What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

I tried a few times and bailed on The Four Kings boss in DARK SOULS. I think my best bet is Havel-tanking plus a crystal halberd I found somewhere along the way. I'll level up and find some more weapon reinforcement stuff and head back eventually. I went back to Anor Londo to farm Silver Knights and put down some white soapstone to jolly co-op on Ornstein & Smough a few times. I am overleveled for this area though, really. I should go kill the Hydra, maybe get the DLC part rolling.

Still playing Overcooked 2 and the eldest insists on three-starring every level. We got stuck on a ridiculous level where almost everything - ingredients, burners, serving window, sink - was on a single row counter at the edge of the screen, and the only way to access it is to use a joystick on a platform that you have to move to each area. The food was burritos, so move the platform to the rice and pots, then move it to the ingredients and grab some plates, then move back to the pots, etc.

My son watched a video and the players only made two dishes at a time, so now that's how we tackle basically every level. With only two dishes in progress at once it's much easier to cover for one another without getting too disorganized. We might start a third dish further along in the level, but starting out with only two really helps get dishes out, and tips in, with consistency.

And on some levels the time doesn't start until the first dish is delivered, so we've started abusing that. We get as many ingredients and dishes cooked as we can beforehand to give us a healthy head start, and sometimes we also get a bunch of raw ingredients out of the bins and throw them in a pile on the floor to reduce fetching later.

Gary Sax wrote: Subtle moveset differences are such an underappreciated source of differentiation in the soulsbourne games.

Or you could do what I do and use the starting axe for the entire game, because it's great and hitting stuff with an axe is great. This especially applies in Bloodborne.

I broke out all my old consoles and set them up. We had a bunch of DVDs and VHS(s!) under the TV that don't do shit, so I swapped all those out for old videogames. The TV has 3 HDMI and 2 HD component inputs, so with a minumum of HDMI swapping I have the following available:

• NES Classic
• Mini SNES
• PS2
• Xbox360
• WiiU
• PS4
• Switch

I jammed More Than A Feeling in GUITAR HERO, and let the kids take over. WII FIT PLUS with the board is a big hit. I am looking forward to making more runs in ODIN SPHERE, crashing some shit in BURNOUT PARADISE, and we all have a great time with NINTENDOLAND.

In DARK SOULS, I beat Gravelord Nito (let's make shit dark and unkillable), Seeth The Scaleless (let's make shit bright and invisible), and finally the Four Kings (let's make Bleed meaningless and have multi-dimensional bosses on a black background with no contextual clues about where they attack). So far so good! I killed the Hydra too, and can probably get over to Oolacile if I work on things a little. My Uchigatana is getting work done, though I did swap it out for a Halberd against the Kings because I can't tell where to aim.

I am having a blast with jolly cooperation though. This game is just stone balls hard on your own and can be a lazy cakewalk in co-op. It's amazing. One goofball had three of us tag along against the Twin Gargoyles and man, I bet those guys wish they'd flown back up to the bell tower. I helped someone take out Ornstein & Smough, and just having a good goofy time, making money and humanity.

For $6 I got Police Stories on the Switch. I am a sucker for games that involve levels that look like building plans, aka Door Kickers, Hotline Miami, etc.

Police Stories is cool, it's a more action-oriented style of game but there is a story going on and you can still give AI commands, etc. It's brutal; it took me MANY tries just to beat the first level, only to receive a C- grade that wasn't even sufficient to unlock level 2. After many more tries, I finally unlocked level 2 last night.

Civilization VI is on sale for $15, and you can get it plus all the DLC for $45. I spent all day Saturday playing it. Still getting the hang of districts.

City of Heroes - Homecoming can be found here . At least instructions on where to get it are there. They have what looks like everything in CoH and CoV right up until NCSoft shut it down. Admission is FREE! It works. If this is something you missed having, take a look at it.

I got bored with Endless Space 2. It's kind of a lightweight Stellaris-ish Civ game IN SPACE!!! After a while I thought, "Why don't I just play Civ? It's a better game." I'm at the point now where spaceship design in Stellaris and ES2 is kind of like WoW was during BC; there were a million ways to do your build, and about 999,997 of them just made your toon sub-optimal.

