newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-22, 17:09:

System Shock
I've been slowly exploring the second level, Engineering. It's definitely much tougher than the first level, and it just reinforces how this game is less a shooter and more a stealth or survival horror game. I've got to mention this game's dynamic soundtrack. It's not as good as the best iMUSE stuff, but it's pretty good. The melody and instrumentation change based on the particular subarea of the level, but unfortunately do not change based on your current situation (combat vs. exploring for instance). Still, it's nice and sounds awesome on a Sound Canvas.

Here's a tip for free: Abuse the leaning, kneeling and prone mechanics as much as possible. Also abuse the fact that because you are aiming your gun independently of your view, try to angle your attack so you hit the absolute edge of someones hit box without fully exposing yourself. You'll find a lot of combat situations are rendered VERY trivial by playing tactically like this.

I looked up the 2025 Game Awards to check all the categories that Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 was nominated for, and noticed that it somehow lost in "Audio Design", despite sweeping pretty much everything else.

This truly baffles me, as this game has an incredibly beautiful soundtrack and some top notch voice acting. I mean, just listen to its main theme which is also used during certain cutscenes. Once again, kudos to the composer!

DracoNihil wrote on 2026-03-23, 15:27:

Here's a tip for free: Abuse the leaning, kneeling and prone mechanics as much as possible. Also abuse the fact that because you are aiming your gun independently of your view, try to angle your attack so you hit the absolute edge of someones hit box without fully exposing yourself. You'll find a lot of combat situations are rendered VERY trivial by playing tactically like this.

I've been doing this! It's what I love about the interface; it's so satisfying to side-step to the edge of a wall, slowly lean over, and then aim and shoot independently of your viewpoint. It's why the mouselook option just doesn't feel right for this game. I feel like every serious FPS with stealth or immersive sim elements should at least have dedicated lean left/right buttons.

---

What I've been playing:

Slayers X: Terminal Aftermath: Vengance of the Slayer
This thing is hilarious, and I love the title (typo included). It's a modern game, but the conceit is that it was a game some guy "designed" in a notebook when he was a kid in the 90s, and then finally made it into an actual game in 2023, without varying from his original design document at all. It's crude, dumb, and sometimes gross. What makes it work, though, is that the level design is pretty interesting and the shooting and movement feel great; although the game was made in Unity, it feels 100% like a game made in the Build engine. It really feels like playing some impressive but dumb total conversion for Duke 3D off some BBS back in the day.

Total War: Warhammer
I've had this in my library for many years, but never was able to get into it. It seemed unbelievably complex, but I decided to sit down and play it for a bit. I was surprised to find that, although the battles are all in real time, the pace of the game is actually pretty manageable; I was expecting a Command & Conquer type of game, but it's actually more like turn-based strategy game where the battles are fought using a a real-time-with-pause system. Pretty interesting so far.

Avowed
I've settled on a gun-mage character after finding an arquebus (such a satisfying weapon to use!), and I'm really getting into this now! I complained earlier about the weird washed-out look of the game, but I enabled HDR and now it looks great. The world is not as massive as an Elder Scrolls game, but it feels much more interesting to explore, and combat, while not anything amazing, is much more interesting (and initially harder) than in Oblivion or Skyrim. My major complaint with this one is the dialogue. It's not as terrible as The Outer Worlds, but it's bad. No one is ever serious about anything, it's all quips and snark. It's like the writers were embarrassed to write dialogue for the game. Give me the boring but earnest stuff from Skyrim any day.

I finished Robocop Rogue City, Its a great game and feels like Robocop should feel . The writing is good, the actions is great and the story was good too.

I've been having incredible fun playing Goat Simulator 3. Truly GOAT.

Was too curious about Tomb Raider 3 so gave it a go straight away... and noped out on level 3.

First the things I liked: visually it looks better than the previous games, lighting has been greatly improved. Colors can be quite vibrant, so things like torches and stuff are much moodier. Audio has also been improved, sounds are crispier. As for enemies at least the first two levels were like in TR1, only animals with much better pacing than in TR2, but I remember there being plenty of humans on later levels so it could stoop back to TR2 style. Didn't bode well when I found a bazooka round...

