Finished Resident Evil 5 in co op , moved on to 6 in co op.
Also playing Resident EVil REquiem.

Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
I finally cleared the starting area (one of several you can choose in the options when starting a new game), including its two dungeons. Although the game was heavily inspired by Wizardry VII, the structure is quite different. Instead of taking place in a giant open world, it consists of smaller linked areas. However, these areas are absolutely dense with stuff to find and do: puzzles, secret areas, hidden treasure chest, and more.

Once you get used to the admittedly quirky interface, you find that the game actually has a lot of nice QoL features. The excellent automap allows you to freely leave notes, auto-navigate through areas you've already explored, and even tells you how much of each map you've explored; if it's sitting at 98% or so, you know you've missed some well-hidden secret door. Otherwise, it plays just like Wizardry VII, but quite a bit more accessible without sacrificing any depth at all. It's simply awesome.

Ion Fury
I completed the separate demo campaign (just a few levels, but different from what's in the main game) and had a blast. I then started the main campaign, got through the first few levels... and then remembered what annoyed me about this game the last time I tried playing through it. The levels are absolutely massive and full of swarms of enemies that can do a lot of damage quickly even from long range, and unless you really take the time to seek out the secrets, health and armor powerups are really quite rare.

I like to play FPS games without mid-level saves, because all the classics play great without save-scumming, once you learn how to play them. But I think that Ion Fury requires you to rely on the frequent auto saves. The levels are just way too big and lethal, even on the default difficulty level.

It's still a pretty cool game (and the stuff they did with the ancient Build engine is amazing), but so far I actually prefer the demo campaign over the actual game; it's tough, but manageable without mid-level saves.

---

I was getting some very annoying and constant stuttering (both inside and outside games) all of a sudden, and it was driving me nuts. I have Windows 11 Pro mostly debloated, so only security updates are installed automatically.
Anyway, the stuttering is gone now, and I should have taken a more systematic approach because I'm not sure what did it:
- I disabled "Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling"
- I disabled indexing on my D: drive (where all my games are installed)

Wizardry 7 on an android tablet.

Touchscreens are very amenable to titles like this one.

Minor foibles with the on-screen keyboard during dialog sessions, but fully playable.

I really should put more games on this thing but storage is limited.

wierd_w wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:19:

Wizardry 7 on an android tablet. […]
Show full quote

Wizardry 7 on an android tablet.

Touchscreens are very amenable to titles like this one.

The attachment 2026-04-01-12-15-15-453.jpg is no longer available

Minor foibles with the on-screen keyboard during dialog sessions, but fully playable.

I really should put more games on this thing but storage is limited.

Ok, you have my attention. What kind of emulation are you using to play it? I always wanted to play Wizardry 6-7-8 and this might be a summer vacation experiment for me..

appiah4 wrote on 2026-04-02, 10:10:

wierd_w wrote on 2026-04-01, 17:19:

Wizardry 7 on an android tablet. […]
Show full quote

Wizardry 7 on an android tablet.

Touchscreens are very amenable to titles like this one.

The attachment 2026-04-01-12-15-15-453.jpg is no longer available

Minor foibles with the on-screen keyboard during dialog sessions, but fully playable.

I really should put more games on this thing but storage is limited.

Ok, you have my attention. What kind of emulation are you using to play it? I always wanted to play Wizardry 6-7-8 and this might be a summer vacation experiment for me..

A combination of Magic dosbox lite and Direct Access 5.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id … x.free&hl=en_US

Dosbox's speed controls for speed up/slowdown can be on-the-fly controlled by the command line, so clever use of batch files lets you set speeds appropriate for games with them at the same time you launch them, then set the speeds back again.

DirectAccess 5 is classic buyware from the days of yore, but there's any number of other options out there. I use it as a mouse-enabled (and thus, touch enabled, with the mouse in the proper mode) dos menu system to pick from what I have installed.

magicdosbox wants to try to push you to buy the 'full version', but that's not at all necessary. The only option they disable is the "in-app" ability to have multiple dosbox .conf setups, presented as an in-app gui picker. Granted, this is kinda needed if you want to play things like Ultima 8, because of how the author decided things like that should work... BUT, booting a disk image is possible to do with the dosbox commandline, so doing that from the dos menu is possible also. You just need to get used to working with/around a single machine config.

