The Ancient Gods Part 2 - Nightmare diff. - 5:7:22
8/10

+ MORE GLORIOUS COMBAT
+ Cool ass cutscenes - WAR WAR WAR WAR WAR - DOOM Eternal: Infinity War? That shit was so peak istg.
+ MORE GLOOOOOOOOORIOUS COMBAT
- MOOOOOOOOOOORE GLOOO- No no no, hold the fuck up... what the fuck was that final bossfight?

I was 1 level into this DLC when I realized my "this isn't overwhelmingly hard" was actually an "wow I've gotten better at the game!"
The combat tuning still felt as if the difficulty was slightly below the first part, but still, it was good. ONLY A COUPLE OF BLUE GHOSTS
HURRAH.
I was gonna end up giving this a 9/10 because of how cool the story was, even when I don't give a fuck about the story in these games. The thing is

- That final boss might be one of the worst bosses I've ever had the displeasure of experiencing. It felt like the antithesis of everything the game had taught me. "gotta go fast, gotta kill shit" nope, you're playing Stardew Valley: DOOMFarmer edition, bitch. Somehow worse than the first part's boss. Atleast that shit wasn't slow.

The Ancient Gods - Nightmare diff. - 8:12:35
8/10

+ GLORIOUS COMBAT
+ GLOOOOOOOOORIOUS COMBAT
+ GLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOORIOUS COMBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT
- The Ghost enemies are not it. I was excited when i saw that there was a new heavy enemy but man did they disappoint. They seemingly only exist to make me use the microwave beam mod and for me, killed the flow of combat.
- The final boss was not fun. At all.

All in all, i had fun, but i ended up groaning whenever i saw blue glowy stuff in the corner of my eye.

I'm probably not gonna be trying to beat this on Ultra-Nightmare, I've had my fill of that for now 😅

I finished the fifth volume of Goodnight Punpun.

This is Punpun Onodera’s coming-of-age story. His parents’ marriage is falling apart. His dad goes to jail and his mom goes to the hospital. He has to live with his loser uncle. He has a crush on a girl who lives in a weird cult. Punpun tries talking with God about his problems, but God is a jerk. Punpun keeps hoping things will get better, but they really, really don’t.

Punpun finally has a plan. But it gets shattered. He wants the world to shatter too. And it does. How can he live with himself? Maybe you just need to find a different life, Punpun.

(Summary from Goodreads for the fifth volume, although it's more fitting for the first volume)

Punpun is now a young man and he finally mets Aiko again. And boy is that first meeting painful to read.

I have to say that I find the fifth volume to be the weakest yet. I still enjoyed it but the absurdness was just too much. All this Pegasus stuff is really tiring to me. For people who haven't read the manga yet, Goodnight Punpun is always to a big part absurd but other volumes contained more coming-of-age story and less "talking random bullshit that makes zero sense".

This volume is a bit hectic, many grave topics are just brushed off on a handful of pages - Punpun's kind-of-girlfriend kind-of cheated on him with her Ex, she became pregnant and wants to abort the child, Punpun decides to fake a personality - Taka, after finally being with Aiko he suddenly is unsure if he doesn't want to be with his kind-of girlfriend instead. All of these topics get just tiny space. To be fair the last point is the cliffhanger so, yeah, it's okay it got like 3 panels or so.

I've already bought the next volume and will continue the manga soon.

Good luck :]

What music, dear Mary?

Music.

Anyways

I primarily play on PC, and I haven't gotten any console this generation since most of the games seem like they're coming to PC now, from both xbox and ps.

I'll always say that if you've already got a nintendo console, all you really need is a PC. But if you've gotta get another console, I'd probably recommend going with a ps4 or ps5. The PS4 because it's library of games is damn impressive, the ps5 because it'll run the ps4 games better 😭(sure, there are also the 10-20 ps5 exclusives, but yeah :/)
Games are also overall cheaper with a PC + also, regular freebies.

