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What Are You Playing? Jump-Start January 2025

What are you up to this month? Have any games in mind for the future? Let us know in the comments below!

It's a new year, if you didn't notice, which means it's time to get excited about all the games that might/will come out in 2025. My list includes Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Borderlands 4, Lunar Remastered Collection, DOOM: The Dark Ages, and more. It's gonna be a packed year, for sure! Of course, we don't yet know when they will come out, so in the more immediate future I have the Marvel's Spider-Man 2 port to Steam as my next-closest game to be interested in.

Currently, I am going back-and-forth between Path of Exile 2 and my modded run of Baldur's Gate III. I bought a Horipad Steam Controller from Amazon - although I'm still waiting for it to arrive - and with that fancy new device I'll have everything I need to play (& review!) games...except maybe a better computer lol. I've got my Switch, my PlayStation 5 as backup, a PC that can run Steam, a Steam Deck, and now the controller.

The Horipad is supposed to have programmable buttons, so it damn well better be able to take screenshots with the push of a button! I'll be really annoyed otherwise: pressing F12 on a Keyboard + Mouse setup is really hard mid-gameplay, and pulling screenshots off the Steam Deck can be annoying. I hope the controller is the perfect middle-ground option.

I'm hoping to review even more games this year; new ones, of course, but also some older titles via our "Timely Reviews" line. It irked me a little that my "favorite games of 2024" article was literally just the ones I reviewed lol - I need more! I am also hoping to do a light bit of game-streaming: not such that you can see my face or hear my voice, per se, but just dipping my toes in the water while I play games with my sister in the passenger seat (like when we were kids).

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  • I'm fully into POE2 at this time. And it's awesome. Except some UI quirks which i hate :)  Also, i wish they integrated the trading web page into the game.

    Right now, cruel difficulty is kind of hard, so i'll have to trade for some better items overall. Also, refunding passives is TOO EXPENSIVE. Changing builds is not gonna happen soon - another issue i have with the game.

    On mobile i'm playing Balatro. Reached ante 16 or 17 the highest. There's so much rng involved that most runs end up squashed quite early due to lack of increments of any kind. Probably getting a good/fulfilling game out of 4-5, but i guess it's fine. I'm not known for being lucky lol.

    Damn life doesn't let me play the whole day, so i had to pause Stalker 2 and others. At least i'm glad there's no burnout with POE2 yet, but i do hate having to redo all the acts on cruel difficulty. I always hated this formula in Diablo too. Hopefully i won't get bored soon.

    • Quote From Crusader2010

      At least i'm glad there's no burnout with POE2 yet, but i do hate having to redo all the acts on cruel difficulty. I always hated this formula in Diablo too. Hopefully i won't get bored soon.

      If it helps, the whole "redo the story, but on a harder difficulty" is just an Early Access thing. The first Path of Exile did something similar: once the full campaign was (finally) released, they dropped the need to go back through.

      There will be six Acts of story in PoE2, and then you'll be able to head straight to end-game.

  • Wow, another month went by,

     

    In my case I have my mother in law visiting so I will see if I am able to finish AC. Syndicate, and keep going with Hades and Balatro.

     

    Other than that, my usual F2P suspects are still present.

  • Took me eight and a half hours to complete my first playthrough for my review.

    It's quite a bigger beast in content than the first game, but it's still fun.

    Staff

  • Happy New Year everyone!

    My answer for this month is going to be quite boring I'm afraid. I plan to continue Stardew Valley, I'll be checking out the WoW update dropping soon (but not likely to do much with it), and I'll get in some Tarkov PvE here and there which I played during the Winter break with a couple of friends.

    I've got a few titles that are in my queue for reviews for the site that hopefully I can get to. It would be refreshing to play something new and possibly be surprised by how good it is.

  • Still playing an ungodly amount of Diablo 4, I'm very close to what I'd consider my character finished though. Between that and the new season hitting I'll try to tune it down a bit.

    Hearthstone sees a little less play, I'm not even legend in Wild yet. There are rumors of a Wild tournament on EU this month but it seems they want to wait for the mini set to drop before doing it. That one should be right around the corner and I expect it to be just as overpowered as usual. Not very happy with the state of HS to be honest.

    Maybe I'll just get a PlayStation Portable and make diablo my main thing. We'll see. 

