I used to write a "Now Playing" list like these in my old WordPress blog about twice a year or so. It's a way to exercise my writing muscle: I write a mini-review of what I've been playing during those half-year in a no-pressure environment. It... usually ends up being a pressure, though. Easier to throw my thoughts at twitter dot com and run.
New variation: throw my thoughts at cohost dot com instead. At least the web editor here isn't actively fighting me like WordPress editors do. I usually put images into these kind of posts, but nah, that's too much effort. I'll just give you links.
1000xRESIST
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1675830/1000xRESIST/ I actually tried to write a full review of this game but it kinda fell off. 1000xRESIST is amazing, a perfect game, in the sense that there's nothing more to add and nothing more to take away. It knows exactly what it is, what story it wants to tell, and it gives you exactly the beats for that story to be told while taking full advantage of its interactive format.
And hell of a story it is. It has the common tropes of alien invasion and humanity being doomed and the slightly less common variation of hey what if the one dooming us is ourselves and not the aliens, and it digs into them. It's also a lot about families, legacies, what get carried to the next generations, both the trauma and the endurance. Also fascism, resistances, the price for all that. In one of the final scenes I made a very centrist choice and the game flat out punished me for it; it was amazing.
The elements that make it up, the minimal visuals, the carefully-paced dialogues, are all fantastic, but I need to give an extra mention for the voice performance. Each line is a perfect fit for the scene and character. Worry, indifference, desperation, longing, resignation. The nuances are incredible. I feel bad for people who aren't fluent in English and won't be able to fully grasp all that.
It's about 12 hours long or so. Longer than I expected, but the story it gives is whole. I played it on the Switch, where it runs perfectly well, but the first-person sections do annoy me a bit. Also, I got lost a lot, which broke immersion a bit, but that's my bad.
Chants of Sennaar
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1931770/Chants_of_Sennaar/ I got two different people recommending this to me and hell yeah, thank you for thinking of me. This game is so me. I looove languages; learning them, figuring them out, or just seeing how differently they can go. Chants of Sennaar is a puzzle game where the puzzle is mostly languages. You have to decipher the words to figure out how to solve the puzzles.
It has a story that's honestly pretty whatever, but that's good enough for what it's going for! Its art direction is impeccable, utilizing simple shapes and colours and lighting to evoke the right mood for each of its sections. The puzzles are great... except for the ones where I have to walk back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
I hate having to walk back and forth, and the game has way too many of that. It's especially bad if, like me, you have a terrible short-term memory. Taking notes help, but it's often things I didn't think to take; when the aha moment hit I was five rooms away from it and walking back was excruciating.
I love the language puzzles though. Language puzzles good. I wish there's a bit more variations though, and that the game doesn't hold my hands too much. I was delighted when I figured out that one of the languages use object-subject-verb structure, and kinda dismayed that they didn't pull something like that again. I also wish there's more translation puzzles. There were a few but they weren't enough to satiate me!
Wuthering Waves
https://wutheringwaves.kurogames.com I am so embarrassed. I played the first 3 hours of this game and disliked it. The writing in the early quests was so bad, it was offensive to me as a writer. The controls and combat feel overly simplistic. The characters are too shallow for me to care about. But then I gave it a fairer attempt, I tried to find what it is that it wants to be, and ah. Fuck. It's actually good.
The combat is fun; it's not that very deep, but there's a lot of mechanics to have fun with here. The exploration is lovely; it's a lot more fast-paced than other open-world games I've played. My early mistake was trying smell the flowers. No, girl, Wuthering Waves wants you to breeze through its landscapes. That's where the joy is.
And heck, even the story isn't that bad once you get past the awful opening quests. It is so very Chinese, so very xianxia, while also being a post-post-apocalyptic science fiction story. It is so proud to be in this intersections of genres, and I'm happy for it.
I still don't really care for the cast, but I do care about playing them. The story can go to hell, but I like interpreting the characters through how they play. Taoqi my beloved, they cannot make me hate you.
