The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion

Finally got RDR2 and holy shit this game is amazing

Previously not much of a gamer, I saw all the Starfield hype around release and decided to get an Xbox to play it. Didn't like it initially, started to enjoy it around 5 hours in, have come full circle and am getting bored now (level 35) with all the repetitive stuff.

Starfield did show me that maybe i enjoy a wider range of video games, so now I'm starting on Fallout 4, and so far I LOVE it. I've pretty much only done one mission and spent a looooooong time building my first base.

I really love open world/exploration games, especially where there is crafting, hoarding, and killing bad guys in comical ways. Just Cause was amazing for that, I liked tethering people to trains because I'm secretly a maniac.

Tried Cult of the Lamb a mix of based management and rogue like. The game is good the lore is a bit to sour to my taste. The more I play the more the based management part of the game shadow the rhythm of the rogue like, sadly.

At the end, I like the idea but prefer to play both type of game separately.

I've been really into Pokemon Unbound (Fire Red ROM hack) recently, once I beat it I think I'm going to play around with the settings and play it again. It's amazing having a Pokemon game that isn't baby easy, and I love that I don't have to impose rules on myself to make it harder. It's really opened my eyes to ROM hacks, I think I'll be playing more next year

Dead Cells with all the DLCs. After being obsessed with Nova Drift for several months I got burnout and looked for other games to play.

Mafia definitive edition was on sale, so I got that. However, it quickly showed that in fact I don´t enjoy 3D shooters as I used to.

So I thought about what I really wanted to play and it was clearly roguelites with retro or at least highly stylized graphics. The DLCs for Dead Cells had been tempting me for some time already and most of them were on sale at that point, so it was pretty much a no-brainer. I erased my progress from years ago and started over fresh and it´s so much fun!

My best run yet was when I found the Hotline Miami reference lore room, which unlocks and drops the (level I) baseball bat. Now the Baseball bat does not have particularly high base damage but very good crit damage and guaranteed crits on stunned/rooted targets. That is already really cool when you combine it with stunning enemies by stomping but I was sure I´d have to replace that weapon later in the run because it was just a level I item. A few levels later I stumbled over a golden altar with a legendary Boys Axe. This item is a throwing axe that roots enemies on hit and as I told earlier you get auto-crit hits on rooted targets with the baseball bat, so obviously I ditched my rampart shield for the Boys Axe and from there on a virtually all my baseball bat hits were crit hits. But it got even better!

Shortly afterwards I found a sinew slicer, which is a trap that causes bleed on hit and then I got incredibly lucky and was able to roll +60% damage on bleeding targets on BOTH, the baseball bat AND the Boys Axe! Obviously from there I just breezed through the rest of the run and killed the Hand of the King in just a few seconds with a level I baseball bat as my main weapon :D

On top of all that, during the run I was also able to figure out how to use certain weapons like they were one, as it had been possible years ago but was patched out. This also added to making the build ridiculously strong since I could spam the baseball bat and the Boys Axe like they where just a combo of the same weapon.

TLDR: Dead Cells is crazy! If you enjoy roguelites, get Dead Cells!

In a bit of a gaming rut right now. Spinning my wheels on a bunch of different games. Haven't had one hook its claws back into me yet.

I've been mostly grinding out Cookie Clicker and Slay the Spire this week.

Nice games to play side by side while I binge blind Let's Plays of Hollow Knight, Outer Wilds, and Return of the Obra Dinn so I can vicariously chase the fleeting joy and wonder I got from playing those games the first time around.

Finished most of the tasks to do in The Longing and now just waiting for the clock to tick down.

Sat down one evening with my old save file and pushed through to finish the Tears of the Kingdom main quest. For all its faults, it had a really strong ending. I cried. Very conflicted on the game, but I don't have anything to say that hasn't already been said ad nauseum.

Played a bit of Dark Souls, a bit of Sekiro, a bit of Kingdoms of Amalur, a bit of Subnautica: Below Zero, and a bit of Siralim. Not sure what I'll settle on yet for next week, but I'm feeling strongest on Siralim right now.

Holocure is a surprisingly good survivors-like and it works perfectly on steam deck with no changes. Just don't change resolution on PC to something sd can't handle.

I finished Chants of Sennaar a couple nights ago, it was a lot of fun. Language-based puzzle game inspired by the Tower of Babel. It's very pretty to look at, and a lot of the puzzles were really clever. My only real complaint is that I was really expecting the final level to be much more difficult, requiring me to do a lot of synthesizing of ideas from previous levels, but instead the final puzzles were pretty easy and linear. I'd still recommend it though, the first 80% of the game is great, and if you get that far, you'll probably have the momentum to finish, the end doesn't take that long.