Just as an example-- I have Master ofOrion II, CDRom edition, installed. It needs the CDRom mounted for mysterious reasons, so I just oblige it.

DirectAccess just starts a batch file I made that does this:

imgmount d /storage/emulated/0/Downloads/Dosbox/iso/Moo2.iso -t cdrom
orion2
mount -u D

That mounts the disk image I need on D, the game can find it fine, I play it, I quit, the batch continues and unmounts the image, then I get dropped back at the menu again.

For games that are speed sensitive, I put appropriate cycles=FOO before and after the game in the batch, so that dosbox slows down then speeds back up again, where appropriate.
The free version does MT32 emulation as well, if you have the romset.

MagicDosbox lets you set up onscreen touch input buttons for games that are .... less amenable.... to use on a tablet, but I find that experience cumbersome.

Games like Wizardry 6 and 7, or Dungeon Master and Dungeon Master 2, are fully mouse-drivable, with game-provided mouse-clickable controls.

etc. You can just straight up tap on the game-provided navigation/action buttons, and things work, when you set the mouse emulation type to the correct mode. Its as if the games were made for use on a touchpad. Others that I have found that work this way are the SSI AD&D games, like Eye of the Beholder, and pals.

Dungeon master is a bit of an odd duck, in that you have to skip the opening questionare about your hardware by using obtuse command line options in the launcher, but it's doable.

dm -sb -*e -pm

for instance, says "Soundblaster, English, with mouse" to the game, skipping all the questions.

Some of the SSI games need a similar commandline massage.

Point-click adventure games like The Dig and co, likewise act like they were made for touchscreens.

edit:
Wizardry 8 requires windows. It also really wants a keyboard, because movement is realtime 3d (outside battles).

It might be playable with winlator, but you cant get that from the playstore. You have to sideload it, and android complains mightily when you do. It's more picky about the hardware in your android device as well.

https://github.com/brunodev85/winlator

*If* you get it running well, it will let you do such fun things as Alpha Centauri, Unreal World, and pals. On most commodity tablets, it's about on par with an early 2000s single core machine.

Thank you very much for the detailed information I will try this!

Help! I'm addicted to PC games!

I know I'm late to the party, but FreeSync is amazing. It's so nice not to have to worry about Vsync and all of its issues, or capping frame rates inside or outside games to get consistent performance. As long as a game stays between 48 and 200 fps, it looks and feels smooth as silk. In fact, even if a game does drop below 48 fps for some reason, it still looks and feels great, since FreeSync duplicates frames so that the game will be within the FreeSync range; it doesn't look quite as smooth as >48 fps, but it's a hell of a lot smoother than trying to play some game at 30 fps on a fixed 60 Hz monitor!

It even makes DOSBox better, since it will run VGA games at 70 Hz. If my dedicated DOS machine ever dies, I'd probably be just fine with DOSBox now.

Anyway, I played a ton of games today:

Avowed
I've been slowly working my way through this. As I mentioned in my previous post, I go back and forth on it. Exploration is actually quite good, but it's annoying to find some hidden treasure chest, only to be rewarded with a bunch of crafting trash. Why are modern games so obsessed with gathering trash to craft and upgrade stuff? Who likes this kind of busywork? If I go out of my way to explore a cave, climb up some vines or whatever, and find a treasure chest, I want to open it up and get some kickass sword or gauntlets or something. Not "iron dagger" and "tree bark." Having said that, the game does reward you from time to time with nice unique equipment in chests, so it's not all a waste of time.

I got annoyed with every single NPC in the game insulting me and bossing me around, so I started selecting the last option in every dialogue, which is usually "shut up and tell me what you want" or "Do it yourself." You still get the quest, so what's the point of having so many dialogue options? Why the hostility? The people who wrote this game are demented.

Borderlands: GOTY Enhanced
This has been sitting in my library FOREVER. I'm around 15 hours into it, but that's after importing my save from the regular GOTY version, which I had played for 25 hours. This is a massive game for sure. I love how this game feels to play, but it's very repetitive and I tend to get bored of it very quickly. There are basically only three types of enemies: various raiders, acid-spitting insects, and big dogs/bears that charge at you.

