Deadpool is now in Midnight Suns, and comes with like a mini story campaign along with him, that I wasn't really expecting as I thought the DLC was just new characters.
Honestly, coming back to Midnight Suns after binging Engage since release, kinda made me appreciate Midnight Suns maybe more than I did previously. I thought the Persona elements in Three Houses were complete overkill, then in Engage they are basically non-existent and I feel like Midnight Suns has found a really healthy middle ground in this regard, even if the general quality of the performances and animation is... not great. And even if this part of the game feels really out of place with everything around it.
I also think I have landed in a place where I've accepted that I just don't generally like Midnight Sun's combat model with all the randomness of the cards, and the convoluted heroism system, but there are also lots of elements to the combat model here which I think makes battles feel so much more dynamic than those in Engage. I miss in Engage being able to use my environment for extra damage, I miss combo'ing heroes together, I miss abilities which earn extra moves or allow you to chain attacks together etc Honestly, I just kinda miss abilities in Engage in general, I know Midnight Suns has a lot of crossover and at the heights of Engage when you are using like your Engage move or whatever it blows Midnight Suns out of the water, but it is kinda nice to have a moment to moment combat model where every move is an ability of some kind.
I also realised I really don't care for those dead turns in a Fire Emblem game where you are just moving Units into position, like apparently people find that stuff fun, but I actually much prefer how Suns is just a small location, the enemies are immediately in front of you and you can just get stuck in straight away.
Finished my playthrough of Midnight Suns, its weird because if I was to just list every negative and positive I had for this game, I think the negative column would be far larger. However, the positives simply outweigh those negatives for me, even if there are less of them. This game is understandably polarising, but if you vibe with it and at least enjoy more of it's disparate parts than you dislike, then I think almost everyone will have an excellent time with this. Also, whereas I usually feel super fatigued after a game these days, after like 60ish hours played or whatever it is, I could happily go back for more. The game offers both an endgame and also a New Game+. I am not usually one to NG+, but I would happily do that here and that is like the greatest praise I can offer a game. I might roll a dark male Hunter, as apposed to the light/neutral female Hunter I ran for this playthrough and try and max out the friendships of some of the heroes I used the least the first time.
I was kinda half nervous that Forspoken's atrocious performance on my rig, along with other games like Midnight Suns which had really spotty performance too, that my PC was simply falling too far behind, but I picked up Dying Light 2 and I know it is almost a year old now, but it is an open world game which runs beautifully on my system and reminds me of how important a properly optimised PC Port is.
I have most of the settings up to max at 1440p, and with the help of DLSS I am closer to a hundred frames most of the time than I am to sixty. And I'd argue Dying Light 2 is far more dense and detailed than something like Forspoken is as well, so if I wasn't sure already, I am now basically convinced the problem is on the end of games like Forspoken and Suns, rather than on mine.
I am also enjoying DL2 as a game a lot too, albeit I am only a few hours in. I tried to the first one a bunch of times, bounced off of it every time, not even really sure why. But this sequel just feels so damn good to play - like seriously, is this the first game with first person melee combat that doesn't just feel like total ass? It also has a light loot like system and borrows heavily from the Ubisoft design school which I know are negatives for many, but for me, give me a big map with a bunch of markers and a loot based progression system and I'm basically sold, couple that with it's dialogue tree and this has basically the three pillars I need to like a videogame.
It's possible to get the Epic Games Store running on Linux but it's not exactly straightforward and most games are going to have at least some issues. There are no native Linux versions on it and most won't have been tuned much for Proton either.
It might be worth it for the occasional game or two but if you've got a large library and want to play all of them you're probably better off installing Windows.
@SlashFuture on STEAM games with have an (i) saying they are playable on the Steam Deck. From what I've seen you can get at least 60% of STEAM games working on the Deck.
Not a crazy amount to add, but now some 20ish hours into Dying Light 2, I am even more convinced this is a very good video game.
