Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 24th

I bought Cyberpunk 2077 release day. I enjoyed it and played a good bit for about a month. I never finished the story. It’s time for a fresh playthrough thanks to update 2.0 and Phantom Liberty

I decided to play Disco Elysium again, but this time I'm just going full on drug and alcohol addicted sex maniac. I only wear the tie, I never tell the truth, and I'm just an absolute asshole continuing the bender that Harry started 3 days prior to us taking control of his adventure. Fuck solving this murder. I'm party cop.
- I did an apocalypse cop playthrough earlier where I just renounced the HDB name and just went with Raphael Ambrosius Costeau.

The season of CRPGs continues for me, and I've started Divinity: Original Sin 2.
I didn't go with a custom character, but chose to play as Beast instead, because dwarven supremacy of course (also it seems like I'm actually working towards that). While it doesn't really fit with his whole vibe, I went with a Summoner build. Playing around the different surfaces, so your summons get different elemental buffs, is pretty neat.
As for the story, I finished Act 1 yesterday and made it to the mainland. I like that there are a bunch of mods integrated in the game, but it sucks that those also disable achievements, so you gotta re-enable those with a different mod. I activated a few QoL ones, like faster movement speed out of combat, which is a lifesaver, or a repec mirror in Act 1, which let me try out some stuff. It's kinda weird that that second one isn't added by default, considering you get a permanent(?) repec mirror after you leave the island.
Anyway, I'm having a lot of fun and this turn-based combat is definitely more up my alley than RTwP.
- Guessing you played BG3 and wanted to check out Larian's other stuff? I always had Beast as summoner whenever I used him. He's a battlemage by default so summoner isn't too far off really. Summoner is also REALLY REALLY good, even without the gift pack mod buff. Since summoner stuff only relies on your skill points and not attributes you can basically dump intelligence for constitution/strength/memory if you need it too. Faster movement is basically necessary to me too, I've sunk so many hundreds of hours in that game and missing so many trophies just because it feels so slow without it.
  
  BG3 started my current run of CRPGs, but I was already familiar with Larian and D:OS. I played through the first one and about halfway through the second when it originally came out. I didn't remember Beast at all, so I got no idea what his default build is. However, for some reason back then I also decided to completely ignore the origin companions, because I didn't want to deal with their personal quests, and just roll with a party of four custom characters, so maybe I just never met him.
  I'm not using the Summoner changes from the gift pack and haven't looked too much into builds or min-maxing, just some basics. At first I wanted to go Summoner / Necromancy, so maybe I can have more minions, but I guess you can have only one "real" minion active at a time, so I got away from that (also Necro wants Warfare I guess, so that's out anyway).
- Pillars of Eternity is the only real-time-with-pause game I've played, and honestly I don't get it. It's too chaotic for me to absorb everything that's happening. If I play another I'm just going to drop the difficulty.
  
  Pillars 1 was more than a bit of a mess. Pillars 2 I love. It has problems on console but I love it despite them. It is a badass fucking pirate RPG sim at the least lol.
  
  Pillars of Eternity was my first RTwP game, and they're fine, but I definitely need some AI for party members. Ain't nobody got time to micromanage six characters.
  I've only played a few RTwP games, but Tyranny was probably my favorite. A smaller party, so it's more manageable, some AI, on the shorter side, and I liked the setting.

Cyberpunk 2077! Update 2.0 really turned the crafting and perk systems on their heads. I was quite resistant to the weapon/crafting progression that's now in place, but it's growing on me.
Battlefield movement is much better with dodging/dashing and air dashing. I'm not even playing a melee build and it's still great being able to close gaps quickly and zip around the battlefield.
Vehicle combat is fun, but it hasn't come up too much just yet. Hope that changes at some point. Haven't determined if the weaponized cars are available in races, that'll be amazing if they are.
All in all, great update, can't wait to see what all Monday's DLC adds to the game.

Warframe. Always coming back to Warframe. It's just too fun making my murdermachines look pretty, and there's always something new to work toward. The game also runs incredibly well for how good it looks and how much is going on at once, I should NOT be able to run it at max settings 4k at 60fps with a mid-range gaming PC.
Plus it's really fun getting those big red damage numbers on enemies with the right builds, and I still haven't played another game with a movement system as fun as this one.
I've also been having fun with Armored Core VI, minus the out of place bosses. They definitely just put them in to be like "Look! We have the FromSoft™ bosses!" I ended up making a cheese build to effectively skip them. The actual mech combat parts are really fun though, and I love trying all the different kinds of loadouts! Runs well on a Steam Deck too which is always good.

I finally started Frostpunk! Things were going so well....then the storm came, my people started freezing to death and executed me. Looking forward to starting another uplifting play through today!

The lemmy minecraft server!
- There's a Lemmy minecraft server?!
  
  Minecraft.lemmy.world it's newish I think, a week or so... Enjoy!