I'm not sure I get the "doesn't feel right" thing though. If it's coz you wanna stick to nintendo, that's that. Otherwise, if you think you can afford it and you also want to get it, go ahead.

I will once again nominate 1000xRESIST for the normal GotM. Peak storytelling.
for the 10th anni thing, I'll nominate Life is Strange

Good job! I remember getting down to about 20hp during the final boss and somehow still maintaining my cool, fun times indeed. Oddly enough I found 2016 to be much harder to complete on UN, but you can see for yourself if you're curious enough ;)

Ayy, thanks. I almost died too, last second glory kills for the win (sure as hell wasn't gonna let a glorified cowman beat me after allat shit).
I feel like Eternal's mobility made avoiding damage easier.

Definitely not gonna go for that any time soon, though. Maybe I'll try Ultra-Nightmare in The Dark Ages when that comes out 🫡

Update: After a total of 11 attempts, I have finally beaten DOOM Eternal on Ultra-Nightmare.

This was definitely up there with some of the hardest shit I've ever done in a game.

HuniePop is also free on GOG

If you do end up making different submissions for each route, be sure to mention which route the time is for in the completion notes.

One of my favorite tracks from the Cowboy Bebop OST.

Easily my favorite track from the Tokyo Ghoul OST.

Shiki No Uta from Samurai Champloo

Devilman Crybaby

Kevin Penkin's one of the GOATs.

I've joined the HLTB Challenge on Storygraph.

I'm new to the Storygraph. One thing I like is that there's better/more statistics in comparison to Goodreads and I find it easier to find the proper edition. On Goodreads I often just pick a random edition. I imported all my shelves/books from Goodread without any issues and might actually put in the effort to change editions for my 2024 reads to get proper statistics. I think I'm going to use both, Goodreads and Storygraph, from now on. The former for my day-to-day, the latter for better statistics. Shouldn't be much more cataloguing.

My plans so far:

04-A. A book based on a table-top game - The Flight of the Eisenstein by James Swallow - W40k - currently reading
09. A doorstopper - Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson - 1087 pages or 48h 13m as an audio book
11. A graphic novel or manga. - Goodnight Punpun Vol. 5 by Inio Asano - currently reading
13. A book adapted into a movie / TV series. - Dune by Frank Herbert - currently listening to
17. (Reread) a book that was assigned in school. - Das Parfüm by Patrick Süßkind

24. One of the oldest books in your backlog.
On the Storygraph Challenge this description is a bit different:
"A book you’ve been meaning to read for a long time (or one of the oldest books on your backlog)" which would allow me to take a book I've been eagerly waiting to read for like 2 years but I do not yet own. But I guess the proper challenge is "(one of the) oldest on backlog" and in that case I choose:
Lucius: The Faultless Blade by Ian St. Martin
I haven't been keeping track of my backlog for very long but this is the oldest that I've marked as owned (in May 2023).

Oyasumi Punpun is incredible, have fun!

Got a spare GOG key for Bioshock 2 Remastered

Mine is a temporary one I originally made in 5 minutes sorta kinda meant to be like a Lucasarts point and click command.

It already existed before I joined but has never been replaced due to laziness and a lack of ideas

nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution haha

As for mine, it's Grey Prince Zote from Hollow Knight tripping and falling. I might change it someday since it was meant to be a joke, but ^ that applies to this too :]

I wrote yesterday Two Worlds crashing was getting on my nerves... It's now pissed me of enough that I'm tempted to just race to the end of the game and forget the rest if the side quests.

I did an area with a lot of travelling and combat. The game then crashes just before I planned to save. I did the area again and somehow was disarned during combat as I was duel wielding... I picked up one weapon but not the second one not noticing. I had just put a whole lot of crystals into so I could do a lot of fire damage and now the weapon is gone. I could probably ride around for ages looking for it but screw that as I don't know where Ilost it. I found a replacement but all these lost crystals are pissing me off. Funny thing is, I don't really need such an OP weapon as my stats are already overkill and I am finding weapons that do a lot more base damage but this would never have happened without the constant crashing.

