Sunday is Gaming Day: What Are You Playing Weekly Thread
Hello everyone. Hope everyone has had a good week. I've had a busy week (3 job interviews) but still found time to play a lot of Binding of Isaac since a muscle injury has kept me out of the gym. Hope everyone has a good upcoming week.
Over the past week I have played and finished Disco Elysium for the first time. Masterpiece. I'll never play anything like it again.
There's a novel with an English translation in the same setting. I haven't gotten around to reading though.
https://gofile.io/d/XR6BKy link to A Sacred and Terrible Air by Robert Kurvitz
Citizen Sleeper. Very engaging story so far. It does seem like everyone you meet immediately likes you and wants to be your friend, which is fine for most games. But in a RP heavy time management sim, I feel like you want to see those characters grow to trust you over time depending on who you choose to help, especially since you're an illegal sentient being in a stolen synthetic body who literally just showed up on their space station.
I was doing the Netflix paralysis thing last night, going through game pass and adding stuff to “play later” rather than actually playing anything, and came across this. Haven’t heard of it but it looks cool.
Marvel Rivals is, surprisingly, quite good. They're leaning heavily on the comics style for the characters rather than another half-assed attempt at an MCU adaptation. The game is entirely FTP, with only cosmetics being something you have to buy as far as I can tell, and you start with all characters unlocked with no bullshit. If capeshit (or, perhaps more appropriately, the source material that was turned into capeshit) is of any interest and you can stomach multiplayer PVP, I'd recommend giving it a try.
First time here, but I continue to play War Thunder.
Don't ever start playing War Thunder.
I salute our soldiers that empower our Military Leak Pipeline
I started Farcry 5, having never played a far cry game before. They combine a lot of shit into Eden's Gate which I don't really like. The political commentary is just an aesthetic skin on the world, it doesn't really have any substance. Though, if you take it literally, you're a fed doing a color revolution against a revolutionary regime while pretending you're a smol bean resistance fighter. That kind of accidentally gives you some insight into how little the creators understand the right wing militia movement. It just comes off as if someone listened to some post-2016 podcasts and decided it would make a fresh setting.
Try Far Cry 3, the best one. The politics are still bad (it's basically "quirked up white boy with a little bit of swag busts it down sexual style.. is he goated with the sauce?" played completely unironically) but it works somehow and it's fun as hell.
I love that game for the music alone. But yeah, I can't defend it too hard. It's pretty easy to accidentally rush through, making it way better than the standard Ubisoft grindfest every game after that turned into. The fishing minigame is also pretty fun.
I am yet again playing some shit I wouldn't have bothered pirating but egs gave me for free so why not.
I haven't played a Lego game since Lego Island (1997) but I've heard the Lego (insert franchise here) games are good and they're giving away 9 movies worth of Lego Star Wars so I decided to give it a try and first impression is holy shit this game is huge. I got a few of the glowing blue rpg elements upgrade token bricks and the game tells me there's 1200 of the goddamn things? So far the plot is literally just the movie scene for scene but with constant Lego based slapstick. Luke finding his family murdered hits weird when he's a little Lego guy.
Believe it or not, still UFO 50
I think 1.0 is releasing this week!
I'm gonna try out Marvel Rivals later today, I like me a hero shooter now and then
Also not exactly playing but watching Northernlion play a ton of The Bazaar and it looks swag as hell. Hope it comes out of beta soon because you will not catch my ass paying $30 for early access
On that note I downloaded Hearthstone for the first time in like 5 years because I remember hearing about some PvE content they had that was pretty fun, which I thought might scratch the Bazaar itch. But all these solo adventures released in 2019 are still $20????? So I played a couple normal hearthstone games and it was... fine
Replayed No More Heroes before starting through the rest of the series. The 2000s must have been wild if having an apartment in californa, a pet, and still plenty of spending money counted as "being a failure."
Yeah that's a really money-brained take and Travis is a massive piece of shit loser for plenty of other reasons, it's just got that vibe of "wait, The Simpsons were actually doing alright"
Started a new game of Pokemon: Heart Gold
I've been having a good time with Baldur's Gate 3. As someone who's never played D&D, I was very frustrated with the combat system initially and I still don't think it's good, but the rest of the game is just so damn great that it doesn't matter too much.