But there's two reason why I quit. First something I didn't mention while writing about TR2, the amount of traps was far greater than in TR1. This wasn't too terrible since even the PS1 version had free saving this time, but on my playthrough DuckStation emulator clocked 25h total playtime while the game itself clocked 17h. Meaning there was 8 hours worth of reloads and retries. Not all of that was because of traps of course, reloading a save on the PS1 version alone takes a moment, but it did have more trial and error than I cared for.

The second level of TR3 already was full of traps. Many of them the kind that have a good chance of killing you on your first time unless you get lucky. To make it even better the PS1 version kinda still has free saving, but this time each save costs a save crystal, which are something you need to find and collect in the levels and there's not that many of them around. Which is to say the amount of trial and error goes through the roof, and I already got my fill of that during TR2.

Then there's the second thing, while the lighting has been improved the darkness it creates gets annoying. Items are harder to notice and you constantly have to use flares to check you don't miss anything. And those flares last pitifully short time. Even when it's not dark items on the ground are harder to notice than in the previous two, right on the first level I ran straight past an important key without noticing it. Stuff on the ground just doesn't pop out as clearly as before, I would have had to increase brightness on my TV if I would have continued.

Also the framerate of the PS1 version isn't great, improved lighting clearly took a toll. In the end I can see why I completed this one only once back in the day. But I'm not ready to call it a bad game, the PS1 version just isn't ideal. The PC version still has those save crystals but apparently they got changed to healing items, saving is free and can still be done at any time. I don't have the PC version but if I ever end up with one I think I'll give that a try.

Signalis

Discovered this game recently when searching for sci-fi survival horror games like Alien: Isolation and Dead Space. This game is a retro-inspired survival-horror title similar to the first Resident Evil and Silent Hill games, but with a sci-fi / retro-futurism setting.

It was apparently made my an indie team of two, yet is highly polished with a late 90s pixel-art retro aesthetic. Gameplay is standard 3rd person survival horror of basic combat, inventory management, finding keycards and solving simple puzzles to progress.

Best thing about the game is the atmosphere which is wonderfully moody thanks to great art and sound design.

Steam reviews are quite high for this game at 96% positive. It also made PC Gamer's 2024 top 100 PC games of all time list.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-24, 19:21:

I've been doing this! It's what I love about the interface; it's so satisfying to side-step to the edge of a wall, slowly lean over, and then aim and shoot independently of your viewpoint. It's why the mouselook option just doesn't feel right for this game. I feel like every serious FPS with stealth or immersive sim elements should at least have dedicated lean left/right buttons.

Good to hear, and here's another valuable tip: Practice and get used to SKATE. You might be wondering why it completely hoses your ability to strafe; think of it like grinding to a halt on actual ice skates / skateboards. When you get used to that, you'll find it VERY useful to basically SKATE almost everywhere just be mindful of your rotation rate, when you need to come to a dead halt hold down your strafe key as you approach a corner you need to go around, then immediately sprint forward to go back up to full momentum again.

DracoNihil wrote on 2026-03-25, 18:57:

Good to hear, and here's another valuable tip: Practice and get used to SKATE. You might be wondering why it completely hoses your ability to strafe; think of it like grinding to a halt on actual ice skates / skateboards. When you get used to that, you'll find it VERY useful to basically SKATE almost everywhere just be mindful of your rotation rate, when you need to come to a dead halt hold down your strafe key as you approach a corner you need to go around, then immediately sprint forward to go back up to full momentum again.

Thanks! I tried it once I got it, and thought it was useless. I'll give it another shot with this in mind.

---

I've been playing a lot of games over the last week...

Avowed
I really like how this game plays; it has some great exploration, combat feels great, and unique equipment is actually useful... but this doesn't really feel like a Pillars game. There's stuff that reminds me of that series , but the sarcastic, jokey dialogue of this game is more like The Outer Worlds. This kind of writing is just so awful, as it takes me out of the world. It's totally bizarre to be exploring some fantasy world of dungeons and dragons, and one of my companions is quipping like Duke Nukem. Meanwhile, every single character in the game is a quirky badass who constantly talks down to you; it's like going back in time to Sega CD where you're constantly being berated by full motion video assholes. Well, at least in this game, you can just reply with more snark... but it's still ridiculous. Why are all the NPCs in this game so rude and weird? Talking to people in this game is like going through customs with someone in a really bad mood. Every conversation is like this:

"You better have a fucking good reason for bothering me today."
"I'm the envoy of the empire, let me pass."
"Oh! Of course, just be careful, envoy!"