People said a lot of the narrative choices in the game are smoke and mirrors, but I've already seen far more consequence for my choices than in games like Cyberpunk 2077. And I do think they do a good job in making choices not too obvious, so you aren't just picking the bad or the good option neatly colour coded. My story has gone down a path I didn't really intend, and I actually think that is kinda cool.
I will say though, the game does lock you into things at times which I think kinda sucks. Like I wanted to try and play Aiden as a good person, but story branches will often inevitably result in Aiden having to kill a bunch of people. I love this in the sense that the combat is absolutely wonderful, but love this less as it robs me of my ability to truly roleplay Aiden.
I also think, maybe unavoidably, being a big open world game, it can be difficult to really get a sense of your choices truly shaping the world around you. It will change the direction of the story, and the characters in the world will comment on the actions you have taken, but really the world itself remains mostly quite static beyond taking over outposts or whatever and changing the flag on them. I will say they do a good job of actually including narrative reasons for these disconnects, so they were at least aware of this and didn't try and play it off like it doesn't matter.
And like I say, everything else is basically universally excellent. Combat starts great, then gets even better as you unlock more stuff. There is this running drop kick thing you can do to absolutely blast people off of rooftops, into each other or into traps and it really just never gets old.
Parkour starts excellent, and then if you side with the survivors you unlock all these additional traversal options, while also levelling up to get more stamina, and parkour options, that just means getting around this world is just getting more and more fun all the time.
It is just honestly a total blast, every part of it just feels so well crafted and loved.
I will say the only other negative I'd really have, is difficulty in Dying Light 2 is kind of an illusion. By that I mean that at least for side quests that take place in the world, there is a degree of RNG to them, like the kind of zombies that spawn or where they spawn etc. I have a bunch of early side quests that are in indoor locations, the idea is to tackle these at night time as the zombies come out to play at night, so you are going to have an easier path to the objective. Only for some reason every time I have attempted these some kind of super zombie is just waiting in the building for me, and no matter how many times I level up, this thing just absolutely destroys me. My RNG must be so bad, but I've basically had to give up on a bunch of side content and just focus on the main story, which kinda sucks as I love clearing a big map, which I am not sure I will be able to do here.
Luckily every story mission is beautifully crafted, so I don't mind too much. Sometimes in these kind of games, the best content is in the side missions, but that doesn't seem to have been the case for me here.
I started up Kandagawa Jet Girls over the weekend. It has a nice bright & bubbly vibe, but so far has been very easy.
I've cleared the first team's story mode & have just started on the second team's, but so far it's been extremely easy to leave the other racers in your wake even if you abstain from using any items. In fact, if one of a race's optional objectives is to hit every other racer at least once, you kinda have to let them pass you up at the start of the race otherwise you'll be way too far ahead to use items.
There's at least half a dozen teams though, so maybe their story modes will get progressively more difficult. Still a nice game though.
Currently Playing:
Switch - Blade Strangers
PS4 - Kingdom Hearts III, Tetris Effect (VR)
Ended up getting the PC version of Hogwarts Legacy, performance is apparently put to the test when you get to Hogsmeade, so I guess I will see what happens when I get there, but the opening hour of the game held up really well for me. With the help of DLSS, I was able to achieve far higher frame rates and resolution than I would have on PS5.
The first hour makes a pretty strong impression, too. The character creator was a little disappointing, lots of options but not a lot of granular detail. I would usually make a female character but it felt weird here as you are playing as a child, so I tried to make teenage me, and just ended up with a kinda generic ginger dude in glasses, oh well.
Game is gorgeous though, although there is some uncanny valley weirdness to the faces/voice acting, almost feels AI generated at times, just feels weird and off. I really like the animations for spell combat, just using that generic spell and the parry (which is wonderfully forgiving), my wizard looked and felt like a total badass. For the most part, with some tweaks, the default key bindings aren't so bad, either.
I let the Sorting Hat sort me, they sorted me into Ravenclaw. For those with intelligence, creativity and wit. I'll take it.
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