I finished it on Balanced and am now playing on Tactician, but I don't think I'll finish this run. Playthroughs are really long and it's probably too deterministic and solvable to keep me hooked.
I have returned to playing The Isle with the updates to the newest version of the game. I would still never recommend anyone play it, but it has nice atmosphere for me to enjoy which is helping me unwind a little.
Also trying to get back into the headspace of thinking about developing my next game, now that things are potentially slowing down again... the egg sprites I made are calling to me...
Deadlock. I'm playing the bodyguard of a djinn whose goal is to get a favor from The Patron to negotiate with the US government to have a piece of land of Wyoming for all djinns.
Surprised no one's brought up Infinity Nikki, a lot of peeps here would love it (ignore the gacha, the free outfits are plentiful and cuuuuute)
Game's gorgeous even on lowest settings on my cheap non-gaming laptop, and I have NEVER seen another game put so much love and care toward fabric/hair textures and physics. Cute and relaxing way to spend time, though I've heard Nikki lore apparently gets unexpectedly dark, lol. I've been spending way more time playing since launch than I expected to.
Giving it a try on this recommendation, so far it's comfy cute fun
Edit: not only can you pet cute critters, it's such a central gameplay mechanic that it's bound to right click
Yesterday I saw another player's in world snapshot that was them pointing out a hidden whimstar. This is a Strand type game.
Nobody Saves the World. It has an addicting gameplay loop. You get to transform at will into about 20 different forms and eventually you can mix and match their active and passive abilities. Each form has quests to level up, plus your character also levels up their base stats. There are bespoke quests scattered around the map as well. And some enemies have locks that make them invulnerable until you hit them with one of the 4 damage types.
Making up strong builds is encouraged in the major dungeons.
Gmod sandbox rocks to this day. Got me off boredom after I had a timberborn overdose
I'm probably two-thirds through the new Indiana Jones and I've kinda gone a bit more cold on it. It's still pretty good, but it does feel kinda limited in its design and with the locations never quite feeling as ambitious and unique as the first one, it kinda runs out of steam somewhat predictably. It is very well designed with a minimal amount of distractions or friction, but that also makes it feel pretty limited once you get over its surface level qualities, like the incredible production values, it falls quite short from its promise. Like if the game was a little bit more ambitious with its puzzles, had more in-depth item management and dialogue trees, this would actually be pretty close to a real first-person version of the old style of point-and-click adventure games, which would have been really amazing.
Still playing Sims 3. Through a combination of mod tweaking, removing conflicting mods, and starting over in a better town I've actually got the damn game to run smoothly for the first time ever. Obligatory fuck EA for not even putting an FPS limiter on the game; if you try to start it up without limiting the FPS it can literally melt your video card.
Some stuff I've been playing lately:
God of War (2018) - This is my snowy winter game because I like to play games that are appropriate for the season. I was hesitant to start playing because I thought that the kid would be annoying but it turns out that the kid is cool and Kratos is the annoying one lol
Wildfrost - Another snowy winter game, this one is a roguelike deckbuilder with an incredible aesthetic. It's a bit too hard and punishing but I like it.
Risk of Rain 2 - It has the potential to be an amazing game but it's held back by some dumbfuck decisions.
Backpack Battles - Fun inventory management game where your backpack filled with stuff fights against other people's backpacks in asynchronous multiplayer.
The vibes of Wildfrost are so good but from watching
play it I think it's just too hard for mePartner and I are halfway through the North Downs in Lord of the Rings Online. We're like 10 levels overlevelled but this is where the main story took us and we decided to just finish every zone it makes us go to in its entirety. Except the Lone Lands, cuz even with 2 people on +3 Fearless difficulty, the group quests were a little difficult. Plan to come back later. Being overlevelled is a nice power fantasy and I feel like a sith lord zapping everything with lightning as a Rune Keeper. Game is so chill and I think it's going to take like 2 years for us to do all the zone at this pace or something.
