Polekatt's Playground (updated Q2 '25)

Interesting. I’m having nothing but a bad time with Starfield and I’m someone who reads and watches and explores literally everything in games. Plus I’m a huge sci-fi fan so I expected Starfield to be exactly what I’ve been looking for in a sci-fi RPG.

The game to me feels just empty, uninspired and unfinished most of the times. Hell, I didn’t even like Skyrim that much but I managed to clock over 200 hours in that one because it felt like Bethesda cared enough to put content next to the main story in Skyrim.

I’m glad you enjoyed Starfield though. All I know, Starfield is probably going to be my last Bethesda game I played as I don’t see Bethesda giving a damn about their games at all.

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very interesting indeed.
my context would be that I am not a huge sci-fi fan- I mean I do like it, but I would not classify myself as a huge fan, I usually prefer fantasy or whatever you would call urban realism (like the Secret World game if you remember that one) I’ve never been that much into space travel or spaceships.

Also, I played as a complete bad guy. Did the Crimson Fleet quest, my character this time had no morals, just generally reeked havoc everywhere for fun then laughed about it.
I wonder if those two points influenced my perceptions.

And I probably will not play the game again without mods. I can see the emptiness if you explore everything. I did not, I just mainly went where I needed to for a quest and didn’t worry about the rest of the planet. I want the mods to fill out the game, fill in all the blanks, and make it where I can — well… make it like the entangled quest was, if you remember that one.

Can totally see your point!

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Quick update for Q1.

Bought and finished Tekken 8 within a month. Finished it so quick I forgot to post anything here.

I love the Tekken series and this one did not disappoint. It is the best of all the fighting games.

The arcade quest storyline is cute, but it really helps you get the feeling of how to play. Its basically a tutorial cleverly masked as a story. It makes learning a character fun, and it propels you right into the online battle part seamlessly.

The main storyline is amazing. The graphics and story are really good. Only complaint I would have is that the final boss fight against Kazuya drags on and on and on… and then on some more. They could have cut that fight by more than in in half and it still would have been good.

overall, completely satisfied, will probably complete the character stories now and fight online off and on as I feel like it.

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You’re amazing.

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Q3 update-

During Q2 I started, played and finished a modded version of Fallout 4. This was no drop in the bucket. This was a full on total replacement of the original game. It was not Fallout London, it was a lessor known mod. But it was every bit as good as many AAA games out there claim to be. A full on story, written and voiced, and I estimate I played 70+ hours start to finish.

Also, just finished the Disney Dreamlight Valley Rift in Time expansion. Its been a year long story where you battle Jafar, if you know your Disney characters.

DDV is a cozy, relaxing game, but man, its really what a lot of games should try to be. price is reasonable, the seasons are just long enough that you can complete them without rushing, but not too long to be boring, you can either pay for them with real cash or in game earnings. In game earnings easy to get if you just play normally and are patient. They are constantly releasing new content and characters, most of it is free.

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For Halloween I decided to start (and actually finish!!.. a scary game for the season)

I tried two-

Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan

I actually managed to start and finish this one!! Arguably, it is short, compared to other games I play. It was like watching a scary movie, but making your own choices. I like the make your own choice visual novels.
But this one was just …ok in my book.

It wasn’t that bad, as far as the story went. But it wasn’t that scary either. It had some jump scares, but the slow burn pschological horror, (which I prefer) wasn’t that great. The story itself was interesting.

What I really didn’t like was the QTEs, (which stands for Quick Time Events, I had to look it up), and the weird camera angles.
The camera angles really threw me. You are looking at your character at an odd angle, so my mind doesn’t register right off the bat which way to move the controller/movement key. The way my mind thinks, I hit up to go the way the character is facing. No, apparently in this game, up goes away from you, no matter which way the character is. Its just weird, and what should have been an immersive horror game, turned into a goofy clown show for me, as my characters constantly just bumped into things moving like dorks.

The other thing was the QTEs. I have terrible quick reflexes, I’m an old dude. This game relies on flashing up a symbol, and you have to mash that button or key before the timer runs out, or something bad happens to your character, usually a death if you miss too many of them. Like you get the jump scare, then it flashes up “S” (or a button or a graphic of the mouse) and while I am still processing what key/button this is, the quick timer runs out.

So again, what should have been fairly interesting, was lost on me, because mostly, the character I was controlling at that time, was going to die, simply because I can’t process the button mash required fast enough.