What is the point of the initial attitude? It doesn't even make sense, considering who your character is in the game.

Blood: Refreshed Supply
Blood is possibly the greatest game ever made, and it's good to finally have a decent (commercial) port of it. Too bad that the thieves at Atari handled it like this.
Anyway, I love this game. I play through it almost every year, and it never gets old. It's not like Doom, where you can blast through it on Ultra Violence with a bit of practice; you have to really learn how the game plays, learn how all the weapons (and their alt fire versions) work, just to actually get through it. It's a truly beautiful game. Having said that, you should only play this on the "Lightly Broiled" difficulty level, because anything above that is bullshit (and on the DOS version was actually broken).

CULTIC
This was clearly made as a sort of spiritual successor to Blood, but it has its own feel. It's certainly more atmospheric and deliberate, and feels more like a survival horror game early on. The maps are larger and more open, and there's a greater reliance on stealth. I'm not far into the game, but it's really great so far. It just feels great to play; even when you screw up and die, you just want to try again.

Ion Fury
I dismissed this one back when it was released, because I didn't get how it was supposed to be played. I assumed, since it's made on the Build engine, that it was a Duke Nukem 3D clone, but you cannot play it like that. The levels are absolutely massive and open, and you are often swarmed by enemies. You have a pistol that has an alternate fire mode where you tag enemies and then instantly kill them (like Panzer Dragoon!), but you also have bombs; what I didn't realize is that you can charge them by holding the button down, and then they will automatically roll over to any enemy in range. It's basically like the dynamite in Blood ; if you reach the end of some hallway opening up into an open area, the first thing you do is to charge up a couple bombs and throw them in to take care of any enemies nearby. Suddenly, it all makes sense; the game looks like a classic FPS, but really does not play like one.

Doom 64 (the 2020 remaster) - for the first time in my life. I started playing on Medium (skill 3) and it's almost too easy. But that's good. I get to enjoy the game's atmosphere rather than worry about dying. It's certainly much more colorful than the original Doom.

I forgot to mention this one:

Control
This was ridiculously cheap during the Spring Sale, and I had heard that it's actually an interesting and challenging game, and not a story game you just press the forward button through the entire game. It's also supposed to be the ultimate ray tracing game, so I had to give it a try.

I dunno about this one. The ray tracing is really not that impressive (especially compared with Cyberpunk 2027), and the game is VERY story-heavy early on. The main character constantly talks to herself, to the point of absurdity. She just never shuts up, and it's ridiculous. The voice actress also made the choice to deliver every single line with excessive emotion and vocal frying, so it ends up feeling completely flat because she sounds the same whether she's saying there's a desk in a room or reacting to some dead body on the floor.

I'm gonna hijack this and rant about modern voice acting. All subtlety has gone out out the window. Every time I hear some voice actor heavily emoting about every single little thing, I think about 2001: A Space Odyssey, where you have a couple guys reacting to horrible stuff initially with cold logic... but when things go down and the main character starts to lose control, it's a shock. The movie would not work if they were screaming and crying from the very start. I don't think this is a fault with voice actors in general today, but is a problem with how they are being directed.

It's not a big deal, but it's embarrassing to listen to. It's a childish game putting on its big boy pants and getting a pat on the head for having "real dialogue" when it's a joke. The amateurish noir dialogue from Max Payne is better than this stuff.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-28, 19:37:

I forgot to mention this one: […]
Show full quote

I forgot to mention this one:

Control
This was ridiculously cheap during the Spring Sale, and I had heard that it's actually an interesting and challenging game, and not a story game you just press the forward button through the entire game. It's also supposed to be the ultimate ray tracing game, so I had to give it a try.

I dunno about this one. The ray tracing is really not that impressive (especially compared with Cyberpunk 2027), and the game is VERY story-heavy early on. The main character constantly talks to herself, to the point of absurdity. She just never shuts up, and it's ridiculous. The voice actress also made the choice to deliver every single line with excessive emotion and vocal frying, so it ends up feeling completely flat because she sounds the same whether she's saying there's a desk in a room or reacting to some dead body on the floor.

