@theknightdamien gotcha, good to know.  I play plenty of older games so I guess I can stick with what I've got.  Thank you!

I beat it!  I can stop posting about the same game over and over because I beat Elden Ring.  And yes, I was indeed about to fight the final boss(es) before I realized I'd skipped three major areas.  Honestly, I wish the game had ended the first time I got to the tree.  I didn't really care for anything that happened after that.  The giants' land, the crumbling city, Haligtree, the snowy area, the parthenon underground... could have done just fine without those personally.  I still loved the game and think it's a masterpiece but not enjoying my last 20+ hours playing it makes for a bummer of a final verdict.  The capitol was pretty much the end of my enjoyment.

Coupla notes I found interesting/frustrating

• Level 188 / 158hrs
• I never changed my weapon after I got Bloodhound's Fang (so like 5% of the way through the game)
• I never used any rune past #4 so I still have probably 500k-1mil runes in my inventory
• never used an Ash of War
• never respec-ed - sword and shield all the way through
• never used a Rune Arc
• wasted quite a few hours running around Haligtree thinking Miquella was there, too
• got the Ranni ending, though I think I had items to get a few others

I'm not sure what I'm going to play next.  Last of Us or Stray or RDR2 need to be played and beaten but after three months with Elden Ring I think I need to go back to some smaller games for a little while.

@mikeysee  No problem!

Some thoughts on your thoughts:

I actually hated Bloodhound's Fang. But I did end up choosing my favorite few weapons fairly early on, with the exception of the Blasphemous Blade, which you can't get until a somewhere around half-way through, I think? Never using an Ash of War seems a bit bizarre - I liked that mechanic a lot. I also never used Rune Arcs, though. Also kept my character spec'd for sword and shield, although my strength was sufficient to also two-hand sometimes.

For your next game - while Last of Us is a pretty intense game, it's also like 17 hours IF you explore everything available. Maybe a little less if you're good at the combat/don't restart encounters that you're not doing well on, etc. My New Game+ playthrough was, I think, 16.5 hours or something like that. But I explored everything and I'm constantly restarting encounters if I feel like I'm doing poorly or wasting too much ammo/resources. So if you're good at games (i.e. you are not me), it's basically a 15 hour game.

RDR2 is LONG if you take the time to enjoy it, so I definitely wouldn't recommend jumping into that if you're looking for something light. I think Stray is also a pretty short game. I didn't play it, but my son played a good chunk of it before getting bored.

I tried Evil West or whatever it's called because it's on PS+ right now and I lost interest REALLY quickly. It feels like a supernatural wild west version of God of War, or something. Very 'on rails' where you just move from one tiny arena fight to the next and I absolutely hated it. No way to be creative with your abilities because the game just tosses you into a tiny circle filled with enemies - making the game feel more like the latest Doom game, where you just have to power through enemies as quickly as you can while trying to remember the 20 button combinations to do all the different moves while trying to remember which reactions you need to do for which attacks. It's just... messy. I don't like games like that and I gave up pretty quickly. Also the story sucked.

I found Stray really mediocre, but it's probably the change of pace you're looking for. I enjoyed it as a cat lover even if the game isn't great. It's only like, six hours, too.

I second KD on RDR2. It was like a 4/5 on my initial play, but I think that's largely because of how long the main story is. Given some time and distance from the game, it's risen in my estimation, but the main story is still a slog IMO. I clocked in at 61.5 hours and I didn't do much side content.

I bought Arkham Asylum on a whim a few months ago. I beat it when it first came out, but I wanted to see if it held up. It's always surreal to play a game like that because of how influential it is/was. Detective mode (blech), the combat system, and the idea that a licensed game could actually be good were revolutionary. The answer to whether it holds up is, yeah, mostly. It felt old until I got back into its rhythms, but once I did, I was impressed. I'm not sure I'd call it a modern classic, but it punches above its weight. It makes you feel like Batman, has memorable boss battles with iconic rogues (aside from the horrendous final boss), and features groundbreaking combat. It's clearly a Batman game made lovingly by fans.

I didn't have as good of an experience with the Resident Evil 4 remake. Until a few years ago, Resident Evil was my biggest gaming blindspot. I played the Resident Evil 2 remake and was blown away. Great level design, a unique atmosphere, and several genuine scares (and that's coming from a horror fanatic). I couldn't have had a more different experience with RE4. The opening village level took me an hour to beat before I finally looked up a guide. Apparently the solution was just to run around for a few minutes until an in-game bell tolled. Okay, whatever. I struggled through more early levels before dropping the difficulty. I don't mind playing games on easy, but I'm rarely forced to do so. I beat RE2 on normal without any trouble. RE4 would've taken me 50 hours if I hadn't dropped it to easy. Aside from that, the game has no scares and real pacing issues. I beat it in 16 hours which is just way too long for a single-player shooter.

@tsi  I still really love Batman: Arkham Asylum/City. But I also can't really play them anymore. To be fair, even when they were current games I did not go back to them after beating them. Didn't feel like a story I was invested enough to revisit, and the gameplay wasn't so amazing that I just had to have more of it. But they were basically the quintessential Batman games and they'll be very hard to top without just like.. doing it again but with a different story and better graphics.

