren't too often.  It'll probably appeal to others more than it does to me.
** Carrion
Pixel reverse platformer where you play the monster.  It's not really a platformer as there's no jumping, you just move around your shoggoth as if there was no gravity or clinging to the wall.  You mostly just kill people (mostly easily, I only died once) and figure out puzzles to unlock new areas.  I was rather enjoying it, but reached a point I couldn't find anywhere else to go, and put it down there.
** S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
I didn't play this very long.  It seems fine, I just think I've moved past this sort of thing, it didn't seem particularly innovative as many years as has gone by from the original.  I was highly annoyed by a poltergeist which I eventually looked up after dying repeatedly to it, and they don't seem worth fighting so I just moved on from there, but I can't find the desire to boot it up.
** Route 96
I finished this game probably under an hour.  It appears to you're supposed to play it again to explore different options.  It's a game about a teen escaping an oppressive Slavic regime apparently or something.  It was marginally interesting, but not quite enough to play it again.  I'm somewhat sad my play-through resulted in another teen's death (well, maybe he was just unconscious, yeah...) almost enough to play it again and try to do better.  I was mostly irritated it seems you can't actually get to know anyone much, just quick brushes with them, and assuming you have to play multiple times to do so, which doesn't make any sense to me.  Either that or the game is really shallow in that regard.
++++++++++
Book Addendum:
All from royalroad.com :
***** Mother of Learning - Groundhog day meets high magic with quite a fleshed out setting.  The protagonist is a wizard.  It was far better than that short synopsis sounds.  I think this is actually 3-5 books worth.  I wouldn't mind rereading this again.
***** The Perfect Run - Groundhog day meets post apoc superhero story. Protagonist is a bit of a trickster deadpool type.  I thought it was very cringe to start, but it more than redeemed itself and why he acts that way is hinted ant and explored throughout the book.  This is I think around 3 books worth.
*** Wander West, In Shadow - Dark Ages fantasy starting a wizard protagonist. A bit too verbose, wordy, and overwrought, but still decent, actual book sized.
**** Chasing Sunlight - Inspired by Sunsless Seas game.  I didn't really get into the game, and that steampunk-magic (steam-magic?) doesn't really speak to me, but the eldritch stuff and 'Brittish explorer' vibe is pretty cool and is worth a read. Book or two sized.
***** Paranoid Mage - Modern times hidden magic society/realm.  30 year old architect finds out he's a mage rather abruptly and arrested for practicing magic without being registered and draft dodging.  Unlike any of the others I've read recently this grabbed me very quickly.  Some of the descriptions of crafting things and set up get a bit long and boring further in, even given that it's my favorite this month. 3+ books.
*** Blue Core - Dungeon core protag with 'litrpg' (I have trouble explaining what that is, but it involves stuff as if one were transported inside an rpg) I don't really care for litrpg (although I guess I'd be somewhat guilty having posted solo logs of D&D) but I can ignore it.  Same author as Paranoid Mage, but really gets way too long on the crafting bits.  Quickly ramps up from a lowly cave to eventual earth shattering events.  Also very NSFW with a humanoid animal people, if you don't care for that at least those chapters are skippable easily without reading it or really impacting the story.  I was left feeling good about the ending. Probably more than 3 books worth.
***** The Lost Deaths - 1700's horror short story.  I really liked this one, made me think like some of the better short stories I liked.  Could do with a whole book or series based off of it. Heck a ttrpg or setting too.
I'm in the middle of A Journey of Black and Red. 1700's vampire story I'm enjoying so far. A bit of the depictions of the protag going into madness/blood frenzy are really too disjointed as they're from her perspective though.
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-Justisaur
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