It still has, like, a metric ton of flaws I can write whole essays on lmao, but it's a good game and I'm really enjoying my time with it. Shame about those terrible opening hours though. RIP the thousands of people who dropped the game by then and never did figure out what the game really wanted to be.
Honkai Star Rail
https://hsr.hoyoverse.com/en-us/home I'm trying to catch up with the Penacony arc but the moment-to-moment story has been a complete snoozefest. What isn't a snoozefest, however, is its battles! I love turn-based battles! Star Rail might have one of the best turn-based combat systems I've played. Shit I can't believe I'm saying this game is good after shitting on it back in the Xianzhou Luofu arc.
Guilty Gear Strive
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1384160/GUILTY_GEAR_STRIVE/ UNDER THE LONELY MOON 🎶 IN AN INFLUX OF WORDS 🎶 THIS ROAD 🎶 SHINES🎶 WITH 🎶 MY🎶 COLORS 🎶 BEARING THE PALE FIRE 🎶 I'M GOING AS FAR AS I CAN 🎶 TO KEEP THE GLOW ALIVE 🎶
Oh I love Guilty Gear so much. This is actually my first GG game, but I'm in love, I wanted to dig through the lores of the previous games too even though I don't really have the time or patience for that. Fortunately, my sister is even more in love with it, so she's the one who watches all the cutscene videos and she'll spill all the lore to me without me asking. I love GG's lore. It's batshit but genuine.
I think I'm pretty decent with the game too. My sister and I play matches almost every night and though I started out stronger, we're usually on even footing nowadays. I uhh, don't really have the patience to play online, though, so it's possible we're just reinforcing each other's bad habits, haha.
Sin is my son and I love him. I love Ky too (not immune to earnest kind blonde man with a sword). Happy Chaos gives me cuteness aggression. I also main Nago, Ram, Slayer. Slayer is so fun to play, he's like if Nago is Sin. Wild how quickly I picked him up.
Bustafellows
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1494470/BUSTAFELLOWS/ Otome games are kind of a guilty pleasure of mine. Yeah I 👉👈 like cute boys and I like stories where I get to be a girl who hangs out with cute boys.
I have way lower standards when judging these kind of games, which helps in that I keep getting pleasantly surprised with them! Admittedly, Bustafellows has a much higher budget than most otome games I play (most of which are indies), so they can really go at it with the presentation. Nice art, really nice (JP) voice acting, nice UI and controls (you'd be surprised how this can make or break even a visual novel).
But the story and writing are also pretty good too! I laughed a few times. I got attached to the characters. It's still fantastical that there exist five good men and you can be a girl among them without feeling like you need to have a knife at the ready, but the story still flows pretty naturally.
A lot of otome games fall for the trap of making the boys "worship" the main heroine too hard. Bustafellows isn't about to break tradition—the boys are definitely into you—but they also each have their own thing going on while also having good dynamic bouncing off each other, and so does all the other characters. Helps make the world more alive and less pandering to you.
Pokemon Platinum & Pokemon Sword
After years and years of resisting it, of saying to myself "I've outgrown it" and "these games are way too expensive", I finally did it. I'm starting my first Pokemon game since Pokemon Black, fourteen whole-ass years ago.
Pokemon was such a big part of my childhood, you have no idea. But as modern Nintendo consoles get less hackable and the games less pirateable and Nintendo showing no sign of imposing a nicer regional pricing, well, what are you expecting?
But I've been playing Pokemon music in the background while working the last few days and it's kicking in hard. I love Pokemon, and more than just for its gameplay. I miss the vibes, the atmosphere, the sense of being a child on an adventure with my pets. I miss it so bad. I miss it bad enough I got an emulator and Pokemon Platinum running on my phone while waiting for my (cheaper, used) copy of Sword to arrive.
My copy of Sword just arrived so I'm also just about to start it. I love what I've played of Platinum though, especially with now-much-older eyes. It's interesting, to compare it with how I experienced it as a child. Child me loved this. Teenage me scoffed at it. Now that I'm older and wiser, I can see just how well-made it is, as a child-friendly game. The artistry involved in making something specifically for children.
Ha. I really have grown. Years really did pass, huh.