Also, my opinion here is probably colored by the fact that my REAL jam was Shadow of Mordor/War, which is just the Arkham games with swords, in basic gameplay terms. Those games I CAN go back to even after all this time.

In this modern age of Spider-Man 1 & 2 from Insomniac, I would very much like a new Batman game, though. Lots of potential to do something a little different and still really cool and fitting.

Funny that you didn't mention Arkham Knight. I thought it was easily the weakest of the core trilogy. I don't remember much of it outside of the forced Batmobile combat and predictable ending. My OCD has me wanting to go back and play City/Knight now, but I didn't enjoy my time with Asylum enough to do so.

I liked Shadow of Mordor but never picked up the sequel. I actually got it for free in a bundle last year. I haven't decided if I'm going to go back and play it yet. I was over the Ubisoft-style game when it came out, but I'm running out of games of its quality to play.

@tsi Yeah, that was definitely intentional. I hated the Batmobile so much that I quit the entire game after the first Batmobile section. No regrets. Fuck that game.

I liked Shadow of War better than Shadow of Mordor by a little bit. Largely because of the variety of swords and gear. I really liked being able to change Talion's armor and weapons around. I'm a BIG fan of customization and that'll put a game over the top for me if done right. War has only improved since release because they removed all the micro transaction things they were using where you could upgrade your orc servants. The only downside to the game, in my opinion, is that the last act is a slog.
Or was. I've heard they changed that as well, but I can't say that for myself because I never played the game after they did all the patches and made it better. I plan to one day, though.

I finally picked up the remake of Link's Awakening for the Switch and I'm really enjoying it. Though I have been using a guide I found online, so that's been helping. I've had the amiibo for this game for a good while, and now that I have the game itself, its become more and more tempting to finally open it up. I don't foresee myself using it to store a custom dungeon, but I kind of want to unlock the shadow Link.

I do hope Grezzo remakes more of the classic 2D Zelda games in this style. Especially A Link to the Past, which I've played a little bit of through NSO. Don't know if this would be an unpopular opinion, but I would want to see them keep Link's pink hair. Maybe they could finally have a line of dialogue or something that explains it, lol.

That said, I'm actually kind of hoping this year's Zelda game (assuming there's going to be one) is a port/remaster of A Link Between Worlds. Last year was it's 10th anniversary, and the pattern for at least some of the Zelda remasters has been to release them around ten years after their original release. Doesn't necessarily mean anything, but it'd be a nice excuse to get that game out again, imo.

Some quick hitters for me this week.

As a huge fan of the roguelite genre, I quickly played through The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. Unfortunately, it didn't click with me. Isaac is more roguelike than roguelite, which accounted for some of my displeasure. I didn't have a bad time with it, but my success (and therefore my fun) with the game was entirely dependent on random item spawns. It's considered an all-time classic of the genre, but it just felt like an old-school Flash game to me.

I also replayed the Uncharted 4 DLC The Lost Legacy. I replayed all the Uncharted games a few years ago but skipped The Lost Legacy for some odd reason. I thought the game would rank high among the Uncharted games and I was right. For those curious, I'd probably go: 4, Lost Legacy, 3, 2, 1. It's between that and Halo for my favorite game franchise. Uncharted 2, 3, 4, and Lost Legacy are all masterpieces.

Finally, I played the free God of War: Ragnarok DLC, Valhalla. God of War 2018 is my favorite game ever, but for whatever reason, Ragnarok didn't work for me on the same level. I finally figured out why while playing the DLC. Soulless is too strong of a word, but the combat is too controlled. It's too polished. It's almost like you're playing the game on rails. It's combo -> stun -> finisher animation -> repeat. All that said, the story is unrivaled. Between Naughty Dog (Uncharted, The Last of Us), Santa Monica Studio (God of War), Guerilla (Horizon), and Sucker Punch (Ghost of Tsushima), PlayStation's studios are operating on a different plane than everyone else.

The meta-textual side of the God of War reboot is fascinating in itself. You're taking Kratos, a violent, cruel, single-minded character from the '00s (a cultural hellscape), and turning him into a nuanced, deep character. Can you rehabilitate someone who has done unspeakable evil? I don't know, but they're sure trying. The DLC is a Hades-inspired roguelite that directly compares its gameplay loop to the repetition and gradual improvement seen in therapy. The story was moving and effective even if the combat didn't grab me.

A poor friend of mine pre-ordered Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League a few years ago and forgot about this game when other, good games (Baldur's Gate III, RE4 Remake, Dead Dpace, etc) came out. So I got to see him play it, because he forgot to cancel his pre-order...

Probably, one of the worst games to come out in a long time. Idiotic dialog written by some ADHD ticktockers, complete disrespect for the characters and awful uninspired gameplay. This is like...I don't know ANTHEM 2 but worse. 

There is barely any appreciation for the characters. They die in the stupidest way possible. I don't even know what to add. It's pure slop.

