I spilled a drink onto my PC. I turned it off as quick as possible. I let it dry out and I cleaned the components with 99% alcohol and compressed air. It won't turn on. I don't know if it's the motherboard or CPU, and I don't know if my GPU is fried or not. I know at least the PSU and RAM works, but I can't afford to replace any of the parts anyways.

So I've mostly been playing "try to keep it together after losing the only real source of joy in your miserable life" simulator. It is very realistic, but I cannot recommend it.

Trudging my way through Oblivion Remaster because I got it for semi-cheap and it does a good job of keeping my office warm. I never played much of the OG version, so this is my first real playthrough. I'm doing pretty much every sidequest in the game before I deliver the Amulet of Kings to Jauffre and start spawning Oblivion Gates everywhere, because fuck it, why not.

I'm not sure what I have lined up next; probably a BG3 Dark Urge + Honor Mode achievement-hunting run. Maybe finishing Sea of Stars. I'm not really sure; too much general burnout to think that far ahead.

I finally completed the entire hunter's journal in Silksong. I should hurry up and get TE before i burn out

I'm playing Yooka-Replaylee

Finally cracked open the Metal Gear Master Collection and played Metal Gear and Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake

Started playing Diablo 1 to try and find out what Kissinger drops

Turns out as a sorceror you go from being barely able to do anything to unstoppable murder machine as soon as you get mana shield + any good attack spell

Played Lethal Company with my friends.

It was nice and made me feel some happiness after a long time.

Final Fantasy Tactics: Ivalice Chronicles. The original was one of my favorites as a kid, and it's as good as I remember. Plus, the translation isn't borderline incomprehensible in places this time! I never played War of the Lions, so I don't have to regret that none of that content is here.

People have been telling me to play a Yakuza game for ages "Play Yakuza. It's so you coded. Trust me you'll love it."

I'm like yeah okay it looks good but it looks like it's one of those games that tries way to hard to be serious and gritty.

So I finally caved and played Yakuza 0 and my god was I wrong. I was so wrong. This game is goofy as fuck and I love it

The mood whiplash is so funny too. One moment you're watching a disgraced Yakuza higher up being forced to cut his pinky off, the next scene Kiryu is practicing disco or clapping awkwardly along to an idol song on karaoke. I'm in love with this big dumb idiot. Add him to my blorbo pile.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator because Northernlion was Chinesemaxxing and I am never to be outdone.

I started a new save so I'm pretty early in there. I decided my strategy is to make a poor Golden Core guy, tier 9, to then bring up my other dudes since Golden Core is enough for Spectre Refinement. Sadly I haven't been very lucky and most of my inners have bad stats, most of them have like 2 or 3 charisma so their law match % is not great. Still, I'm progressing decently. I neglected that spectre refinement is available before PS so I made the mistake of ingesting 1 default tier earth flux on all my inners instead of waiting for refinement. I'll have to rebirth them later.

Several years have passed and it is once again time to attempt Civ V multiplayer with The Gang. Gonna try to be chill with it this time...

I finally started Clair Obscur a week and a half ago after letting it sit on the backlog all year. Just finished my first playthrough and post-game content, working through NG+ while breaking the sound barrier with damage numbers lmao

Absolutely phenomenal game. Act 3 and post-game scaling is wonky (playing act 3 without the new picto they give you made it 10x better), but aside from that gripe, the game's nearly flawless. Incredible stuff.

I started playing Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon as my spooky game for October. It's a bit too spooky actually. The combat is a bit janky and unsatisfying at this point, especially compared to modded Skyrim. The writing is quite good. I'm definitely gonna keep playing.

Grinding them absolute fuck out of 2XKO.

Running a Vi/Teemo team which definitely has some sauce but aint the top tiers. Its mad fun though. Best FG in a hot minute tbh. Will probably enter a few tourneys in this one, which I haven't done since early strive.

Outside of that, a lil bf6 inbetween matches since 2xko is a high brainpower game lol. Tires you out easily.

Kenshi. So much Kenshi.

Replaying Deltarune Ch. 4 right now and I beat the Shadow Crystal boss for Chapter 4, which now means I have beaten all of the secret bosses in Deltarune Pretty fun fight, even if the mechanic that this fight relies on exposed how bad my reaction time is, with some very very interesting dialogue (and of course there's the music). There's so much stuff in this chapter that I missed on my first playthrough and playing through this chapter is getting me super excited for Chapter 5 to come out (but that's going to have to wait at least 8 months probably )

i got into Albion Online last month because Free + Year of Linux Gaming, so its kinda what i dick around with lately.

im still figuring shit out and afraid of lootable pvp zones, but im not totally useless in the arena and have my little hustle for gathering/refining going to make $.

