Liz Henges has been playing Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, an open-world RPG that condenses the anime down into a manageable timeframe (opens in new tab), which sounds ideal for someone like me who only knows the absolute basics. I am aware of what a dragon is and what a ball is, how complicated can it be? Turns out: very complicated.
Christopher Livingston has been playing Speaking Simulator, the game about an android trying to pass for human (opens in new tab). It's probably the best game with the word "simulator" in its name since American Truck Simulator, in part because it's so easy to empathize with a robot pretending to be human. Struggling to get through ordinary social interactions is very Relatable Content.
Rachel Watts has been playing Frostpunk's new Last Autumn DLC (opens in new tab), a prequel which sets you the task of building the crater that will be the home of climate disaster survivors who come after you. Like the vanilla game's campaigns, it's all about balancing scarce resources, one of which is your own sense of humanity. The world gets cold and so do you. Videogames are fun!
Jonathan Bolding has been playing Panzer Corps 2 and enjoying many things about it (opens in new tab), including that it has a really good undo button. I too admire the undo, a vital way to mitigate the annoyance of the misclick screw-up, but as Jon points out it's just one element of well-considered design in a game that's respectful of your time.
Tom Senior is still plugging away at Pillars of Eternity 2 (opens in new tab), and one of the things that's kept him going is its interesting shops (like the Dark Cupboard, which sells wizard supplies), and their supply of strange purchasables, whether magic cats or baffling hats.
I've been playing Planescape: Torment, trying the enhanced edition after finishing the original years ago. It's still upsettlingly well-written (that's a typo but I'm leaving it), and coming to it after a replay of Baldur's Gate is a real contrast. There are a few weak spots—the Foundry and anything away from the city of Sigil—but there are so many rewarding paragraphs I don't mind. I spent hours in the Society of Sensation's headquarters toying with the text equivalent of audiologs, completely rapt.
Enough about us. What about you? Pick anything up in the Steam Lunar New Year sale? Been trying Temtem? Let us know!
