Resources and Allies

Platinum'd Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and then took a break, although I have picked it up again to do a new game plus playthrough to get the other ending. I love the game and the world and the combat style, and I will play it again, but it's too soon to really sink myself back down into it. The new game plus also keeps all my team's final stats and builds, so I'm one-shotting most of the first and second act mobs, and some of the bosses, and while that's good for speed it means I'm not as involved as I was on the first playthrough. I think I just need more time.

I downloaded Balatro (poker rogue-like deck builder) as it was one of the free monthly games with my PS Plus membership, and then of course then discovered I also have it via Apple Arcade on my phone. I've played it for a bit and beat two decks on basic stakes using the same strategy, then put it down a bit, then accidentally got my nephew hooked on it and so started playing it again myself. I've done all the starting decks on white and the blue deck on red. I like it - it really does have amazing variety - and I am experimenting more with different strategies, but it's not something I throw myself into with reckless abandon.

I am still looking for another immersive game. I started playing Death Stranding, because the second one came out to good reviews but random internet commenters said I should do the first one first, and it is an oddly intriguing RPG/walking simulator - after an event that disrupts the boundaries between life and death, people live in isolated cities to protect them from horrific things that roam the land as well as timefall, a rain that vastly accelerates time in whatever living thing it touches. Sam, the protagonist, has bucketloads of trauma, a phobia about being touched, and important vulnerable relatives, and works as a Porter, taking shipments between settlements and helping them reconnect to the newly forming chiral network.

The stealth bits around enemies are terrifying - I got too close to one in the opening sequence and triggered a void-out, flooding the landscape with some sort of black liquid filled with things with tentacles - and in addition you have with you BB, a bridge baby, a fetus taken from a brain-dead mother that is attached to you and will signal enemies by crying when they get close. The countryside, when it's not trying to kill you, is great to walk through, and it also has very good music. The plot - hmm. It's a very cinematic style (when new characters show up they get credits, so I know I am not hallucinating that Guillermo del Toro wants to provide me with semi-helpful advice and shove me out in search of certain danger) and it's very atmospheric, and blends well with the gameplay, I'm just not convinced (yet) that it actually makes sense. Still. Clambering across rocky terrain, struggling to balance the body of my dead mother on my back and desperate to reach a crematorium to incinerate her before her corpse explodes is certainly compelling.

(and then Astro Bot put out more DLC, including a Cloud Strife bot! I determinedly played through all the DLC open levels to get him (and then bought him a Buster Sword so he can do his Omnislash animation) and then failed multiple times to get anywhere with the secret DLC level, which has a lurking Sephibot as the reward. I have got so frustrated doing this that I've actually now gone back and done all the other levels I was stuck on (including the horrendous Splashing Sprint - fight lava enemies with a water spraying duck - and To the Beat - everything is precisely timed except my reactions, woe - and am now trying to do the last core game level, the Great Master Challenge. I have managed to get two obstacles away from the end but it is a relentless nightmare of perfection.)