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Cake day: Jul 09, 2025

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I didn’t pick up any new games this year that I can think of despite how good of a year it’s apparently been for new releases. I almost exclusively play multiplayer games with lots of replay value, so I don’t mind going a few years without a new game. I’ve mostly played a lot of Helldivers 2, Phasmophobia, Remnant: From the Ashes, Risk of Rain 2, Terraria, and Tabletop Simulator.

Risk of Rain 2 in particular has been a lot of fun recently. It got a new DLC about a month ago, so I guess I did technically get something new. It’s easily the best DLC for the game yet, and the new boss fights are a massive step up in quality compared to any others in the game.

The only singleplayer game I’ve been playing a bit of is Minecraft. I picked up GregTech: New Horizons, a minecraft modpack, a bit earlier this year just to see how far in it I could get before getting bored. GT:NH apparently has a ridiculous average completion time of 2,500 hours of active gameplay for experienced solo players, and I have quite literally never touched a tech mod in my life, so I have no delusions about ever actually finishing it. But it’s been fun so far.


And yet, more than a few people were happy to engage with it. Maybe you should take your own advice; not every thought needs to be commented.



God, it’s been years since I’ve done that.

I had Minecraft on the Xbox 360 when I was younger and would get up to all kinds of shenanigans with my friends, usually involving TNT. Like building the most impressive boat or castle we could, and then launching TNT at each other to see who could destroy all of the other players’ cannons first. If we had 4 players, each team would have a bowman trying to slow down the person shooting TNT.

Once creative mode was added it was a game changer, but even before that point we would dupe hundreds of stacks of TNT with a glitch I can’t remember (though I do recall it involved a furnace).


Project Zomboid really does have a surprising amount of depth to it. It’s also got a really impressive modding scene. Like, in this particular instance, cutting off limbs and prosthetics are from a mod. In the vanilla game, once you’ve been bitten, you’ll die soon after no matter what you do.


I was also a big fan of the gear overhaul initially, until I saw how it was actually implemented and really came to dislike it. I just don’t see who it’s here for. It screws over newer players who are stuck with really poor gear, making the already punishing learning curve the game has significantly worse, and it screws over any experienced players by punishing anybody that actually wants to interact with the level prestige mechanic once they do get themselves to level 100. Meanwhile anybody who doesn’t prestige just permanently has even better gear than what previously existed and never needs to worry about the other tiers. And since there’s no reward for prestiging aside from a cosmetic badge, why should you interact with the system at all? Overall it was a poorly thought out and unbalanced update.

While some updates haven’t been great and some things desperately need to be reworked, I’ve still been really enjoying the game. Once you get to around level 40 and unlock all the original gear, you can largely pretend the gear overhaul never happened. The newer maps and map reworks are awesome (aside from the new-ish lighthouse map point hope, that thing sucks), and I don’t play frequently enough to get too bored of the basic gameplay loop. Playing on nightmare where you only get 2 evidence helps since it adds a bit more strategy to each round than just getting 3 pieces of evidence and leaving. The newly reworked media evidence is pretty fun too, where you get rewarded for getting videos and pictures of unique forms of evidence rather than taking 10 pictures of a pile of salt that somebody stepped in.


I love the deogen. I was just playing phasmophobia last night and encountered one or two of them. I love that it flips the game on its head. Quite literally every other ghost wants you to hide somewhere, usually in a tight spot like a locker or behind a cabinet so the ghost can never get line of sight on you. But for the deogen that’s the exact opposite of what you should be doing, and if you don’t know that or don’t know it’s a deogen before it hunts, you’re screwed. Nothing gets my heart pumping like hearing a ghost rapidly running towards my exact location like Usain Bolt as I realize what it is and desperately try to escape my hiding place before it traps me.

Fun thing about the deogen is that it’s the second fastest ghost in the entire game, and then it slows down to be the slowest ghost when it’s extremely close to you. So you can’t safely hide anywhere, no matter how far away from it you are. By the time it’s near you, the deogen becomes slow enough to out-walk, but if you manage to back yourself into a corner? Good luck.


