What have you been playing lately? (August)

Tunic. Playing it filled me with a sense of wonder and discovery reminiscent of the first time I looked at the map of the original NES Legend of Zelda. Amazing experience. I’m in the final chapter of the game but not finished yet.

Started Baldurs Gate 3 a few months ago and just recently started to get more play time.

I picked up Tunic on the summer sale and am finishing that up.

I'm playing two games at the moment:

Yet another run in Nier: Automata, second playthrough, first time on steam deck. It runs surprisingly well.

Stardew valley. For steam deck it's a killer game - 8-9 hours on a battery, perfect for resting.

I also have Snowrunner and Vampire Survivors as my go to games.

A lot of Balatro, lol. I wish it was on mobile, though...

I just modded my Switch, and tomorrow I'm gonna try to get Breath of the Wild / Tears of the Kingdom dumped and working on my Deck

Kingdom Come: Deliverance

Haven’t seen a post like this recently so I thought I’d start the conversation !

We normally do a "what are you playing" discussion post at the start of each month, so the next one would have been posted in a couple days. This post is taking off though, so I'll go ahead and feature it and we'll use it instead for the month of August.

On a side note, we're always looking for more routine discussion topics if anyone has any suggestions.

Lately I’ve been playing Pseudoregalia. It’s a really good game. It’s a 3D platformer in the style of N64, with super fluid movement.

Pretty much just Zenless Zone Zero and Hades II for the past month or so.

And a bit of Terraria with the boys.

Mortuary Assistant and the Outer Wilds while I was on a trip without internet access last week. Both played great at heavily restricted TDP.

Mostly just working through my "I should get around to playing this" list. Hades, Dome Keeper, Loop Hero and Whisper Squadron: Survivor.

I have recently gone to replay Dishonored. It worked great, so now I'm continuing with Dishonored 2, which I had abandoned after like three missions the last time. It's loads of fun although D2 crashes from time to time for me. No big problem with the frequent saving I do anyway.

Fury of the Furries

New Vegas. At some point I took my save from my PC and copied it over since zi didn't feel like playing as my level 6 new character on hard difficulty survival mode. I'd rather play my melee build character who now has an insanely fast war club that can take out individual death claws without backup with only a 50% chance of death, assuming vats allows me to knock one down.

That, and games like GemCraft: Frostborn Wrath, Isles of Sea and Sky, and trying to get back into Brok the Investigator so I can try and get all endings completed before the eventual DLC release.

Manor Lords.

Plays really well but as one reviewer put it, it gets old after 20 hours or so.

That said, the early access bit is done well in that the content that is there works pretty well, and you can see placeholder for the other features being worked on.

Like right now it’s maybe like 25% of the full game, but that 25% works well and you can clearly see what’s coming.

I’ve been all over the place:

• Warframe
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Amnesia: Rebirth
• Arkham Knight
• Oblivion (runs amazing with some modding)

Predecessor

• Pathfinder: WotR
• Armored Core 6
• Elden Ring DLC
• Once Human
• WH40k: Boltgun
• No Man's Sky

I hop and drop games pretty easily hahah

Finished Disco Elysium recently. I enjoyed it despite it not being my typical type of game. The story kept me guessing and at times it was funny. I'm sure there is some replayability there with different specs and choices but I'm not too pushed at the moment as I have other stuff to play.

Next up is the prison dlc for deus ex mankind divided. Finished the main game a while back but heard the dlc was decent.

Every time I tell myself I'm done with Brotato...it sucks me back in.

Chrono Trigger SNES.

It’s on my must play list for this year. RIP Akira Toriyama

The Elder Scrolls Oblivion. Always wanted to play it but never really stuck to it every time I started. It's awesome on the Deck. Handheld gaming is the best.

Quickly played the storyline of Detroit: Become Human through for the first time, some Dishonored for nostalgia and fell back to playing the PS2 games I never had the console for back when I was a child.

Most of my recent hours have gone to Rayman 3, and there's a big heap of PS2 games to go through after that. I've noticed PCSX2 doesn't consume much battery, so my typical travel games tend to be PS2 games as well.

so much Elden ring

Dicey Dungeons and Wingspan.

Kingdom rush alliance (yes it is out, go play it)

Balatro

Children of Morta

Lego Marvel Super Heroes 2

Mars First Logistics

Finally came back to Reverse Collapse: Code Name Bakery - a sci-fi tactical RPG. Really fun, with interesting story so far. Can be pretty challenging at times (especially on higher difficulties when trying to complete all optional goals on your first try) but that's kind of what you'd want from a title like this, isn't it?

It plays great on both desktop, with mouse and keyboard, as well as on the Deck so I tend to jump between the two depending on the situation. Thankfully game has no problem with that.

Mega Man X, basically finished am just to stupid for Sigma.

Pokemon Unbound, a Romhack for Pokémon Fire Red, probably my favourite Pokémon game. Enemy Trainers are way better than they were in the official games so some fights actually require thinking.

