Happy New Year!
My winter vacations are almost over and it has been very productive couple of weeks, as far as gaming is concerned at least. Spent the days with family and personal stuff, but was free most of the nights so played for at least a few hours each night.
Finished Assassin’s Creed: Rogue Remastered.
Ubisoft games are known for their bloat, but I mostly stuck to the main story and had lots of fun playing the game. Only did side stuff near me, didn’t go out of my way to do anything, except maybe a handful of exception.
I liked this about the game, that it dosen’t force you to do any of the side stuff. You do need to do some naval battles to upgrade your ship but other than that all side activities are optional. Maybe this has been true for previous games too, but me wanting to clear all the icons on map is what made AC: Black Flag start feeling as a chore and why I ended up dropping it. Not being forced to do everything made me enjoy the game more.
Gameplay and visuals felt pretty good. Game didn’t feel dated, but since I mostly play 5-6 years old games I am not sure I am a good judge of that.
I am done with the naval part in these games though. Hope the next games in the series have significantly less of them.
Played and finished Beyond: Two Souls. Got this a long time ago as PS+ monthly game, finally got around to playing it.
Comparing it to the previous game by Quantic Dreams, Heavy Rain, the gameplay and the narrative was much better. And for a game that was originally released in 2013 (with the PS4 version releasing in 2015) the game holds up very well. The controls are very simple, you move around from left stick, interact with the world using right stick (intearctable objects have white circle above them, you just move the right stick in that direction) and all other actions are done by pressing or holding the button they are showing on screen.
Each level ends with showing the choices you made and what percentage of the people in the world who made the same choices. Game also has multiple endings but I just played it once, will probably see the other endings on YouTube.
For those who like adventure / narrative games, and haven’t played Beyond: Two Souls, I’ll highly recommend the game to them.
Played (and dropped) Returnal.
Gameplay wise this is probably the best game I have played lately. The movement, the controls they are all super smooth. Narrative is also pretty interesting, but I didn’t reach far enough to see how it unfolds.
Took me a few tries but I reached the first boss, then died, and since it’s a roguelike (or is it roguelite?) started from the beginning again. And that is the only issue I have with the game, the roguelike nature of it. Every time you die you have to start from the beginning, and you have to explore the whole map before fighting the boss, so that you can get some powerups and better weapons, you can’t just directly run to the boss. After dying to the boss 2-3 times, I just gave up and dropped the game.
Finished Mutant Mudds Deluxe . I was already about 80% of the way through, so went back and finished the last few levels, which were the toughest ones yet.
As for the secret levels, or the other game in the collection Mutant Mudds Super Challenge, they were too difficult for me. Played them a bit and decided they aren’t for me. Great games if you like difficult platformers.
Looking for some some short game, I started (and finished) Blue Rider. It’s a top-down shmup where you can move in all directions, and no auto-moving screen. Which actually makes the game much easier, since you can get back to safety when there are too many bullets flying around. Not possible in boss fights, but there is still enough area to keep moving. I think the game is closer to twin stick shooters than usual shmups.
Game has 9 levels, and if you die you can start from any of the levels that you have reached. The most trouble I had with the level was the second last one, when you pass through any place it gets covered with lava, so you can’t escape backwards and have to keep moving. Other than that the game wasn’t too difficult.
What about all of you? What have you been playing and/or plan to play?
Oooh, wire-to-wire victory, that’s great. I bought and played a few board games in last couple of weeks too, was going to mention in the post but it had already become too long.
Bought Eat-Carrot, Whirl Othello, Abalone and Clue Giant Edition. Eat Carrot looks like a game for very little kids but my daughter was interested so got it, but it’s pretty fun, one of the most family fun we had was with this. Each player has 4 rabbits, and the goal is to start from one side and reach the top of the carrot. Every turn you pick up a card and move 1, 2, or 3 places or spin the carrot, depending on what the card shows. When you spin the carrot, the place where you are standing can become a hole and you can fall down, losing your rabbit, or it can throw you down from the board making you start from beginning, or raise the drawbridge to block your way.
Whirl Othello is made up of 4 3x3 squares, each turn you put your piece on the board and rotate any of the board by 90 degree. The goal is to have 5 in a row. 2 players only. In Abalone you can move your 1, 2, or 3 pieces in any of the 6 directions. The goal is to push other person’s piece from the board. The first one to push out 6 pieces wins. The toughest of all games, and most complicated (but still not that complicated) but very enjoyable.
Clue Giant Edition we got cause we never owned a copy of Clue and our kids have never played it, so wanted to rectify that, but this turned out to be some weird spin-off of Clue. It was kinda boring.
Hopefully with backward compatibility becoming common we won’t have to keep buying older games anymore!
What are your plans for starting Octopath Traveler 0?
Thanks, it’s nice to know people look forward to and miss these. And thanks! hope you also have a better 2026!
Re: Octopath Traveler 0
I don’t know yet. I’m on the final final battle of the mobile game and I definitely want to finish that before I start Zero. But I’m still stuck between my desire for a physical copy and my dislike of key-cards. I’m leaning toward picking it up digitally, but since I’ve waited a month at this point, I’ll probably wait for a sale.
Yeah, putting the game on GKC wasn’t a good idea. Good luck with the final boss!