Honestly. Games that came out after late 2001 and have less than 5 weapons have no business getting sequels. That said, I feel like we’re ignoring some more important criteria here. Like the amount of main characters named John. Gears of War didn’t have any! Can you believe that??


Wow, I just got hit with a wave of nostalgia looking at those PureBDCraft inspired textures.


It’s just one of those years. There were a lot of great games that came out this year.


Different strokes for different folks and all that. I personally couldn’t stand The Witcher 3, Red Dead Redemption 2, or Baldur’s Gate 3 despite them being constantly praised.


Reach is my favorite Halo game. To be completely honest, I always wanted more from the story telling in most Halo games, as you’re usually just a one man army with nobody else to care about. Sure, maybe there’s some high stakes overarching story, and you often have some regular soldiers helping you out, but it’s not something I ever really think about during a mission. I’m just here to shoot aliens, and my allies are meat shields who will not be missed. Which is fine, but when I played Reach for the first time and watched characters I came to like actually die, I loved it. It’s funny too, because in the lore Master Chief is a competent commander that prefers fighting with a squad, while Noble Six is a total lone wolf that always fights alone, and yet their games play opposite that.

I didn’t want him taking the sniper so i threw myself off the ledge to stop him from getting it.

I love this. Every time I play Halo with somebody, this type of shit goes down. Somebody does something and then suddenly it’s just a free for all, and by the end of it, we’re more worried about fucking the other person over than whatever we originally wanted to do.


Minecraft on peaceful difficulty isn’t violent at all. Hostile monsters don’t spawn, and while you can kill a pig or something, there is no reason or encouragement to since you don’t get hungry. As far as aesthetically ugly… that’s entirely subjective. I highly doubt your kids will mind how it looks (I sure didn’t). In fact, I loved the blocky style when I was a kid. Reminded me of legos.


Depends entirely on how you interpret the question. It could be read as “What’s a recent game you’ve tried…” (as in, a recently released game that you tried), as you’ve done, or “What’s a recent game you’ve tried…” (as in, a game you’ve tried recently) as the person you’re responding to did.

I think either interpretation is fine since the title doesn’t actually clarify either way.


I had a somewhat similar experience. I was playing Phasmphobia just last night as well, and we planned to play a bunch, but an emergency popped up and my friend had to go so we only played the one game. We hopped on Sunny Meadows as a nice warm up before hitting the harder maps like Tanglewood (not that we ever got around to that).

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This was the first attempted hunt in the game. TWENTY FOUR MINUTES in! We had the ghost pinned down to either shade or deogen before even getting any evidence, with our suspicion getting stronger every minute it refused to hunt. We eventually got spirit box evidence, which all but confirmed deogen. And sure enough it was a deogen, which was a dream come true on Sunny Meadows. Easiest (and possibly slowest) $3,000 perfect investigation I’ve ever gotten.


A big part of the appeal of Hollow Knight and Hades are their respective art styles. They are both genuinely gorgeous games, and it really improves the experience. I would rather open up Hades again instead of, say, TBoI for exactly that reason, despite my thinking that TBoI is the better roguelike.

Admittedly I can’t bring myself to enjoy Hollow Knight at all, but that’s just an issue of me disliking metroidvanias.


That’s because you’re playing it wrong. You see, at it’s core Skyrim is actually a puzzle game you play on the Nexus Mods website. You spend 30+ hours carefully researching, building, and tweaking the perfect pack of mods, only to immediately run out of interest in playing Skyrim once you’re finally done. The actual Skyrim installation only exists to check if you solved the puzzle correctly and it runs.


It has nothing to do with the slogan. In fact, it stopped being the game’s slogan by gen 3 (look up Crystal’s box art and then look up any game’s box art after that like Sapphire). Catching them all is just a fun side objective completionists can do, similar to collecting all the achievements in a game. I’ve also collected all of the creatures in other creature collectors like cassette beasts or monster sanctuary because I find it fun, not because some 25 year old slogan told me to.


