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3w ago

Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

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Slay the spire (again), trying to climb to A20 with Watcher now. Was never a huge fan of her deck, since most of my winning runs can be distilled into Rushdown and Mental Fortress. Maybe someone can tell me about other possible builds for Watcher

I finally got Final Fantasy Tactics working on my Steam deck, so I will be going between that and finishing Pokemon Brilliant Diamond.

Completely ignoring the plot in Fallout 4 as I help yet another settlement
- Stealth archer?
  
  Less stealth and more "I'm hopped up on goofballs and nerd rage lets goooooooo"

I finished Deus Ex: Mankind Divided this week, and I'm now trying to decide whether I want to push through the DLCs or not. I'm kind of done with the game but if I don't do them now I probably never will.
Overall I found MD to be good, but uneven. The main story overall suffers immensely from being the second game in a planned trilogy, but the side content is very very good. Gameplay was a step up from Human Revolution in most regards and there were some pretty good level designs strewn around as well. The final mission felt absolutely awesome to me and was one of my favourite Deus Ex missions, and Golem City was another highlight. The running theme of apartheid was also extremely well executed and the climax to that arc with martial law at the end felt very impactful.
Overall I think Human Revolution is probably better as it's a more self contained and complete experience, but the highs of Mankind Divided are definitely higher than those of HR, in my opinion.

Giving Outer Wilds another go from a new save. I played 5 years ago but got stuck and gave up.
- Man. I got about 5 minutes into that game.
  I think I closed it and started a second runthrough of Stray. Wanted the kitty, not the spaceship.
  I should eat some mushrooms or something and give it another shot.
  
  You should. It's very unique and special.

I played super tux kart (or any kind of cart racing game for that matter) and had a great time
- My friends and I love to hum the gloriously CC-licensed main menu music!
- +1 for FOSS game. Is the little Linux penguin a racer in the game?
  
  yes, there are "characters" from linux universe (like bsd puffer fish, or krita female something, goat (fsf) and more))

Back on my OG DooM bullshit. I gave Almalgoom a go and it inspired me to get back into mapping again after about 30 years.
- Fuk ya man. DOOM will never die. I still open up DOOM 2016 and play that first level on arcade nightmare, just to get a kick.
  I've got a folder of all the D1 and D2 standard and freedoom wads. I copy it onto any new linux machine, and I install Boom or whatever.
  I have a project that I keep picking up and abandoning for a DOOM OS. Its purpose would be to spin up on a vm, search for a local game, and join a bot to a deathmatch. Each vm would add to the load on the server. How many vms can it run? That's the DOOM quotient. But I'm not very serious about it.

I‘m playing Bowser‘s Fury while waiting for some AFK grind in Core Keeper to finish for that sweet, sweet platinum.
Core Keeper‘s a really good game, the 100-skill-point-grind‘s gotta be the bane of any achievement hunter, though. Anyway, I recommend anyone who liked the likes of Starbound to give it a look.
I‘ve also finished Mario Kart World (not so patient) this week and went back to MK8 to check if it‘s nostalgia but nope, I really think 8 is so much better. A tip for anyone having trouble to three star on 150cc: Stop drifting. The game adjusts difficulty by the amount you drift. If you don‘t drift the AI stops being absolute rubberbanding BS. And you can press dpad down to rewind. If you do that before a blue shell hits, you can avoid the hit.
I‘ve also „finished“ PUBG with a friend of mine this week. It‘s a really fun game but also… so sweaty at this point that even low elo will likely absolutely smoke you. Can‘t really recommend it unless you wanna spend a long time in training to be able to keep up eventually. There‘s three casual games a day where 88% of the lobby are bots and you get to shoot at someone without getting insta headshot back, so that‘s fun at least.

old world, which I got for €10 in the GOG sale. I wanted something like the OG civ experience, where you slowly build up your civilisation, creating a network of cities with good transport links, strong agriculture supporting healthy growth, then, when the bloodlust gets too strong to ignore, building small military forces to go out and crush your neighbours.
I'm enjoying myself so far. The game does seem like a more straightforward and casual Civ - the learning curve is so gentle and you don't feel like you're overloaded with admin details that you can't keep track of. Last time I played Civ, it was Civ 6 and it was fun until a rival civilisation plonked a city down right in the middle of one of my own conglomerations. Perfect excuse for kicking some ass, so I assembled a little force and invaded the city to kick it out. Unfortunately you can't just declare war and get away with it, and there were a lot of side-effects to contend with, such as becoming a pariah on the world stage affecting trade. War was just not economically viable, and while that might be realistic for some time periods, it just wasn't the game I wanted to play.
So I am happy with old world. It's pretty much what I wanted so far - but will the simpler mechanics make the game less replayable? It may well do, but I'm enjoying it for now. Above all, what I like about these sorts of games - zero time pressure. I can take as long as I like on each turn, there's absolutely no rush to decide what to do, I'm free to bimble about and make sure I've not forgotten anything.
- Does it support controller natively?
  
