What video game(s) are you playing at the moment?

[607]

I've recently been 'working on' Castelian on Game Boy (the game called Nebulus on Amiga and ST), Super Mario Bros. 2 on the Game & Watch (emulating a Famicom), Mario Kart 8 Deluxe on the Switch, Gradius on the NES (on Switch), The Legend of Zelda on the NES (on Switch), Super Monkey Ball Banana Mania on the Switch, Dewy's Adventure on Wii, Yoshi's Woolly World on Wii U and Re-Volt on N64.
That's a lot of Switch! It's been like that ever since I bought it. I'm not playing anything on GBA at the moment, which was my favourite console/handheld before getting the Switch!

[Strato Incendus]

Given that Lemmings was originally marketed as an "action puzzle", I wonder if anyone here has ever come into contact with the Mirror's Edge games?
I discovered them one year ago, and are currently replaying them again - because replay value is certainly something they have going for them!

They're definitely more on the "action" than the "puzzle" side, but I'd kind of say they combine the best of both worlds:
During the initial playthrough, when you still need to figure out the path through a level, you will be busier with the "puzzle" side;
then, you're organically incentivised to do a re-run (not in a ham-fisted Yoko Taro-like way ), because you'll naturally want to improve your performance in getting through the level.
So the second time, when you know the level better, you can focus more on the "action" side. It's one of the few games literally made for speedrunners.

Basically, imagine you had a Lemmings level and its rerun, both being an X-of-everything level; but the first time, you mess around trying out whatever you want; the second time, you put a self-imposed time limit on the whole thing, trying to get through it as fast and efficiently as possible.


I assume Mirror's Edge won't appeal to the puzzle purists, because execution difficulty is definitely a major component.
However, where in Lemmings, execution difficulty is accidental and mostly unwanted, in Mirror's Edge, it's an intended part of the challenge - just like if you were doing Parkour for real.

The "accidental" and usually "unwanted" part of Mirror's Edge is the gun combat, which slows you down and eliminates most of your movement options, i.e. does the exact opposite of what the game otherwise wants you to do (just like execution difficulty in the original Lemmings games hindered the puzzle aspect). That's why they removed gun combat from the sequel, Mirror's Edge: Catalyst, which only has martial-arts combat. However, even that often still ends up being clunky.

While many trash the story of both the original 2008 game and Catalyst, and it's certainly nothing to write home about, I actually found myself more invested in at least some of the events (especially in Catalyst) than in other games that attempt to go for a more complex and elaborate story, but fail at establishing a connection with the characters.



I'd sum up the basic idea as a combination of Tomb Raider, Spider-Man, and Temple Run :
You're doing fast parkour puzzles in a metropolis while being chased by cops and private security.

I have only found a few other games that attempt anything similar, but none of them quite come close:
- The Dying Light games and Cyberpunk 2077 (though I prefer the aesthetic of Mirror's Edge over both, since "dark and gritty" has been done to death at this point, and some even refer to Mirror's Edge as cyberpunk, too; I've discovered it by, and hence have always been referring to it, as "Grimbright").

- And then, I recently saw somebody randomly flash in gameplay of Neon White, which looks to me as if somebody had taken the abstract level shapes from the Mirror's Edge DLC time trials (where you're jumping around somewhere in the clouds) and mashed it together with The Legend of Zelda.

[namida]

I've recently been playing two games that both might be of interest to people here. The first is Understand, a puzzle game heavily inspired by Zendo. The second is PsiloSybil, a retro-style 3D platformer with a very similar feel to Crash 1 (but harder); it's early access but the only bug I've run into is slight frame rate drops from time to time, which may be down to my hardware (and in particular that I'm running it at low power to extend battery life).

[Pieuw]

Yesterday I played What Remains of Edith Finch and I absolutely loved it. It's a very short game (~ 2-3h) and the gameplay is ultra linear but the atmosphere and story are incredible. I just wanted to chill but ended up with the feels

[Guigui]

I'm currently playing Portal 1 and 2 games, for maybe the 3rd time each since they came out.

The simplicity of the concept, and the tremendous puzzle it is able to create still amazes me each run I make. Plus the humour around those corridors is really good. Definitely give it a try if you love puzzle games, and do not get misdirected by the firts person view : those are real puzzle games.

[GigaLem]

Been playing through the Sly Cooper Series since acquiring the Vita Collection and going through my backlog to continue it. I'm playing through Sly 2 and im at the halfway point

[Proxima]

I just finished (as in reached the credits, although there is still plenty more to do in the game) Hollow Knight: Silksong, the sequel to Hollow Knight, which is just about the only modern game that I love as much as I love the classics    Both games are Metroidvanias with vast worlds to explore, and I love the feeling of exploration and discovery, not knowing what's around each new corner, and gradually piecing things together and building connections. Both games also have a ton of colourful characters and fascinating, well-developed worlds, presented in a very cryptic way so that as you explore, you gradually come to understand them.

