1. DKC Returns (3DS)2.√ Letter 3. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided (PC)4. Spec Ops: The Line (PC)5. Fire Emblem Heroes (Android) (such as it is)6. Gears of War UItimate Edition (Xbox One)7. Onechanbara Z2 Chaos (PS4)8. Horizon: Zero Dawn (PS4)9. Nioh (PS4)10. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Wii U)11. Dark Souls III: The Ringed City (PC)12. Demon’s Souls (PS3) replay
13. Dark Souls (PC) replay
14. Dark Souls III (PC) replay
15. Dark Souls (PC) replay
FFXI
16. Mario Kart 8 Deluxe (NSW) replay
17. Destiny 2 (PC)
18. Doki Doki Literature Club (PC)
19. Uncharted: The Lost Legacy (PS4)
20. VA-11 Hall-A: Cyperpunk Bartender Action (PC)21. Dark Souls (PC) yet again22. Super Mario Odyssey (NSW)23. Nier: Automata (PS4)Dark SoulsAs mentioned in the Souls thread, I did a heavy armor/fat roll run, kind of with the idea in mind of keeping the build as dirt-simple as possible. Outside of a few things, it proved to be extremely effective and easy, since I still used a high stability shield, making rolling kind of unnecessary for most anything. I did drop to fast roll for the center part of Bed of Chaos - there are likely other ways to do it, but, its' a BS fight in the first place.
Super Mario OdysseyPlayed through to the N64 castle area and did a bit there, but interest was waning already, so I didn't push much further. Which isn't to say that it's a bad game. I wasn't keen on the inclusion of motion controls - not strictly necessary, but, usually the better/easier way to do things (auto-targeting hat throws, faster climbing, etc). I even tried to turn them off at one point, since they seemed to be causing me to steer when I didn't want to in one of the flower/dash things....but the game happily ignored that setting.
Plus, as much as the hat mechanic more or less creates an elegant re-imagining of the variety of other power-ups Mario would typically get...the constant pop-ups telling you how to do things seemed kind of not-Mario, even if they're somewhat appropriate when controls can change so often.
Anyway, for what it is,
Odyssey is good, great even. The folks that still can't get enough
Mario 64 have a new game to do challenge runs in for decades on end. For me personally...it's fun enough for a bit, but not the kind of game that I can't wait to get home and play. So, I was satisfied with leaving it at what's objectively a fairly low completion level.
Nier: AutomataI started on this when it came out earlier this year, but wound up playing through other things (and eventually drifting back to the FFXI black hole for a bit), but wanted to get back around to it. While I didn't bother with many of the specific game-over type endings, I did get endings A-E and sacrificed my save data so someone else could as well...sooo, not going back for stray sidequests anytime soon.
Overall, pretty good, though it never quite hit the level I was hoping for based on the hype. Certain expectations were, of course, tempered, since
Automata is actually a relatively low budget game made over a fairly short time period. Even accounting for that though, necessitating playing the first part of that game twice over (with changes here and there) stretched the asset reuse a bit much, and I wasn't fond of the 2.5D switching either. Combat seemed over-thought, though I guess it'd allow for players to tune things harder if they really wanted (pretty easy by default, save for some of the twin-stick hacking parts).
Those kinds of things are easy to gloss over with how quirky the game is in general, and it comes together well as a whole. Maybe not as amazing to me as to some folks, but, it was fun, and the somewhat small game world kept it focused and memorable.