Yeah, that Pirate Lord is tough
Stood in line for a PS5, missed it by maybe 20 people, but they still had Xbox Series Xs. So, fine, I got one of them. I figured Game Pass actually sounds pretty good, and lots of my old Xbox One (RIP) peripherals would work with it, including Rock Band stuff. Consequently, Iāve finally had a chance to try Slay the Spire II: Monster Train. Seems v. nice. Also figured Iād start Jedi Fallen Order again, since Iāve totally forgotten how to play. I started it a long time ago on the PS4, but, when I got to the first real boss and realized I could either look up how to beat her online or else try out a bunch of stuff to figure it out myself, but sit through over a minute of loading each time, I thought Iād just wait until I had a PS5. So, uh, the joke was on me. Anyway, there do appear to be tons of games on it that Iām keen on, so thatās pretty neat.
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I still play Marvel Strike Force every day and have been in a solid ācasually seriousā alliance for a couple years. If anyone here is still playing and would like a new alliance, let me know.
Anyone else get into the new Pathfinder game?
I find it super cool, but I think I might have taken too much out on my first play through (put crusader on auto).
Really enjoying the wild variety of fights but I am playing slightly reduced difficulty.
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What is it on?
PC master race 
Went the Lich route first (whoops) then started down a good playthrough and hit a wall at the end of act 1 since I didnāt want to replay another 15 hours to get back to where I was.
Iāll come back to it though, itās really well made
Having gotten an Xbox Series X as a consolation prize for standing in line for an hour and failing to get a PS5 at Best Buy a couple weeks ago, I tried out Game Pass.
Superliminal: the standout surprise for me. Wonderful puzzles; three times, I thought, āWell, I finally hit the point where this low-budget, jank-ass game breaks completely, so Iāll quit playingā only to try it one more time after a break and solve it immediately. Itās also about as philosophically deep as I trust a game to attempt to be.
Avengers: couldnāt handle the constantly shifting controls. Iām too old for that. Itās too bad, because I was interested in this version of Kamala Khan.
Sable: made an artistic choice with its animation I find as uncomfortable as watching a Greengrass-directed action sequence.
Subnautica Below Zero: yup, more Subnautica. I enjoy my time with these, but donāt want it to be longer, so I play without hunger and thirst. Still, I do like them.
Tetris Effect: pretty Tetris. Still a solid design.
The Artful Escape: I really like some choices this makes, and really dislike others. Doubt I have the patience to finish.
Jedi Fallen Order: pretty solid. Not amazing, and I have to turn off the QTEs and turn down the difficulty when it decides it wants to be punishing, because I just donāt care about getting good. But the dramatically reduced load times showed off the generation upgrade very clearly.
Sea of Thieves: didnāt love the feel of the controls during the tutorial, so it got bumped to the back of the queue.
Snow Runner: Car Cry, I guess? I suck at driving in games, so, despite this getting great reviews, itās not for me.
Myst: I do not have time for this bullshit anymore.
Monster Train is lively and enticing; seems a bit peppier than Slay the Spire.
Call of the Sea: looks like Sea of Thieves, gameplay offers pretty basic puzzling, but the juxtaposition of almost cartoonishly bright tropical visuals and incipient Lovecraft-style horror is groovy. I happened upon one puzzle which seemed a little obscure, so Iām setting it aside for a while, but itās promising.
Fucking Destiny: why did I start again? Itās like I had a buffet of wonderful board games I was excited to play, and then introduced Magic. I knew what would happen! Itās good, it makes close to zero sense, and it wants all of my timeāand I want to comply.
So, overall, game pass is doing its job. Some good AAA experiences, some crappy ones (for my needs) to try and then reject, some neat more experimental things I wouldnāt have otherwise tried.
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My gaming philosophy in a nutshell.
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Haha was gonna quote the same thing with the same sentiment
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Iād like to express my appreciation for Horrible Guild. The Railroad Ink app is a shining example of how a roll & wrote should be done. Iāve played almost all of the digital roll/flip & writes and Horrible Guild seems to be the first developer who has really nailed the way scores and challenges should be shared. The app looks and runs really well on top of that.
But letās not forget that years ago they made Potion Explosion, another great app that only suffered because of the Asmodee treatment. And Dragon Castle is also a great app, though I donāt think many people play it.
There are a few insta-buy developers out there for me like Playdek or Dire Wolf and Horrible Guild definitely has my attention.
That is all.
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I miss having instabuy devs. Square was my first, but that ended shortly after the Enix merger. BioWare and Pandemic were, then they merged and promptly got swallowed by EA and digested into unrecognizable mush by the belly of the beast. Rockstar was, until they werenāt. I guess Obsidian is as close as I have to one now.
On the mobile side, Tinytouchtales was, but they got a bit weaker each time out. That last one, with the steampunk mouse stuff or whatever, was just plain bad. They wonāt get me again I am afraid.
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I donāt know that I have any on consoles, mainly because of cost - I have to be more discerning. Iāll still buy a Final Fantasy title instantly but thatās about it.
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Glad to know someone shares my Tinytouchtales opinionā¦
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Tinytouchtales is still on my must-buy list, but I understand why he might not be everyoneās taste. I actually liked Card Thief a lot less than Card Crawl, and Maze Machina got me interested in his games again.
Back to @Mirefoxās first point, Horrible Guild has done a great job with Railroad Ink and is entering must-buy territory for me. I have Dragon Castle but havenāt played it yetāprobably grabbed it on sale after reading good comments and just threw it into my backlog.
Dragon Castle came out at the same time as Azul and got absolutely robbed of recognition. Like Azul it is a ātake a tile or two and add it to you boardā kind of game but it is better looking, has a better table presence, is easier to teach, has more interesting decisions and has optional powers and goals for variability. The app is nice, too, though I never play online so I canāt vouch for its functionality.
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Dragon Castle is about 20 times the game Azul is.
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Oh yes. Card Crawl is still a top mobile games for me. Card Thief was fun for a while but lasted staying power. I flipped off and on with Miracle Merchant and had maybe 100 games or so, but it felt less engaging. And Maze Machina sucked. It had visual style but the base gameplay was an exercise in tedium and forced mechanics.
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My recollection is that played a bit of Dragon Castle, but (at least at the time) the AI was so weak that I never felt like I needed to learn the nuances; a couple basic heuristics were all I needed to be confident. Does that sound familiar to anyone else, or might I be misremembering badly?
Goes for the basic level of the AI, definitely. The medium/hard AI are somewhat better.