Elden Ring, started a new play through for the dlc, have not entered the new area yet, but my last play through is more than a year past and i've forgotten way more stuff than i thought so even the old areas feel pretty fresh again. and while i still love the game, but damn it fromsoftware quests should be more than bumping into an npc in random locations where they have some cryptic thing to say and then bumping into them again later for more cryptic stuff.

Right now I'm not playing too much games, just testing them here and there out on an emulator. And have neglected my Steam Deck as a whole too, since I purchased a new Gaming PC. So nothing recent to report playing on Deck. When I do, its mostly emulation; I'm big fan of emulation.

Steam Deck

• Wario Land 3: As a fan of 1 and 2, I never played this one on real hardware and was curious. Its basically like 2. But did not finish it yet (got very far though), maybe I'll pick it up again soon. Didn't play it in a while, just mention it as you remind me. There was a few tricky (in other words frustrating) places, but I overcome most of them. A big design flaw to me is, because you cannot die, they have to design the levels in another way to punish players. And that is often done by falling down and then playing those long segments again. There was one such moment where I had enough and put it away, but planned on playing next week again. Did not workout as planned. :D

PC

• Tears of the Kingdom: Just finished it a few days ago with Yuzu 112 hours playtime (+10 from Ryujinx) in roughly 4 to 5 weeks. 1440p + 60 fps = unstoppable. And that after a few months stop playing Breath of the Wild. So it was basically a back to back experience for me and I'm burned out. Especially because Totk was dragging everything to the extreme and it was a shore at times. The building mechanic is really goddamn cool and its one of the most beautiful games I have played in my entire life, and I mean it in an artistic way how everything looks. But the underworld was just not fun and lot of time was spent there. Overall good game, but BotW was more enjoyable to me. 9/10

Unfortunately nothing. Been running another round of Injustice on comic to better understand why Batman is such a douche.

Battle Chasers: Nightwar

Runs pretty well on the deck and the turn based-ness of combat lends well to pick up and play

Permanently Deleted

Hype: The Time Quest, a 90s PC game by Playmobil that was a formative part of my childhood. Surprisingly dark story for baby's first 3D action adventure game. Took quite a bit of work to get it running on Steam Deck, but I'm about 3/4 through it. Starting to lose my patience with the awful fucking tank controls, though. Tried to modernize them a little with Steam Input, but the platforming is killing me.

I'm planning on checking out the Wario Land series myself soon. Recently got a cheap retro handheld and that's on my list for sure.

I completed Firewatch in a couple of days. Nice game, cozy, if anything a bit too short. Still, perfect for my summer nights.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/383870/Firewatch/

Warframe

Recently played through:

• What became of Edith Finch
• Gris
• Inside
• Limbo
• Hades II
• Submerged
• Outer Wilds
• Hellblade Senna's Sacrifice

Just started GTA V.

The Deck will never cease to amaze me.

The past two month I have played lots of Zelda. I finished Breath of the Wild and now I am working my way through Tears of the Kingdom.

Two superb games if I say so myself! Unfortunately TotK could have better performance on the Deck but it's playable with the right settings. For BotW I played the Wii U version with great performance

I've recently finished playing the entire Ratchet and Clank collection..... Well... With the exception of the PS3 spinoffs.

But yeah, was surprised the Deck can actually handle PS3 emulation quite well. I was holding off on playing Rift Apart, but when I got Motorstorm running nicely, a game that previously was completely impossible to run decently, I was convinced I could finally go and play all of R&C.

Now I just got to wait till...

*checks notes

... 2029!?!

Uh... Yeah... 2029 for the conclusion of Ratchet and Clank...

Anyway, Rift Apart ran great after some tweaking. The default settings make the game look fugly.

Motor Town, because I love Motor Town, it just has such good driving feel that it is hard to make a serious argument for another racing/driving game when I can open Motor Town, pick up a taxi passenger and start racing with zero thought or decisions having to be made. It is FANTASTIC as a relaxation and meditation tool, especially since you can either a) just suspend the Steam Deck and come back to your race or b) put the vehicle into autopilot and let it drive itself which fits the mobile, multitasking nature of the Steam Deck experience perfectly.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1369670/Motor_Town_Behind_The_Wheel/

I have been playing a lot of new games but one that particularly stood out to me on the steamdeck was the Descent spiritual successor Overload. WOW DOES THIS GAME FEEL GOOD with Steam Deck joysticks and if you mix a bit of gyro aim into it and bam you really can actually see deep into the future potential of the Switch/Steam Deck hardware form. Very very very quickly you can get locked in when using joysticks and gyro in this game and it is just a blast to zip around the environments using a totally new form of control that the original game that inspired it could never have dreamt of.

https://isthereanydeal.com/game/overload/info/

I had a big sailing rant on a sailing thread recently and admittedly some people were taken aback by how hilariously imbalanced my hyperfocus is, but the sailing game that I have kept playing the most and am most interested in following development of is definitely Sailwind which is like a relatively dry space trading open world game if space flight mechanics were actually deep and organic feeling in control.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1764530/Sailwind/

