What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

My eldest passed the marshmallow test. Last year he decided he wanted a Switch. For ten months he saved every dollar of his allowance and every birthday and Christmas gift. Yesterday he bought that Switch. I chipped in for extra controllers for his brothers and his first games (Mario Kart 8 and the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Cowabunga Collection). He’s happy. Auto-steer, 50cc and easy computer AI have him taking first regularly.

My wife is even more happy. We bought the pass that gets you access to the online NES collection, so she’s playing Super Mario Bros. 3 for the first time in decades. She remembers all the secret paths and hidden boxes and warns me about Thwomps off screen.

It absolutely holds up, but there are these odd things that stick out to me years later. The levels are incredibly short. Most shouldn’t take more than a minute if you are pushing right. You can also skip a huge amount of gameplay through the secret paths. My wife is hitting all of the skips because she learned them the hard way over a summer of grinding, but I actually want to play the game.

I remember when I went back to the first Super Mario Bros as an adult, I realized I had never played half the game because as a kid I would always use warp pipes, so when I played this time I made sure to just play straight through.

Also, SMB3 is top shelf.

Gary Sax wrote: One thing to do that takes away some annoyance is just train up your running/endurance (I think athletics?) by rubber banding a controller or modding. It's going to happen anyway as you play.

Yeah, I'm hopping pretty near everywhere, and running when I'm not. It would be an Elder Scrolls game if you didn't do some stupid thing to level up your movement.

san il defanso wrote:
For whatever reason, perhaps in a fit of ADHD madness, I decided to see if I can get into Morrowind.

Morrowind is awesome. Assuming you are playing on PC, there is a mod that simply removes the flying enemies (cliff racers?). They suck and are annoying. You will only be making yourself happier.

I've been playing the game vanilla, aside from using the OpenMW engine to run it on Mac. Call me a glutton for punishment, I just like seeing stuff in its original form I guess.

Truly, I can burn hours in Morrowind more than just about any other open world RPG I've ever played. There's just something that works about the game, even with its considerable jank, which was even a little much for 2002.

I've actually been thinking a lot about why this game is hitting my Q-zone more than Oblivion or Skyrim. It's surprisingly hard to qualify, but I think it has something to do with the quests feeling like they come from NPCs, rather than just feeling like content to be consumed. I don't want to be too hard on Skyrim, which I've always enjoyed, but there's a lot more character in Morrowind, that's for sure.

In other words, 20-year-old game that everyone likes is, in fact, really good.

I picked up Diablo 4 on Xbox thinking it would be my new long-term video game investment after not really playing much of anything for the last year. It's...fine. Incredibly well done for what it is. Just not sure that what it is really does it for me anymore.

Last week I grabbed Baldur's Gate 3 and, holy shit, it's the real deal. Closest thing to a TTRPG I've ever played, and in all the good ways. Every single encounter has MANY ways to resolve. The voice acting is incredible. Exploration is very satisfying. Every nook and cranny of the environment is worth exploring as you WILL find something of interest. And not just some little meaningless filler to pad the play time. Everything is so well fleshed out and impactful.

I actually find myself counting the hours down at work until I can go home and play again and that hasn't happened in a long time for me with any game.The fact that they delivered a thing of this scope and quality with so few bugs and no micro transactions is extremely impressive.

Just be aware that you will be tasked with choosing what your character's genitals look like. It was a little disconcerting choosing my gnome's vulva but it's pretty cool that everyone can build a character that matches any sex/gender combination that they identify with.

Yeah, I am fucking hyped for BG3, I intentionally avoided everything about its early access. Going to wait till I have like an extended period I could play it to buy but...

I want to say there's a no nudity option in the menu? That might nix that choice out?

I would probably be playing Baldur's Gate 3 now if I wasn't busy making my own video game, a task which I am trying very hard to not falter on.

Oh, I'm not offended by the nudity or anything. I just found the process funny. I wasn't prepared for "design your junk."

So let me tell you about my video game I'm creating. There's this group that goes to Origins and Gen Con, called the Red Shirt society. It refers to red shirt brown pants, to cover up for where you got stabbed and shit your pants during war. Whatever.

They have this game they run events for, called Monster Mash. I've played for years, and it is always fun. Each player is randomly assigned a D&D monster. They are NOT all created equal. Every monster is thrust into the dungeon, and it's a battle royale. The rules enforce combat and don't let you turtle. I never last long, but it's fun.

I have long thought it would be a fun premise for a video game, and am finally acting on that premise. I am changing the formula though, to suit my medium. My current title is Gacha Dungeon, after the vending machines that spit out random toys. Here's the pitch:

100 monsters thrown into a dungeon to engage in 1v1 battles until there is a last monster standing. When you start, let's say there are 10 "starter" monsters in your gacha machine. You spin the machine and it spits out one of the monsters. That is your character. You then battle until you either die or win the whole thing. When you defeat a monster, you gain gold. If the monster has never been defeated by you before, it enters your gacha so it may be a future character you get to play. You can spend the gold on stat boosts for the monsters, to make it easier to win with them. If you actually win the whole thing, that monster would then be brought out of the gacha and you could choose it specifically to play as. Most of this is not implemented yet, it's just the direction I'm heading.

Making a video game is infinitely harder than making a board game, but not having to deal with a publisher / physical goods is liberating.