Finally got round to starting Starfield and all I have to say is… wow

I'm replaying The Sinking City which has a lot of problems but I'm in love with the main protagonist (obviously). Since I've already played it twice and I know what I'm getting into, I'm trying to figure out a nice balance with the main story line vs the side quests while also exploring other dialogue options (even though there aren't a ton).
Still working on season shit for Diablo 4. Some latency stuff on my side has made things difficult, and I'm a bit behind on my timeline that I made for myself. Still working on it though!
Still on the fence about getting into Gungrave G.O.R.E.. Definitely need to jump on it before it's taken off of Game Pass.

Just finished Firewatch, and I'm a few hours in Outer Wilds. I enjoy having no way to really fail, and discovering the story bit by bit.
Started Torchlight 2 in coop with a friend living abroad, it's fun to see a non-blizzard Diablo with a Warcraft 3 aesthetic. Still trying to figure out which mods we want in the long run.
And almost at the end of It Takes Two in couch coop with a friend, we've laughed a lot so far !

I've had more unused time this and last week than usual due to a persistent case of Covid, so I've played Return to Monkey Island again. It's so much lovelier than I remembered - it took a few "just average good" games inbetween to notice just what a piece of art this game is. There's a billion of details you hardly notice: the pattern of the frame around the main menu changes every time, there's so much going on even in the most obscure and distant corners of the background that adds nothing to the story but a lot to the atmosphere, and characters constantly hint at non-canon things that happened earlier in the game based on the player's choices.
It's also a bittersweet game for two reasons:
It keeps confronting Guybrush (the protagonist) with the consequences of his actions on his quest to find The Secret - he destroys an ancient tree and makes the woodland critters cry, a museum is shut down because of him, a friend is abducted and his shop is destroyed, a kingdom falls into chaos etc., all just because he wants to find The Secret for the principle of the thing.
It does a very good job of likening the changes in the game - new pirate leaders doing things differently than the old ones, practitioners of that new-fangled Dark Magic putting the Voodoo Lady out of business etc. - to changes in the real world, where the glory days of the Monkey Island series in particular and point-and-click adventures in general are all but over.
Still, for old farts like me who grew up with anything Lucasfilm from Maniac Mansion to Full Throttle, the game feels a bit like coming home - and as far as point-and-click adventures go, they don't come much more brilliant than this one.

Got back into monster hunter rise / sunbreak just got the DLC after I read a lot of comments that the DLC is better than base.
A little bit of resident evil 4 remake to get in the October mood.
- Absolutely. Most of the fun end-game game loops don't even show up until half way through sunbreak. Near the end of sunbreak is when you get the fun armor skills, outlandish weapons, and hard difficulties and end-game monsters that really make monster hunter a joy to experience.

starfield or fortnite all day

@chloyster I started playing Surviving Mars on my Steam Deck. Although it shows as non-verified, it's a pleasure to play it and it keeps me in for quite a lot of time if I'm not careful enough. Well worth it.

Recently started playing guild wars 2 again as the new expansion just dropped. Has been a nice experience so far to dive in with friends :)

I've been getting back into simracing again with Assetto Corsa Competizione, and I'm still deep into Baldur's Gate 3

Apex Legends has become my go-to comfort game (non-ranked, and without any voice or written chat, everyone muted by default).
I'm also trying to get into Street Fighter 6, but just watching tutorials melts my brain. Everything is an overwhelming info dump.
- Dont give up too quickly on SF6!! It's not as hard as it's made out to be. You can get away with quite a lot with very little intentional play/very little knowledge, and mashing the rest of the time. The other concepts you can pick up as you go once you're comfortable!
  
  Thanks for the encouragement! I'll keep trying, I just feel like there is a very steep curve until I reach the point of not having to use 110% of my brain power. As things become muscle memory, they're becoming easier and more enjoyable.

Tetris Effect: I was sure it would be a nice, relaxing game I could play casually to calm down. Nope. While I enjoyed the aesthetic and the dynamic music, the way it speeds up at times and the way the difficulty scales makes it a remarkably stressful game, to the point that I still felt stressed out hours after playing it. If you're a Tetris god, you'll probably think differently about it, but I'm not. I ended up digging out a classic Tetris clone from over 20 years ago instead, Zetrix, which still looks nice, plays just fine on modern hardware (except for resolution support) and, crucially, isn't even remotely as stressful. I wish it had a hold function though.
Proun: An abstract racing game from 12 years ago. It still looks fantastic, has outstanding track design and controls exceedingly well. Neat concept, near flawless execution, just as much fun as I remember it being.
Game Dev Tycoon: No matter what you click, no matter what you choose, no matter how many points your game has, you can never predict how well your game ends up scoring. It's just an RNG clicker. You as the player might as well not even be there. Everything about it is meaningless.

