Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 29th

Still having a blast playing Baldur’s Gate 3! I just made it to Act 3 and there have been some very unexpected events (don’t know how to do spoiler tags) ha ha! It’s been quite an adventure so far; I’m already planning another playthrough!

Also thinking of doing another run of Fire Emblem: Three Houses to complete the house I haven’t aligned with yet.

Dragon Age: Origins. Haven't played since it's release and wanted something in the same vein as the original Baldur's Gate...does not disappoint!

Lies of P! I just killed the second-to-last boss, and oh boy was it tough. That game is absolutely amazing, and has surpassed pretty much every expectation I had of it.

I've also been playing a fair bit of Deep Rock Galactic, which is always a delight!

Am I allowed to say Diablo IV? I really like Diablo IV

Finally bought myself a Playstation, so I've been playing a bunch of The Last of Us over the last week or so. And I got back into Hypixel Skyblock (please help the game has me trapped.)

Cities: Skylines 2. Hugely problematic launch, but it runs acceptably for me on Linux (just over 40fps consistently on a Ryzen 5 7600X and a 6600 XT). I've got all settings on high (except Volumetric Quality set to Disabled and AA set to TAA) and it honestly looks quite good, especially with DOF set to tilt-shift.

In terms of the game itself, I'm very much enjoying it. Every mechanic seems more detailed than C:S1 and there is a lot more planning needed to make a really successful city. Not without bugs but nothing game breaking. Lacks some of the annoyances in the first game (like needing water pipes everywhere).

I started a second (and third) run of Baldur's Gate 3 (4 and 3 Player group respectively), one as a barbarian and on as a bard. It's definitely my favorite game in recent memory, it might even be one of my favorite games or single most favorite game ever.

Besides that, Mario Wonder has also been great, although I didn't play a lot of it yet. I did finally get a (used) Switch for that game though, so I'm definitely intending to play through this game at least once.

As with every time I leave it alone for a while and come back, Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is like a completely different game. I booted up the latest experimental and started a new mall start character, something I do every time to get into the groove of things. Suddenly zombies are all powerful grapplers, frenzied humans listening for gunshots prowl the halls, and dodging/blocking/stunning are all a lot less reliable.

Im scared again! And a little frustrated lol

I bought Outer Wilds recently (my consumerism couldn't resist the 40% sale on steam), friends recommended it and I know nothing about it, but only time will tell if I'll play the game someday or if it'll stay untouched for years..

• League Of Legends (Yes, I’m addicted)
• Spider man 2 (what a blast man!)

Also been trying to find a positive and uplifting game but can’t find one just yet.

UFC 5. It's very not-different from UFC 4 but that's kind of okay. It was fun before and I need to catch up on my trophy collection after spending too much time with Diablo 4.

I played a few minutes of Spider-Man 2. It's about as enjoyable as expected but I can play only one controller-heavy game at a time so I'll come back to this later.

Subpar pool for Android, nice juicy pool meets golf game

World of Horror. Lovecraftian point and click adventure-roguelike-card-game. 2 bit graphics, but looks and plays fantastic!

Diablo 4 - I feel like I talk about this game every week, but I've been playing it every week, so... working on Season 2. Doing pretty good, already on Slayer chapter, and I'm happy to see a change up in the season journey objectives from last season. Feeling apprehensive but optimistic about completing all them this round, except for the PvP objective. There's like nobody in the PvP areas every time I'm there.
Diablo 3 - season 29. Trying to improve my wizard for Greater Rifts. It's going... meh. I feel like I've hit a plateau in progressing, even though I'm still leveling up like crazy.
Mad Max - I hadn't finished a previous playthrough of this game and was kind of having a shitty week, so I've been revisiting this favorite of mine. Ended up finishing the story while chatting with a friend, so now I'm just driving around in the Interceptor finishing up side quests and taking down camps.

Class of 09: The Re-up

It's a sorta virtual novel type game, but it absolutely knew what it wanted to be and nails it 100% of the time. It's teenage edge with an edge so sharp it actually breaks skin.

I went to several schools and had a lot of shitty drama growing up and it somehow nails that perfect catharsis while being funny as hell. They released an anime style trailer that made me buy it. I think it was the perfect limbic test for the whole game.

The original FFVII game! Figuring out how to get the multiple discs to work from an emulator was a bit of a pain, but afterwards it's been easy sailing! While it certainly has its problems, I can see why it's so popular. Planning on checking out the remakes later on to get more of it, but I can't deny I'll miss the low-poly graphics of the OG, as I've always had a soft spot for that kind of 3D art

Against the Storm! It's a roguelite citybuilder set in an apocalyptic world where you build settlements in a short amount of time to complete objectives and hopefully survive. While it borrows some mechanics from some city builders, I haven't played anything quite like it's unique blend yet. Plus the artstyle is pretty reminiscent of Warcraft but prettier.

It's in early access right now but it's basically a complete game at this point.

Been playing garden galaxys , a nice chill game.

I'm in a weird gaming rut at the moment, I just bought into the radius, but I don't want to play it until I get a better headset. I worried that the screen door effect of my first Gen vive will ruin the experience.

As such I've fallen back to the rogue lite twin stick goodness of nova drift.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, though less and less each time. Baldur's Gate 3 with my friends, Halo Infinite with my friends, and Skyrim for the nth time. Downloaded Wildlander and it's like a whole new game.

Sons of the forest and Mordhau, waiting for RoboCop to release.

Still playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker. I'm about halfway through, and right now doing a small DLC side campaign. This DLC campaign runs parallel to the main story, in a neighboring barony, so it can maybe add some details and flesh out the world a bit.