Every time I see someone mention LOTRO I want to get back into it but I'm still in the middle of a few games already. There's too much to play this year!
The game itself is so chill because you can tell the original vision was to have something where you felt like you were going on a journey.
The game is like 17 years old now so it's pretty jank, balance is all over the place because different races/sexes have faster and slower animations for different classes, the PvP has never been balanced, etc. So like honestly as an MMO I wouldn't call it good if you're looking for deep and engaging gameplay systems. I'd recommend like Final Fantasy 11 instead if someone wants to go old school.
But it's extremely comfy to just exist in and quest in, the environments with their outdated hyper realistic art style still look cool, etc. I wouldn't pay the sub fee, but because it's free, we like to hop on at least once a week to make some progress.
Tried PoE2 and fell off. I get the devs want a slower game but every aspect of it seems to be "pace of a snail". The loot, movement, campaign, boss fights. I don't need to be zooming like its PoE1 but I feel like I'm swimming in molasses. I know they'll adjust so much of it and it'll barely be recognizable by this time next year, but I'll wait until then. Or I'll just stick to PoE1.
So instead I've started Rimworld for the first time.
Got hooked on Balatro. Still playing the Silent Hill 2 remake at a slow pace. Installed Atomic Heart and Final Fantasy VII Crisis Core since I might play one of the two after SH2.
Don't sleep on high card and pairs builds.
WFRP. We're closing in on the end of Shadows Over Bögenhafen. I'm particularly nervous that Bögenhafen is going to get destroyed. PC's haven't gotten much info on the chaos cult.
Not much, played a bit more Halls of Torment (finally finished the Vault with an invincible Shieldmaiden build), also played like 1.5 hours of Deep Rock earlier in the week.
God damn trying to beat the time trials in crash bandicoot remaster is addictive. It’s just like being me back in ‘97 when my mum bought the ps1 to distract us kids from the divorce fr fr
I finally picked up Stardew Valley again after the 1.6 update, and I am smitten with the game all over again. Perfect cozy game to get through the holidays too.
I was literally just staring at it on my Xbox yesterday, I haven’t played since I “beat” it in 2016 or so. Are all the updates enough to make it worth another play through?
I think so, because you have the option to start from scratch, or start from a previous save. I started with a year-old save that was already year 5, and I'm running around like year 1 again (which I like). Besides the new achievements available, the art has been updated, QOL has been taken into account, there's a new farm, a mastery system, new events and festivals, new items/crops have been added, and my personal favorite is the addition of multiple pets. Probably 20-30 hours more of content for normal players, possibly more. I haven't read too much because I'm enjoying not being spoiled on it. ...So yeah, I think even old school players will enjoy picking it up again, if only just to collect all the new stuff.
Dominions 6 got updated so I have dipped my toe back into that absolute mess. Gonna try and take it real easy and not get into half a dozen games at once this time only to burn the fuck out.
Also been doing some Metaphor Refantazio, which is definitely an Atlus game. It's not like it's bad, and I am definitely having fun with it, but it's also just so fucking stupid and anime. I kind of love that though. I do have to say that the 3d environments fucking suck and it's sad to see that there was a lot of work put into them only for it to look like crap. Otherwise I have been enjoying how sexy all the menus are and the super fucking good battle theme with the guy chanting all crazy.
I'm continuing my Half-Life 2 adventures with Episode 1. It's not too long, so I'll probably finish it this evening.
I wanted to replace my xbox one controller's joysticks, but I realized too late I don't have any desolder wick, and no hardware store anywhere seems to have any. I have some in for delivery so probably next weekend...
Murky Divers. Everyone should get it and join the gaming discord. It is all sorts of ridiculous and I can show folks the ropes. It's also only like $8. Good roguelite coop fun with a lovecraftian/anticapitalist bent.
I’m playing Path of Exile 2 like my life depends on it, and I love it. It’s exactly the kind of game that o wanted poe 1 t become before it became super fast. Can’t wait for it to launch so that more friends can play it.