After finishing Dave the Diver I've been playing sifu and outer wilds. Interesting mix of games. Sifu is pretty tough so far. Outer wilds I think I just need to invest more time before I'm really hooked

I’m playing Lies of P and it’s amazing. It’s been a long time since a game was able to draw me in like this.

Bioshock Remastered has been great to revisit again. I remember how mind blown I was when I was a kid playing the demo for it on my 360.

I started playing Enderal, a total conversion of Skyrim. I like the deeper RPG mechanics, which the mod adds, although I'm a bit nervous about choosing something wrong and fucking up my character.

The game is set in a different world than Elder Scrolls. I'm not sure I like it as much, but that might be because of the different music.

I've been playing Cassette Beasts and it is phenomenal! From outside the game it just seems like a Pokemon/Digimon clone but there's so much more depth to the combat. The art is amazing, the characters are all written very well with a lot of depth and feel real. The music is amazing. My only complaint is that when the game is starting up if I tab off into another window sometimes it crashes. I started up Hallow Knight again after putting it down close to 5 years ago and I'm slightly less lost than I was before.

I’m replaying Omori since I was on laptop/switch friendly games for the past two weeks visiting family, but I didn’t water the flowers my first playthrough so I’m here for the good good ending.

I just played through the original Homefront.

Poe's new league!

Got a new gaming notebook. Still trying it out, but I already bought Cyberpunk 2077, but only loaded for ~30 minutes for now. But I guess, that'll be what I will play the coming weeks.

finished Omori.

Im glad I stuck around, kind of got a bit of RPG fatigue at the Sweetheart section. The gameplay was fine, i just kind of didnt have anymore RPG juice left in me and the RPG kept coming. Everything after Deeper Well was well worth the persistance though, and hoo boy the ending sequence came at me personally with a knife. Good game.

Playing Dave the Diver at the moment.

Disappointed that it went on sale hours after I bought it but even at full price it’s worth the price of admission.

Finally got No Man's Sky on sale. It's even better than I thought it would be. 7 years later and the game is super fun and has a ton of things to do. I hear they're still updating it so I can't wait for what comes next.

Couldn't sleep in the wee hours of the night, so I went "f*ck it" and downloaded Tetris on my phone. I really only like playing marathon mode, but I found myself enjoying the stages in the game as well.

Certain actions like rotating and hard drop or soft dropping pieces translate surprisingly well into swipe amd drag motions on the app.

I played 72 hours of Stardew Valley 3 years ago and I got back to realize...that I know nothing!

What is this chest? What is this thing standing beside my scarecrow?! What are all these machines doing?!? What am I planting?!?! Who is my boyfriend?!?!? Why is he my boyfriend?!?!? In short, a lot of things happened and I have amnesia now. And I thought that only happened in Rune Factory.

Anyways, I'm playing it again. But now, dived face-first into modding it. And lo and behold! 133+ hours in, and I'm still not in the second season of the game cause I spent most of my time getting mods and testing them Skyrim modding session flashbacks All my men are yandere now and that wizard is now a hot ikemen(who I can marry in the future). I can't wait to play!

Football, Tactics & Glory. It‘s alright, I already got it so might as well play it, but it‘s only a football manager in a very loose sense. It‘s actually only football in a very loose sense.

Baldur's Gate consumed a bunch of my time, but I've had on hold for a bit. Got obsessed with Armored Core 6 which has been a ton of fun. Bit biased though, played AC series growing up, big Fromsoft fan in general.

Most recently been hitting that Mario World Wonder on switch for quick casual time kill, then Predecessor on PC for scratching competitive PVP itch. Got so tense playing it the other day I managed to tweak a muscle somehow 😂

Still Heroes of the storm every day. And going through the master chief collection. Enjoyed Halo Reach. Halo Combat Evolved was fun game play with a well paced story. Halo 2 is just a slog. Such long levels. Much of it just the same section repeated because padding. Story all over the place and jumping around between characters so no real sense of cohesion. Just need to slog through it so I can start on Halo 3. Oh. I have never played Halo before so this is all new to me.

After many years, knowing all too well that it's the kind of game that would have driven me crazy, I started Factorio. I am indeed struggling not to have it swallow my life whole.

Back to Grim Dawn after its 1.2 update. I'm glad they integrated most of Grim Internals' functions. I appreciate games like these that really listen to their players.

Every few months I get the itch to dive into an MMO. I drift around among many of the free to play offerings depending on what sort of world I want to inhabit. As is tradition for me this time of year, I've been rewatching the LOTR trilogy, and thus I've decided to hop back into Lord of the Rings Online.

I haven't played in years, but dusted off my level 10 champion and set about getting reacquainted with things. Thus far I'm having a really good time. There's something quaintly nostalgic about this kind of tab target MMO. The whole thing is very cozy to me. Maybe that's just my love of the setting and the opening areas being consciously pastoral, but I find it very easy to just zone out and churn through content in this game.

