Played Fatal Frame I was really enjoying it up until the third night, where there’s a huge difficulty spike and I fear I’m stuck there due to not having resources. I might restart it some other time, but I’ve decided to play something else.

So I played Still Wakes the Deep. I found it to be pretty mediocre: the story and acting were fine, but I couldn’t really connect to the characters. The gameplay is so scripted and simple the monster encounters had no tension as they were basically on rails. Doesn’t help that the monster design is forgettable and they mostly look like flesh blobs.

I’m currently playing Resident Evil Village and Project Diva.

Monster Hunter World - Iceborne I can’t stop! The game is such a marathon…

I think I’m about halfway through and I’m starting to find the difficult spike a bit much so I’m focussing on some easier optional quests to get materials for upgrades which is quite nice as I get through them quickly.

I love how the game looks and feels, prefer it to Rise, but I think I prefer the combat in Rise. The problem with MHWI is the new clutch claw mechanic, it makes monsters get staggered during a fight and leaves them out of distance so you have to use the claw, it really breaks the rhythm of the game, plus they have inflated the monster health massively in Master Rank to compensate for the new mechanic which means fights can take ages if you don’t take advantage of the clutch claw moves perfectly.

Looking forward to Monster Hunter Wilds at some point in the future.

I think I might have relapsed. Send help. Everything was going so well, I was playing through the Final Draft of Alan Wake 2 and having the time of my life, and then I clicked on a video YouTube recommended in my feed that looked interesting and the familiar old craving kicked in. Suddenly a week had passed by and I was deep in the rabbit hole again.

So this week I’ve mostly been modding STALKER: Anomaly. There’s been so many new mods and modpacks and even engine optimization released since I played it last and I’m having a blast getting reacquainted, this time basing my modlist on the H.A.C.R. pack which seems to be a flexible and solid base. I’ve already added about 30 mods to it.

I also have to give special mention to the mod and video that kicked it all off - TALKER. It transcribes your voice talking into the mic, and uses AI to give responses from characters in game and it’s actually just so much fun to use, especially for someone like me who loves the role-play and emergent narratives and storytelling of Anomaly. Right now I haven’t even started a full playthrough yet as I’m still tweaking parameters for the AI to fine tune the prompts given to each faction as well as adding to the list of unique personalities.

If you’re an Anomaly player, I definitely recommend checking out TALKER, even though setting it up is a little annoying.

Just bounced off of Elden Ring again. It’s a good game but idk starting a fresh playthrough just feels like a slog. And jumping back into my overheated character feels boring. I should remove it from my “favorite game” section on Steam but idk what should replace it.

Another game I’m way more into than I thought is Final Fantasy XVI. I’m not a huge FF fan and have gotten a lot less interested in turn based combat as I got older, so I really like this direction FF is heading into.

Clive and Sid’s VAs sound like 30 years older than their characters and the amount of cutscenes is quite overwhelming, but I’m invested.

I had it on my wishlist for quite some time and the reason why I finally pulled the trigger was a short 50 sec video of someone annihilating a deer with the power of god.

Basically just playing Slay the Spire and Miku Mega Mix, but I just found out SuperTuxKart 1.5 dropped and that might become the game I start playing a lot more now.

I’ve been enjoying this season of football, so at nearly 50 I decided to try Madden for the first time. I’m… not very good. At all.