Finally got a free day to just unwind. Gonna play Guild 2 and Where the Water Tastes Like Wine. Was gonna play Bellwright, but sadly that game seems too intensive for my PC. :/
I finished Rise of the Golden Idol, which I really liked overall, but the ending didn't do much for me, I thought it was going in a way that interested me, and the pivot to something that makes more sense, makes more sense but completely deflated it for me. Because the way the language puzzle works it meant my final guess was so far off that I only fixed it with the hint system. Also I really wanted it to be like 1 hour less of a game, so I wasnt up for another hour of being a detective and slowly swapping between screens and making notes on things. A very good game, but not as good as the first.
Persona 5, I've begun the second heist, and I really enjoy both parts of the game, but I almost wish I could just do the life sim and the dungeon crawler independent of each other, because it feels like I simply do not have the time to do what I want and I'm sure that's intentional, but it's the biggest struggle for me to play through these types of games.
Path of exile 2, it's good, it's also very poorly balanced, with needing a good weapon being so important and not really giving you the tools to get one. It has some really cool interesting boss fights, that have 20% too much going on. It does make it satisfying when you beat them, but also they need better sign posting for these boss fight mechanics. also the game has horrendous stuttering for me which I can only presume is because I'm on wireless internet that hiccups, but it's around 17ms ping most of the time so I really hope they figure it out. But given that poe1 had this issue for like 10 years and never felt great to play either. It's probably the thing that will force me to drop the game.
Still on The Morrow's Golden Country, and it's still a blast. Also started another playthrough of Three Houses, and it feels so different now that I actually understand FE mechanics. There's so many potential builds, so many skills, and now I understand why Dark Mage and Dark Bishop are garbage classes. Also forgot how nice the game's aesthetic is, Intelligent Systems has been cooking with game presentation since Shadows of Valentia.
Just finished the first season of the walking Dead and just started the Wolf Among Us. Both for the first time.
I enjoyed TWD, definitely showed its age though and was slightly buggy a few times. But a great story none the less. Still on the first episode of The Wolf Among us, it's excellent so far. Top tier gameplay, graphics, animation, they really outdid themselves on this one.
love both of them honestly. that era of telltale games was so fun. have you played the tales from the burgerlands ones?
I haven't yet, this is the first time playing any telltale game honestly. I played both BL1 and BL2, heard good things about it though.
Honestly, I'm trying the games in order of release. That way I can get a feel for how the devs grew over the course of their games. Also it will allow me to experience their highs and lows, cause I feel like if I had started with Wolf Among Us, going back to TWD s1, I feel I wouldn't been able to enjoy it as much.
But yeah eventually I'll get to tales from the borderlands! Exciting. 😊
the best borderlands game actually
Been playing some Skyrim - namely some mods that were recommended here, VIGILANT and The Forgotten City so far. The later was fine, nice concept that doesn't work well in Skyrim - might check out the indie game version of it.
VIGILANT however... Now that's a diamond in the rough, a heavily Dark Souls inspired Skyrim story that reinterprets a lot of the background material - and has genuinely engaging in-universe books. The strongest parts were where it went beyond either Souls or Skyrim's style - the cryptic in-setting books that are actually relevant, the memory sequences of ancient souls' greatest triumph or torment - a1nd the weakest were the various expy armour sets from other franchises stopping it from really settling into its own aesthetic (not that I didn't collect them all). A near railroad of a story, but the different choices made really do dramatically change the details, if not the end result (which itself is part of the story of reclaiming something from a vast and uncaring cycle of time and powerlessness... I think).
Just started Glenmoril, the sequel, which takes a different tack by having the prologue establish important ties to a few characters before getting all Bloodborne-ey. The mod maker's clearly experimenting more with it, and it's cool to see.
