I’m trying to focus on Nier: Automata, halfway through the 9S playthrough, it’s an interesting game, not very deep in gameplay, but every so often surprises me.

I’ve also just picked up Monster Hunter Rise with Sunbreak, I’ve never really played a MH game properly and find them really Grundy, but I hear Rise isn’t so bad so wanted to give it a fair go.

Also just finished getting a Druid to 100 in Diablo IV, my first season and I am done with the game in about 2 weeks, I may try another class in the next season but the game seems very shallow and repetive.

I finished Doom in the most recent re-release (Doom + Doom II), Ultra-Violence, Pistol Start and no save scumming. The base game isn’t too difficult, but still one level per episode gave me some trouble. The fourth episode is a massive step-up in difficulty though. E4M6 took me a lot of tries, but it got a lot easier, once I found some secrets with extra weapons.

After Doom, I continued with Doom II, still on UV, Pistol Start, no saves, and the first few levels are no issue, but it got tough real quick. Basically, just like E4 in the first game, it’s often about finding the best path to more weapons and ammo. The levels are also more open, so you usually have a few different paths to choose from, so figuring stuff out takes a bit. Depending on how it goes, I might start looking at the wiki to check out secrets and pickups and kinda plan a route that way.

I also finished Lies of P. It’s a good game and I had fun, but the there are definitely some weird decisions by the devs, although they were pretty minor. Weapon durability felt pretty pointless, I think only for two or three boss fights did I have to sharpen during the fight. Same with the jump, which is only needed a few times. However, since it’s like Dark Souls, so you need to sprint to be able to jump, any more would have sucked anyway. Might as well put in a dedicated button like Elden Ring and make it better, or just remove it. The weapon system was pretty neat, even though I basically just used three different heads and handles. I loved the perfect block mechanic, especially if it also destroyed the enemy weapon. Too bad it doesn’t work on the monster enemies, I guess, since they don’t really carry a weapon. The story got pretty lame in the end, but it’s whatever. I disliked two boss fights, the first Black Brotherhood fight since it was a gank fight, and the penultimate boss, because the hitboxes were just really weird, and I was constantly getting shoved around. Even on a perfect block I was a mile away from the boss, so a follow-up really sucked

Finally, I started Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC. I played the base game earlier this year, when it released on Steam, but I’m not really feeling the huge 3D open world right now. I’ll still finish the story, since it’s pretty short, but will probably only do the critical path and little to no exploring.

I decided I wanted to replay Skyrim so I went and downloaded a few mod packs from Wabbajack and played through the intro to Bleakfalls Barrow on each.

Nordic Souls is a 200GB pack that makes the game feel modern and look great! My poor 1060 struggled in some places but the world is gorgeous and the interface is much better. It has the quick loot feature from Fallout 4 and overall feels like a great pack if you want to replay Skyrim but want something that feels new. Also it comes with like 1000 hair styles.
I did have a frustrating bug that made my crosshair disappear while trying to be a stealth archer, and the map was a 2D paper map which didn’t have enough detail for my liking. The list is like 1300 mods so didn’t where to look to fix those things.

Then I tried out Legends of the Frost, which is closer to 40GB total and is a more tame pack that mostly fixes bugs and enhances the vanilla world. I added the quick loot mod and this is what I’ll be playing on, the performance is much smoother on my graphics card and I don’t really feel the need for all the extra content. The world is still a lot prettier!

Nordic Souls is absolutely worth it if you’ve got the space though. There were more enemies wandering around Bleakfalls Barrow which made it a little harder, the refreshed map made it feel fresh to explore (I was surprised at some of the differences in world props!), and it has a ton of new content in the form of quests, companions, locations, spells, weapons, armor, etc.

I’ve been finishing off Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on my Xbox One X. I mostly enjoyed it but many of the RPG mechanics were quite tiresome. I hear Valhalla is even longer, which doesn’t bode well. Odyssey was already hitting the upper limit for me and the mechanics were starting to grow stale.

Still, the world was fairly pretty and it had a surprising amount of comedy in it. The fighting mechanics were mostly fun, although the lack of hidden blades and stupid auto-leveling content rather worked against the demi-god power fantasy.

I should probably get my Steam Deck RMA’d so I can play something else, but that requires more mental effort than I can handle right now.

I’m trying to get into shmups. Just playing whatever I can find on sale on Switch. Mostly Raiden IV x MIKADO Remix on loop. I think I might be getting better!