Game #4 finished this year - Stellar Blade I really enjoyed this. The combat was great. It felt punchy and responsive and, more importantly, fun as well. The story was a bit..predictable and the pacing of the game went out the window in the last 2 hrs with one hard boss fight after another.

Played a bit of the Windrose demo yesterday. It's got a lot of potential. I really like the atmosphere, UI, setting. Combat is basic but still pretty engaging. I don't love the building so far..but it feels like some of the features are being held back for full release. Will play some more today.

I might check out the demo of Windrose today. It's been described as "Pirate Valheim" which sounds great tbh. Survival crafting + pirates is a cool combination as long as each element works well together.

Oh goody..I love laser puzzles 👌😅 There are sections of this game with traversal puzzles and limited combat (ranged abilities only). Without spoiling too much, let's just say the game becomes less a Souls like and more a Dead Space/RE clone. Claustrophobic & creepy sci-fi environments.

I find Stellar Blade's visual cue system a bit difficult to get used to, even after 25 hrs. Mainly because, in combat, if an enemy flashes red it means you CAN block the attack - whereas yellow means dodge. In other games it's usually the opposite because, to me, red means danger GTFO!

Wow, this is a shock. They were such a well respected studio and did some great jobs remaking classic PlayStation games. It's a real shame it's come to an end.

Probably not a good idea to play a Souls like when you're having a bad day and are in a bad mood. I hit a wall with a boss fight in #StellarBlade - 11 attempts and 45 mins later and I'm still no closer to beating the boss. **Minor Spoiler in screenshot below**

Picked up Final Fantasy Tactics & Indiana Jones and the Great circle recently. So, after I finish Stellar Blade they should be the next games I focus on. Although RE9 is out in a week as well. Lots of cool games to play at the moment. Should keep me busy for a while I hope.

More #StellarBlade screenshots. I just completed a really fun boss fight against the Stalker. Not sure how far I am through the game. I'm just enjoying the ride. Some of the optional side bosses are hard as nails so I'll probably come back to them later.

This is a public service announcement.. Play indie games. //Transmission ends ::::

Some thoughts on the 9070XT: - Impressive benchmarks. I game @ 1440p but this card could easily do 4K 60fps in most games - Adrenaline drivers are way better than they used to be - FSR = still not great but the flip side is you don't need it because of how good this gpu is @ native rasterization

This new gpu is a bit of a beast size wise. I think I might need to install the sag bracket at some point. It also has 3xPCI-E power sockets as well Seems pretty powerful. Ran a benchmark of a few games. Cyberpunk 2077 runs at about 80fps @ High/Ultra with Raytracing set to Ultra as well.

Some random pics from my Stellar Blade playthrough. Enjoying the game, even though the boss fights put me on edge. It's part of the fun though 👌😅

So, in a Souls like, when you get a boss down to 1% health and you get greedy and go for the kill..but end up dying yourself.. How do you avoid throwing your controller through the window? Definitely asking for a 'friend' 😅 At least I know it's my error and not the game screwing me.

I'm not one for hype but Crimson Desert looks pretty ambitious with the amount of systems and features it seems to have. I'm not sure it's my thing but it will be interesting to see how the game lands when it finally releases. I got a free code with my gpu so am curious to try it out.

I'm spending Valentine's Day with Eve from Stellar Blade. Now if only I could remember *any* of the controls or the timing for the dodge and parry windows. Not to worry, the camp's have a training mode. "Your camp has no power." Ok, then..I may be gone some time.

Game #3 finished this year - Dark Pictures: Little Hope Hilariously bad horror 'adventure' game. It basically involved walking down a foggy road for most of it with the occasional jump scare/flashback/QTE event. The voice acting sucked and the story was stupid. House of Ashes was much better.

I'm not superstitious but it's Friday the 13th and a few things have already gone wrong today. ..I think I'll install the gpu tomorrow. No point risking any further angst today 😅

Ordered a new graphics card yesterday - a PowerColor 9070XT Red Devil (White) and it arrived like this.. Would it have killed them to put a cardboard box around it? The packaging is already damaged 😔 They agreed to compensate for it, thankfully. But it really shouldn't have been sent like this.

Looks like Konami are making a comeback now. They've reinvigorated the Silent Hill franchise with the 2 remake and Silent Hill f. Now there's another new SH game coming with Townfall. MGS4 will no longer be stuck on PS3 with the announcement of Master Collection 2. New Castlevania game too!

Available on Steam you say? Nice.

do people think they remember the initial reviews of F:NV better than i do please be serious www.youtube.com/watch?v=48Tp...

I bought Doom: the Dark Ages but clearly I wasn't paying attention to the specs because it does not run well. It needs 10gb of VRAM to even run at 1440p. I have an 8gb card. I don't really want to play it at 1080p tbh. It doesn't look good at that res and I'm barely getting above 60fps anyway.

I played the Pragmata Sketchbook demo. Thanks to @lycanofchaos.bsky.social for the recommendation. I really liked the gameplay. A unique mix of third person shooting and hacking. It works surprisingly well. Brings a tactical element to the gameplay. It's definitely on my wishlist now.