I'm hoping I finish the game by the end of the week.

EDIT: Screw it... I just reloaded saves until I found it. Luckily it was only around 10 minutes worth of gameplay. What's kind of sad (though kind of funny) if that I lost the other replacement weapon and its stats were decent... lol My Fire axe was better though... umm sort of better...

Sounds like a lotta crashes. Have you checked out PC Gaming Wiki?

I'll start making my list. For now, I'll have some categories with multiple options.

The Challenge List
Gaming Adjacent challenges
❌01. A book published by Boss Fight Books - Silent Hill 2 (Mike Drucker) - One of my favorite games of all time.
❌02. A novel that was (directly) adapted into a videogame - Inferno (Dante Alighieri); I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream (Harlan Ellison)
❌03. A book based on a videogame - Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants (Matthew J. Kirby); Final Fantasy XV: The Dawn of the Future (Jun Eishima); Dead Space: Martyr (B.K. Evenson)
❌04. A non-fiction book about videogames - Blood, Sweat, and Pixels + Play Nice (Jason Schreier) - Heard about his books on the Friends Per Second podcast.

Regular challenges
❌05. A book published since the start of 2024 - Percy Jackson: Wrath of the Triple Goddess (Rick Riordan) - My favorite series from middle school, gonna have to read the one that came out before this one too. I thought that the ending to the series (Book 5, The Last Olympian) was perfect, so I'm interested in seeing where it goes.
❌06. A "classic" / literary cornerstone - TOO MANY OPTIONS. I'll just pick whichever one I read first.
❌07. A short story or novella - The Old Man and the Sea (Ernest Hemingway)
❌08. A graphic novel or manga - Again, TOO MANY OPTIONS. Here, I'll pick whichever one I like the most.
❌09. A memoir or (auto-)biography - Bad as I Wanna Be (Dennis Rodman)
❌10. A book adapted into a movie / TV series - The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky) - Didn't really like the film but my friend keeps raving about it.
❌11. A self-published book - Starlight Universe: Moments of Transition (Chris Adamek)
❌12. A book from a genre you don’t normally read - The Book Thief (Markus Zusak)
❌13. A book you have read before but remember nothing about/think you won't like anymore - Kafka on the Shore (Haruki Murakami) - I'm not sure that ❌I'll not like it, but I do feel like my opinion on it won't be the same.
❌14. (Reread) a book that was assigned in school - The Tempest (Shakespeare)
❌15. A book from an abandoned or currently unfinished series - Sacred and Terrible Air (Robert Kurvitz) - From the world and by the writer of Disco Elysium, currently my favorite game of all time, and also a dead series. Nobody said the series in question had to be a book :]
❌16. A “hopeful non-fiction” book - You're Never Weird on the Internet (Felicia Day)
❌17. An animal xenofiction novel - Watership Down (Richard Adams) - Roach (Matt on the forums) was raving about this one a while back.
❌18. A novel set in your city/state/country - The God of Small Things (Arundhati Roy) - Set in India.
❌19. A book from Wikipedia’s list of “Most Commonly Challenged Books in the US” - Slaughterhouse-Five (Kurt Vonnegut)
❌20. A book actually purchased in your local walk-in book shop - Foundation (Asimov)
❌21. One of the oldest books in your backlog - Tombland (C. J. Sansom)
❌22. A book in your mother tongue - I'll think about this one some more.
...
❌30. The Discussion Challenge - Pending

My nominations for The Discussion Challenge:
- 20th Century Boy - Naoki Urasawa's magnum opus.
- Norwegian Wood - Widely considered to be one of Haruki Murakami's most popular and most sexist works, but I'd argue that's missing the bigger picture. It's not just mysoginistic, it hates everyone equally, the protagonist included.
- It Ends With Us - I do not like this book. I think its representation of love, toxicity, responsibility, etc etc is moronic and irresponsible and juvenile. I'd still love to discuss it.
- The Poppy War - I've got no idea what this book is about but i've heard a lot.
- Batman Year Zero - widely considered to be one of the best volumes from the one of the only good New 52 run of the DC comics. I prefer some other volumes but that's a topic for later.

