During the past 32 years of married/family life, I’ve had quite a few of these consoles as well. And as for Apple devices, I have kept my original launch-day iPad and an iPad 3 just to play older iOS games that were never upgraded to later versions of iOS. This week, I finally setup an original Nintendo Wii that was handed down from my father-in-law. (A gift from his grandchildren, who thought he would enjoy the Wii Fitness Board for exercising.) Everything is in virtually new condition. Of course, none of the online Nintendo Wii community apps work these days. But the games are so good. Even the simplest games on the ubiquitous Wii Sports disc are great fun. Nintendo doesn’t have the history of pushing the technical limits of console technology that Sony and Microsoft do, but they certainly hold their own when it comes to game design. Now I find myself tempted to track down copies of Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2010 and COD: World at War.
See if you like the look of Endless Ocean. I loved it. One of the most relaxing experiences in gaming.
That’s one we never owned when our kids were the primary Wii users at home, but I do like the sound of that one. Thanks!
And the sequel if you can find it.
I’m playing Dream Quest again. Was looking for a “new” single player game and didn’t feel like starting anything in my backlog, so it’s back to a classic. Maybe I won’t suck so bad this time around.
Nintendo nails the fun fun factor, that’s for sure.
I always thought Elebits was great underrated fun. It basically an on-rails “shooter” but you’re really just uncovering these little spirit things light gun-style and using the them for physics puzzles.
This makes me so happy.
I’m sure you’re well aware, but just in case then Slay the Spire, Pirates Outlaws, and Card Quest are all great and on iOS too.
Some others that I quite like are Blood Card, Dimensions of Dream, and Night of the Full Moon.
On PC only there’s also Monster Train.
(I went back to DQ just the other day. It still holds up as a very strategic play, and tough as well. I can still get stomped by the first floor boss even.)
I’ve played most of those, with Pirates Outlaws and Blood Card as the only exceptions, I think. Love Slay the Spire on iOS but wish they’d put in iCloud sync. I started playing on my phone for portability and would rather play on my iPad most of the time, but I don’t want to unlock everything again.
Love Monster Train but really need it on another platform—running it on the Boot Camp partition in my MacBook isn’t great.
Card Crusade is a good, albeit fairly simplistic game in that vein.
This is the Police II. Despite the fact they’ve done fuck-all work putting it on Android, and it’s not that stable with semi-regular crashes, I love the day-to-day management and the turn-based combat is suitably sharp-edged.
I’m really loving Trials of Fire. A kind of Slay the Spire game but you have three characters and are going on different quests. It’s more like an RPG though, as you are adventuring and meeting people, buying equipment or finding it.
The combat is card-based though and you are improving/replacing the cards in your battle deck.
You are also moving around a map during combat.
It’s pretty cool
Looks great!
I am sucked in so deep into WoW, that I can’t do anything else on PC at the moment…
Really? I hit about level 54 and got to Maldraxxus and was just getting kind of bored. I will get back to it, but having trouble being motivated on it.
John Wick Hex. So close to being good, but on Switch at least, this is a little bit lazily made. The idea is genius, implementing John Wick as a hypercompetent turn-based soldier, but the animation is literally pedestrian, the environments don’t matter beyond sightlines, there’s no continuity between actions (e.g. if you hit an enemy three times, it’s just the same three strikes, repeated) there are no disarms, there’s no granularity when it comes to shooting, and so on. Why not implement it in a much more fluid (yet still turn-based) way? Strike, disarm, shoot against an armed enemy, instead of strike, takedown, move to adjacent hex where their gun dropped, pick up gun, then shoot. They’ve made the whole process laborious. Really lumbering. The time management is fantastic, but fucking Hell, why can enemies just shoot through enemies unless of course you’re using push? Why can’t you push enemies over guardrails? Why can’t you push enemies into other enemies? Why can’t you choose between different throws and takedowns and throw enemies into each other? Why can you do so little of the kind of action you see in the films? Just frustrating.
