Old_Man_Harper

I thought Botany Manor was terrific. It’s sort of similar to Obra Dinn/Golden Idol - you must deduce how to grow weird rare plants from clues you find around the manor and grounds. Very engrossing and you can probably complete it in a weekend..

KCD2 on Series X. I’ve reached the Kuttenberg area now, still exploring it and picking up side quests. I tried the photo mode today and was amused to find that after taking a picture and returning to the game, Henry says things like “That’s a good one!” or “What a view that is!”

I played it quite a bit when it came out, but it fell off my radar a few years ago.

KCD2 - I had to go back to a save before the big wedding when it became very clear I wasn’t levelled enough for the ensuing sections! A bit more grinding - including actually learning how to sword fight - and I’m much better levelled and equipped to progress. I really enjoy the pace of the game.

It would have to be Baldur’s Gate 3 for me, I’ve played it through three times, 100+ hours each time, and I still find new things I’ve missed or new ways to approach situations.

I had a lot of fun and put a lot of hours into Grounded as well.

Sounds good to me, although at the rate I’m going, I won’t have finished KCD2 until autumn.

@oopsiezz I played it after the Christmas patch and had no issues.

@GuyinPA75 I’ve played all of them and with the exception of LiS2, which I’ve mentioned (and which is probably the weakest of the series) I’ve never felt I was having an agenda pushed on me. If that had been the case, I’d have definitely found it off-putting.

@GuyinPA75 Not notably. LiS 2 had some fairly heavy-handed commentary on anti-Mexican prejudice. Max is gay and Alex could be so if you wanted her to be, but the LiS games aren’t like (say) Dustborn, which is heart-on-sleeve left wing.

I installed it once - there must have been a fleeting planetary alignment that caused me to think I’d be interested in baseball - but I never played it. I don’t suppose it has much traction outside the US.

I enjoyed it, but it isn’t as good as True Colors. I think it needed quite a bit more work, the male characters in particular seemed two dimensional and forgettable (I couldn't remember the name of any of them) and it didn’t achieve much of a sense of place. If you’ve liked the other LiS games I’d still recommend giving it a try, although Lost Records has the same feel and is a better game than DE.

Yeah, I reckon, I’m pretty happy with Xbox to be honest. Personally speaking, the Series X (with Game Pass) is the best console I’ve ever owned and I’ve owned most of them, starting with the Atari VCS!

More KCD2 on Series X. Got a horse now, which saves on shoe leather and also makes it easier to avoid bandits. Still relatively early in the game, doing side missions today, maybe a main quest mission tomorrow.

It looks good, but I don’t know anyone who’d be interested in playing it and, to be honest, I’m not really interested in playing with other people.

I wanted to like it, but I haven’t got a clue what is going on or what I’m supposed to do. I certainly haven’t felt anything like addiction, or even a desire to play it again.

On Series X I’ve started Kingdom Come Deliverance 2. It throws you in at the deep end a bit, but I’ve now got freedom of action and will be looking to make a bit of money, preferably by non-violent means, as I’m pretty poor at fighting!

I played MHWorld for a bit, but was put off by the cruelty. Okay, it’s just a game, but chasing down and killing a creature that hadn’t attacked me in the first place and was fleeing for its life just made me sad. ☹️

I finished Lost Records tape 1, I thought it was terrific. Looking forward to the second episode.

I’m playing Lost Records tape 1 on Series X (I bought it not realising it would be on PS+ which I also have - duh 🤦‍♂️) I thought I’d have a break between mega-RPGs.

It’s basically a Life is Strange game in everything but the name. I’m quite early into it - it encourages you to look at everything around and even video it, so the pace is quite slow, but I like that in this sort of game.

The story so far reminds me a bit of ‘Yellowjackets’ in that it has two timelines - middle-aged women in the near-present day and their teenage selves in 1995. So far so good, I think.

Rogue Trader… crikey, I’m never going to clear the backlog!

It looks interesting, so I bought and installed it (whilst sitting at my desk at work - what a world we live in now!) I’m planning to play this as a palate cleanser between BG3 and Avowed, or Kingdom Come 2, I’ll make my mind up which.

BG3 Durge run - past the point of no return for the final showdown, but it’s beer o’clock now, so I’ll save the last battle for tomorrow. Not sure what I’ll play after that - I bought Kingdom Come 2, but I’m tempted to play a palate cleanser-type game and wait for Avowed.

@Millionski I’ve played it for the last few weeks, so the version I played was after the patch they did at Christmas, but before this patch. It’s fine, not noticeably buggy at all in about 60-70 hours I’ve played. It wasn’t happy with quick resume though, so I got into the habit of saving and fully quitting the game.

NPCs are going to start looting the best gear from corpses… aw, I like waiting in cover while NPCs fight it out and then looting the bodies! It’s a good way to get guns and ammo, especially early on. But it’s obviously what they really would do in the Zone.

It looks good and apparently it is possible to do a playthrough in about 30 hours, which gives good scope for replayability, as by all accounts there’s a lot hidden in what is a quite small world.