The list was a collaborative effort between a few of us on the HLTB Discord server!

Thanks for bringing the challenge to the forum too!

I've actually been wanting to get into the WH40K books, been really into the series recently. Got any recommendations for me to start with?

Oh, I could go on for hours about this topic :)

Many people recommend The Eisenhorn Trilogy by Abnett for beginners. I think these are interesting and good novels and they cover many aspects of W40k, Chaos, daemons, xenos, psykers, the Inquisition, Imperium politics, etc. But I think there are still better ones out there.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1009259.Xenos

I would recommend the Gaunt's Ghosts series, also by Abnett. This is a band of brothers' type of story. As a reader you follow a regiment of Imperial Guardsmen and their leader, Ibram Gaunt, through various adventures. It's perfect for beginners because the stories are very independent from the rest of the W40k universe. You don't need to know all about various actors and storylines. You just follow a group of soldiers trying to survive the horrors of W40k.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/220741.First_and_Only

Also fantastic and much darker and involving (Chaos) Space Marines (Space Marines being the poster child of W40k) is the Night Lords' trilogy by Dembski-Bowden. Many people, including me, would put these books into their top 5 W40 lists. These are truly grim dark books, though, including torture, and therefore not for everyone.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7000922-soul-hunter

Abnett and Dembski-Bowden are often named as some of the best authors of W40k and they both have written many novels in this universe.

When I started reading W40k I used this guide: https://wh40kbookclub.com/beginners-guide-to-warhammer-40000/
However, I need to say that I think both the Uriel Ventries and the Ciaphas Cain series are really not all that great in my opinion. I'm the outlier here though, at least with Ciaphas Cain which many people enjoy (Uriel Ventries trilogy does have a rather low rating on Goodreads).
Btw: this W40k book club is also on YouTube and Goodreads.

Then there's also the whole Horus Heresy, that's the story line that happened 10,000 years before W40k, leading to the quasi-death of the Emperor and the downfall of the Imperium into a bureaucratic hellhole, besieged by enemies on all sides. There are many guides on how to start with the Horus Heresy (there are over 50 books, you can't read all, some are stand-alones, others need to be read in order). This is a very cool website: https://www.heresyomnibus.com/ to find some orientation.
You could certainly start with the (first four books of the) Horus Heresy. However, my advise would be to first read a handful of books in the W40k timeline. It makes you appreciate certain things more, I would claim.

If you've got any recommendations, I'd be glad if you shared them! We're still missing a fair few challenges to complete the 30

Thanks! If I can come up with a good recommendation I will write you.

It doesn't really matter if you can't finish. The point is simply to get all of us reading, and if the challenge gets us to do that, I'd consider that a form of completing it too!

Good point. I'm going to participate then, at least for the fun of discussing books!

Good point. I'm going to participate then, at least for the fun of discussing books!

Yay! Welcome to the club!

As for bringing it to the forums, that was always my plan, I just decided to discuss it with the others (thanks to Roach, Bohemu, Ericb, Siver and Uvehj) and flesh it out a bit before posting about it here.

Also, thanks a bunch for all the recommendations! I've heard really good things about the Eisenhorn Trilogy. I've watched basically all the lore videos I could find about the Horus Heresy but I definitely want to read the books too 🫡.

2007 - Tekken 6 - I think the best game from this year is Half-Life 2: Ep 2, but I've got a lot of fond memories related to this one
2008 - Monster Hunter Freedom Unite - Again, I think Dead Space is a better game, but I've got a lot of fond memories of this one
2009 - Batman: Arkham Asylum
2010 - Halo: Reach
2011 - Dead Space 2... Portal 2... I can't choose 😭
2012 - Persona 4 Golden
2013 - The Wolf Among Us
2014 - Soul Sacrifice Delta
2015 - Undertale
2016 - Dark Souls III
2017 - Hollow Knight
2018 - God of War 2018
2019 - Disco Elysium
2020 - Kentucky Route Zero (final ep was released in 2020)
2021 - Everhood
2022 - Citizen Sleeper
2023 - Jedi: Survivor - I'd put Dead Space Remake here but I'll go with a one-per-series rule
2024 - 1000xRESIST

-edit: I intended to put this as a Nier Automata thread but I think staying here will do-

I think this would be a good place to vent about things we'd all dislike
First me:

You know what grinds my gears?