Absolum dropped this week so I've played it, finished my first run yesterday and only have played as the elven sword lady. It's a beat em up rogue lite. There's quite a bit (not a huge amount though) of path choosing and unlocking of various ways through each level. Very fun, and expertly animated.

Also have been working on crosscode as well. Just in the jungle twin dungeons now. The twist at the raid was pretty good way to break the monotony of just playing a fantasy MMO that also has added some increased stakes and has produced some very nice character moments between Lea and her friends.

tried the '83 demo this morning, a little janky but it does have rising storm 2 vietnam vibes. needs a lot of polish though

Decided to fire up my account on Ragnarok Online and got my swordsman to knight which is cool. I never got to the 2-1 job classes as a kid playing RO back in like 03-04.

Beat the final boss of Persona 5, now it's on to Royal. The narrative really falls apart for me after the 7th palace, imo there's just no way to make that sudden ass-pull increase in stakes work. Ironically, the game also felt the easiest it ever had because I actually properly cleared Mementos' latest floor and killed the Reaper in advance, so I was level 87 and didn't even have to fight any enemies. Probably a good thing because I'm sick of the combat. The intro to Royal so far seems much more interesting, and tearing down a false version of reality where everyone's happy and has everything they want is going to be a lot more narratively interesting than tearing down a false version of reality where everyone's a prisoner (but likes it).

The last 3 or 4 bosses are all a giant joke. Who decided to remove the elemental weakness system from the combat system where that's the only even remotely interesting thing you can do? 7th palace's boss in particular is just horrendous, a multi-stage slog that's just totally uninteresting from start to finish. Not once do you learn about his actual desires, I guess he's just power hungry. The twist with the secret villain who dies but ends up surviving is also super lame.

Still playing Warframe until I max out my daily syndicate standing every day that I have time, looking forward to Undermind to have some new content for a few days. Down to only 8 missing prime frames, but they're all vaulted and if I wanted to buy them it'd be like 500 plat so I get to wait for resurgences I suppose.

My brother stayed here for 2 days and we played Isaac online, that was cool!

I also played the demo for Alabaster Dawn which was great. Now I want to play CrossCode.

I didn't play it yesterday, but I'm still finishing Hollow Knight.

Been playing Fuga: Melodies of Steel. It's pretty fun and extremely Gundam. I'm not playing too wildly unsafe, so I've managed to not sacrifice any of the kids to fire the big ass soul devouring laser from the Devil Machine. Definitely had a few close calls, though lol

Sleeping Dogs has been in my backlog for a while and I watched Hard Boiled last week, so I decided I'd finally get 'round to it.

Stronghold Crusader because I like to RETVRN sometimes but as a bit

Revisiting The Long Dark. I would call it a survival immersive sim. It has a story mode and sandbox mode, I have only ever played the sandbox. Your plane crashes during a huge solar storm that knocks out all electronics. There were also some geomagnetic issues, landslides, and earthquakes. There are several open world regions to pick, some are easier to explore than others. You have to manually map out each area as you travel while trying to stay warm, rested, fed, and hydrated. There are guns but ammo is scarce. Hunting is in the game but most of your food for a while will be scavenging supplies from the structures and cars around each region. The goal is simply to survive as long as possible and explore as much as you can. Each night there is a chance of an aurora which, mysteriously, causes electricity to come back to structures. It also has some spoopy effects on the environment.

They're doing a sequel next year called Blackfrost. Looks like it will have a lot of good QoL features (TLD is 10 years old) and improved mechanics.

Started up a new run in Cosmoteer. I gave up my previous run after my flagship got destroyed. It's been a few updates since then. Holy fuck is fire really dangerous now.

Also been playing 9 Kings. The final king came out, the King of Time. Everyone is complaining he's too weak, but I'm not seeing it. He has the ability to create time loops, effectively giving you unlimited resources, upgrades, and turns. Seems like a skill issue, tbh.

Been procrastinating on assembling my Gundam Assemble models. I should hurry up and get them done before the monthly hobby meetup.

• Super Meat Boy (360), to satisfy a craving. Good fun. Will probably put it aside when it gets tough.
• Diablo 4 (Xbox)
• Ori and the Blind Forest (Xbox), got it on sale. Delightful presentation but a little been-there-done-that mechanics wise.
• Colin McRae Rally 2005 Plus (PSP), why is the career mode so crazy hard? Going flat out and still +30 sec!

Just finished:

• Circuit Superstars (PS4) on Amateur. Maybe I'll attempt a harder difficulty later but had enough for now
• Sound Shapes (PS4), finished the short but lovely campaign. Played some of the the 'extreme' challenges but will probably save the rest for later

Back on strive. Unfortunately i have to practice to not get worse at the videogame

I started a new city in Workers & Resources. In the past I have focused on exports to drive growth but this time I'm going to try to be more self sufficient and minimize trade in general to see how it goes