Game #2 finished this year - Divinity: Original Sin This was long, as expected from a Larian game - 114hrs. It's a good, solid RPG. I really liked the humour and the camaraderie between characters and NPCs. It's something they developed with later games. Decent gameplay too. Well worth playing.

There's a lot of negativity in the world right now. So here's a video of a cat comforting a dog who is feeling lonely. It's very heart warming. Animals can be so empathic. www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWnL...

Ten years ago today we shipped Firewatch. I say this every anniversary but it feels both like a lifetime ago and like it was yesterday. Thank you everyone who played it back then or played it today for the first time. Thank you to everyone on the team, I’m still so proud of what we made.

I'm in the final dungeon of Divinity: Original Sin and, I have to say, despite the game being pretty fun, Act 3 has been a real slog. It's funny because the last 3 Larian games I've played, it feels like they run out of a gas a bit in Act 3 - even BG3 a little, although less so than DOS 1 & 2.

It's misty today where I am so here's a quote from my favourite Bob Marley song: “One of my good friends said, in a reggae riddim, don’t jump in the water if you can’t swim...”

Love this quote. "Not all those who wander are lost" - J.R.R Tolkein.

Resident Evil Requiem comes out in 3 weeks. This is the first big AAA game I'm looking forward to this year. Because it's Resident Evil and I love this franchise. Previews look good as well. I think this is the same team that did the RE2 Remake so I have high hopes for it being good.

I have an urge to play Halo. Time to boot up the MCC and try to finish Halo 2 I think.

I want to take a moment to honor the late Jerry Lawson, the Electronic Engineer who led the design of the 'Fairchild Channel F' console and also designed the FIRST interchangeable game (ROM) cartridges. The game industry wouldn't be what it is today without Jerry's brilliance. (cont..)

I'm nearly 90 hrs into Divinity: Original Sin and this final area of the game is driving me nuts. I think I might need a break from the game because it feels the difficulty spike has gone through the roof. Either that or I'm underleveled.

I saw this on sale on Steam and thought of you @lycanofchaos.bsky.social It's got some good reviews as well :) store.steampowered.com/app/926990/W...

Picked up some new games. All 3 of them cost me less than £7 in total 👍👌 Death's Door is the only one I've played before. Put a few hours in on game pass back in the day. I liked it but then forgot about it until I saw it on sale for 99p!

I think this game is a must purchase for me. I really enjoyed Jusant and hopefully the climbing mechanics are just as good in Cairn, if not better. store.steampowered.com/app/1588550/...

I love it when people arrange to collect an item I'm selling and then cancel at the last minute claiming they "have to work late". Appreciate you wasting my time. Thanks very much!

I'm still annoyed about Ubisoft cancelling the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time remake. The game was done, apparently, and they just canned it. Makes no sense..

I got an achievement in Divinity Original Sin: Enhanced Edition for helping two cats to get married. The Pet Pal perk definitely opens up some interesting quest opportunities and dialogue choices. It's definitely worth investing in.

Honestly, the only Ubisoft IP I care about these days is The Division. I know that franchise has had issues with mismanagement over the years but I hope The Division 3 still ends up getting made and turns out great. There's also the return of the Survival mode for Division 2 which looks promising.

Been playing a lot of the first Divinity: Original Sin (Enhanced Edition). It's a bit weird playing this game after nearly 350 hrs in the sequel. You can see how they improved a lot of the gameplay systems in 2 but the first game has a lot going for it still - especially the humour and characters.

I like the look of Marathon. It's got a cool aesthetic. Lots of splashy colours. Not sure it's going to eat Arc Raiders lunch anytime soon but it might sneak a bite of the sandwich when they're not looking. I doubt I'll play it but - nice trailer 👍 www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbNh...

I hope it's Knack 3

I think I'll take a break from Warframe now. I got to MR10 which is good but I still have 6 nodes left to complete on the Star Chart - one of which is an 80-100 conjunction survival mission. I don't currently have any weapons/mods that would be much use at that level and I don't feel like grinding.

I had a weird bug in Warframe earlier while doing the Undercroft in Duviri. All of my weapons stopped working. And it wasn't caused by enemy abilities or another mechanic because I couldn't get them working at all for the rest of the encounter. I had to just use my frame abilities to get around it.

QTP with 4 games in your backlog! Well, I didn't have much of a backlog until I bought 8 games in a month recently. So now I do 😅 Most of them are indies.

I probably enjoy about 80% of #Warframe. It genuinely has some of the best combat and movement mechanics in any video game I've played. However, it also has some outdated systems and buggy/glitchy encounters that leave me scratching my head at times. Still, it's a better ratio than most AAA games.

"No fucking AI assets" - a reminder that many good publishers that will disqualify any prototype with genAI placeholders, and that using it is at your own peril. Hooded Horse happens to be one of the best publishers out there at the moment, so this is a big one. kotaku.com/hooded-horse...

If you see this, post a vampire that isn't Dracula