I don't know how long I'll stick with it, as MMOs tend to demand more investment than I'm willing to give single games, but as of right now I'm having a wonderful time.

Warhammer 40k Darktide. Love my lil sexy Zealot. Always looking for new people to play with by the way...

Tribes of Midgard

Forza Horizon 5 and Minecraft. Might get back to finishing Super Mario Bros. Wonder.

CK3 with mods. I'm considering buying the tours & tournaments dlc

Returnal. It's hard as shit but very well designed

Back at modded Minecraft again. Prominence 2 (Fabric) on CurseForge. It's probably on other installers too.

I'm that one guy that tried BG3 and really disliked it

When the EDF sale came around, I already owned 4.1 but decided to get back into it. Taking some references from a guide on what are the best weapons, I have a lot of fun as Wing Diver, and even finished a few missions on Inferno.

It probably helps that I got a new CPU since I last played the game. Handling hundreds of GIANT INSECTS on screen can’t be simple for old computers.

Destiny 2.

Been playing Disney Starlight Valley. Idk why but it's pretty fun. Maybe because it's familiar, and grindy. The mood is always light and non stressful. We did notice that pocahontas is not in the game. Apparently she's too much of a PR liability maybe?

Otherwise I was binging hard on Grand Turismo 7. It was pretty well done.

Throwback last week was Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Friend was playing it so I joined back in.

im going to start cyberpunk tomorrow night cause my friend asked if i played the dlc yet. bye starfield and skyrim, i will return to you soon 🥹

Hades.

Having just finished Hollow Knight (in fact, I mentioned starting it in one of the previous Weekly Discussion threads), I find Hades to be a bit too repetitive. But I don’t want to make the same mistakes I did with Hollow Knight and give up early.

I will give this game a few more days before forming a conclusive opinion.

Speaking of Hollow Knight, I am glad I didn’t give up yet again. The game really opens up after the first few boss fights, and it was really fun exploring the lore, levelling up, and going through some of the bosses.

I've actually started playing Genshin Impact, and it surprised me how fun it is! And it's nice to be able to play on the phone when travelling/sitting in the sofa, and then hop on the PC when the kids and wife has gone to bed.

Fallout 3

Having a blast exploring the wasteland.

Been playing the original ni no kuni as part of my Ghibli playlist.

The game shows its age right from the get go, though it's still adorable and fairly charming. 5 hrs in and my only complaint is that jumping is somehow an unlockable, but yeah guess it's just me.

Steam input support is a pleasant surprise. And I ran into a steam bug because of that(¯\_(ツ)_/¯).

Talos Principle. The VR version of the first game, haven’t gotten around to the second game yet. I love the puzzles (when I don’t struggle with timing running past mines), and it’s hilarious that the philosophical test to make a Milton admin profile showed me how utterly unprepared I am for philosophical debate, and how weirdly contradictory my viewpoints might be. Mind you, the only philosophy class I’ve taken in my life was an ethics class.

TL;DR Talos Principle is amazing so far, even though it makes me want to slink off back to college and sheepishly register for a philosophy class.

Dragons dogma on switch. I tried to get into it on PX a few years back but it's really clicking now. Looking forward to 2 in march

Recently I'm back on halo MCC, halo infinite and just started high on life.

I’ve been playing the original Call Of Duty games, starting at the first one. I beat it and United Offensive. I’m working on the second game.

It’s all in service of a write up about the core identity and the design philosophy of the games. How the original games were fresh for their time, and how COD4 used a lot of the sensibilities of the WW2 games that preceded it. There’s a lot to mine and digest in the old games, COD4, and Modern Warfare 2 as a contrast and turning point. I just don’t know if people care enough to follow it.

Still addicted to Overwatch

Final Fantasy VI Pixel Remaster. Almost finished, and then I'll have played through all the Pixel Remasters.

I got steel panthers (winspww2 to be specific) working on my steam deck, updated to the newest camp workshop version too.

The low resolution DOS style graphics actually are a natural fit for the steamdeck’s lower resolution screen lol.

I am having a lot of fun, there are many tactical war games that have come out since steel panthers 2’s original release that are technically superior in every single way but I am not sure they are better. Artillery is terrifying in this game and scouting is filled with tension.

Finally started playing FFVII Crisis Core Reunion

I just finished Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane yesterday. Definitely the kind of game that sits on your mind a long time after you've finished. It's almost criminal to refer to it as an "Ace Attorney fan-game", seeing how many things they get so right so uniquely. They absolutely nail the kind of cathartic, heart-twisting drama of all of these characters that gets you cheering for the ending.

There's a lot in the soundtrack that I adore, especially the way they build multiple character leitmotifs and a particular track right at the finale of the game, but obviously, their equivalent of the "Pursuit" theme is always going to be a standout.