I don’t think I would call HD2 an extraction shooter. I mean sure, you shoot things and try to extract, but for the same reason HD2 isn’t a RPG just because you can roleplay or an RTS just because you need to make strategic decisions in real time, there’s a lot more to these genres that HD2 doesn’t include. Hell, technically you don’t even need to extract, as the only thing successfully extracting gives you is any samples you find… completing the mission counts as a win regardless.


Oh no that’s not a screenshot of Terraria, that’s actually a photo of me standing next to my computer after I tried running Helldivers.


For The Worthy and Get Fixed Boi (which is just all the vanilla seeds including FTW combined) are both difficult in a different way from something like Infernum. While Infernum completely reworks boss fights, often feeling like a completely different fight all together, FTW is more like Vanilla+. Like, many of the bosses just attack faster and more often, summoning more minions and doing more damage. At most a boss might get a new attack or two, like skeletron summoning dark casters to shoot at you throughout the fight and the brain of cthulhu flipping you upside-down during its second phase. I should stress though, it’s not easy by any means. Dark casters interrupting your flow during an already sped-up and beefed-up skeletron fight is surprisingly difficult. It’s kinda similar to Infernum mode King Slime, where you need to dodge the slime, crystal, and ninja simultaneously by the third phase (though maybe not quite as hard).

Get Fixed Boi especially is a pretty interesting experience. Unlike most mods, it’s got a kinda anti-QoL vibe, making your life more difficult throughout the entire game rather than just during boss fights. Darkness kills you, bunnies explode, you spawn in the underworld, the entire surface is corrupted with spawn rates cranked up, the dungeon is underground, among other things. I’d recommend giving it a shot at some point.

I know Calamity has support for both seeds. It actually has support for FTW + Rev/Death Mode, and additional content for Legendary mode (i.e. Master + FTW) + Rev/Death. I don’t know if Infernum supports them, but I’d be willing to bet Legendary Death mode would be pretty similar in difficulty to Infernum, though I haven’t tried it myself just yet.


But dying just 30 times to a boss? Took me about 170 attempts to kill King Slime in Infernum, after reworking my arena multiple times. I’m very bad at the game.

I get that completely lol. I’ve definitely fought bosses before that put me in the hundreds. Hell, I remember when Terraria 1.4 first came out with the “for the worthy” secret seed and I tried that out on master mode. I must have died well over 100 times to the brain of cthulhu in that seed, which is crazy because it’s usually one of the easiest bosses imo. For the first time in my life I had to set up a damn vicious mushroom farm because I was shredding through those spawners. And I was playing vanilla! The wall of flesh was equally challenging and annoying to get spawners for. I was using melee, and this was before the huge melee buff that came in 1.4.4.

Funny enough, my current playthrough is a bit easier than it should be thanks to the lag I mentioned. My options are either turn frame skip to subtle, and have my game move at like 66% of it’s normal speed (allowing me to react easier), or set it to on and watch as bosses use insane attacks without warning because the telegraph frames got skipped. Bit unfortunate, but I can’t really experience some bosses fully, and I can’t really do anything about it. That’s the main reason I’d recommend using Infernal Eclipse of Ragnarok over Homeward Ragnarok.


I prefer to use mods that make the game far more difficult, like Fargo’s Masochist mode or the Infernum mode mod. Sometimes I’ll just use vanilla’s Legendary mode if a mod has support for that. I’ll usually pick one of those three and then I’ll sprinkle in a larger compatible mod like The Stars Above along with a ton of QoL mods. I rarely mix more than one or two large mods, as they don’t really tend to play well together generally.

Currently though, I’m playing through an ultra-modded modpack I found recently called “Infernal Eclipse of Ragnarok”, which is very different from what I normally do. It’s a mod made to allow Calamity (plus add-ons like Wrath of the Gods and Catalyst), Thorium, Secrets of the Shadows, & Consolaria to all work work together with Infernum mode. It rebalances bosses and items, adds in new content, and just about anything else you would need to play the mods together without Calamity greatly overshadowing the others in difficulty. Several of these mods add their own version of the thrower class, so they’re all merged into one unified class. And Thorium’s bard & healer classes have new content added for post-thorium content so they can stay relevant too.