After more than a hundred hours (and probably also 50+ crashes) me and my friends managed to finish our co-op Satisfactory session and completed the (for now) last stage of the space elevator. At the end of the game everything was slowly falling apart though. No means of transport was reliable anymore due to the lag. Trains were acting weirdly, hypertubes cannons were very dangerous, standing on drones was a quick trip to the void, and even normal hypertubes had random glitches where you'd randomly fall out of them and get completely desynced. But the factories were impressive, and it was a cool experience.
Now we're kinda filling the void with some older games. Playing some Splitgate again, which was quite fun despite the low player counts. And also playing some Mario Kart etc via Dolphin. Yesterday we also played Barony for the first time. I didn't have a full idea what was going on, but one friend had some experience already. We managed to get like 6 floors deep on our second run before saving the game and calling it a night, which felt quite good.
In single player I'm picking up Cyberpunk 2077 again in preparation for Phantom Liberty. My build seems completely messed up tho, and the SPT Grad sniper that I relied on seems to be nerfed and can no longer shoot through walls it seems. Nevertheless the changes seem like an overall improvement to the game, I had a lot of fun with the police already.

I started my third playthrough of dragonage inquisition this week. I'm playing a male Inquisitor for the first time so I can romance Dorian. I really really enjoy DA:I, I never played any of the earlier games but even without context the gameplay loop and getting to know the characters is always fun. I do feel like I make the same choices every time I play though. I struggle to have video game characters make choices I wouldn't personally make.

Dead Space 1, the original. I recently realized I own it on the EA account I forgot having made and figured I'd take a look. I'm partway through chapter 3 now. The game really shows its age graphically, the ragdoll physics on the many corpses lying around keeps glitching out, and if the game is actually trying to be horrifying I feel a touch more subtlety would have been called for. It often feels more like a haunted house than something that's supposed to seem like a real place.
That being said, the combat is satisfyingly visceral (the gimmick of focusing on cutting off limbs was a very good idea), and tech limitations aside both the art direction and sound design are very solid. The times the game actually manages to be unnerving is almost always due to the tension of hearing the monsters in the walls but not being able to pinpoint its location.
Overall, I'm not exactly in love with it but I'll probably play it all the way through.
- There is a fix you can apply to fix the glitching ragdolls. If I recall correctly if you don't fix it there will eventually be a physics related puzzle that won't work right because the physics won't be responding correctly and you'll get stuck, but my memory could be wrong.
  It's pretty easy to fix and will increase your immersion
  
  Oh, thanks for the tip. That would have been frustrating to run into

I have been playing Stardew Valley, which admittedly took me many years and many attempts to get into. I am now on year 3, birthdays and events no longer stress me out, but at the same time I keep discovering new things and most importantly I am still enjoying myself a lot. I think I finally understand the acclaim.

Mostly BG3 but also finished most of Cruelty Squad, the latter of which was a weird as I hoped.

I've finished FF9 Remaster, the game has some problems, mainly the battle feels slow compared to its predecessor. And personally, Zidane is not as interesting / relatable, maybe until Disc 3. Vivi on the other hand, is one of the best characters in Final Fantasy.
Halfway thru AI The Somnium Files Nirvana Initiative, the game is an improvement over the first game, so far it seems like there's a sci-fi hook dangling in front of me, that keeps me going. Characters are still ridiculous, but never annoying. The Psync gameplay part is still nonsensical, but some of them are funny enough that I can look past it. Excited to see the reveal.

The Aether mod for Minecraft was recently ported to 1.20.1, so I've been working on a modpack that's centered around it and a few addons for it.

Naught Deus Ex GOTY, System Shock 2 and Divinity Oiginal Sin - Enhanced Edition all on sale at gog.
Will start with Divinity

I picked up Slime Rancher for Switch this weekend (on sale: $12 (not a bot /corporate shill I just love it so much)) and have not been able to put it down. It's so darn cute and addicting. It plays like Risk of Rain 2 met a farming game. Build an empire from selling different flavor slime poo at fluctuating market prices; find fancier slimes, fancier poo, fancier upkeep tools: profit and repeat. Plus some exploration.

I've been playing IdleOn for a few months now, but since I've been traveling for the last week I've been using my phone instead of the computer. The UI could be more finger-friendly, but it's handy to be able to do some of the daily stuff without too much trouble

I think I might get started on New Vegas again. Maybe. I've got a lot of other shit to keep me occupied, so we'll see.
It's been years, so while it won't be "playing it like new", I've forgotten enough to keep it a little bit fresh.
Just need to sort out my mod list first. All the major bugfixes and shit are there, but I want to add some of the radio mods and maybe updated character models or just textures in general (although I honestly don't care much about graphics, but still).
Everything else is staying the same.
(For radio, I might actually add some audio drama podcasts and older radio dramas that I feel could still fit in the world of Fallout. Pretty much anything pre-Atomic Era works without needing some suspension of disbelief since the timeline only split around or slightly after WWII.)

Wanted:Dead, or at least i try. Does not feel like an arcade game at all, collisions feel like random

I have started cyberpunk 2077 thenkcontinued with its new update. The game is great, very good dialog. I'm enjoying it a lot on my steamdeck. :)
However, there is few issue as cyberpunk universe is tied to the old cyberpunk's concepts/ideas from the 90s, too much trash and sexual ads.