What are ya playin' in 2025? - by henke
WingedKagouti on 18/10/2025 at 08:56
Quote Posted by Harvester
but that guy is a pompous, slimy fratboy-like douchebag who only partially redeems himself at the end.
You make it sound like he was made for the "I can fix him"-crowd.
Tomi on 18/10/2025 at 14:32
Rolled credits on DOOM: The Dark Ages. A power fantasy on par with Saints Row 4 or Prototype. The story was engaging and had some fun twists, even tho the actual storytelling was a bit muddled and I occasionally found myself asking "wait WHY am I doing this?" But then I remembered, no, the Doom Slayer does not ask why, he just rips and tears. I started out the campaign non-committedly but got hooked a few chapters in and ended up really whitling the middle section of the campaign down to the bone, running around hunting for all the secrets, reading a lot of the lore, and generally trying to 100% each chapter, but towards the end boredom set in and just like DOOM 2016 it kinda dragged towards the end. The final 2 chapters were fun and eventful tho and I'm glad I stuck with it. Yeah, good game!I'm at chapter 17 (out of 22 iirc?) right now and the game feels like it's dragging on a bit indeed. It also took a while for the game to really get going, but I'm enjoying this a lot more than I thought I would. :) I still don't care about the chapters where you control the mech-dragon-motorbike-thingy or the giant-titan-fleshy-robots, but the basic gunplay is really good. Having said that, I would have preferred a more old-fashioned way to get ammo and health instead of bashing a random enemy with your fist to get ammo and killing monsters with a specific weapon to get health. I have no idea how it even works, to be honest, but it doesn't feel like a very exciting system. Good to hear that the last two chapters are fun, so at least I have that to look forward to. As much as I've enjoyed DOOM TDA, I kind of want to be done with it already.
I've also been playing
South of Midnight a lot, and wow, this is absolutely great! The controls and the combat mechanics are quite mediocre, but just about everything else is so good that it doesn't matter so much. The story is weird but in the best possible way (and it feels very Psychonauts indeed), the soundtrack is fantastic, and I love the art style. For me South of Midnight is a surprise GOTY contender for 2025!
Tomi on 18/10/2025 at 14:47
Quote Posted by Sulphur
LEGO Voyagers
Like the others said already, that's a great review and an entertaining read. :) LEGO Voyagers sounds like something that I'd enjoy playing with my 6-yo, so I'll be adding this on my wishlist. Having said that, I didn't enjoy
LEGO Builder's Journey (the first game by this studio) all that much, so hopefully Voyagers turns out to be a better game.
Malf on 18/10/2025 at 22:22
Quote Posted by henke
As someone who found Journey and Abzu to be kinda meh, Sword of the Sea was also kinda meh.
Was Flower made by the same people? If so, that's the only one of theirs I've played, but I liked it well enough.
I did however watch an interesting YouTube vidja from Play, Watch, Listen where one of the devs goes into detail about the wave tech in Sword of the Sea, and the bit about blending sand into water was particularly cool:
[video=youtube_share;96Fvvr8DiNw]https://youtu.be/96Fvvr8DiNw?si=1hU_AW0r9rOO7SmA[/video]
henke on 19/10/2025 at 12:00
Replayed Crow Country this weekend. I thought the standard difficulty of my first playthrough was too easy (didn't die once), but playing it on Hard now was... annoying. The combat isn't terribly fun and having to replay chunks of it because I got killed and hadn't saved in a while was a slog. Besides that tho, still a good experience, but if anyone else is eyeing this since it got added to the PS+ collection, I'd say go with standard difficulty.
nicked on 20/10/2025 at 11:29
Quote Posted by henke
Replayed
Crow Country this weekend. I thought the standard difficulty of my first playthrough was too easy (didn't die once), but playing it on Hard now was... annoying. The combat isn't terribly fun and having to replay chunks of it because I got killed and hadn't saved in a while was a slog. Besides that tho, still a good experience, but if anyone else is eyeing this since it got added to the PS+ collection, I'd say go with standard difficulty.
It's more about the excellent story anyway.
henke on 20/10/2025 at 14:57
Yes! And the whole puzzly adventure-game part of the gameplay. I listened to a podcast interview with the devs recently and was surprised to hear how much (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SFB_Games) these lads had done before Crow Country. They made Snipperclips! On Switch! And a series of games called Detective Grimoire? And like a hundred Flash games?
Anyway, speaking of good stories, I've played the first few hours of
Expedition 33. The whole world it presents is very unique and compelling, but, man... I do not like all the fantasy RPG leveling system mumbo jumbo. Luminas? Pictos? I don't give a shit about ANY OF THIS. Tried turning difficulty down to Story-mode but that just makes the fights easier (and more boring) but removes none of the complexity. NO. I don't wanna do this.
Thirith on 20/10/2025 at 15:45
For some reason, whenever I read about Crow Country, I think it's Death's Door. Every time I'm surprised when I look at screenshots of Crow Country and it's an entirely different game.
henke on 24/10/2025 at 17:40
Thirith, dunno if you're a survival horror guy, but you should play Crow Country.
Speaking of horror games, I moved right on to the Silent Hill 2 Remake (tis the season!) It's alright, but 10 hours in it's starting to drag a little. My memory of the original is hazy, but the areas in this feel bigger and more intricate, and looking up the HowLongToBeat times just now confirms it, this is a significantly longer game than the OG. Eeeeehhh... not sure they needed to make it any longer. It's not THAT much fun. :erg:
Thirith on 24/10/2025 at 18:58
Okay, okay, I've added it to my wishlist. Happy? :p