Technically I’m playing an add-on to the modpack called “Homeward Ragnarok”, which additionally adds support for Fargo’s Souls and Homeward Journey, but I wouldn’t recommend it over the base modpack. Homeward Journey isn’t really balanced well yet and doesn’t have any Infernum mode boss AI, so they all end up being very easy to kill compared to the rest of the bosses. And the sheer amount of content has made the game lag a ton, where my frames drop to below 40 any time I fight a boss anywhere but space (which I have to do a lot of the time).

Still, it’s been a lot of fun so far. I beat my first superboss, Astrageldon, yesterday after getting my butt handed to me like 30 times in a row. It’s a very well designed boss, and learning its patterns were a lot of fun. I’ve also been making a bit of a trophy platform, where I’m collecting all the relics and trophies and such for each boss.

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Good ol’ modded Terraria with a side of Helldivers 2.

Fire makes me happy.


I quite liked Legends: Arceus (pirated ofc) and will likely enjoy the new Legends game too. As much as it sucks to ever defend Nintendo, those two games in particular are exactly what I’ve been wanting: a Pokemon game that isn’t the exact same game for the 17th year in a row.

I haven’t actually tried Z-A yet, but L:A was really good imo.


There are three ways to move in Zomboid: walking, running, and sprinting, each faster but more exhausting than the last. You will be tempted to run away from the horde of 65 zombies you just picked up walking through a commercial zone. But you walk faster than zombies, so do not run unless absolutely necessary; you will become exhausted and tire quicker, slowing you and weakening you. The lowest level of exhaustion (out of four) will halve your melee damage and make you move 20% slower, and it quickly gets much worse from there, especially if you’re running or fighting. And never sprint. It will get you killed. The other comment mentioned a far better way to lose zombies than running away full speed.

When creating a character, you pick from a list of negative and positive traits. Positive traits cost points which you get through picking negative traits, so you need to balance them. But when first starting out, I think you’re better off not touching too many negative traits; you don’t want to start the game obese if you don’t know how to lose weight or in what ways it will affect you! That said, there are a few smaller negatives worth picking up. I would recommend Short Sighted, which is completely counteracted by wearing glasses (which you can choose to spawn with), Prone to Illness, which is countered entirely by Outdoorsy (a cheap positive trait), and Weak Stomach, which only affects eating rotting foods (which you really shouldn’t be doing anyway!). That’ll start you off with an extra +8 points to spend on things you want without really affecting you.

I would also like to reinforce an idea the other comment mentioned, it is a sandbox and you can change settings however you like. I highly encourage you to look through them if you get annoyed by something. My friends like to start with starter backpacks and an extra free +8 points to spend on character creation, so I do that when I play with them. And I personally like to change the infection to be transmitted through bites only. There’s loads of options to fit any playstyle.


And none of that makes it P2W, which is the original claim that I was commenting on. I’m not interested in defending this game whatsoever beyond that.


I feel like that was bound to happen eventually. They’re already at over 1,000 pokemon and this is a cash cow they’re never putting down. It’s still super lame though.


I’d only play it if the game wasn’t P2W

it isn’t P2W as of right now

I have good news and bad news!

The good news is that the game isn’t P2W, so you can play it now! The bad news is that you might be an idiot. I’m sorry you had to find out this way.

Seriously, you’re spreading misinformation about a game you know nothing about. Based entirely on some random group’s subjective and baseless opinion on what might happen to this game in the future. It would be difficult to get any more dishonest than that. It’s sad.


I also really enjoy the combat. I like how you can chain the quick combat into the turn-based combat to start with an advantage by stunning enemies. And since you want to abuse weaknesses in turn-based combat, neither forms of combat overshadow or weaken the other despite quick combat being inherently easier and safer. It feels very fluid and well designed, to the point where I was surprised to learn quick combat wasn’t a thing in the original game.