@wil I could go for a remake of basically any Zelda, but Wind Waker would be my top want.  I was really bummed when they opted to do Skyward Sword instead.  I hadn't played that one (and still haven't finished it) but pretty much anything from the Wii is going to interest me less than a game from other systems.

The Switch Link's Awakening is one of my favorite games on the system.  It's just absolute retro perfection with tons of charm and passion to spare.  I'll take it over BoTW and Tears any day and look forward to doing a NG+ with it sometime.  If they gave Link to the Past, possibly my favorite Zelda, that same treatment I would be over the moon.

Speaking of retro Zelda, I actually started Minish Cap on the GBA about a week ago.  I've had a CIB copy for a long time and never even popped it into the system.  Heck, I don't even know where I got it but I'm glad I did because I've gathered it's a fan favorite.  It's really good!  I'm having some frustrations with the GBA dpad but I like how Capcom mixed the gameplay up from the typical Zelda formula.  There are some retro gaming frustrations here and there like ambiguous clues and not knowing what to do next but otherwise it's a real gem of a game.  And it's short!  After putting 158 hours into Elden Ring I'm down for a game I can finish in a couple weeks.

I finished off Dark Souls: Remastered yesterday. I had initially been playing with a friend, but he lost interest so I downloaded an easy mod that gave me 50% damage reduction. While still challenging, the game was much more in my wheelhouse with the mod. Although I admire FromSoft's level design, enemy variety, and bosses, I don't like banging my head against the wall with game difficulty. The level design was some of the best in the series, but a few gimmicky bosses (including one that was unfinished when the game shipped) brought it down. I'd recommend it to fans of the series even though it was my least favorite Souls experience (I've played DS3, Bloodborne, Sekiro, and Elden Ring).

Incredibly late to the party, but playing through Baldur's Gate 3 as of late. Inching towards the end of act 1 at the moment with 50 hours in it and jesus christ is it easy to get lost in. Feels very nostalgic playing it too, since my dad raised me on all console and PC baldur's gate games, neverwinter nights, etc as well as TTRPGs. And that experience's been helping get everything I want on the first run via complete and utter jank. Somehow managed to keep Karlach and Wyll but destroy the grove (All for Minthara!) via electrocuting them to death, they respawned at the party but didn't do anything and their stories still work. Running an eldritch knight/warlock build! Focused on electricity spells and whatnot.

Still doing TLOU2. I forgot how fucking LOOOOOOONG this game is. It's great. It's an excellent game. Moving. Gripping. Powerful. Great characters. But goddamn is it LONG.
And TSI's comment earlier about the game being kind of unfairly or unfun-ly punishing is a lot more accurate than I remembered it being from my first time playing. Some of these encounters are just absolutely stupid. Like FromSoft levels of 'you're just going to have to die a few times until you figure it out.'

And in a horror-adjacent game I do think that does the narrative a huge disservice because it breaks tension and drama. You're not longer in the moment and in the character and feeling jittery. Now you're just trying to remember which exact sequence of movements and stealth kills and weapons will get you through this stupid encounter. TLOU2 does have .. a fair bit of that. Something I don't think I really encountered at all in Part 1.

Only a few hours of gameplay left, I think. Then maybe on to the Borderlands D&D game, whatever that was called.

Two more for me and then I suspect I'll be slowing down.

Armored Core VI. My first and likely my last Armored Core game. As much as I like Dark Souls and FromSoft games, this one did not work for me. From story to gameplay to graphics, it felt like something from 2008-2013.

On the other hand, I really appreciated Yes, Your Grace. You play as the king of small kingdom. Part narrative, part strategy, part management game, it reminded me of Papers, Please. Not a perfect game by any stretch, but it felt like playing an early season of Game of Thrones.

Now I'm on to Civ IV, Tears of the Kingdom, and a replay of Slay the Spire. I've probably said all that before in this thread, but for real this time.

@tsi  I'll believe you're actually back on Civ when I see it.

Teared up at the final Joel scene of TLOU2. Gets me every time.

Started the Tina's Wonderland Borderlands game and played for, I don't know.. two hours? Something like that. I can safely say that yes, this is a Borderlands game. But that's fine. It's goofy and mindless and uncomplicated. I'm enjoying, so far, the main bad guy that chats at you randomly sometimes like Handsome Jack would do. Not all of the comedy lands, for sure. That's also a Borderlands thing. But enough of it lands, with punchy action, that I can just have a good time. That's all I need from this one. Not sure how long it is, so who's to say if I'll ever finish it or get bored first. Time will tell.

I think I eventually will need to buy a new computer. This one is getting a little slow and I've had it for near seven years or so. It would need a pretty major revamp, I think, to handle any modern games even with modest graphics. It can't even handle the new definitive AOE2. But I'm hankering lately for some good strategy/world builder type games like your Civs, Age of Empires, etc. And even just some games like Mount & Blade/Bannerlord that I think work better on computer. But any of those games will trounce my current set-up because this is 100% not a gaming computer. That being said, it would take a big bite out of my hobby budget to go out and buy a brand new gaming computer, and I don't want to buy something that's just 'sort've okay' and have it feel outdated within a year, or worse - still unable to play certain new games while it's still new.