https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esoteric_Ebb

Such a fun game. Its dnd like.

...after work today it will be deltarune. Looking forward to that.

I don't know. I have a vague state of being this week, so I really don't know.

I finally got Cyberpunk since it was on sale and been playing it on my Steam Deck. I’m only a few hours in but I’m blown away by how pretty and performant the game is.

I typically scoff at AAAs, especially after CP77’s initial release, but they seem to have smoothed out quite a lot and filled out missing chunks. I can see myself sinking the next few weeks of free time into this one.

Luigis Mansion

I finally got around to 3ds.hack.guide and started playing LM on the 2DS. The controls take a bit if getting used to but it's still a great game.

Balatro

I finished my first run yesterday but still have lots to discover :)

I never got to finish Randal’s Monday when it launched, so picking it up now again after many years.

I just finished Avowed yesterday. I give it an OK 6/10.

Visuals and exploration were top notch. The music was fairly forgettable. The story was OK... IMO it had too much speaking in metaphors to be coherent at times. One of the companions was cool, I didn't really like the others. The ending of the story was very abrupt and followed by a huge dump of written exposition.

The combat felt pretty good (I played wand wizard) but got old as the game went on as there weren't many new abilities or gear from mid to late game. The gear upgrade system was survival game level shit... open chests for 60hrs to get mats to upgrade. The gear itself was mostly pretty boring stat boosts. Unique gear is just better making all other gear useless. The uniques don't have particularly interesting effects.

I'll remember the world and the general world building fondly but not much else. Hopefully if there is an Avowed 2, the gear and ability systems will get more fleshed out. If you're gonna try it out, I think it's worth it on sale.

Next up is Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time. So far i've spent 1.5hrs on character creation and getting the game to look good with a decent framerate with the help of OptiScaler.

Edit: I actually ditched Optiscaler now. Using Proton-GE I added the flag PROTON_FSR4_UPGRADE=1 to the Steam launch options and it works great. Along with some tweaking of the graphics settings this got rid of some flickering/textural/lighting issues I had (i7-9700k & RX9070).

I've had a couple of weeks where I've been in a real gaming rut. I guess part of it is the World Cup taking up a lot of time and brain space, but it's not solely that. I've just not really been able to get into any game at all recently. I've played a couple of hours of Lost Odyssey but it hasn't hooked me. I also feel a bit fuzzy in the head and lacking the focus to commit to a hundred+ hour JRPG. I played a bit of Splinter Cell: Double Agent on Xemu Xbox emulator but I'm not quite feeling it. I don't know what I'm in the mood for, maybe I'm just not in a gaming mood at all. But... I feel like there is a hole in my life I want to fill with a game, I just can't find the one to fit the shape of it. Eh, I guess I'll just keep scrolling my backlog, I'm bound to find something eventually...

Playing some arcade-inspired modern-retro stuff and enjoying it. Not sure which I like the most of my pickups, but as a recommendation Freddy Farmer has an OK amount of content and challenge for a game I paid €2 for.

I'm still playing Quantum Break and Cronos: The New Dawn. A couple of technical issues have slowed me down a bit.

I'm mid-chapter 4 on Quantum break and I had to restart it yesterday because the game bugged and I fell through a broken bridge and didn't die when I should have and the game autosaved right there, leaving me with no way of getting out without dying, which took me back there again. I saw the Night Springs easter egg in the beginning of the chapter, pretty funny.

In Cronos I was having trouble with

spoiler

an ambush in the steelworks

that was being made even more fun with the help of my dying XBOX Series controller. The USB-C port was dying and I had to hold the controller in a very specific position to keep it connected, but sometimes even the vibration disconnected it, and it sometimes took a couple of seconds for the game to register the controller disconnected. The triggers get stuck while pushing them most of the time now, which made charging shots a unique experience. The extra tension was not welcome. I finally bought a new controller (8bitdo Ultimate 2) and yesterday I was able to get past that section, but it still took me a couple of tries.

I'm playing Heretic. Because it's always installed and it's a quick way to have fun and unplug the mind.

I played Fable: Anniversary last week and finished a good playthrough. I started Fable 2 a few days ago, and I just finished the Spire. Once I finish 2, I'll start a new game on Fable 3, which I still kinda love even though it was incredibly rushed and you can definitely tell while playing.

I'm working on the initial premise and background details for my role-play focused playthrough of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly so I decided to take a break from that for a now. Well, mostly - I'm still adding mods and tweaking the numbers so I jump in from time to time to test things out. Proper gaming sessions however are on hold until I'm ready to start from scratch.

