Weekly what have you been playing discussion - week of May 13th, 2024

Little Kitty, Big City

Vampire Survivors

Moonring

I just finished up Titan Quest with a friend, and we moved on to V Rising. That game feels very good to play. The controller support is a tad wonky in menus, and I wish that the opening minutes were better at facilitating co-op play, but it seems like a very cool loop between base building/survival and action.

Playing through some games I've had in my library for a while:

• AC Brotherhood - on Steam Deck
• Red Dead Redemption II - PC
• random indies - Steam Deck

Anyone know if Cities: Skylines II is good yet? I've been waiting for some of the core issues to be fixed (performance and economy) before buying. I'm also debating buying the last few DLC for EU4 before EUV (er, "Project Caesar") comes out.

I got sucked back into BG3 after I had a lot of fun with Vic3 and HoI4

Mostly been playing Golden Sun - The Lost Age. I have never played the second part despite playing the first part multiple times. So far it definitely does not disappoint after playing ~20hrs or so.

MedianXL and FFXIV mostly.

FF7 Rebirth. I'm sort of struggling to push through. I just got to chapter 10, figure if I'm this far to just mainline the story to completion. I fully completed the first two open world areas but have been ignoring most of the others after that. The open world traversal seems bolted on to the hallway simulator that Remake was. That and the quests in the open world don't feel substantial or consequential. Find this Spring, fight this legendary enemy, rinse and repeat. The campiness of the story is also getting to me.

For full disclosure, I didn't play the original on PSX but was always intrigued by the art style and aesthetic back when it released. Alas, I only had a N64 at the time and never played it in the later years through emulation. I'm not sure if the original has the same level of camp, but would like to hear if that's only in these games or in the series overall. The feeling I got from various advertisements was the game was more mature in tone than I've experienced so far.

I did finish Remake earlier this year, after initially trying it when it launched in 2020. The campiness of it turned me off a few years back but I really wanted to understand the hype.

I guess the only thing I'm getting out of it at the moment are the visuals. It's gorgeous, but I don't think I'm appreciating the story/lore like all the fans are.