I'm gonna hijack this and rant about modern voice acting. All subtlety has gone out out the window. Every time I hear some voice actor heavily emoting about every single little thing, I think about 2001: A Space Oddity, where you have a couple guys reacting to horrible stuff initially with cold logic... but when things go down and the main character starts to lose control, it's a shock. The movie would not work if they were screaming and crying from the very start. I don't think this is a fault with voice actors in general today, but is a problem with how they are being directed.

It's not a big deal, but it's embarrassing to listen to. It's a childish game putting on its big boy pants and getting a pat on the head for having "real dialogue" when it's a joke. The amateurish noir dialogue from Max Payne is better than this stuff.

I couldn't put my finger on what made Control so uninteresting to me. I really, really tried. Played about 22 hours and was probably 75-80% through the game. But that was from brute force playing despite it not being very interesting to me. I finally bowed out and don't really feel like ever trying to finish it. Some of the sci-fi stuff felt like it was trying to be too over-the-top X-Filesish. But your synopsis of the protagonist voice acting does ring true.

clueless1 wrote on 2026-03-28, 19:51:

I couldn't put my finger on what made Control so uninteresting to me. I really, really tried. Played about 22 hours and was probably 75-80% through the game. But that was from brute force playing despite it not being very interesting to me. I finally bowed out and don't really feel like ever trying to finish it. Some of the sci-fi stuff felt like it was trying to be too over-the-top X-Filesish. But your synopsis of the protagonist voice acting does ring true.

I'm starting to regret my purchase! Well, it was only 450 yen, which is basically like 0 dollars, so I won't bother refunding it.

---

F.E.A.R.
This is one I've tried to complete many times over the years, going back to when it was first released. Every time I play it I absolutely love it, but end up getting sidetracked and eventually stop playing it. Hilariously, I actually completed both of its inferior sequels on the PS3 back in the day.
There's a lot to love about this game. It has a nice clean look that has aged really nicely; every time I start it up I'm struck by how great it looks. It feels great to play, and it sounds awesome with some great EAX effects. The game is perhaps most well known for its effective enemy AI. Enemies really seem to work as a team and react to what you're doing, though I've read that much of this is just simple but clever scripting.

Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
This game is awesome. It's basically an alternate reality version of Wizardry VIII, as if that game had been designed by D.W. Bradley on an enhanced Wizardry VII engine. Even the writing is quite similar to that of Bradley's.
I got addicted to this game a few years ago and was 12 hours in, but I lost my saves at some point, and had to start over. I actually didn't mind at all. It's a ton of fun creating your characters, since there are so many interesting races and classes, and the game actually lets you choose from several different starting areas. You can create as many characters as you want in your "library" (roster), and then can select up to 8 characters for your party. Or, you can select fewer characters so that you can recruit some of the many NPCs throughout the world.
There are a lot of nice QOL features. There's an excellent automap, and all of your maps are added to a library you can access at any time. You can add notes to the maps, and can even set destinations and automatically navigate to those destinations. There's an auto-heal action you can take to immediately heal your most injured character (assuming that the character healing has enough spell points). You can even set how often random encounters occur in the options menu.

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-03-29, 15:58:

F.E.A.R.
...
There's a lot to love about this game. It has a nice clean look that has aged really nicely; every time I start it up I'm struck by how great it looks.

Absolutely! I've first played the original more than a decade and a half ago, and a few years back replayed it, and continued to both its expansion packs, in full 4K glory. The graphics are nothing short of amazing for a game from 2005, and it handles just as well for the most part. Fixing the tiny text on such a high resolution was the only hassle I remember, and I think I never got that to work perfectly, but it didn't harm the experience much.

The game and its expansions remain among my all-time favorites. I have written a personal review (with some spoilers). To date I have not played the sequels.