  • Broke my glasses this morning, dodging out of the way of a snow plow. So that sucks. Gotta figure out how to play Wukong (or Lies of P) while I await a new prescription...

  • My Horipad Steam Controller arrived 8 days early, so that's cool 😎 Currently recovering from a liver biopsy, though, which is not-so-cool lol 🤕

  • While I remain hurting from my biopsy, I was thinking that I need to find a "cozy" game that I can just play without requiring my full attention, ya know? Something that doesn't need me to tryhard: love Lies of P, quite enjoyed Black Myth: Wukong back in August, and so on, but they require the player to maintain focus (and a fair bit of discipline). Kinda hard to play them when you're drowsy on pain meds, half-asleep lol.

    Almost done with Lies of P, by the way, but I've "lost" a fair bit of potential playtime to naps and the like. Also the Horipad Steam Controller turned out to be just what I wanted: it's rather perfect for taking screenshots.

  • I was fighting a flu for about a week, and the second day was by far the worst. I went through some bad shit there.

    But now that I'm not sick out of my mind anymore, it's time to do more Freedom Planet 2. Carol's story is done. Up next, Milla!

    Staff

  • howdy y'all, im back for a bit with some internet. Going to be traveling back to the states so going to have some time to play some more demanding games which I'm excited for! Anywho, I've been doing a fair bit of indies recently still. Slowly playing through Scarmonde and YIIK (again, but they updated it now and its soooo much funnier now), and at the start of the month I absolutely clobbered the entirety of Chained Echoes.

    In terms of the two meat-and-potato games, I've been playing a ton of Rotwood and an even larger ton of Crystal Project. Rotwood is just a fantastic game, kinda like Hades if you replaced everyone with potentially fluffy (?) animals/non-humanoids and made one of the weapons have the ability to dunk on people. It's build-crafting leads to some of the most stupid looking gameplay I've ever seen, with my favorite so far being one based around putting on a bunch of heavy clothing and fat rolling into people and just having them die. It's still in EA, but its going to have a price bump towards launch, so I'd check it out if it's something you're mildly interested. Oh and it has multiplayer but I obviously haven't gotten the chance to try it.

    As for the other one, MAN is Crystal Project probably my favorite JRPG of all time. Base game is a wonderful experience through and through, but I've been having fun making mods recently. Currently have two, one is more or less finished and it takes the whole 'yeah I want to decide what skills I want" leveling you usually would have in a JRPG and throws it out the window of a Slay the Spire-esque "draft abilities to add to your toolkit" method. Pretty fun so far but I want to change a thing or two because it's a bit overtuned. As for the other mod, it just kinda doubles the game's playable unlockable classs from 24 to 48. Been learning how to sprite things for it so some are hit or miss, but some are really decent if you ask me. It's a precursor to a larger mod I want to make, releasing just the classes to make sure they are more balanced so I can try to avoid a balance nightmare. That being said the 24 new classes are a bit funny looking back on, because some range from "yeah this is just a plant themed support mage" to "yeah this is just a bunch of casino games some idiot coded into this game for some reason", ie something that only someone who is really bored and lacks internet would do. All that said (and despite what Sera says), play Crystal Project, game is very good.

  • Diablo IV's Season of Witchcraft started yesterday. I wasn't planning to do anything with it - still got the RTS Steam Fest to review, plus Black Myth: Wukong and so on, but my motivation was torpedoed by some personal events that hit me over the last couple days. I'm just gonna play some Diablo for a bit and try to feel better; January has really sucked.

  • Sorry to hear that, StormKnightSera. I'll keep my fingers crossed for things to massively improve quickly on your side!

    On my end, two things dominate gaming January:

    • Finished my first Diablo 4 season with a very decent Necromancer, I was able to consistently beat Duriel on Torment 4 in the end! Also got all the best mythics and tried my hands at trading 2 items - now I have 8 billion gold in my Eternal account lol. This season I went with the barbarian class. Haven't come far yet, but smashing baddies with Hammer of the Ancients is super fun!
    • Hearthstone is completely on the sideline when it comes to game time. That said... I'm still having the biggest success ever somehow. Reached a new personal best at rank 35 yesterday, exclusively playing Hooktusk Rogue which is a tier 3 deck lol. I will keep pushing this with a hand full of games per day and see how far it can go. Not gonna lie, I do feel proud about that one.

  • I've won my first Domination victory in Civ 6. AMA.

    Staff