ARC Raiders. It’s really good but also fucking infuriating. I swear to Christ I have turned a particularly shitty corner when it comes to shooters, and am now borderline useless. Still love the game, and it rewards smarts, but to a certain extent, the early weapons are so niche as to be useless in most situations, which can rapidly lead to incredible frustration. Some wonderful times when you have a good team, and a great extraction mechanism (plus genuinely challenging enemies) means I’ll stick with it even in the face of the teenage caffeine demons who ambush me, but there’s an early hump to get over. Love how it looks and sounds, though. The overall ambience of the game is incredible.
5 Likes
I’ve found that with age, I’m pretty useless in shooters as well that aren’t called Call of Duty. I’ve played CoD weekly with my BiL and cousins for years and I am still competitive - any other shooter turns me into the old man that I am with the reflexes of a sloth. I just tried out the new Battlefield game and thought just about everything about it was great - except for how I had about as much success as my grandmother would have trying to play. The muscle memory is slow to develop these days.
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I’ve been spending so much time on mobile games that I think my Steam Deck feels neglected:
- Maze Mice: the newest game from Luck Be A Landlord developer Trampoline Tales Games. Clearly inspired by Pac-Man, but you can grab power-ups to fight the cats–not ghosts–chasing you, there’s a ton of roguelite progression between runs, and, crucially, your enemies only move when you move, so you can pause and think about your next move before you go.
- Lost for Swords: port of a Steam deck-building dungeon crawler that’s perfect for mobile. Lots to unlock, lots to think about, lots of fun in a nicely constrained package. And it’s free to try with a full game unlock, like so many of my new mobile faves.
- Once Upon A Galaxy: It’s been way too easy to get way too into this deck-building auto-battler. Damn you, @kennfusion (who recommended this game about a month ago).
2 Likes
is Once Upon a Galaxy PvP or is there single-player stuff? I still haven’t really heard a good explanation of how exactly it plays.
Yeah, Once Upon a Galaxy is still one of my top games right now. Thanks for these other suggestions, I just grabbed them both. I have a bunch of travel coming up.
1 Like
It is Ghost PvP. So you are playing against a pool of 5 other recent players, but ghosts of them.
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I’m mad at you because you mentioned Lost for Swords. I can’t get anything done since yesterday.
Sorry not sorry.
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I’ve given it a dozen or so games and Once Upon a Galaxy just isn’t getting its hooks in me. I think production values are fine and the pricing seems more than fair, but there is a bit too much randomness and I’m not hooked by the seemingly very limited progression. I’ll admit that deck building on the fly can be entertaining and there are certainly the big dopamine hits when when of your combos clicks for big numbers, but I still find it just a little lacking. I also get a bit frustrated when treasures and spells fire off at a rapid pace near the end of the game and one of my opponent’s creatures is suddenly 1,000/1,000 and I couldn’t really follow why.
All this said, I’ve never really clicked with auto battlers, so the odds were stacked against this one from the start.
2 Likes
Yeah, if you don’t like Autobattlers, you won’t like it for sure. I have been obsessed with Autobattlers lately, Once Upon a Galaxy, Hearthstone Battlegrounds, Mechabellum, Backpack Battle - so I might be biased at the moment, and OUaG is my fav at the moment of these.
Nice game! I have played a couple of rounds - enjoy the tight decision space for this style of game.
no good accumulation trade off - nice multipliers etc.
better than super auto pets
I need to play less. This game is great.
at what stage do you start building your own decks? I don’t seem to have enough cards
For most of the captains I play modified Starter Deck, so if you open the custom deck it is the starter deck and then I just look to see if I want to make any swaps.
I do buy the battle pass, so I have about 40 cards unlocked on most Captains, so in a few cases I will swap out for a combo if I have the right cards, but I am still working on unlocking it all.
Yeah, you won’t get the ability to customize a captain’s deck until you’ve unlocked enough cards to do so. I do check my custom deck every couple of times I play a particular captain because I’m unlocking cards at a pretty decent rate with the battle pass. Feel like I’ve got a pretty good handle on some decks and have no idea how to build others (or maybe how to play the ones I’ve “built”).
Thanks! What rank are you up to?
i am at Silver 3 I think? Clearly a long way to go - this is going to be my train game for a while
I am Platinum 3 right now.
1 Like