What are you playing right now?

[jukemix_]

I need to pick up on my ps2 backlog I wanna continue FFX but classes have just been my main priority and I've only been playing skate. and skate 3 to passby my breaks. It just itches something in my head but not that one drive of me playing FFX, especially since I also got FFX2 for like a bargain ($5) at the flea market.

 

[Term]

Ho boy I'm posting about it again

All that stuff I said about Ninja Gaiden was before I'd even tried hard mode. I think it's common to be a bit burnt out on hard modes in games, considering how many of them just tweak damage numbers, sometimes to tedious degrees, rather than thinking out their extra challenge more interestingly. I wasn't sure whether this would be the case in Ragebound - I thought at best it might add some more enemies to the stages. I am delighted to report I was wrong. I'm going through it now and, yes, the stages have more enemies. But there are also new recolored variants of enemies with different properties, rearranged level hazards for tougher platforming, and some challenges are altered to make getting ranks more difficult. Each boss is altered as well - some are simple, like faster movement or starting on phase 2, but others are more insidious, like using the attacks that make them more vulnerable less often, or changing the terrain in their arena. One boss removes the entire floor and forces you to fight by hanging underneath platforms, something no other boss in the normal game requires. I can tell some real thought was put into it and I'm having a great time

I doubt I can get the S++es on hard though. I'd be doing good to get all S-ranks. As you'd hope, it's brutal.

 

[KeplerElectronics]

still grinding through Silksong. Just discovered a brand new area that I somehow missed over 50 hours in. Debating on going for the boss now or waiting until I get 100%. There's still a ton of mysteries to solve.

definitely gonna try speedrunning it once I finish, WR is less than an hour, if I can manage sub 2hrs I'll be astonished. It's got my favorite movement system since Celeste, and I've gotten pretty darn good at the downward slash mechanic (I'm still traaaaash at parries tho) so it should be pretty fun to go back to the early game bosses I thought were absolutely brutal now that I have a ton more experience with the controls.

I'm still letting my thoughts simmer, but this is definitely a contender for my favorite game of the past decade. Crosscode, Celeste, BotW, and Infra are the other standouts, not sure where I'd rank it among them.

I wasn't big on Hollow Knight, I beat it, but it took me probably a year or so, putting it down and picking it back up a few times. I bought Silksong mostly for the memes, expecting it to be a fine platformer with some pretty art and bosses, but it totally surprised me. If you weren't big on HK but enjoy challenging bossfights and/or 2D platformers, I'd recommend giving it a try. You'll probably know within the Steam refund window whether you'll like it or not.

Want to do a more thorough writeup on the game design aspects, but this game 100% falls in with Deltarune as a game where the devs understand secrets in retro games. There is so much content that is 100% missable, at least 25+ hours worth, and that is amazing.

Played the first 30-35 hours on my desktop, then my Steam Deck arrived and I've played the last 10-15 hours on that, switching between docked and handheld mode. The resolution is slightly squished horizontally in handheld mode, not sure if that's an issue on my end or not, but I've not really felt the need to make it 100% perfect, I'd rather just play the game haha.

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Also picked up Star of Providence in the Steam sale. I rolled credits on it a lot faster than I expected, not sure if its just my experience with danmaku/twinstick games, or if it really only picks up in difficulty once you hit postgame. For reference, it took me like 150+ hours to finally get a successful run in FTL, which is the only other roguelike I've managed to topple.

It's a very pretty game with good music and excellent game feel, and it'll probably be one I boot up to do a quick run between classes. It took some finesse to figure out how to make it play nicely on Steam Deck (for whatever reason the only keybinds that felt alright have accept on Y??) but once it does it feels great.