Sniper Elite 5
I finally said a reluctant goodbye to Kingdom Come Deliverance: 2. One year of gameplay (266 hours in 363 days). Finished every DLC. It was like a favorite pair of old jeans that you refuse to throw out. I kept coming back to it. But today, I said bye bye. And started Sniper Elite 5. I'm 40 minutes in and just in the very beginning missions, but so far it's very fun. A nice break from KCD2. Simplified gameplay, nice graphics, decent story. The game amazingly uses all 12GB VRAM from my RTX 4070. I have it locked at 60 fps in 1080p, and it never dips below. About 30% cpu and 40% gpu usage with every detail maxed and set to Vulkan. Plays and looks amazing. This will give me the simple fun I need to break away from a complex RPG for a bit. Once I finish this (and I think I will), I'm looking at several options:
-Doom 2016: I'm about 75% through but it's been a year since I played it. Doubtful I take this route.
-System Shock Remake: this would be my 2nd playthrough (first time was in summer of 2023).
-Grimoire-Heralds of the Winged Exemplar: been installed and ready to play since I bought the game in December 2021. Interesting coincidence to see @newtmonkey picking it up again.
-Bioshock Infinite: I've beaten the first two. Just haven't gotten around to playing the 3rd and final one in the series.
-Hogwarts Legacy: I tried to get my wife to play this. She got about 1/3 through it before she bowed out. She's not a gamer at all and was trying to play it so we could have a shared gaming experience. Not gonna happen. 🙁
-Legend of Grimrock 2: I beat the first one way back in 2017 and just haven't gotten around to the sequel yet.

dr_st wrote on 2026-03-28, 19:24:

Doom 64 (the 2020 remaster) - for the first time in my life. I started playing on Medium (skill 3) and it's almost too easy. But that's good. I get to enjoy the game's atmosphere rather than worry about dying. It's certainly much more colorful than the original Doom.

I've also recently played this for the first time and was pleasantly surprised. Went into it expecting a basic port of Doom, it ended up being so much more.

clueless1 wrote on 2026-03-29, 22:10:

-Grimoire-Heralds of the Winged Exemplar: been installed and ready to play since I bought the game in December 2021. Interesting coincidence to see @newtmonkey picking it up again.

I hope you'll give this one a try soon! It takes a bit of time and effort to get used to the interface, but it's a blast to play once you do.

clueless1 wrote on 2026-03-28, 19:51:

I couldn't put my finger on what made Control so uninteresting to me. I really, really tried. Played about 22 hours and was probably 75-80% through the game. But that was from brute force playing despite it not being very interesting to me.

I finished Control but I also found it uninteresting. For me it was that the story was told almost entirely through exposition.

A lot of video games suffer from this, since it's often the only way to explain things to the player.

But in the case of Control, it was a game that relied on all this backstory but they chose to reveal through almost nothing but expository dialog. I feel it would have been much more interesting to include some playable flashbacks that could have revealed the backstory that way.

Call of Cthulhu
This has some great atmosphere and starts out quite interesting, as it's sort of an adventure/RPG hybrid where your stats/skills determine what clues you can find, so puzzles have multiple solutions... but it's really just a "walking sim" where you walk down a bunch of corridors and click on shit while the game solves the puzzles for you. There's a cool mechanic where you inspect crime scenes (reminds me of the Condemned games), but it basically isn't any different from inspecting stuff in the rest of the game.

Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
Such a satisfying game to play. Combat is not very difficult so far, but it's so fun to sit there every round deciding what each character will do. The dungeons in the forest starting area are quite small but full of stuff to find and do, and are very satisfying to explore and figure out. I've hit a tough boss fight that I need to win in order to proceed, so I need to sit down and really micromanage my actions to figure it out.
Really great soundtrack, too!

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

It's interesting to compare this version to the OG Dark Souls 2. Many areas have more enemies now, but sometimes also different enemy types. This definitively makes things harder, but on the flip side, more enemies = more souls = faster leveling. Item placement seems to be slightly different too. For example, you can get the ember for the second blacksmith much earlier here, which means weapons can be upgraded faster. That said, I don't like how certain areas are gated off by those statues now. Feels kinda pointless, and just adds more tedium to the gameplay.

I'm playing without summoned NPCs this time, and some bosses are a bit harder that way. Tackling the Ruin Sentinels and the Lost Sinner solo was certainly more challenging, but they have less health if you don't use summons, so it kinda evens out. Despite the huge equipment variety in this game, I still gravitate towards a high strength/heavy armor/big weapon build, but I will keep a few faster weapons as backup for some of the DLC bosses.

Lastly, I have to emphasize once again how much better the controls feel on the PS4. Even after applying the fix, character movement in the PC version of DS2 still felt slightly off. But there are zero issues with that on the console release. It may seem like a small thing, but for me, having more responsive controls greatly enhances the overall experience.