Mod list got another boost since last week, here's how it look right now:

Updated mod list

• AlifePlus - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on general NPC behaviour.
• AlifeTactics - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC combat tactics.
• AlifeGuard - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC cleanup.
• AlifeBalance - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC respawn management.
• (New) AmmoCheck Enhanced - animated ammo check + secondary reload type (faster then normal but you drop replaced mag).
• (New) Animated Campfire Ignition - pretty self explanatory.
• Anomaly Feminine Player Audio - more consistent audio quality for LASS. Used it from the start but forgot to mention it before.
• Anomaly Notebook - adds an in-game journal you can use to write your own notes. It's kind of janky to use but it works.
• Anomaly: Real Distant Mutants Sounds - fixes broken mutant noises that suppose to play at certain distance ranges.
• (New) Arszi's Mutant Bleeding - pretty self explanatory.
• Arti and RavenAscendants Mags Redux - detailed magazine and ammo management.
• Beloved Photo - a simple immersion addon which allows you to use an otherwise junk item to look at it, that's it.
• Blindsides Weapon Reanimation and Rebalance - dependency for other stuff.
• Boomsticks and Sharpsticks - dependency for other mods, improved weapon animations are a nice bonus.
• (New) Camera Reanimation Project - I.N.E.R.T.I.A. - more reactive and smoother camera behaviour.
• (New) Campfire Cooking - allows you to roast meat on campfires, without the need for cooking sets. The end result isn't as good (well, that's configurable) but it can help in a pinch.
• (New) Cordon early-game tweaks + easier Fanatic training - tweaks to week 1 difficulty in Cordon and change to the tutorial quest (it makes no sense to make it a two person excursion to hunt a family of boars, especially with Stalker's AI).
• (New) Dark signal audioscape: Anomalies and blowouts - improved sounds for anomalies and blowouts.
• (New) Dark signal audioscape: Mutants - improved mutant sounds.
• Dark signal weapon soundscape - improved ambiance sounds, dependency for other mods.
• Decreased Bush Hearing Distance - NPCs can't hear you walking through bushes from the other side of the map.
• Dialogue Expanded Expanded - more NPC dialogue (direct, PDA messages etc). Had to do some manual merging with this one due to the conflict with LASS and fix some incorrect characters caused by different encoding, I think? I also left a ton more cause I was too lazy to go through all of the issues.
• (New) Dodge System - exactly what it says, a simple weight and stamina based dodge system.
• (New) Dynamic Reload Speeds - dependency for AmmoCheck Enhanced.
• (New) Dynamic Time-based Tonemap Extended - adds dynamic image tone adjustments based on time of day.
• (New) Early geiger warning - pretty self explanatory. Vanilla warnings are pretty useless since they happen right before you step into the radiation zone, leaving little to no time to react.
• (New) Even More Hideout Furniture - more items for Hideout Furniture.
• Food, drug and drinks animations - pretty self explanatory.
• FDDA Enhanced Animations - Food and Drinks - animation improvements for the above.
• (New) Fixed Vanilla Models & Textures - model and texture fixes for characters.
• He's with me - prevents friendly factions from attacking your companions, even if they are from opposing force. Not sure if I'll stick with this one but it's on for now.
• (New) Hideout Furniture - allows you to make proper hideouts with placeable stashes, light sources etc.
• (New) Hideout Furniture Expansion - more placeable items for the above.
• HTS Bars - hunger and thirst status bars. For whatever reason base Anomaly doesn't show them even though both are tracked and affect gameplay experience (I don't mind the latter but I like to have information about such things).
• HUD icons time - displays remaining time for status effect icons on the HUD.
• (New) Improved Gestures Tool - allows you to play NPC animations (sitting or laying down, leaning on stuff, various actions etc). Purely for immersion.
• Instant Tooltip+ - pretty self explanatory.
• Inventory Anrifreeze - lazy loading for in-game containers, helps with the hitching when opening things with lots of items.
• (New) Keep Crafting Window Open - pretty self explanatory.
• LASS (check full mod name) - female player character.
• LASS Population Addon - adds female stalkers to the NPC pool.
• Ledge Grabbing / Mantling - adds a simple climbing/mantling system to the game.
• (New) Meadow terrain material mask fix - pretty self explanatory.
• Michikos Weather Revamp Revised - more natural look for all weather conditions (bright and colourful for clear skies, dark and moody for rain etc) and restores moving clouds to some of them. Also comes with an option for dynamic wind behaviour (changes based on the weather and location).
• Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Bottled Water Adjusted** - change number of uses for mineral water from 3 to 5, restores the same amount of thirst (just divided by 5).
• Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Talk to Everyone** - as the name suggests, it allows you to talk to every NPC instead of just team leaders.
• MSBS Grot - cool gun that doesn't really appear in games often (ARMA 3 and Girls' Frontline are the only titles I can think of right now).
• (New) New Walk & Run Animation - pretty self explanatory.
• New Zone Mutants can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• New Zone NPC's can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
• NPC Weapon Jamming - pretty self explanatory.
• Overheat Gunsmoke - restores Anomaly's bugged feature of gun barrels letting off smoke after lots of shooting.
• (New) Pre-Blowout Murder - adds an early warning system and tension builder in the form of crows populating the sky right before blowouts.
• (New) Remove "(BaS)"/"(BaS+Van)" label from "Boomsticks and Sharpsticks" - pretty self explanatory.
• Sickhowl's Grass Tweaks - more lush version of vanilla grass grass and trees with little to no performance impact.
• S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC - Soundscape Overhaul for Anomaly - improved ambiance sounds. I'm a bit mixed on this one - on one hand a lot of the new sounds add quite a bit to the atmosphere, on the other some changes (especially in regards to fake mutant noises) act pretty much as sound pollution, making it harder to react to real threats (in a bad way).
• Sascha's S-40 Sirens - period and region appropriate siren sounds for emissions.
• Simple FPS Monitor - pretty self explanatory, useful for tweaking my graphics settings.
• (New) Skies Redux - prettier skyboxes.
• (New) Sleep restores health - pretty self explanatory though I did change the default HP restoration from 3% per hour of sleep to 1% since I want to use it as a minor bonus rather than an intended way of healing.
• (New) Sorting Plus - type based item sorting.
• Stealth - bunch of tweaks to the stealth and detection system.
• (New) TB's 475 New Stash Locations - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) TB's Angry Chimera Growls - new audio cues for Chimeras.
• (New) TB's Bugged Stashes Fix - removes unreachable and bugged stashes from in-game use.
• Tactical Movement Speed - change movement speed depending on weapon status (holstered, lowered, drawn, aimed).
• (New) Thirst Blur Tweak - removes the annoying blur effect from the first (safe) stage of thirst.
• (New) Transition between locations without confirmation - pretty self explanatory.
• (New) Weapon Cover Tilt - makes player raise their weapon when standing close to a cover.
• Weighted Probability Weather Manager - improvements to the weather selection system.
• xlibs - dependency for other mods.