@themightyant It does make me wonder why companies (Square Enix notably, but most recently EA) are so quick out of the blocks to declare a game’s sales a disappointment, essentially labelling them a failure, when they quite often keep selling!

@Fiendish-Beaver Not that old yet - I’m 56, but I’m the oldest of my circle of friends, hence the name! Old enough to have played Space Invaders, Galaxian, etc. in arcades back in the day, when they were new and totally thrilling…

Continuing my BG3 Durge run on Series X. Broke into the Devil’s house to nick his hammer. He wasn’t best pleased. A very tough fight ensued (although they are all pretty tough at this point) and I haven’t been able to win it yet. I’ll give it a few more tries, but I saved just before going there, so I might skip it as it’s not really necessary for the endgame - I was just interested to see it.

I have bought and downloaded it and it’s on the ‘to play’ pile. God knows why I do that when I could pick it up cheaper when I’ve finished the other games I’ve still got to play! 🤷‍♂️

I think there will be one more generation of consoles after this one. After that my own interest in gaming is likely to be diminished by the end of my life.

I haven’t read all the comments, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see someone complaining that it isn’t 120fps…

It’s early February and I’ve already got a 2025 game backlog! 😮

Taking a break from Stalker 2 to finish my Durge run on BG3 - I’m now in the city itself so nearing the endgame and learning just why my character has all these violent thoughts…

I am interested in Avowed, Kingdom Come and Lost Records. Quite a lot for a February! I expect a lot of them want to get their games out before GTA6 and the Switch 2 launch and dominate the conversation.

Never played it! Perhaps they could replace it with Tournament Bowls ‘25. Or a birdwatching game.

More Stalker 2. The story has taken me to the west of the map, closer to Pripyat, and safe to say the danger has ramped up. However, I am now much better equipped and armed. Still very much enjoying it - it feels like the Fallout game we clearly won’t get in this console generation.

I feel pretty well set up there for games for the next few months. Stalker 2 will likely last me until Avowed, I’ll also probably buy the new Kingdom Come game, then the three we just saw for April and May. 🙂

I’m sure DA will have a ‘long tail’ sales-wise, but a ten-year gap between releases means that a lot of people nowadays won’t even know much about the series. EA have nobody to blame but themselves for that.

A tough field though - Hannah Telle and Melina Juergens were both brilliant too.

He does a really good job and has some proper Indy lines to deliver. I love the bit where Voss calls him a ‘pathetic little man’ and he replies ‘Better than being a Nazi!’

Starbound looks interesting. And if you haven’t played Case of the Golden Idol yet, I can only re-re-re recommend it, a belter.

More Stalker 2 on Series X - just reached an important decision point. About 60 hours in and still really enjoying myself.

Still Stalking the Zone on Series X, still having a great time. If you’ve been holding off playing after the launch because of the bugs, I’d say you’re good to go now. I haven’t noticed any problems.

I guess it’s a judgement call from the developers. Take the cash up front or hope for the sales. I can think of some games - Tunic, Unpacking and Immortality spring to mind - that probably benefited from the exposure of being on game pass.

I guessed they noticed that lots of people were getting the ‘play 3 game pass games’ reward in less than a minute just by pressing start on them! The rewards website or app is another quick way to accumulate points. I can usually manage 6-7,000 points a month without much effort.

I wouldn’t even know where to go to buy a new physical game now and I live in Leeds which isn’t exactly short of shops. In fact, the last boxed game I bought was Sea of Thieves in 2018.

Not a lot gets released at this time of year. I wonder why smaller/indie game developers don’t release around now (or in summer) and get a clearer run, rather than getting lost among the big release before Christmas.

It was pretty minor and got mediocre reviews, but ‘Open Roads’ was three or four hours that stuck in my head. It’s from some of the people who did ‘Gone Home’ and ‘Tacoma’. A mother and daughter are clearing out their late mother/grandmother’s house and discover she may have had a secret affair… They go on a road trip to get to the bottom of it, which they do.

I also thought Life is Strange Double Exposure was much better than a lot of the reviews it got did.

I assumed that the layout on PlayStation thumb sticks was something that was copyrighted or something, because I can’t see any reason not to make them offset nowadays. It always feels a bit of a hangover from the 90s when many people preferred to use the d-pad and the sticks were an optional extra.

Back to work on Monday, but for the past week I’ve been playing Stalker 2 on Series X. I found it takes a bit of getting into, but now I am, I’m having a great time, in a Fallout-but-tougher way. I enjoy the random element of the Zone, where groups of NPCs sometimes clash fatally and you can help yourself to loot, and on one occasion an NPC squad attacked the same objective I was sneaking up on and did a good part of the job for me!

I haven’t noticed any bugs in the 30+ hours I’ve played, so I think the patches have sorted that, however it is sometimes unhappy with quick resume. I really didn’t care for the English voice acting at all, so I switched to Ukrainian with subtitles.