The game does have some nice things going for it. I normally hate cel shading, but the effect is very subtle here, and the game otherwise has a very sharp look with some great textures. You'd think that the game would have tons of level scaling, but quests are set to certain levels, and it's not that difficult to take on quests that are at a higher level than you; conversely, it can be a real blast to go through quests below your level, since they are so trivial.

40 hours in, I think I have to be pretty close to the end. I'd like to finally finish this one and give the sequel a try.

Grimoire: Heralds of the Winged Exemplar
After fully exploring Briarpatch Woods, I arrived at a town area. It's mostly abandoned and quite dangerous, but it's basically a hub area for several other areas. I found a merchant here, so I could finally unload some of my items (my inventory was getting quite full). This is an interesting game. It's structured like Wizardry VII, in that it takes place mostly in outdoor areas containing dungeons... but actually feels a bit more like Wizardry VI, since it consists of a bunch of interlinked smaller areas instead of a giant open world.

It's a very complex game and it feels very satisfying to play, just like Wiz6 and (what I've played of) Wiz7. It really demonstrates why turn-based games are so fascinating: you control the pace of the game, and the game gives you enough options even early on where that's worth something. I love getting into a battle with some tough enemies (or, even better, something I've never encountered before), and taking my time to select each character's action. I love entering a new area and exploring it step by step, referring to the in-game map. I love getting stuck, stepping away from the game to get a drink or a snack, and then coming back with a fresh perspective.

Having said that, it's also easy to drop in, play for 15 minutes, save you game, and feel like you've actually accomplished something worthwhile in it (or, you can sit there and play it for two hours straight, like I did last night!). It's quirky and rough around the edges, but it was made with a lot of heart, and the interface quirks are actually quite charming once you get into it. I love this game so far.

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
It's been a while since I've played this one! I got sidetracked with Grimoire, and I usually try to play one RPG at a time. I really like this one, but I have to be in the mood for it. It's a huge game, and every single combat, no matter how trivial, seems to take 10-15 minutes to finish, because there are so many enemies to kill. You cannot avoid combat since all encounters are fixed, so you just have to deal with it... sort of like in Divinity: Original Sin. Just like that game, it can get tedious to hit yet another battle with a dozen thugs, many of whom take 2-3 hits to kill. The difference here is that Rogue Trader lets you fast-forward through enemy turns by holding a key, which helps a ton.

I know very little about the setting, but it's quite fascinating and I went and got a couple of the Warhammer 40,000 novels on my Kindle (Eisenhorn and Horus Rising). I gave each an hour and liked both.

Finished the main campaign of Doom 64. I liked how the levels were short and focused, even if some of the puzzles became a bit obtuse towards the end.

Back to playing GTA: San Andreas. Finally over 50% progress. That "pimping" mission put me over the threshold. 🤣 Now, I'm about 10 missions away from the end of the storyline, and still only ~50%. It's amazing how many side activities this game has that count towards completion. Way more than GTA III and Vice City (which also had a lot).

Elite Force, but it's the PS2 version. Some silly differences:

- the rendering just got simply reduced for overscan considerations so the hud appears a little larger
- they broke the shaders a bit, so rgbGen wave/identityLighting looks overbright, and there's no alpha modulation for some effects (some explosions)
- no detail textures and only the vertex light shading path
- no flares, even if the ps2 can easily do flares
- ingame music quality's definitely lower
- the sickbay secret is still there, the tricorder is even more busted and the hypospray can really spam particles
- supports KBM but is buggy at changing settings
- locked at 30fps

despite all this, i haven't noticed any significant loss in level design.

Final Fantasy 8 on Windows Millennium it's special effects are great for my old GPU it's a pity to be the last Final Fantasy without requiring online connection.
I am powering through with max stats thanks to game saves found the net 🤣 funny the steam version allows that too easy achievements he he he

Borderlands GOTY Enhanced
Finished! It turns out that I had reached the final mission of the game without realizing it, and had been wasting my time doing optional stuff when I had already obtained endgame-level equipment. This meant that I was far over-leveled, and I mostly just ran straight through it to the end.