STELLARIS FEDERATIONS IS OUT WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SOCIAL ISOLATION

CoX was the only mmo that I really missed - I've been so excited to return to it and visit familiar places. Now I'm in Talos Island taking out Tsoo - and remembering what PITA Sorcerors and Tattooed Men are.

Been playing Blue side, I really need to set up a Red side character as I didn't get far in CoV before it was shut down.

Gary Sax wrote: STELLARIS FEDERATIONS IS OUT WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO SOCIAL ISOLATION

I'm waiting on the big console patch still. Theoretically it's coming.

I've been playing a lot of Torchlight 2. I'm grinding maps in NG+ to eventually hit lvl100 and 1million gold for trophies. I'm lvl63 atm so it's a long way to go, but it's a pretty low impact game to play when you're massively stressed out and just want to tune out to something. It's fitting the bill nicely atm.

Glad you guys got Utopia, it was pretty important.

Oh WOW, and the next patch is Le Guin you're jumping to. That's HUGE, complete change and huge improvement to the economy and planet management. What a positive change for the game, that's exciting for y'all.

Ori and the Will of the Wisps

gamepass, I had to download it, then a 4 gig update immediately, which was annoying that it didn't download automatically. then XBL spazzed out and wouldn't let anyone login almost all day Sunday. Finally played a couple hours on Monday.

If you liked Ori and the Blind Forest you'll like Will of the Wisps.

Combat is very different. Blind Forest had this heat-seeking missle based combat, which worked, but was just kinda there. Wisps has replaced that with a melee focused combat, starting with a quick sword/strike thing. It's still not nearly as combat focused as something like Hollow Knight, but it's immensely more satisfying than Blind Forest. One of the first upgrades I bought was a slow-heavy strike. I think it's supposed to form a sort of hammer, but I initially thought it looked like a frying pan, and now all I can think about is the pan from Tangled. Overall I like the combat changes, but they've added a couple sequences where you have to fight larger creatures. in the first game, these would have been race-like platform challenges. but with the new combat you have to fight these creatures off. it's alittle frustrating until you get the patterns down. I realize that's pretty common, but it's new for the series.

The escape sequences are back! that's bad for some. they are a significant interruption in the over all flow of the game. But so far (I've only hit one) the sequence is significantly shorter and easier than they were in the first game.

So far the game feels bigger, with more characters to interact with, some minor fetch quest things, and a central 'town' to upgrade and return too.

movement is still as smooth and Ori is as agile as ever. they've moved some of the buttons around (using bumpers instead of Y for several of them) which is annoying as I transition. but that opens up the face buttons to be set to whatever powers you want. now there's a whole slew of powers that can be assigned to the various buttons, depending on what you want to do. Options are good, but sometimes I'm turned off when too much is thrown at you...feeling like I'm missing out on something.

Performance is kinda shitty, with several places where the game would lock up for a good 5-10 seconds. some stutters and fragments appear. they're working on patches, and I didn't play Blind Forest until well into it's life, so it's not a great comparison.

Still, so far I'm really enjoying it. I think Blind Forest is the better game, but I'm glad to be back with Ori.

I'll have to get back into stellaris.

Been playing something called Wildermyth, which is a turn based tactical game kind of like all sorts of other dungeon crawlers. There are random events that change the characters, and they all age and can eventually retire as you progress through chapters. There's an overworld map to manage not unlike how it works in X COM 2, but you can split your party up to deal with different areas and threats.

It's neat. Still in early access. It's a little buggy and slow at times.

Got the social distancing dream team of Animal Crossing and Doom Eternal preordered for my wife and I. Pretty good time for those to drop.

Help me out here. I'm looking for something chill and easy to play on the PS4. What I've been playing is No Man's Sky but they've largely upgraded that out of my interest zone (I like exploring and finding the different species, which I'm still doing, not interested in ships, base building, or crafting). I'm looking for something along the lines of The Witness, a calm puzzly game where no one's yelling or shooting at me. I just don't need a lot of stress right now. I tried a Mystlike called Obduction but it was hard as balls and I ended up just following a walkthrough until I gave up.

Any ideas?

I grabbed a hidden object game that came out yesterday, real cute art and a Where's Waldo kind of vibe. I'm blanking on the name, but it might fit the bill. Also Stardew Valley is not particularly puzzly, but it's my ultimate low key PS4 time sink.