Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 15th

I played through The Forgotten City and really liked it! It’s a time looping puzzle game where you have to unravel the mystery of a strange city before every day it collapses into ruin. It really sucked me into the story and I could forgive a bit of the jankiness in the actual gameplay. The characters were all interesting and were very interconnected which made the whole thing feel quite alive. I didn’t love the ending (there are technically multiple but I managed to get the canon one on my play through), it was okay but a little out of nowhere, everything before that was good.

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Your description makes me think of Outer Wilds. Any comparison there?

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- I haven’t played Outer Wilds but from what I know of it it should be similar. The Forgotten City is based on real world history though which was pretty interesting and it’s much more compact than what I’ve heard of Outer Wilds. It look me maybe ~7h to finish it fully, but can definitely be done faster too.
  
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The Oracle games are amazing, Oracle of Ages pulled young me into the Zelda series.

I'm currently switching between Armored Core 6, X4 Foundation and Baldur's Gate 3, depending on my mood.

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Cocoon from the Limbo game designer, it's really good!

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I just beat this in two sessions yesterday, it's very very good. The puzzles are much more involved and clever, but even more cleverly designed so that you can't get stuck and usually have some ideas of what to do.

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- Oh, you can get stuck
  
  Source: Me
  
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Assassin's Creed Mirage. It's refreshing to have the game be about stealth again, after years of just hack-and-slash. Yeah, there's nothing really new here, but that's kinda the point.

Diablo IV is on the backburner. I finally hit level 100 last week and have only two trophies remaining: Get 5 PvP kills (I have 2; other players aren't easy to just stumble upon, especially those I can easily beat) and Defeat Uber Lilith (which I'm not going to be able to do by myself and coordinating with other players is not something I want to put any effort into doing).

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Hitman: World of Assassination. Currently at the Hokkaido mission, it can be quite challenging! Had a hard time beating the Colorado mission on the easiest difficulty

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Fallout 76. It's actually pretty fun as long as you have the capacity for a massive perspective change (and use mods lol).

And yes you can play solo. It's a bit more difficult, but you can do it. Also, FO76 puts a lot more emphasis on survival simulation than previous games (except FO4 in Survival Mode, which I haven't played in yet).

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I've been really enjoying the new expansion for Cyberpunk 2077. I personally loved the game when it came out, specifically for the tone and environment and the main story. I did stop playing pretty quickly though because the progression didn't click for me and different parts felt too shallow.

I really think the 2.0 update fixed a lot of game mechanics I didn't like the first time through, and the expansion has a great tight storyline I've really enjoyed sinking my teeth into. I'm going back and doing all of the side quests I didn't get to before I stopped playing too. And so excited to see what the alternate ending they cooked up is. If you had fun with the game, definitely consider picking it back up!

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Same deal, and definitely. Before 2.0 I thought Cyberpunk did some really cool stuff with narrative and inter-quest structures, but now the core of the game is a ton of fun all by itself. (The little Edgerunners references in the perk trees are a nice touch, too!)

And god do I love being free of the tedious incentives to check/compare all your attire and weapons for the best stats; standardisation here is a blessing.

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Baldur's Gate 3 - It's my second run. Part of what I love about these games is that you'll find new things and different approaches with every play-through. And with every run you get a little more daring and in-character with how you react to situations.
First time round I can't help but play little miss goody two-shoes, just staying true to my own nature. Second time I feel a bit more daring and actually try to act like the self-centered anti-hero I had in mind for this character. Who knows, maybe some day I'll even dare to play a villain :)

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Playing coop with my friend. It's so much fun. It's kinda hard not to mention spoilers, choices or things we've done in our main games though hahah. There's so many choices and branches...

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Picked up Warhammer Dark Tide since it's on gamepass. I played 8 hours straight. This could be bad....lol

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RDR 2. Bought it back in 2019 but my PC couldn't really handle it too well (less than 45 FPS on medium), so I shelved it.

But now I have a 4090 and I'm enjoying the hell out of the game. It was slow at first but by the second chapter I was hooked. Looks damn good for a 4-year-old game, too; dare I say as good as a modern ray traced title. (I mean it's close)

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DLSS implementation wasn’t great, but it did sharpen things up a bit over the muddiness that came with TAA.

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I’ve been playing Baldur’s Gate 3 as much as I possibly can. I’m having a ton of fun with it! I’ve never played D&D, or any of the Baldur’s Gate games, so I don’t know what I’m doing most of the time, but I’m slowly getting the hang of it!