Also, honestly I think a lot of people just look at me weird for this but I play plenty of competitive shooters on the deck with joysticks + gyro and I love it. I used to play Battlebit, but I think the devs really lost their way with game balance. One game I have actually really been liking the realism/fun balance with is Operation Harsh Doorstep which is a free multiplayer realistic moddable shooter on the Unreal engine. It is in the process of adding vehicles and the gun mechanics are really good. More importantly, it feels like the kind of game where being hyper aggressive and rushing can be super powerful (as you can hip shoot an assault rifle accurately enough at close range to make a rush work if you are willing to empty your magazine) but also creeping around, being stealthy and projecting powerful kill angles with scoped weapons also feels similarly powerful. That balance is actually really hard to nail, even in a realistic game where you would think you could just fall back on modelling everything as realistically as possible and just hope the actual in optimal in game tactics end up being similar.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Operation_Harsh_Doorstop/

What I really appreciate About Operation Harsh Doorstop is that movement mechanics feel slick, it doesn't feel like playing Arma 3 in the slightest, but that weapon handling feels very realistic so long as you pretend you are a super human with impossibly buff arms to hold your scoped long rifle aim steady at a target while standing lol.

You have to turn the settings WAYYY down on Operation Harsh Doorstop and I honestly just limit the frames to like 45 fps, but super realistic body cam shooters are all the rage these days... isn't this kind of just like a lofi, Steam Deck equivalent? Why go through the process of simulating all the grit and haze, embrace the pixels lol. This game is built on the Unreal Engine and you can tell there is a lot of equipment built into the Unreal Engine particularly focused on making games able to scale down for potato gaming devices like the Steam Deck (as a AAA 3d game engine meant for shooters and action games fundamentally should in my opinion.....) .

I will upload bindings for Operation Harsh Doorstep for the Steam Deck at some point, really the only thing I have changed currently is to create a toggle for gyro aim and to bind crouch, prone, and left/right lean buttons to the rear four buttons of the deck but the game deserves some good Steam Deck Bindings because it is genuinely a community project focused on creating lots of new opportunities for other developers and gaming communities to form ontop of the path it forges. It hurt to live through EA abandoning the wonderful wacky world of the Battlefield modding community and I honestly think it set vehicle based multiplayer shooters back a decade but that is a separate rant...

Edit a final fun note about Operation Harsh Doorstep is that the guy at the head of the project is very active on youtube and regularly covers similar games. I don't know much about this guy, I am not a huge fan of his or anything, but what I can say is that he often gives a lot of air time to cool interesting indie developed shooter fps games, and he is very generous with his compliments to independent developers when he does give them the spotlight.

https://www.youtube.com/@Bluedrake42

Added 6 more mods to my Stardew Valley. That should be alright. It's not over 200, luckily.

Crash Bandicoot on PSX using duckstation. Man some of these levels are hard, I remember as a kid getting so frustrated and it was absolutely warranted.

Star Stuff : which is a very cute little programming-puzzle game. Light on the programming - you are heavily boxed into there only being one correct solution.

The Farmer Was Replaced : literally "Python the game".

Veritus : the sequel to Prodigal. It's weaker for lacking the whole adventure side of things, and no waifus 😭.

Arranger : have it as a Netflix Mobile app. Really cute little slider puzzle game, the artwork is gorgeous on an ipad.

That was the game of my childhood too, there's a record of the soundtrack on YouTube I highly recommend for massive nostalgia

Little Kitty Big City. It's cute & charming, a little glitchy here and there, and makes me smile. I'm not trying to speed run the thing, just collecting hats and trying to hit all the goals.

Dink Smallwood and various dmods.

Sonic 3 AIR, and the Sonic 8bit Remakes because my daughter can’t get enough Sonic.

I just this afternoon rolled up a new character in Stardew Valley.

Project Zomboid, more than 30 hours in.

I am a bit of a cheater because I do backup saves and restore them when did.

I suppose I didn't actually answer the question! I've been soooo busy lately, but I've been playing bits of Children of Morta, I think made by the same people as the Wizard Legends game. It's fun, although while I understand the fatigue mechanics I'm not big on that one aspect. Everything else is nice though

The Binding of Isaac, Noita (custom bindings using right touchpad to aim as mouse, the default controller aiming is horrendous), Vampire Survivors

Rocket League! It plays at a smooth 90FPS on the OLED Deck which is really nice.

Additionally, some ARPGs - Last Epoch, Diablo 4, and I'm trying out Path of Exile (but we'll see about that one) since I've been really into those as of recently.

I tried The First Descendant on the Steam Deck but unfortunately it seems to be just unstable enough FPS-wise, and for some reason the game completely disconnects you from the servers if your framerate is unstable for too long.

In what way is Eternal Cylinder demanding? Graphics wise or gameplay/control wise?

Cult of the Lamb

Bought it right at the end of the summer sale. Been having a blast.

Insanely enough, Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver. I’m playing with friends and it’s been fun to see many concepts here that were heavily used in the industry later, even though this game is very dated.

Sea of stars... Such a great game