Like everyone else, I’ve been playing Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree. It is more challenging than the base game so far, but not dramatically so. The game gives you plenty of tools to deal with it, including situational loadouts to give you more damage or defense depending on what’s giving you trouble. Maybe a lot of people got too complacent with a single build that handled it all in the base game.
When I wasn’t playing that I was playing Fallout 2. It’s continued to be just what the doctor ordered after watching the Fallout TV show, but now I really feel bottlenecked by my gear. I don’t know if guns exist in the game that will do enough damage to take down some of the tankier enemies I’ve found, but if they do, I definitely can’t afford them. I haven’t even managed to find any armor to equip over my starting Vault 13 uniform, and there’s always a huge money sink for certain unique items or quests that eat into my savings just as I became a thousand-aire. I’ll have to find some ways to earn more caps quickly.
And when I wasn’t playing either of those, I was playing more Skullgirls, but I’m always playing Skullgirls, so that’s basically the free space on my bingo card.
Is Skullgirls still alive? Is there much of a player base?
There’s a revolving door of hundreds of players in the community at any given time. You can find a game in quick match with absolutely no skill-based matchmaking at most times of the day, so it’s a total dice roll in that regard, or you can hit up the Skullgirls or Mix Masters Discord servers to find one at your skill level. Hunter Half Hands runs beginner tournaments, there are the Get Gr8 events to help learn the game, and there’s a community danisen league to fill in for the game’s lack of ranked mode that runs about 3 times per week in North America. This year, at Combo Breaker, the bracket was larger for Skullgirls than it was for Dragon Ball FighterZ. As far as I’m concerned, it’s more alive than I’d need it to be, but I’m happy it’s this alive.
Monster Hunter World: The girlfriend and I are tearing through Iceborne content
City Skyline 2: I still need to play it since the update today
I’m glad you’re enjoying Fallout 2, it’s probably my all time favourite Fallout! Are you playing with the Restoration Project?
I know exactly what you mean by that early game bottleneck. FO2 can be rough in the early stages between lack of equipment and the comically unbalanced random encounters. It usually swings the other way once you can survive big encounters and sell the looted weapons after.
How far have you gotten?
No, I’m playing with the one that isn’t labeled “classic” in my GOG library. As far as I can tell, it may have cleaned up how that game interfaces with modern displays and maybe not much else. I’m level 7, and I just got to NCR with my posse of three companions. I had some encounters in the Wanamingo Mines and Vault 15 that wiped the floor with me, so I left them for now, though maybe with some guns I just picked up, Vault 15 would go better at this point. I’d love to get some better armor, but I have yet to find any in drops from enemies.
From looking at the GOG store it doesn’t seem to be bundled with any patch, which is actually unusual for GOG. If you’re interested I heartily recommend Restoration Project, Updated or RPU for short. It’s a combined unofficial patch/cut content restoration that’s very vanilla friendly and tidies up a lot of stuff left unfixed in the last official patch.
Yeah those Wanamingos are scary in the early game, definitely a place to come back to later. Armour can be tough to get as it doesn’t typically drop as random loot. There are two leather armours for sale in Klamath I think if you’ve gotten a bit of money now.
The quest bugged out a few times, but with a bit of reloading old saves, I managed to transport some brahmin for about 3k caps, so I think I can afford that armor now.
So, started over with Elden Ring on PS5 (completely different build and play style from my Steam playthrough) in preparation for the DLC, and a new BG3 playthrough on steam deck for breaks at work.
Then got sidetracked because someone mentioned Kingdom Come deliverance somewhere and I noticed it was $3 on PS. Hardcore mode is tough. It would be a lot less painful if I could at least have the compass point north. Navigating forests for hunting is rough. (I could probably use position of the sun? It seems like the kind of thing they’d get right. But it’s a huge pain that even finding a landmark doesn’t make reorienting myself very easy.)
Played a bit of Despotism 3k and it was surprisingly addictive. I forget when or how I got it (probably a bundle), but I enjoyed myself.
I have been trying to avoid buying new games, and I’ve really enjoyed digging through my library.
Instead of jumping on the Elden Ring DLC I’ve continued to be addicted to Esports Godfather to an almost worrying degree.
It’s the clear standout surprise hit of the year for me so far, coming out of absolutely nowhere and ending up being my favourite game in quite a while. It’s a MOBA-themed deckbuilder/autobattler/team management game, and while that sounds like a hot mess it actually plays really well - at least once you get past the initial information overload.
There are lots of fun interactions between cards, items, hero abilities and player abilities which in itself creates great replayability, and constantly changing rulesets keeps things fresh even during a run. The Backpack Battles esque training minigame itself is super fun to optimise when you start getting deep into a run and have more complex blocks to play with.
I heartily recommend it if you like deckbuilders (some passing knowledge of MOBAs might help). It’s only €16 on Steam, and there is a free demo that covers the first couple of hours of a run. I recommend playing with AI difficulty on maximum for both card playing and ban/pick for the best experience (the game is a little too easy by default).