'True' endings

It always implies me as a fool or letting down or forgetting something at a first run and I feel absolutely unsatisfied. And if I wanted to go for it, its always in the most contrived, complex and niche goals you need to achieve in order to do another thing so as to do and another, ad nauseam. I'm just focusing on the leveling up for fighting the boss I can't handle building social connections or side quests!
Having to put myself through the whole ordeal of playing again is tiresome, and squeezing out that games appeal long enough to play again is a cheap tactic

Just give me a "you've won" ffs

I think they're conceptually cool.
You too have fallen for the illusion that had overcome the reality of the game, but you know better and know that something else needs to change.

The issue is that, let's take P5R. Turns out you need to replay 100 hours of content to play the thing again! (I think this is more of an issue in Nier's case because, yk, you can just load your save file in games like P5R

power of friendship endings/bosses with too many forms

I hate how much I love bosses with multiple forms. It's just the fact that massive-ass forces of nature need to play all their cards to fight "us". And then the guardian ape goes Headless and fucks me up way too bad. I hate that shit-flinging asshat.

Less a merge request and more a deletion request.

Half-Life 3 has not been announced.

Nah no way T_T

Hey NoOne,

I love this idea, very cool! Also nicely done list. I like the challenges that you chose and the examples that were provided.

These kind of challenges and achievements are really fun to me. I was already happy that Goodreads extended their Reading challenge 2025 by including 15 sub-achievements (read a book in month x, read a book in every month of 2025, meet your reading goal, read more than last year). Even though it makes no actual difference I enjoy this kind of gamification.

I'm not sure if I'm going to participate, though. My reading interest is quite limited these days. Currently, I'm only really interested in reading W40k, with small exceptions here and there. I would only tick off 2 or 3 boxes.

"A book from Wikipedia’s list of 'Most Commonly Challenged Books in the US'" is a great idea! Funny that "Encouraging poor spelling" put a book on the list (even as high as 41 out of 100).

Hey, thanks! The list was a collaborative effort between a few of us on the HLTB Discord server! I was basically thinking about how people've said that having a gaming challenge helped motivate them to play games, and I wanted to read more books this year too, so I decided to ask if people would be interested!
If you've got any recommendations, I'd be glad if you shared them! We're still missing a fair few challenges to complete the 30, and I do also want to make a few alternatives to make the challenge more accessible.

I'm not sure if I'm going to participate, though. My reading interest is quite limited these days. Currently, I'm only really interested in reading W40k, with small exceptions here and there. I would only tick off 2 or 3 boxes.

It doesn't really matter if you can't finish. The point is simply to get all of us reading, and if the challenge gets us to do that, I'd consider that a form of completing it too!
I've actually been wanting to get into the WH40K books, been really into the series recently. Got any recommendations for me to start with?

As for the "challenged books" idea, my original idea was "A book notorious for being out of touch or by a problematic person" but I think it was Roach who modified it into the challenged books idea, and it was for the best. It's a lot less vague this way and a lot easier to choose a book for.
The challenged list in itself is fascinatingly moronic, though, to the point that it's kind of the opposite of my original idea for the challenge. Instead of writers being out of touch, here it's the people who made that list (I'm not sure how it works, not from the U.S.) that are the ones being out of touch. It's honestly worth applauding how utterly non-sensical the list is. There are very, very few books on the list whose presence I actually agree with ;_;

Hello, people of the HLTB community! Welcome to the Reading Challenge 2025, inspired by the yearly gaming challenges!