However, I discovered Hollow Knight through a Let's Play, which I'm grateful for as I might have missed it altogether, but that did mean that I never had the experience of playing it completely blind for myself. So Silksong has been an amazing opportunity to immerse myself in that experience. I have recorded my playthrough (96 episodes so far!) but haven't started uploading it yet as that would take huge chunks of time away from playing. At this point I'll probably just keep going, either until I 100% the game or until I decide I've reached a point where it makes sense to stop recording and play the rest by myself, and only start uploading then 

Namida is also playing this game at the moment.

[Guigui]

... vast worlds to explore, and I love the feeling of exploration and discovery, not knowing what's around each new corner, and gradually piecing things together and building connections...

Hollow Knight was sure a great game, I'll also play Silksong when time comes.

Your words above appeal to the Souls series, I may sound dumb by asking this but have you tried this series already ? If not, I definitely recommend giving them a go ; Demons' Souls and Darks Souls are very good entries in there.
Hollow Knight borrows many things from those games, to the point that on my first run of Hollow, I felt like I was playing the best 2D Darks Souls ever.

[kaywhyn]

For the last several months, I went through and played several games I remembered from my childhood, with some also being in more recent times.

In August, I went through the GOG (Great Old Games) Mega Incredible Machine pack that I downloaded from way back in 2019 and have installed on my machine but which I didn't play through all of each game. The bundle consists of The Even More Incredible Machine, The Incredible Machine 3, The Return of the Incredible Machine: Contraptions, and The Return of the Incredible Machine: Even More Contraptions. The only one of these I played back when I was a child is TEMIM, though I didn't finish all of the puzzles at the time. It wasn't until after I had graduated from college when I finally played and solved all 160 puzzles.

The only other game in the series I owned when I was a kid was The Incredible Machine 2. TIM3 is essentially TIM2 but with an updated UI and for Windows rather than Dos. I wasn't able to get the speech for TIM3 working until I asked a user on one of their videos how they got the speech working. They referred me to ExoWin for that. Needless to say, it's a huge pain to get working on modern machines. IMHO, you're better off just sticking to TIM2, as IMO the TIM2 soundtrack is many times better than the remakes in TIM3.

Well, I felt it was time to play through all 4 games of the mega bundle, even TEMIM in spite of how that was the only game in the series included in the bundle that I have played in its entirety. So, for about a month I successfully completed all the puzzles of each game and hence got a diploma of Contrapology after completing Even More Contraptions Absolutely worth getting if you're into The Incredible Machine and puzzles in general. I think this pretty much explains why I'm able to solve custom Lemmings levels more easily than most.

After that, in September I played through Contraption Maker, which is pretty much a spiritual successor to The Incredible Machine. It's a game that is available for purchase on Steam. I bought this back in 2017 and played for probably about a week before I stopped playing for a long time before I finally buckled down and played through all the puzzles for real. After about a week, I completed all the official puzzles. Though controls are at times clunky, a lot of the puzzles were very satisfying to figure out and solve

In the same month, I played Age of Empires and its expansion Rise of Rome. I was one of those who only used cheat codes back then, but nowadays I don't play with them anymore and play the campaigns legit. I went through the campaigns of both games and completed them all again on the highest difficulty of "Hardest." I played them on a Win XP virtual machine, and it's quite surprising how very well they run despite the games themselves being quite old. Here, I played the vanilla version via the Gold Edition that is available for download online. The reason for this is because I really miss the old graphics and sounds I remembered growing up playing the game. For clarity, I also have the Steam AoE Definitive Edition installed on my machine alongside the Gold Edition, but the AoE Steam version just doesn't do the series justice. In particular, I don't really like the music remakes on Steam. It's such a travesty IMO!

Finally, Guigui's post saying that they played through both Portal games inspired me to play through them again as well, which I did last month. Not only did I complete the single-player again for them, I also completed all the advanced chambers of Portal again. I honestly didn't remember finishing all the advanced chambers maps, but I apparently have from several years ago as indicated by the 100% completion shown in the game.

It didn't stop there. Thanks to this Portal 2 Tutorial - How to Switch Players in Co-Op When Playing Solo, I was able to complete the entire co-op by myself Despite how it's intended to be played with another person, it's definitely possible to complete solo. There's only a few sections that have extremely tricky and difficult timing, but they are possible to do solo. I don't have any recorded videos of my playthrough of Portal 2 Co-op, but maybe sometime in the future I will

I'm currently playing Portal 1 and 2 games, for maybe the 3rd time each since they came out.

The simplicity of the concept, and the tremendous puzzle it is able to create still amazes me each run I make. Plus the humour around those corridors is really good. Definitely give it a try if you love puzzle games, and do not get misdirected by the firts person view : those are real puzzle games.

Absolutely agree with the excellent voice acting of the Portal games! I think in this case this was either my 4th or 5th time playing them      

[GigaLem]

There's been a bit of game clearing and testing between and after the new pc.

I've been busy with Legends ZA and Star Crossed World

I can finally play games like Lethal Company, Peak, The Karters 2 and possibly others

Platinum'd Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, Once Upon a Katamari, and got all trophies for the PS4 version of Sonic Mania and have been working my way through Sonic Forces

And I've resumed editing for Ratchet & Clank