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When in doubt, check the tooltips to see what a thing means and what it does. Even the tooltips have tooltips sometimes. I do really wish they broke down the to-hit percentages underneath the cursor in combat, because that would go a long way toward helping the player understand the underlying math.

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- That's the combat log for you. Listing all the math going on would be a bit much.
  
  Personnaly I just went along without checking too much of how things are calculated. When I saw 30% hit chance, I just knew I had to do somehting else. When I got a good grasp of the system, I dug deeper on how things are calculated.
  
  There's a lot to understand for new players so I think they made the right call.
  
  Thinking about it, maybe just listing the AC or the attribute that would make the Save without the need to Examine each enemy would be nice.
  
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I'm dealing with a thumb injury, so I can only play games that don't require a gamepad, so I've been playing a lot of Vampire Survivors. I've unlocked almost everything, now, and the game's become really easy with a zillion gold eggs upgrading everything and the ability to lock out all the "bad" weapons, so I was looking for something new to play.

I just started Spelunky again, but this time with keyboard controls on the home row only. It's a bit of a mind bender and I'm constantly hitting the wrong keys, but I'm slowly getting it. I think this might be really good for me, in the long term; controlling games with HR only will greatly reduce fatigue and risk of RSIs.

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I finished Quake 2: Call of the Machine. It's definitely my favorite of the Machine Games campaigns, for Quake 1 and 2, and probably my favorite Quake campaign in general. It's still the same formula as the others, a hub that connects a bunch of different levels, where you need to collect items to unlock the final boss. This campaign is a bit more challenging than the other Q2 ones, but not that hard. It's also not as confusing, so that's a plus for me as well. I think I'll skip Quake 64 and Quake 2 64, since they seem to just be kind of remixes of the PC game. I'd rather play Doom 64, since that's a whole different game.

While I was waiting for the Quake 2 patch the past few weeks, I tried out Wolfenstein 3D and finished the first episode, but it was kinda boring. This week I played through the second episode and it's pretty much the same. I think the game is a bit too basic for me. It's crazy that Doom came out not even two years later and is just such a massive improvement. I'll probably play through the third episode as well, just to kill Hitler, and then I'm done with the game. Since the Steam release just used Dosbox, I swapped that for the ECWolf source port, which has a few more modern features and QoL improvements.

I'm also done with Pillars of Eternity: The White March, the two expansions to the game. I wasn't really that into it, but I knew if I didn't play through them this week, I'd probably never do it. Taking that break for Divinity 2 just killed all my enthusiasm I still had for the game. There were some good moments, but I'm not a fan that this was just slotted in the middle of the base game. While you're on the clock and deal with some world ending threat, you just take a few months off and do the same somewhere else. Still glad I can finally put this game down and eventually play Pillars 2.

Lastly, I started Pathfinder: Kingmaker. It's my first time with the Pathfinder system, and I had a really tough time deciding on my character. In the end, I went with a Scaled Fist Monk, because I want to punch people. I'm still really early, I made it out of the tutorial yesterday and saved the merchant from the Bandits earlier today. I'll take it slow for now and get used to everything.

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funny square game with late update

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Demos from Steam's Next Fest, Talos Principle 2 looks nice, Robocop game is cheesy and over the top AF like 80s movies, I love it

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I started up a new Terraria play through this last week. I’ve beaten most of the Pre-Hardmode bosses. I’m about to hoik through the door of the Temple to gather trap materials for my house.

It’s been fun. Though I’m having trouble getting an obsidian farm going on the current version.

Last time played was during the first “final” update… 1.2 I think. And there’s a loooot that I haven’t seen yet.

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Well shit. A previous update removed the ability to farm traps until post-Golem. RIP Golem cheesing using spiky ball dispensers.

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AC Mirage and it's OK. Really like the setting but haven't gotten that far yet. Also some EA FC 24, GT7 and Pokemon Scarlet.

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So far:

Halo: Infinite - Season 5's coming soon, and I'm trying to wrap up my season 4 battle pass :D
Hogwarts: Legacy - I took a a pause in this game just because life got in the way, and just getting back to it
Dragon Ball Xenoverse 2 - the new free update with higher level cap & Ultra Instinct

I should get back to Cyberpunk again. Need to go through my backlog again.

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Knights of the Old Republic. It holds up pretty well, with a few mods for widescreen and resolution support.

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Dragon's Crown on the Vita. Awesome Diablo meets Golden Axe sort of game. Really wish this one would make its way off Playstation so everyone could experience it.

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