Today's game is Phasmophobia. After moving PCs it took me a while to get it set up again on my PC. Apparently i needed the SteamDeck=1 command to get Voice Chat to work on Non-Steam Deck devices. After that though it worked perfectly.

We have a new friend that's joined our group, but the problem with games like these is that they're only ever 4 player. So our solution?

I messed with pipewire and merged my Mic and Discord's Output into one Audio Source, then fed that into Phasmophobia. Then i streamed Phasmophobia too my friend on Discord.

The result was all my friends could hear him through me and he could hear them through my stream. It was like having a second voice in my body.

Is it convoluted? Yeah. Is my flow chart a mess? Probably. But it was a lot of fun to setup, though it definitely needs more work. I wonder if i could make some sort of Widget to toggle it on and off per a game to make it cleaner.

Nerd stuff aside, we only played a few matches. All our games kept taking quite a while because we'd die and then the Ghost just... wouldn't show up. Nothing at all. We spent a total of maybe 2 hours playing in total.

By the last match we needed to lower our sanity, so i just took to watching my friends through the window like a creep. The player model kind of looks like Todd Howard, so just picture him watching you through your living room window at night and you get the idea.

After that wore off to bring my sanity down lower i started tossing stuff on my dead friend. Just random stuff like kitchen supplies. I thought i was probably going to die because everyone was left in the truck. But one of my other friends went back in for a photo, and the moment he did the ghost started a hunt. I was already safe back in the truck by then and we lost him.

That ended up being our last game for the night and we went back. We were going to do one more but one of our players started having Wi-Fi issues, thanks AT&T.

Today's game is Max Payne. I continued my playthrough today with a friend who's on call. I was just kind of peeking around with the camera when i noticed the writing on the wall behind Max (literally). I probably missed it my first playthrough because i was blind, but it's kind of ironic that the writing was literally on the wall the entire game.

I also dicked around and tried to make it look like Max was playing Basketball. There's not really much too this one, i just thought it was funny to try and make him look like he was playing.

I also wanted to talk about the difficulty fix. This life right here? On my first playthrough without the fix i spent an hour struggling here. With the fix it was the same difficulty as everything else though. I highly recommend the fix to anyone playing as it's the result of a bug (and makes it far more tolerable).

Though i will say i wonder if it makes it too easy, like this fight here was supposed to be like a boss fight sort of. I ended up just hanging out up here for the most part and shooting at them with the Desert Eagle. Besides that though it's really handy to have. I stopped at this fight for other reasons, but i want to sit down and finish chapter 1 soon. Hopefully i'll find the time.

Today's game is Animal Crossing New Leaf. I apologize for the abysmal compression. If i had known the screenshots were going to come out like this i would have picked another game entirely.

Me and a friend decided to play this because it got Pretendo support. For anyone not in the know, Pretendo is replacement servers for the 3DS and Wii U. I never played it much growing up, and the only reason i have a copy really is because i got it bundled with my 3DS i bought from GameStop years back. But i wanted to give it a shot because i had this itch in the back of my mind to play it. I guess i was just really in the mood to run a town of animals.

As soon as i opened my gate to my friend, he left this note for my villagers. For context, i do not have a good track record when it comes to games like Animal Crossing. I always end up dropping them after a day. We'll see though with this, the new year has me motivated to keep up on this and also finish my second Pokemon Platinum playthrough.

Isabelle isn't making it easy though. Everytime i try to do a mayoral duty she wants to stop me and make me do something else. It's like "Do you know how to use a shovel? You should go learn how". Isabelle, it's a fucking shovel. It's not rocket science. Please for the love of god just let me do my job.

Besides the government struggles though, i went down to the beach and went shell collecting for some money to pay off my house some. When i went to pay part of it off though Tom Nook was closed, so it looks like i'll have to do that tomorrow. That's all really though. I went and planted some Cherries before going off. I wanted to clean up my 3DS after a while away for a fresh install, which seemed like the right idea. Honestly i might get the parts to refurbish it. It certainly needs it, as the whole thing was basically held together with duct tape at one point, and the shell's paint is peeling.

Today's game is Max Payne. I went ahead and figured out how to renable the Developer tools again and was just playing around with it. Remedy games are always the most fun to do this with because not only does it let you get out neat screenshots (like the one above), but theres some interesting things to be found out of bounds.

With having played the game before, i've taken to just exploring and watching the environment. Max Payne has some of my favorite ambient areas with the snow. I didn't grow up with it, but something about it is just really pretty looking and nice to just chill and watch. So far this has been my favorite spot to watch. It's right next to the fire barrel above and the ambient noise is nice to listen too.

I had a clip of me just sitting there watching it but i didn't realize my mic was on so i can't share it.

I went and sough out a close up of the rats wandering around the map to get an idea of what they look like up close. I did a similar thing in Halo 3 so i wanted to get an idea here too. Funnily enough they're pretty close to me, at least on a surface level. I guess at the level of fidelity you don't really need Rats to have a high polygon count.