---

Since I'm taking a break from Stalker, I decided to use this opportunity to jump back into The Elder Scrolls Online. My time with the game has been... fine. Harder combat is cool and all but everything else?

I'm trying to follow the quests (both local and main story ones) to give myself some goals but the whole thing is pretty boring to be honest. It's not that writing is terrible or anything like that, it's just I really hate being the chosen one. I'm SO BORED of this position it's difficult to get invested into anything that's happening in the story. "You're special" - yay... (๑ - ᆺ -)

I dunno, maybe if I played with a group I could feel better by acting as an unimportant support character but as it is now, I'm just going through the motions. Run around, follow the quests, kill some boring bad guys, rinse and repeat. I don't think classic MMOs are for me any more.
I thought about trying Skyrim multiplayer instead since that's more role-playing focused (including non-combat roles) but that requires joining project's discord server which is an instant "no, thanks" for me.

I'm going through a bit of a rough patch right now which affects my motivation to some extent but even in better circumstances my feelings towards the game weren't much different than now. Time to browse through my library again.

I fired up Stellaris and I'm kinda annoyed at how much has changed since I last played. Like you don't even have the FTL options any more. I specifically wanted to use the gates this time and was confused as to when and where you're asked to choose that stuff; looked it up and found it's not a thing anymore. Along with a few other fun things I loved about the game at launch.

I don't suppose anyone knows of any mods that return some of those things back to how the game was when it first came out, do they?

Batman Arkham knight

Dungeon Munchies!

still going with sto. I like finding little tweaks to my build. ugh though some new ground things are brutal. want to do champs more but they changed stuff and im going to have to do a lot of respeccing and deciding how it goes into my characters story.

Factorio again. Space Exploration mod is fun and grindy

Gunfire Reborn: It's a cartoony rogue-like FPS where each character has different powers and there are lots of unique weapons and power ups. Fun for casual play in short bursts or longer if you like.

Been playing Tomodachi Life on 3ds for the first time. It's such a ridiculous game (in a good way)

And I'm still playing Fallout 76 but after 370 hours in the past few months, I'm starting to get burnt out on it ngl

Back on Guild Wars 2 working towards that final piece of Obsidian light armor after Cassette Beasts released its week-long vice grip on me (10/10, highly recommend).

For once, the Steam Summer Sale starts when I get paid instead of when I'm between paychecks and broke as shit, so I might grab Deltarune and some other stuff that looks good.

Subnautica: Below Zero, the underrated and I would argue superior semi-sequel to Subnautica (not referring to the recent Subnautica 2 Early Access game):

https://store.steampowered.com/app/848450/Subnautica_Below_Zero/

And another run of Dave the Diver in prep for the recent DLC drop:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1868140/DAVE_THE_DIVER/