To start off, there will be a total of 30 challenges
- The book must be completed in 2025 to be used as an entry.
- Each book can only be used as entry for one challenge.
- Some challenges will have alternatives (X-A, X-B). Only one alternative needs to be accounted for, but both can be done if you wish to.

Tiers: Not everyone's got enough time for 30 books. That's fine! The reading challenge will have 3 tiers of completions:
Main -10 books
Main+ - 10+ books
100% - All 30 books!

The Storygraph collection for the HLTB Reading Challenge

At the end of each month, post a progress report and discuss the books you read!
Most importantly, remember to have fun!

The Challenge List
Gaming Adjacent challenges - This is HowLongToBeat.com! Of course we need to have some game related topics!
01. A book published by Boss Fight Books.
02. A novel that was (directly) adapted into a videogame. [Examples]
03. A book based on a videogame. [Examples]
04-A. A book based on a table-top game (DnD, Warhammer, Shadowrun, Magic, BattleTech, etc) [Examples. More examples.]
04-B. a Gamebook (e.g. Choose-Your-Own-Adventures, single-player RPGs). [Examples. More examples.]
05. A non-fiction book about videogames. [Examples]

Regular challenges
06. A book published since the start of 2024.
07. A "classic" / literary cornerstone. [Examples]
08. A short story or novella.
09. A doorstopper (Approx. 700 pages).
10. A play.
11. A graphic novel or manga.
12. A memoir or (auto-)biography.
13. A book adapted into a movie / TV series.
14. A self-published book.
15. A book from a genre you don’t normally read.
16. A book you have read before but remember nothing about/think you won't like anymore.
17. (Reread) a book that was assigned in school.
18. A book from an abandoned or currently unfinished series.
19. A “hopeful non-fiction” book. [Can filter with The StoryGraph Search]
20. An animal xenofiction novel. [Examples]
21. A novel set in your city/state/country. [Helpful: Mappit and TripFiction]
22. A book from Wikipedia’s list of “Most Commonly Challenged Books in the US”.
23. A book actually purchased in your local walk-in book shop.
24. One of the oldest books in your backlog.
25. A book in your mother tongue.
26. A book about a character engaging with a hobby of yours.
27-A. A book set before medieval times.
27-B. A book set in the far future.
28-A. The debut book by an up-and-coming author (They must not have any other books out at the moment, unless releasing in 2025).
28-B. The first book by a famous/pre-established author.
29. A book that has at least two of the following words in the title: How Long To Beat.
30. The Discussion Challenge - Choose upto 5 books that you would like to discuss with the people of the forums, and then select one book from someone else's recommendations that you'd like to discuss with them.

Discussion Challenge Collection - List of all the entries to for the discussion challenge by folks participating.
To find a particular user, just ctrl-f (if on pc) and search for "{username}"

{bohemu}
The Tetris Effect (Dan Ackerman)
Leslie F*cking Jones (Leslie Jones)
Scurry (Mac Smith)
The Chosen and the Beautiful (Nghi Vo)
Starlight Universe: Moments of Transition (Chris Adamek)

{Cock}
Earth (David Brin)
Watership Down (Richard Adams)
Through The Black Hole (Edward Packard)

{NoOne}
20th Century Boys (Naoki Urasawa)
Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)
It Ends With Us (Colleen Hoover)
The Poppy War R. F. Kuang
Batman (New 52) - Year Zero Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo

{Siver}
Small Gods (Terry Pratchett)
Piranesi (Susanna Clarke)
To Say Nothing of the Dog (Connie Willis)

{Uvehj}
The Kindly Ones (Jonathan Littell)
Salammbo (Gustave Flaubert)
House of Leaves (Mark Z. Danielewski)
All Quiet on the Western Front (Erich Maria Remarque)
Fictions (Jorge Luis Borges)

We'll also be discussing the challenge on the HLTB discord! Feel free to hop in and join the discussion on there too!

Ayy, glad ya liked it! It's probably one of my favorite Vita games, definitely a must play for anyone who's got it 🫡