So far the only thing I don’t enjoy is missions where you need to protect people. Like one of the first few missions where you need to protect the kids as you fight off the group of cats, I’ve lost many a battle purely because of bad RNG where they just all beat up the kid three turns in a row and there’s nothing I can do about it. And since you can’t use quick combat to get an advantage on story encounters like that, it really is all down to luck. And good fucking luck if you run into an enemy that explodes on death later down the line.

Admittedly I’m (stupidly) playing on the hardest difficulty despite not being great at turned-based combat, so that’s probably mostly a me issue lol.


If you grabbed the right community and threw them into the game it could probably work out. Some games end up with really positive communities. Hell, some of them end up so positive that they loop back around to being toxic to anyone who isn’t being positive. Problem is a game like this could never cultivate a positive community and is basically doomed to fail.


It’s not something I found in Next Fest, but if we’re talking demos, Trails in the Sky is something I’ve been having fun playing recently. The demo is surprisingly long too.


Idk, I completed both Gen I and II fully, getting all 151 (plus MissingNo.) and 251 Pokemon respectively in those games, and it wasn’t that bad. If you’re just doing the regional pokedex each game I’d probably find it fun because I like collecting things.

Trying to complete the national pokedex in later games sounds miserable though. 1,000+ Pokemon in one game?? No thanks. But I’m fairly certain you can’t even complete the national pokedex anymore because many older Pokemon just aren’t in the newer games.



Ah, Sunny Meadows. It’s my favorite map, though I usually prefer the Restricted version because a map that big is a pain to play with just one friend. The vibes and atmosphere in there are amazing, and there are a bunch of small things like being able to lock yourself in a padded cell to experience a deafening silence that make me love it.

I get excited for future maps too when I think about this one, because they’ve clearly gotten better at making them over the last few years. Sunny Meadows is leaps and bounds better than the old removed Asylum map that it replaced, and the recently reworked farmhouse has a similar eerie decrepit vibe (though it feels over-cluttered to me). They’ve been cooking!


After this one we got the prison unlocked, but decided to save that for next time we play.

Some advice for when you do: If you get stuck in a cell block during a hunt, the ghost can’t see through cells for some reason so locking yourself in one isn’t a terrible idea. Good luck. Medium maps are a big step up in difficulty, and a lot of people hate prison, though I myself enjoy it a lot.


An easy solution to this problem is to allow any player to unpause the game.


Halo 1 will have 3 different versions on PC before Halo 5 gets any. H5 must have really sucked.


This link has a pretty good comparison between the new and old gamepass features/prices. The cheapest tier is actually better than it used to be, but it looks like the more expensive ones are getting bundled with shit most people won’t want just so they can justify increasing the price.

There are four tiers to the gamepass: Core, Standard, PC, and Ultimate. The first two were exclusive to Xbox, the PC version was obviously exclusive to PCs, and Ultimate was available for both. All tiers aside from the PC gamepass are now being bundled with xbox’s cloud gaming, with higher tiers having shorter wait times and better quality.

This is all US pricing, so take it with a grain of salt considering the OP said their prices doubled:

  1. Core, now called Essential, is a $10 tier that will now have double the games (from 25+ to 50+) and is newly available on PC as well with no price increase.
  2. The $15 Standard tier, now called Premium, is likewise not seeing a price increase and will now be available on PC. However, it looks like Call of Duty will no longer be included in this tier, which I imagine is one of the biggest sellers of gamepass.
  3. The previously $12 PC tier is increasing in price to $16.50. Looks like the only new “benefit” is it will come with Ubisoft+ classic (40+ games) now. Still exclusive to PC.
  4. Then there’s the previously $20 Ultimate tier. It’s price is increasing to $30 a month, and it’s the one everyone’s upset about. The only new benefits are cloud gaming, Ubisoft+ classic, and a Fortnite subscription.

I’d like to buy Sea of Stars or Dungeons of Hinterberg. They’ve both been on my wishlist for a while. But I can’t really justify the cost rn, and I already have a huge backlog to work through. So I’ll probably skip this autumn sale as well.