TheMightyEthan

Still going strong in Starfield. 50/50 shot whether I get it wrapped up before Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty comes out next week.

Went on sale for the lowest price it's hit yet, so I picked it up. Hopefully I can sneak it in between Starfield and Cyberpunk.

Beat Saber I'm listing this as beat now because I've finished the campaign, but obviously with a rhythm game you can keep playing as much as you want. I've been playing this for exercise, and it's great. Normally whenever I start an exercise routine I have a hard time maintaining it because I never want to actually do it, but this game is intrinsically fun, so I haven't had that problem yet. It may not be what I want to do at any given time, but I'm at least not averse to doing it like I normally get with exercise. And once I'm in it's easy to keep going because it's fun. The campaign was pretty good too, and while there were a few songs with special objectives that I didn't like (such as get at least 10 but no more than 15 misses), overall it was a lot of fun. It's very satisfying to try a new song, and go from "This doesn't seem physically possible!" to being able to do it fairly easily over the course of a couple days. Grade: A+

Yeah, that was my thought, I'm gonna do a real playthrough where I do all the side stuff, but I knew if I did that first I wouldn't want to do NG+, so I'm just doing it in NG+. I know I'm in the minority, but it really takes me out of a game when something is supposed to be really far and it's actually like 200 feet. I want it to feel like a real place, not a theme park. To be clear, I'm not advocating for fewer things to do overall (though I do think certain games, coughAssassin'sCreedcough, are too jam-packed), just I want to feel the scale that the world purports to have.

Starfield Based on some recommendations I saw online that the NG+ in this game is something special I bee-lined through the main quest (in 40 hours) to get to NG+ and I think I made the right choice. This is bananas. I would recommend others do the same. Beyond that, what I've experienced so far is great, I love how big and empty the universe feels, just like a space frontier actually should. None (or very little) of the open world nonsense of the game telling you you're on the raggedy edge of nothin but in reality there's a settlement every 50 feet. It's great. I'm not going to give it a rating yet because in some ways I feel like the game really only starts at your first NG+.

It does not disable achievements, none of the ones I listed do. I've been playing for hours with all of them and have still been getting achievements*, without the special achievement re-enabler mod. As far as I'm aware the only ones that disable achievements are console commands. *I've been playing the MS Store/Game Pass version, so I can't swear it works the same on Steam, but I'd be very surprised if they were stricter.

I've got a bunch of mods to recommend for PC players: DLSS & XeSS Bridge: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/196 This one replaces FSR with DLSS or XeSS for if you have an RTX or Intel card. It gave me a 5% performance boost right off the bat, without changing any settings, just because DLSS can run in hardware while FSR was having to run in software. Neutral LUTs: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/323 This one gets rid of the weird color grading a lot of the environments tend to have, massively improves the look of the game imo. As a side benefit, it makes the black of space actually look black, instead of navy blue. Though I do recommend using his suggested modification to increase star brightness back to vanilla levels (or higher, I cranked mine way up to 500, vanilla is 110, I would have gone higher but above 500 you start to get weird flashing artifacts). Smooth UI: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/270 This one replaces the UI elements that normally run at 30 fps (the ship reticle, some of the menus, etc) with versions that run at up to 120 fps instead. Really makes the experience feel smoother. QoL ini tweaks: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/381 Just a few nice Quality of Life tweaks you can make to the ini, pick and choose which ones you want. Quick & Clean Main Menu: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/418 This one skips all the intro stuff so you launch straight into the main menu, and also gets rid of some of the main menu clutter, like the Message of the Day. Just nice. Value to Weight Ratio Sort: https://www.nexusmods.com/starfield/mods/476 Makes one of your inventory sort options the item's value-to-weight ratio, so you can figure out what's best to hang onto and what's best to dump when you get over encumbered. And finally, last but definitely not least, I recommend using SpecialK for anyone with an HDR display. The game uses Windows Auto-HDR rather than native HDR, and it's fine, but SpecialK can inject HDR and does a better job. Basic instructions for setting it up and download link: https://wiki.special-k.info/SpecialK/Global Instructions for getting HDR working: https://wiki.special-k.info/en/HDR/Retrofit The main stable version doesn't work with Starfield right now, you need to update it to the nightly one from the Discord. There are instructions on doing that in the first link. Enjoy!

Starfield! It's pretty good.

I actually refunded it cause I hit a wall with the first boss and hadn't really been having a ton of fun (it was fine) up to that point, so I didn't feel invested enough to keep beating my head against the wall to get through it.

My wife loved Moonlighter, but it wasn't for me either. For what it's worth, I think Valhalla is widely regarded as the worst of the nu-style Assassin's Creed games.

You can get a month of game pass and then get the $30 upgrade to the premium edition for early access...

Red Matter This is a VR walking sim/mystery game that starts off pretty promising, but I don't think really lives up to its potential, and then the end is kind of a cop-out. The space base you're exploring is really cool though, with a faux-soviet aesthetic, and a really strong sense of place. I definitely felt like I was there, so that was cool. But overall, I felt like the beginning is a lot stronger than the end, and ultimately I felt let down by it. I'd recommend checking it out if you find a sale for a few dollars, but not otherwise. Grade: C

Same.