Once you complete the game and watch the credits, it drops you right back in so that you can go continue playing. It's one of those games that you could play forever, but I've had enough.

Overall, I liked the game, though it got very repetitive toward the end. I think you're probably meant to just run through the story missions one after another, maybe doing some of the optional missions if you find yourself under-leveled. Doing that would probably maintain a consistent difficulty level, instead of trivializing the endgame. Still, I had fun with it. The humor was hit-and-miss, but the writing was mostly likeable.

I actually went and installed the sequel, but got annoyed with it immediately. None of the menus work if you're using a non-English keyboard in Windows--it's easy enough to switch before you start the game, but it's kind of insulting that this was never fixed. That means that, after watching a long-ass unskippable intro cinema that basically just shows you the ending of the first game, I had to Alt-F4 out of the game because the keyboard issue made the game unplayable. Of course, when I restarted the game, it made me watch that cinema all over again... so I Alt-F4 out of it and uninstalled the game. Maybe some other day.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

Some more observations on the differences between this version and OG Dark Souls 2. There seem to be a lot more NPC invaders in Scholar, and they don't always appear when you initially enter the area. At times, they randomly pop up on your second or third pass, which can be quite dangerous if it happens while you're fighting a bunch of regular enemies.

By the way, sometimes it feels like the devs went a bit overboard with adding extra enemies in this version. Iron Keep is a prominent example of this, with its dozens upon dozens of knights, who often attack in groups of 2-3 at a time. For that reason, I decided to farm out the area until all the regular enemies permanently despawned. This made the Smelter Demon runback effortless, while also providing a ton of souls in the process. But I'm not sure if new players would even be aware of that mechanic.

On that note, I can see how the Scholar edition might turn some people off from this game. As others have said, it does feel like a "hard mode" compared to vanilla DS2. That's great if you're replaying the game like me, but for first timers coming straight from DS1, I guess Scholar might feel overwhelming at times. The game does give you the tools to deal with everything that it throws at you, but new players might not be aware of some of those. I think I now understand where all those "just skip DS2 bro" comments are coming from, though I still disagree with them. It's a fun game if you know its ins and outs, but I concur that the Scholar version might be less friendly to newcomers.

I decided to play through Final Fantasy 7 again, for probably the 20th time over the years. Square "re-released" it over on Steam, again...

Back in 2013 they added the PC version to Steam. I bought it even though I still own the orignal game disks becasue it's one of my top favorite RPG titles. Played through it several times with the 7th Heaven Mod Manager. Now, Square decided to de-list the 2013 release in favor of a new one where all they did was build in 3 cheats and added a host of new bugs, and charge new buyers $12 for it... again. Yeah, 2013 owners got it for free, but a cheap move in my opinion. The 2013 version was good enough, it worked. However, they wanted to milk that old cow a little more, but with as little effort as possible.

Still, I'm playing it again. Still a great story and fun game to play. 😜

Borderlands 2
So far, this game seems really tedious. It constantly forces you to sit there listening to characters going on and on, as they tell unfunny joke after unfunny joke, just to open a door. Hell, even when the game pops up a tutorial message, it makes you wait several seconds before you can actually dismiss it. I just want to loot and shoot. It doesn't really look any better than the first game, even though it was released years later. Terrible first impression.

I wanted to start playing The Last of Us.

Looking for some gameplay to check if I like it, I ended up watching a full movie cut of both parts.
It was better as a movie IMHO. The story is quite harsh.
This was years ago.

I finally wanted to play it and ended watching an even longer full cut and still it is harsh.

Part III might materialize and I'll play that.
---

Playing some X-Wing.
I remember being way better... years don't lie, you get slow 😀
Probably I need to go through that learning curve again.

Nexxen wrote on 2026-04-05, 11:09:

I wanted to start playing The Last of Us. […]
Show full quote

I wanted to start playing The Last of Us.

Looking for some gameplay to check if I like it, I ended up watching a full movie cut of both parts.
It was better as a movie IMHO. The story is quite harsh.
This was years ago.