On my 80th Priest run since I went back to DQ, I finally cleared the third floor for the first time as a Priest. FINALLY. This achievement might be the best thing I’ve done all year.
I’ve been having a difficult metaphysical contemplation here. I’m trying to figure out what is or isn’t an RPG. As the lines get blurred, games like Spider-Man are really giving me problems because you’ve got all the trademarks or an RPG - levels, stats, skills, and equipment - but I can’t bring myself to call it an RPG. I just dabbled in Nioh a bit, and the same issue. I’m ok with calling the Dark Souls games RPGs, but Nioh is an action game to me, even though it is entirely the same outside of character creation. But character creation cannot be the defining factor because all of my beloved JRPGs give you pre-made characters to play. Does any of this even matter? Probably not.
To further convolute the matter look at Open World games…are they RPGs? Are they not?
Is Mad Max an RPG? Is Assassin Creed (insert whatever iteration here) one?
What is with the Yakuza games? Are they RPGs? Well at least Yakuza 7 is easy to categorize with its turn based battle based on Dragon Quest…but every other game in the franchise which came before?
On the plus side I finally beat Assassin Origins and its DLCs…and I am only ~ 50 hours over the average consumer’s finishing time…(based on my most important internet page ever “howlongtobeat.com”)
Not only am I a fan of too many genres, especially Open World and RPGs which are per definition long-as-heck-games to start with, no I take at least 50% longer than the usual “gamer” to finish them…
#firstworldproblems
Oh and I finished Hellblade - Senua’s Sacrifice as well. What a game this is. I am usuallly not fond of “horror” in any medium. And HB isn’t per definition one, but playing (as strongly recommended) with headphones a game which has a psychotic main character (also very realitically portrayed, not the usual BS implementation of crazy mofo with a chainsaw) was something else.
Also a game with a runtime of nine-ish hours wasn’t too bad for a change. Especially as them hours were very fun since I love norse mythology and despite the fact it wasn’t ever a full priced tripple A game (release price was 30€ which is very nice) is a strong bonus, given that some AAA games cost 60 (now 80) and have SP content that is way shorther than that.
Fore being developed on a budget they implemented the setting very well Also very good use of soundtrack, ambient sound effects and lighting. They also went beyond the standard in Motion Capture of Senua…
I am now looking forward to Hellblade 2 - Senua’s Saga which has me reasonably hyped especially with this kickass tune…
On Reddit, and in other forums, in the Roguelike subreddit, the discussion of what defines a Roguelike and what is a Roguelite comes up all of the time. I have been playing Roguelikes since…Rogue. Although actually I came a little later to the Roguelike party with Angband/Zangband as what really addicted me to the genre.
To me, Roguelike has to be turn-based and has to have perma-death. But clearly there are a lot of people out there that do not agree with that definition. But I like games like Hades, a Roguelite, because it does have a lot of the elements I do like from a Roguelike. Just because I want to call Hades a Roguelike and not a Roguelite does not mean I don’t recognize the relationship.
And Hades is also an RPG, but not in the same way as say Baldur’s Gate.
Back when the computer game store had 2 sections, Apple II and Commodore 64, the lines were fairly clean because there were not enough games to create division of much. 35-40 years later, the definition of a game is based on all of the games that it is mashed up from, so you end up with terms like “Soulslike” just to define games that are like a specific game.
It’s an interesting distinction. The meaning has changed since the advent of Binding of Issac, and it boils down to:
Roguelike = no meta progression systems. No power gained from losing runs. Possible to win the first run if you have experience. In this view, Binding of Issac (you get different ways to play based on achievements, but no real power gains) and all of the Traditional, Berlin Interpretation Roguelikes fit in here.
Roguelite = Metaprogression. Currency gained in runs used to make the player more powerful. Usually not possible to win the very first run. Hades, Monolith, Undermine, Moonlighter are all examples here.