It's way better, the screen is much sharper and the tracking is flawless, none of the drift I would sometimes get with PSVR. Also, the lack of cable (when I want) is super nice.

Astro Bot Rescue Mission I actually beat this on PSVR last week before I got my Quest. It's super good. Easily the best 3D platformer I've played that didn't have Mario in the title, and pretty high up there even once you include those. The whole thing is just so charming, the controls feel great, the levels, while linear, are very dynamic. It's just a really nice game. Grade: A+ Batman: Arkham VR This one I did play on Quest. It's really cool, as far as it goes, but it's extremely short. You get a grappling hook, a taser, and batarangs, and I don't think I even used the taser once. There's only two scenes that even involved enemies at all, one was entirely scripted and the other I threw a single batarang to end it. Don't get me wrong, what's there is quite good, but there's almost nothing there. I'm glad I only paid $4 for it. Grade: C The Last Clockwinder This is a fun little VR indie puzzle game. You're fixing this giant machine, and you can record your own actions for a few seconds and it sets a robot guy on a loop repeating what you did. So for instance, you might need to cut a fruit off a stalk, combine it with another fruit, and then put it in a press. So you record yourself cutting the fruit off one plant, and tossing it toward another plant. Then you go over to the other plant, record yourself catching the fruit, sticking it to another one, and tossing it toward the press, etc. Your little robot clones repeat your actions on an infinite loop, it can get pretty complex and be immensely satisfying to watch. It's kind of got a Zachtronics vibe, where you can solve a given puzzle in 10 minutes, and then spend another hour and half optimizing that solution, or just call it good enough an move on. It's also fun to be able to see the little quirks of your own movements in your recordings. I have a couple minor complaints, like the gravity isn't Newtonian, so different objects will take different arcs when thrown at the same speed and direction, which can make aiming throws frustrating, but nothing that really detracts much from the overall experience. Grade: A-

I can see that. I was just appreciating that it's not beating me over the head with how metaphorical its premise is like every other indie puzzle game I've played recently.

3 VR games, surprising no one I imagine.

How do you jailbreak it?!

Meta Quest 2 I've been playing Astro Bot Rescue Mission on PSVR (which is a damn good game) and it's been making me think about how cool VR really is, but I've become increasingly aware of the limitations of PSVR. I considered getting a PSVR2, but ultimately decided to go with this because it's substantially cheaper, has nearly as good a screen, and will work with my PC so there's a lot bigger library to draw from.

Chicory: A Colorful Tale and Hue Both of these just weren't really grabbing me for whatever reason. Hue has a neat concept but the execution just wasn't there, I wasn't having fun and it does the mind-bending indie puzzler thing of having a disembodied voice talk at you about all the deep metaphorical ramifications of its central conceit. I'm so over that trope, and the gameplay wasn't there to make me persevere through it like with something like Superliminal. Chicory actually did have me at first, it's cute and doesn't rub your face in the message it's trying to communicate. The problem with this game is it's just too long for how repetitive it is. After chapter 4 of 10, which marked the fourth time doing more or less the same thing, and with no indication the remaining 6 chapters would be any different, I just lost all motivation to continue. I've heard lots of good things about this one, so presumably it's for somebody, just not me.

Venba This game is super short, like an hour and a half long, but it's great. It's a little story about a Tamil family who have immigrated to Canada, told around food. It's neat and very heartfelt and I highly recommend it. Grade: A+

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Armistice This is the last expansion, and it follows on from the previous one. It's kind of a let down, tbh, it just ends with no real culmination, and the story reasons from Ghost Fleet Offensive that excused the lack of a strategy layer are gone again, so it's back to just being frustrating. It did have some good character moments, and as far as the combat goes it's the same as ever, but it just was not a suitable finale for this game. Grade: C-

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Ghost Fleet Offensive This expansion keeps the reduced strategic layer from the previous expansion, but this time there are story reasons why it makes sense so it's less galling. Also, there are spoiler things that mitigate some of my other complaints, but obviously I'm not going to go into those here. Suffice to say it is an improvement over Resurrection, though without the grand strategy aspect it doesn't reach the same highs as the first season did. Grade: B On to Armistice, the last one!

Battlestar Galactica Deadlock: Resurrection This is the second major campaign expansion, and sadly the changes they've made I'm not a fan of. The biggest one is they've gotten rid of the whole grand strategy layer. Now, instead of managing a war across the colonies, occupying/fortifying planets, positioning fleets, etc, there's a much more reduced interface. You still manage fleets and officers, but there's not war map, you just send individual fleets on individual missions instead. It really loses something. The other thing is that most of the cast from the first "season" (base game through Sin & Sacrifice) is gone, replaced by a bunch of boring dudes with bad voice acting. I understand the story reasons for why that happened, but the game does suffer for it. Finally, the story is a bit of a letdown as well, it doesn't really go anywhere, and doesn't have nearly the impact of Sin & Sacrifice. That said, there are two more expansions left, and this one does set up some stuff that could be interesting if it pans out well, so hopefully it's really just the first part of a 3-part story and the rest redeems it. The core tactical gameplay is still there, and still as good as ever, but the package as a whole really feels like a letdown. Grade: C

The Expanse: A Telltale Series Been looking forward to this one, just was waiting to make sure that nuTelltale didn't shit the bed, and early reviews are pretty positive (around 80) so I snagged it.