I finally wanted to play it and ended watching an even longer full cut and still it is harsh.

Part III might materialize and I'll play that.
---

Playing some X-Wing.
I remember being way better... years don't lie, you get slow 😀
Probably I need to go through that learning curve again.

The Last of Us is not a game, it’s a life experience. 😁

bloodem wrote on Yesterday, 06:27:

Nexxen wrote on 2026-04-05, 11:09:

I wanted to start playing The Last of Us. […]
Show full quote

I wanted to start playing The Last of Us.

Looking for some gameplay to check if I like it, I ended up watching a full movie cut of both parts.
It was better as a movie IMHO. The story is quite harsh.
This was years ago.

I finally wanted to play it and ended watching an even longer full cut and still it is harsh.

Part III might materialize and I'll play that.
---

Playing some X-Wing.
I remember being way better... years don't lie, you get slow 😀
Probably I need to go through that learning curve again.

The Last of Us is not a game, it’s a life experience. 😁

The game tells a story and you don't really have a choice in many situations.
There are lots of controversies but in the end it is what they want you to experience: you are right on that.
I thank who made all those cuts into a movie for slackers like me 😀 Today all games have complete walkthroughs...

newtmonkey wrote on 2026-04-04, 16:10:

Borderlands 2
So far, this game seems really tedious. It constantly forces you to sit there listening to characters going on and on, as they tell unfunny joke after unfunny joke, just to open a door. Hell, even when the game pops up a tutorial message, it makes you wait several seconds before you can actually dismiss it. I just want to loot and shoot. It doesn't really look any better than the first game, even though it was released years later. Terrible first impression.

I'm finding the same thing with BL 4.

Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin

Finished! From what I've been told, the DLC areas are exactly the same between OG Dark Souls 2 and Scholar of the First Sin, so I'll replay those at another time. One of the things that I missed in my first playthrough was the Darklurker fight. And considering all the hoops you need to jump through just to get there, it's no wonder I never found this on my own.

The runback to the boss arena was kinda ridiculous, almost matching some of the DLC stuff. And the Darklurker had some crazy attacks, such as instantly following up area effect explosions with a fast melee combo. I struggled a lot against this thing, almost as much as with Sir Alonne. Especially when it splits up, and you have to dodge multiple magic blasts at once. I had to memorize the patterns of its deadliest attacks perfectly just to survive here. It took many attempts, including a few deaths on the runback, but I managed to beat it. This was the hardest fight in the base game, without a doubt. Nashandra and her minions were a piece of cake in comparison.

Final thoughts: Scholar of the First Sin is an acquired taste. I'd definitively suggest playing the vanilla version of Dark Souls 2 before diving into this revamped re-release. Though the differences in difficulty sort of disappear as you get closer to the end of the game. The starting areas are noticeably harder in Scholar, and that trend continues up to Drangleic Castle. After that, it gradually evens out. Lastly, playing Scholar didn't change my opinion of Dark Souls 2. It's a decent game overall, but still the weakest entry in the trilogy. Given the exceptional quality of Bloodborne, it's clear where FromSoft's priorities rested, as they were developing these two games simultaneously.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on Yesterday, 21:42:

I'd definitively suggest playing the vanilla version of Dark Souls 2 before diving into this revamped re-release. Though the differences in difficulty sort of disappear as you get closer to the end of the game. The starting areas are noticeably harder in Scholar, and that trend continues up to Drangleic Castle.

Curious, because from what I've seen most people recommend just playing the SotFS version over the base version.

That's what I ended up doing when I played DS2 for the first time a few months ago. And admittedly I don't have a desire to try playing the original, mainly because I feel the game is overly long as it is.

Lastly, playing Scholar didn't change my opinion of Dark Souls 2. It's a decent game overall, but still the weakest entry in the trilogy. Given the exceptional quality of Bloodborne, it's clear where FromSoft's priorities rested, as they were developing these two games simultaneously.

Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed DS2 more than DS3. I feel that DS2 had better areas to explore and more interesting game mechanics. DS3 had better bosses though.

For example, I love the torch mechanic in DS2. It's something I wish the other DS games (and Elden Ring) had made use of.