Speaking of story, I think this is by far the weakest aspect of the game. Including the prologue, there have been four small story lines so far, that have been pretty much separated for the most part. While there are some small inklings here and there about some grander plot going on, there's nothing concrete, so who knows. Act 3 was pretty good, there's some shit going down in your kingdom, and I was really invested and felt like I was racing against time, but that just meant I blasted through the main quests in about a week or two in-game time, and then had like 200+ days of downtime until the next big thing happens. Yes, there are some (really basic) side quests, you can explore, and of course manage your kingdom, but it just doesn't feel good. You need these long timeframes, because the kingdom management just has all these small time-skips (if you don't use mods), but like I said last week, I don't think the developers found the right balance here.

Dark and Darker, Starfield, just got the newest set of cheevos in vampire survivors, and also dabbling in New World now that the MSQ is fixed.

I started playing Ring of Pain. It's a deckbuilder-ish roguelite. There isn't really a deck, it's more of a loadout-builder (or tableau builder in boardgame terms). Meteorfall: Krumit's Tale is the closest thing I've played before. RoP is sort of like a 1d version of that. Fun and fairly unique mechanics, smooth implementation. Runs great on the steamdeck too, good controller support.

After being a little apprehensive about it, finally started Dark Souls 2. Man, what a game! Totally get why people say it is worse than one, but still a hell of a game. Really enjoying it so far

Vintage Story, on a good server, lots of fun! Haven't really been playing anything else lately.

I bought Cities Skylines 2 under the premise that I'd refund it if it ran like shit. On my PC it runs about the same as the first game. Which isn't great, around 30-60 fps, but also not unplayable. I haven't played a lot yet, but so far I'm enjoying it. I did get into a fight with the UI thingy that lets you designate an area for landfills/farmland/etc. It feels very counterintuitive when you build the respective building and then try to mark the area. But when you finish the building and then edit the area again it suddenly works a lot better. Maybe my brain is just weird

I came back to using Linux after a few years break this week, tested a bunch of different distros, and for some reason the game I picked to load on all of them to test gaming was No Man's Sky.

Needless to say, after I finished setting up my final distro of choice (which was Ubuntu 23.10), I've put many more hours into this game since.

I just finished my first BG3 playthrough last night, clocked about 140 hours total. Debating whether to take a break before starting a new Dark Urge run

Laika: Aged Through Blood. Really unique metroidvania with motorcycle physics

Hellboy: Web of Wyrd. I'm not really enjoying it very much. I LOVE the comics, but this game is rough. The art style is amazing. It's like it was pulled straight from the comics. The gameplay, however, isn't great. It's a rogue-like with very basic combat. Dodging and blocking are not super responsive. Already feeling stale after just a few hours unfortunately.

I just finished Atelier Totori. Third game in the series I've tried, second I've finished (after Rorona). I mostly nibbled at this one (did much the same with Rorona, especially early on) but I liked the story and characters a lot more here. I laughed, I cried. The progression system was much more interesting, too. Even with all that, the UI/UX is just plain brutal. I really hope the next game I play in the series is better about this. I'm also quite surprised that I did almost everything with months to spare, considering everything I heard about how strict the time limit is in Totori.

A friend and also just finished our Baldur's Gate 3 multiplayer campaign (her first run, I had a lot of hours in it before she started). Amazingly I still don't think I've fully gotten the game out of my system yet.

WarioWare: Move It! comes out in a few days and I'll likely be picking that up right away. Other than that, I'm not sure. Maybe I'll finally pick up Phantom Liberty.

I'm prepping for my next BG3 playthrough by playing through divinity original sin 1 and probably 2 after. I've never played either and I'm really enjoying the challenge so far. I've really been into that genre since BG launched, we will see how long it lasts!

I installed Persona 5 Royale yesterday and Sun about two hours into it. I'm not finding the gameplay or the story interesting, and the amount of time spent in cutscenes is wearing me down. Does it get better? Or is this game just not for me?

Started the Dead Space remake.

Played up to chapter 4 and not really vibing with it. I don't usually like ditching games when I've already sunk time into them, but I'm not really having much fun with it, so I might switch over to Jusant or something.

Or just watch some TV I've been meaning to catch up on instead. Don't know. We'll see.

I think I'm almost done with Cyberpunk 2077. Cleared all Scanner Hustles and Side Gigs, most Side Missions, so I think I just have the main story, the Phantom Liberty story, and whatever Side Missions might need a day in-game to complete. When it's done I think I'm going to find something much lower impact to just veg out in for a bit, but Cyberpunk has been a lot of fun to dive into and I can see myself coming back to it in a few years.

I also took the plunge into a gacha game for some reason on my phone. Reverse 1999. The art style was intriguing and I'm enjoying it a lot so far. We'll see how long it sticks around.

Okay, so started Jusant.

In a weird way, it reminds me of the 2008 Prince of Persia game. Mainly because there was also a lot of climbing and platforming there, and also because of something I guess is story-related so won't get into.

Anyway, doubt I can keep it up for much more. If they had a toggle option for the triggers, maybe, but it's hell on my already strained wrists.

Otherwise, it seems like a nice little game. Probably just not for me.

Been playing Foxhole with a buddy of mine. The game is pretty cool. An mmo with a persistent war that lasts until one side takes the entire map, which is pretty large. All the guns, ammo, vehicles, respawns, etc. are player made and need to be transported to fronts. It's a lot to take in but it's engaging even while you're learning.