I played the standalone version of the forgotten city, I enjoyed it. Finished it over a couple of nights.
i played indiana jones for a number of hours yesterday.. its not particularly the best game but somehow its just good enough to keep me playing.. kinda like some of the other bethesda games but without most of the bugs
though trying to jump through a window and ending up jumping through the window, sliding over a railing, and falling to my death is getting a bit old
Just finished the first Jedi fallen order game and just started the crash bandicoot remake
i was going to play indiana jones but didn't realized you need a ray traceable card so im outta luck there. still need to finish cyberpunk and wolfenstein the new colossus though.
cyberpunk has been fun, but im still in act two and have already reached max level; getting a bit stale. similarly to witcher 3 ive restarted this game about 5 times before finally getting into it. even after the dlc and multiple updates the game still feels half-baked. multiple ways to do some missions, but they all seem to lead to similar outcomes. atmosphere is pretty cool; very dredd/bladerunner. the story is fairly hohum but compared to most video game writing it's attention grabbing at least.
wolfenstein 2 gameplay somehow feels a bit clumsier than 1, but i am enjoying the story so far. to be fair i havent played 1 since near release. the contrast of blaskowicz dour inner monologue with the games silliness hits me well. ill probably finish it
playing cyberpunk i feel like i just dont have the energy for open world games anymore; however i still find myself going back to openworld games ive already played. not sure whats going on there
as always playing civ 6 and balatro when i dont want to get into a more involved game. maybe need to scope out some gpus to swipe from a truck; im not paying 500 clams for a new card right now
happy holidays to those that celebrate
Started playing Path of Exile 2, looks great, plays great too, but I think the difficulty is a bit overtuned, I don't necessarily want it to be a breeze but I'm starting to really struggle and I'm barely into Act 2
Also playing Project Zomboid multiplayer with friends, it's a different beast from SP but I think it works even better
I find difficulty to be so whack in games. Medium is too easy, hard sometimes just becomes an annoying grind that isn’t so much testing your skill as your patience.
I guess it’s better than when I was a kid and just literally never being able to finish a game because every 90s game had one difficulty setting: “fuck you”
The "make the player put another coin" setting
I'm in a bit of a tangle with Outer Wilds (it's funny how much of this game is spent thinking about the game and figuring out potential solutions to puzzles while in the shower) so I got Balatro.
Full House gang. Best hand.
yakuza kiwami
Finally got myself a new GPU a month ago and decided to give Cyberpunk 2077 another shot and... damn, it's actually a pretty solid game nowadays. There's a bunch of bugs here and there, it doesn't feel extremely polished, but I'm really into it now. It was absolute ass at release, but now that the major bugs have been squashed I'm having tons of fun with it.
The combat system really gives you that badass power fantasy. I went for a high risk high reward melee build with throwing knives and a katana and it's a blast to activate Sandevistan, throw a knife into an enemy's face then leap to the next one, swinging my katana.
Also, I think the writing is way better than I thought it would be. Not Disco Elysium levels, sure, but I like the worldbuilding and character development. Johnny Silverhand is a really fun character and Keanu's performance actually elevates him.
Technically not what I'm playing right now, but I recently played Nobody Wants to Die and while I didn't think it was a particularly good game, I was absolutely blown the fuck away by how unbelievably good that game looks. It's one of the few games I've played that made me literally go holy fucking shit out loud just looking at it. My jaw hit the floor about five minutes in when you get the full reveal of the game's futuristic cyberpunk noir setting. Just check this shit out at around 8:15, when the character opens the door of his car hovering over Times Square.
The aesthetic is like LA Noire meets Bioshock meets Cyberpunk 2077 and it's absolutely impeccable. It's a brand of art deco noir 30's retrofuturism that I don't remember ever having seen anywhere else, and it fucking rocks. A visual masterpiece that's sadly wasted on a game that's the definition of meh.
Overall it's a very mediocre game, the plot is pretty confusing and derivative, just a more noir version of Altered Carbon with a hundred different indistinct characters that I mostly did not care about or even remember who they were as your character does the murder investigation. You investigate by putting together a kind of puzzle visually connecting characters and events, but I have to admit that most of my progress was by trying random shit because I had no idea who anybody was and didn't care. The gameplay loop is repetitive and kind of annoying, but holy shit is it an absolute visual feast. Soundtrack's pretty solid too.
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
I've been playing a lot of metaphor! I'm loving every bit of it so far! I've also been getting back into Isaac since repentance + launched and that's always fun.