I would give this game a 5/10. Interestingly story, but hated the gameplay mechanics, so as much as I want to see the rest of the story, I won’t waste money on it.

Other new games update-
Right now I’m playing Star Wars Outlaws, and The Killing Antidote (the other “scary” one I tried), both of which I love. Will give reviews of them in posts of their own sometime.

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Trust me…I hated QTEs even back in PS3 days when I was like 0.5 years old. I have no idea why they add those mechanics instead of doing whatever David Cage did with his games, where you have like 15 seconds to make a choice or make a button combination to proceed further.

Also, I believe those Dark Pictures games are on Humble bundle now for $15ish. Probably gonna grab them and play them on steam deck. To get into the halloween mood :smile:

Until Dawn is by far the best game from that studio. House of Ashes is my second favorite.

Are these Dark pictures games supposed to be played in order or it’s whatever?

They seem to be whatever. There is some light connection between them, but not a contiguous story.

As mentioned in the other post, I’ve been playing other games also!

Finished another one over the Thanksgiving holiday.

Well, to be clear- Its an Early Access game and I finished the current story content… will explain in review

The game is called The Killing Antidote.

Sometime in October, I saw a post on a discord forum talking about this game. Based on comments of people that were playing it, and that it was on a good sale, I decided to take a chance on it.
I have been pleasantly surprised. TLDR review: This game is way better than it has any right to be, and well worth the price, especially if you catch it on sale.

The game is sort of a resident evil clone, and the level design reminds me of the older games I used to play, like Duke Nukem, Deax Ex, No Time to Die, that sort. Which was FUN. The story/plot is nothing special, basically your character is a reporter and the world is suddenly taken over by zombies, which are people infected with some type of virus that got out of control.

The game is apparently made and being done by ONE chinese dude. I have no proof of that, but if so, this is why the game has no right to be as good as it is. ONE dude, programming, has made a game that I enjoy way better than big corporations, or games charging $70. It is entirely playable, and fun, and with the content he has already, it is worth it. In addition to the story part, he has other levels called challenges, where you just have a level and you try to kill waves of zombies, on your difficulty preference and complete the challenge.

So what else makes this different and worth it?

Dress up- You have a female protagonist, who is fully customizable. Yes, read that. No ugly girl because of the world’s view of politics and stuff, unless you want to make her that way. You can customize your girl with a very good character creator to be as sexy and good looking as you want. And throughout the game, you get loot boxes with clothing items. Like, I hear there are 200+ items in and counting. Very refreshing to make your character look like YOU want her to look.

No hand holding - This might just be me, but I like games that take this approach. Story mode is in a 7-8 story building, and it does get a bit confusing at times as to where you are, how to get back to a point, how to do this or that puzzle. In the FAQ, one of the questions is, “There is no map function! When or will you put in a map button?” The answer- “Nope. pen and paper babyboy, pen and paper.” Sold!!

Mod support - The developer has already said that he will embrace mod support, and there is already steam workshop support. This will keep this game going and is a brilliant move. More big Devs need to realize that mod support is the way to go. Bethesda isn’t still around because of their awesome programming skills, they are still around because they realize just make a framework and let the modders do the rest. Lots of older games are still out there because they can be modded. So modders can make new levels and stuff for this game.

The only downside I have come across is that the voice acting and signs/flavor in game is in Chinese. The menus and computer stuff in game is in English. But I can’t read the signs on the walls, so no idea what they say, and I think there are some clues there, or flavor. The voice acting IS subtitled, but with all the action going on, in the middle of a horde of zombies, I can’t read what the subtitles are saying.

All that said, hot customizable chick, killing zombies, and make it fun and moddable.
I like this one.

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Shifty is going to like this one since you mentioned Resident Evil.

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I emerge for mentions of RE

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completed the main story for Star Wars Outlaws and rolled the credits.

I have posted about this game in other threads, so it may be redundant, but doing my official completed the game review here.

Disclaimer: I am not a huge Star Wars fan. I’ve seen the first 9 movies and done a tabletop roleplay for a few sessions and thats about it. I like the story, just not a fan boy like a lot of people, so I don’t concern myself with canon and baby yodas and whatever else is out there. (I have not seen the Mandalorean)

Disclaimer #2: I got this game for free as part of an Nvidia promotion. After playing it through, if I had paid up to $60 for it, I would be very happy. Base games should not be more than that, for any of them. I got the DLC, but waited till it was on sale, got it for $23.

