Hate to be that guy but there’s an equally bonkers and wonderful game called Scarface: The World is Yours that is also a 3rd person action game with a dedicated swear/middle finger button. And it would tell you which body part you shot a bad guy in, including individual nuts. A GTA clone that, for a teen boy, totally…

I’ve played over 100 hours of Phasmophobia, and am nearly level 200. My number of hoops rests at 666. I bought VR almost expressly to make it scary for me again. In my view, it’s one of the greatest co-op experiences ever made. Unfailingly varied and terrifying stuff that actually feels like you’re being haunted. If…

Don’t beat yourself up.  Knowing that you don’t have to be the fastest runner, just a bit faster than the slowest, is comforting wisdom.

Backlogged: No Time for You Old Man-annan Edition!

I’ve watched a little bit of Phasmophobia, and from what I gather, I keep missing the most important part, where they actually get the ghost to materialize and positively identify it. So I’ve largely just seen an increasingly agitated ne-ghost-iator start off by saying the ghost’s name and asking, “Are you here?” and…

Great writeup - I’ve only distantly heard about this game but it reminds me vaguely of the team dynamics in Dead by Daylight? Not sure if the two are otherwise that similar, but DbD did let you suss out which of your buddies was primarily in it for themselves and who was a team player, haha.

This sounds almost good enough to get me over my dislike of co-op.

First up, I’m still playing through Inkle’s Arthurian “narrative rogue-like” Pendragon. I went through a run at “melodramatic” difficulty (which I think is the 4^th easiest, it’s the highest I’ve unlocked), with Sir Kay as my main character this time:

This weekend is for finally sinking my teeth into Crash Bandicoot 4, after migraines robbed me of the last coupla weekends. I’m a few levels in so far, and it’s fantastic. The game-feel’s perfect, the levels are gorgeous and the voice acting’s charming and funny. It even leans into the series’ tradition of cartoon…

I feel your pain.

The Talos Principle is great for boundary breaking. After I finished, I used the flying cheat code to zoom around the puzzle areas, it’s a huge amount of fun. There’s also a youtube series devoted to “breaking” the puzzles, often by hopping the walls that are supposed to keep you in the puzzle area.

I’m not a gamer but this sort of thing fascinates me, as well. I’m drawn to anything with a sense of ominous dread and eeriness hanging over it.

This is one of my favorite AVClub articles right here, as it puts words to a feeling that I’ve struggled to express. Especially the bit about the difference between game worlds and cinematic worlds (or other forms of media). Interestingly, it’s arguably only a portion of game worlds too, since 2D environments don’t…

As ever, my video game habit manifested itself in quick micro doses of games played as I slowly, slowly work my way through my backlog. Part of that is that my long-planned/wish-listed/waitlisted/etc. new desktop build looks like it might actually finally fall within my budget this time next week, which is exciting,…

I love going into the areas of games not intentional created for exploration.  I often find it to be a hypnotic and even meditative experience.  That, and I find beauty in corrupted video game art, much like the cover of Kid A.

I’ve only dabbled with jumping out of bounds a few times, but one of my favorites was an area in Final Fantasy XIV where you could enter a different zone without entering the loading screen. This is gone forever now due to the implementation of flying in all A Realm Reborn zones, but you used to be able to sneak out…

At a commenter’s suggestion I picked up The Last Door, and have played through the first two episodes of the “season”. It’s a solid story and none of the puzzles so far have been complete bullshit, so I’ll see where this goes. I am looking at World of Horror, as well, it’s in dev/early access but looks pretty solid…

I finished my replay of all 11 Mega Man games last week, and I’m so glad there are 4 good games after 7, because 7 really is just the one entry in the series I’m never going to adjust to and actually enjoy from start to finish. Even running out of E-tanks in the last level of Mega Man 9 and spending over half an hour…

There’s no requirement to watch every video of every aspect of game making, it’s always allowed to NOT watch behind-the-scenes stuff if you’re not into seeing what goes on in the sausage factory.

When it comes to water related terror, Sunless Sea has a pretty good Conrad quote to set off the game. Something like “the sea has never been an ally to man, at best an accomplice to his recklessness” I think that’s how it goes.