I got as far as taking the elevator up before the game crashed as soon as i left it. I'm not really sure what the crash was because its been pretty stable so far. My last save wasn't too far off though so i just need to load it up again and take the elevator back up before continuing.

Today's game is Red Dead Online. Me and my friend played in a private lobby and just hunted some stuff. It's honestly one of my favorite ways to spend my time playing this game. I don't think i have it in me to directly take an Animal's life, so this game kind of lets me get the experience of it without the guilt (though, when i fuck up a shot and the animal suffers i do feel pretty bad too).

It's honestly really cool. I like when games have mechanics like this that i could only describe as immersive. Zomboid is like this too with it's... well... everything. I need more games like this in my life.

After a while of hunting i got a new Jacket unlocked, so me and my friend rode into San Denis to go shopping. I like coming to this city in the winter because of all the snow. I honestly wish the game had a season mechanic. It'd probably take a lot of Horsepower to run but it'd be cool. That's probably more of a Red Dead 3 thing though, if and when it happens.

After clothes shopping we went Bounty Hunting. This is my favorite job to do just because it feels the closest to a campaign. I wish we had gotten more jobs though. I know i, and i know many others, have said this before, but Rockstar really did this game dirty by cutting it's life so short. It really deserved more.

After the bounty hunting, me and my friend went back too hunting animals until he got off, citing flu. I stayed on to get my Trader production up and running again before getting off myself.

For whatever reason I’ve had major network issues on my end (fucking AT&T man). I’d have to assume it’s on my end because as far as I’ve heard there was no major outage, but I did get today’s out even if it’s a bit late. Today’s game is Max Payne. I wanted to play this January, since I assume December/January was when this takes place.

I went ahead and left it at its natural resolution out of laziness but to be honest, I might leave it like this. It doesn’t look bad at all and it helps mask the harsh jagged edges I’d see at 4k.

I also went ahead and installed the adaptive difficulty fix, and it makes a world of difference. For people who don’t know, the PC version is bugged and the enemies after a bit will cap out at the hardest difficulty values because it doesn’t account for death like it’s supposed to.

I’m keeping today a bit short because I already wasted enough time trying to get this actually posted, but I went all the way to the hotel before stopping.

With the fix I installed I was mowing through enemies like a lawn mower, it was a good feeling after already being exhausted by that level the last time I played

It makes the game far more enjoyable so I’d suggest it for anyone wanting to play (unless you want the adaptive difficulty of course)

Today's game is some more The Darkside Detective. I was in call with a friend and finished it up today with him. I really enjoyed playing this, and i'm thankful i was gifted it, i don't think i would have tried it other wise.

Overall for the game, Most of the puzzles were pretty straightforward. There was one i struggled with and it was the Christmas one. It was pretty open from the get go so i had trouble figuring out what all to do. Even then though there were maybe two hole puzzles i got stuck on.

The bonus one after that was pretty quick and straight forward which i liked. It gave a much needed breather after the difficulty of the last one and i got it done fast. I liked the puzzles in it, and the humor was great too.

spoiler

I liked having to assemble the sausage rope. It's a stupid joke but i thought it was funny and got a good laugh out of me.

Honestly a lot of the writing in general is really good. There's one character who's meant to be the Nepo bigshot Cop, and i like that they made him not only a dick, but a horrible person too. It really makes you feel a lot better about not liking how much of an asshole he is. It also makes you feel good about destroying his car.

The game ended with a teaser to the sequel, which i think I'll pick up eventually because i really liked this game. It was a lot of fun and a good time. For anyone that likes point and clicks I'd say it's at least worth checking out.

Today's game is The Darkside Detective. I had gifted a friend a copy of OneShot, and he ended up enjoying it so much he gifted me this as a little game exchange. He said he thought i might like it. Turns out, i really enjoyed it. It's a basic point and click but a lot of fun.

It's humor reminds me a lot of Welcome to Nightvale meets Douglas Adams. It's like a mix of Nightvale's seriously funny absurdity and Adam's laid back funny absurdity. I really like it. Not to mention it features Douglas Adams himself as an NPC in a chapter, so that's an instant plus from me.

Gameplay wise it reminds me of Ace Attorney's investigation stages. I do wish it had an overarching story like those games (i haven't beaten this yet, but i'm on the last case and not seeing one), but that's not really a slight against it's quality. More so a "Oh, it would be cool".

I played this in call with the friend who gifted it to me today, and I'll probably finish it up tomorrow doing the same. It's a lot of fun, and honestly after Undertale it kind of makes me want to replay Ace Attorney again.

Today's game is Baldur's Gate 3. We managed to get our group together and go free the Druid guy. We started out taking a long rest to heal after last time. Only, our game bugged out and we started off with everyone asleep like this...

One of our players sleeps naked after selling all his belongings, so just a heads up that Little Zorvak is there behind the black box, but here's a better view of the party roasting their head.

Censored Nudity

After that we snuck in and poisoned the goblins. I also managed to wipe out most the people in the upper area by being a sneaky fighter and kicking their shit in with a Axe. The only one that proved to really be an issue was the two guys with like 20 HP, and even then we picked them off pretty easily.