I personally loved this game. I actually enjoyed this game more than I enjoyed Starfield and Baudlers Gate 3. Most of you know if you have read my reviews, that I am a casual gamer, I love stories, and immersion, and I don’t like games that are too hard because I’m old and have terrible reflexes. At this point in my life, just give me a good story or an interesting open world to follow, and don’t make it hard for me to do that.

This game did that. The story was really good, and immersive. I have said that before, but this game made me feel like I was playing a character in one of the original movies. The atmosphere, especially the music that plays, made me feel like those movies, back when I was watching them in the early 80s in the theater. I don’t know how to describe it, its just a different feeling than watching most action movies today.

The story kept me fully engrossed in it. The graphics were great, as far as I like them. I don’t push 4K, 1080 scaled to ultra wide is fine by me. But the vistas and scenes from the game were great, I even switched to one of my photos as my windows wall paper I liked it so good. Gameplay was exactly how I like it. I could do the missions, combat was hard enough that it challenged me, sometimes I had to try it 2-4 times, but it was never hard enough to make me rage or get mad.

After the main quest is over, you can keep playing. Pretty much like Skyrim. I love this. My Kay has done her intro story so to speak, now I can just play her as an outlaw running around doing outlaw stuff.

My take, is 9/10, not a lot that I saw wrong with this game, as far as my personal interests and playstyle.

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This one is for @ShiftySatchmo

I completed Resident Evil 5 last night, it was Scavenger and I’s latest co op game.

Although I have known the history and story because its everywhere, this is actually the first Resident Evil game I have actually played.

I did like the game overall, the story and progression were good. The challenges were hard, but not so difficult that we could not pull them off after trying them 2-4 times. We were playing on normal difficulty. Graphics were dated, but I knew this going in, as it is a game that I think has been out a while.

Minor details that I did not care for was the control schemes. You can’t move and aim down your sight at the same time. I am so used to this in every other shooter game I play, it kept throwing me off. And I am also so used to hitting I for inventory, I kept forgetting in this one the inventory key was E. Just minor stuff.

The only thing that really soured me a bit was the end game.

I was playing Sheeva as Scavenger was controlling the game.
First, we get to the last chapter, the last boss battle, and we just could not get that one battle done. Unlike the other challenges, this one we just could not seem to get. We tried it over and over and over and over (thats what it felt like) for an hour. Finally, both of us were frustrated enough that we decided to look up the solution. More frustration set in, as we realized that everyone else seem to think the end was easy, and we had been doing exactly what all the solutions were saying to do. So we just quit.

Last night we finally decided to try one thing we read, in the button tap part, to just hold the button instead of tapping it. That did not work. But we did realize that some of the scenes looked different so, we tried again, tapping this time like we were doing. Easy peasy, everything went perfect, got by the fight and hit the credits. The only thing we could think of was that our game must’ve glitched somehow the other time we played.

So game over. Scavenger is going on about extra outfits and stuff we got, and maybe we can try one of the other mini games or stuff that is all opened up now. huh? what?? I don’t see anything…

come to find out, apparently the game glitched again, or because we started up a continued game, the game did not recognized that I had completed it, because I joined his game last night. Even though I had played the entire rest of the game with him. So I didn’t get anything.

Needless to say that bummed me enough that I don’t know if I’ll do any more RE. He is trying to get me to try RE6 now. But after the way this one ended, I don’t know if I want to put the time into it.

8/10 if it had ended correctly, but only 5/10 the way it ended for me.

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I beat Resident Evil 5 a few times even though it’s one of the weakest ones in the series. Co-op can sometimes make a mediocre game fun because the person you play with more than the game.

One shiny silver lining of playing 5 first and skipping 6 is the next RE game you play will feel like a masterpiece, no matter what you choose.

Pro tip: Resident Evil 6 is a trash game. Not even co-op will save you! I beat it with Josh and we had fun in our shared misery, I guess?

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I beat Civilization 7 last night.

Pretty much the same as @ShiftySatchmo

I won on an economic victory, and I thought it was very easy. I barely had to fight, and didn’t fight anyone in modern age. The AI players got into it, and I resolved to stay neutral, and like a Swiss bank, I just sat back and made tons of money while they fought each other.

Its a good game, but its not that much different than the other ones, that can tell. You can pick different civs at the end of each age, but you have to unlock them, so its not like ANY civ, like I personally would have liked.

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I still miss nukes.

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Found your missing nuke

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