Heading in, i snuck through and looted the treasure room and then bought a better axe before we jumped into combat. My friends though stated combat without me though. That's something i kind of like about this, how you can split the party and go off and get up to your own random antics. My character and Zorvak usually get up to our own B-Plot, like when we were chasing the Chicken while the other two were hunting gold.

After making our way inside and through the building i snuck into the rafters before getting into a fight with the big guy. It was handy to have set up because i could hold it as a choke point against the enemies as they all climbed up. I also set up a few things of grease through out the fight to mess them up.

After the fight we were gonna get off because our rogue's WiFi crashed, before we did though i stuffed our Mage's inventory full of random shit while he was finishing a cut scene. This was the result after he emptied it.

Today's game is Subnautica. After hearing the news about Krafton i was really disappointed. This was a big game to me when i was younger, and i've kind of been trying to figure out how to play this without budging on my morals. The answer seems kind of obvious, but it was hard to pull off for me for some reason.

Anyways, i just wanted to make sure everything worked, yknow? So i just loaded up a creative save and made a little base for 40 Minutes. The one above is the "Bedroom" i made. I'm a big fan of water and so i put lots of windows in.

I also built a observation sphere to just watch from. The screenshot doesn't really capture it, but the view was gorgeous. Almost pitch blackness with glowing things in the sea, it was really pretty. I like seeing the pretty side of this game highlighted. I always hear from friends about how scary this game is, but also sometimes i feel it can be beautiful.

I also built this central living quarters with a fish tank. I had trouble getting the fish in until i realized i had to actually build a door to get in, so that was an embarrassing struggle.

By the point i was finished it was already getting late, so i decided to relax before my new years plans (Wii Sports, as is my tradition). I just sat in the dome and chilled, while listening to the soundtrack and other music. It was a chill experience. It's a shame i won't get to experience it with the sequel.

I don't want to end off on a sour note about something negative, so i just want to wish everyone a Happy New Year! It's been crazy to think I've made it this far in my screenshots. Even if this isn't the Second Year mark, i'm thankful to have gotten to do these, it's a blast getting to play these games and sharing them with others.

Today's game is Minecraft. I got a bunch of friends together for a modded Server and we've been playing on it all day. It's fun to have something so lively to play on. I set it up on a little mini PC i shoved in the corner. It runs surprisingly well. On top of that keeps the power bill down.

I added Tinker's construct too it for myself just because i adore the tool system. As such it was the first thing i did before even a house. It's really handy to have access too the advanced tools it gives you so i wanted those ASAP.

I set up a smelter first, then sprinted off to a Mesa too get clay. I like to melt it in the smelter and pour it on bricks to get my blocks for the Forge. From there it's easy.

Due to the lack of a house, i frequently got into fights with the local population. One of the mods i have added bosses that spawn every once and a while. I have mixed feelings, because they're cool, but way too OP. I want to see if i can tone them down in the settings.

Speaking of way too OP, Ice and Fire. It was added at the request of a friend and god do i get frustrated by this mod. It feels like it's sole purpose is to fuck me over in as many ways as possible. it's like "Here's 8 fire dragons, and then here's some Sea Serpents too kill you while you try to get your stuff back. And then here's some sirens, then a pixie steals your sword". I ended up messing with the config to make things more tolerable so there's at least that, but damn, the dragons are OP as fuck.

I also added a shader pack for myself. I'm not usually big on these as i feel like they make the game kind of fuzzy and crank up the bloom, but this one i kind of like just for the way it makes the ores glow.

I ended off for the night by helping a friend get acquainted, before hopping off to start prototyping a machine too make train tracks for Create Steam and Rails. I automated it pretty well so i'm excited to show that off next time i play.

Today's game is Undertale. Last time i played i mentioned not really being motivated to play this due to seeing it when i was younger. Now that i've been going through it though i'm picking up on a lot of humor i missed when i was younger. Like a joke in the bar about wearing a collar, or a reference to leaving a line (he left a literal Line with his number on a rod), before saying he wanted to make out with a fish. Anyways, so i admit there's still more this game has to offer me.

Speaking of the game's offering, there's the combat. I keep feeling as if i keep getting stuck quite a bit. It's honestly a good marker to take a break, but i can't help but feel it's dragging the game out a little because ever 2 hours i'll hit a room that's roadblocking me from getting out.

For example, the Papyrus "fight". besides it taking me a while to actually figure out to spare him, i also was struggling too keep up with the second half where it gets serious. It was a genuine struggle, and reminded me way too much of flappy bird for it's own good. After a few attempts though i managed to make it.

The health is a challenge too sometimes. I need to be stocking up more, because with how little healing objects i have i'm being reminded of my Fallout New Vegas run, fun times were had all because i couldn't manage my stimpaks for shit.

The latest roadblock i've hit is right after having a meal with Sans. I snuck past Undyne and i'm stuck on a group of enemies that always seem to be able to kick my ass. It's a challenge. I'm going to attempt to try and get past them tomorrow though if i get the chance.