  I've been playing keyboard & mouse so far so I just tried it with an XBox controller. Doesn't seem to really support it at all - there weren't any default bindings for it and while you can assign functions to some of the buttons in the key-bind settings, it doesn't seem possible to assign anything to analogue inputs such as the sticks and triggers, or even the d-pad.

Penny's Big Breakway
creative colorful indie platformer

I wanna look into playing all the FF but I don't know which of all the versions out there to play.
- Try FF 7 and 8. FF 6 gets recommended a lot.
  
  Oh, not each FFTitle but like. There's 20 different releases of FF4 for example. I'm kinda lost

I am playing Alters. having fun so far.
- Sir, this is patient gamers. The Alters came out like a week ago.
  
  Being impatient in nature, one week might be as patient as he can get :)
- Me too. So far I'm a few hours in and it's very good.

Blasphemous! Slept too long on this one, its really good, love the lore, and it's not too hard

Finally got time to play Battleblock Theater after finishing Castle Crashers
- I used to love playing BBT on the 360 with a friend of mine. Enjoy, it’s a very entertaining game
- Can't wait for Painter's Paradise

Battlefront 2 multi player has come back to life for the moment.

Finished up Darks Souls 3. There was the odd annoying area or enemy but overall I enjoyed myself quite well. It did not feel like the pinnacle of the Dark Souls experience like I have heard it described as, just more Dark Souls. Which is fine but I won't start a NG+ anytime soon I think.
- Congrats! I feel similarly about DS3. Certain fights like Nameless King, Sister Friede, and Gael are some of the best in the entire series IMO, but the linear, grey/bleak levels drag on after a while and then you end the game with the meh Soul of Cinder. Plus that game is where the modern fast roll spam twitchy gameplay originated.
- Funny, that’s one of my all time favourite games. Some of my favourite ever bosses are from that game, and the lows aren’t nearly as annoying (to me) as the lows of the original Dark Souls. I’d still say I prefer Elden Ring and Sekiro to any DS title, though.

Mostly Jurassic Park Evolution 2, offered by Epic a few weeks ago. Fills the little kid in me with joy, who loved dinosaurs after watching og Jurassic Park back in the day.

Satisfactory with some friends. We just unlocked trains.

I picked up mirrors edge again after some weeks without playing it and i cleared a level yesterday. Was going to do a session now as well, but now my save had been wiped. Probably related to me struggling to figure out lutris and heroic and messing around abit yesterday evening. It a little of a bummer but at the same time i found the game a little too frustrating - a good idea not executed well enough to be a truly enjoyable experience in my opinion.
I am abit indecesive at the moment. I fired up both tales of symphonia on gamecube and final fantasy 7 on ps1 yesterday, kinda want to start another jrpg but at the same time not quite where i want to commit myself to a long game. Also installing fallout 3 now so hm...
I fired up theme hospital for some fun this week as well though, that was a welcome nostalgia trip :)
- Have you tried Two Point Hospital? It's the same thing, just better. Even has the insane PA announcements from Theme Hospital.
  
  Never tried it but recetly picked it up for free from epic store so will give it a try this summer!

I'm grinding hard on Fantasy Life i. I think I'm going to get 100% achievements, which is a rarity for me.
- What makes it work for you?
  
  It's very low-pressure, but progress is steady. Good for grinding while watching a video or listening to a podcast.

Playing the last of us part 1 for the first time, about 10 hours in
- I’m jealous! I loved that game. Enjoy the first time experience, it’s awesome.

CTA Gates of Hell Ostfront
I've been going through the campaign mission on hard and hardcore which requires a lot of micromanagement and they take ages to complete!

Hitman Absolution
- Funny, I’m currently going through the remake trilogy
- Damn, that's a choice. How is it?
  
  Good

Mass Effect Legendary Edition!
- I was thinking of jumping to that next, I’m currently replaying the Hitman reboot trilogy. I haven’t played Mass Effect in a while, and never tried the LE. What do you think of it? How are the graphics? Have you played the originals? If so, how does it compare?

The Alters has been insanely fun the last week or so. Pretty interesting science fiction space survival, resource gathering, base building. Some of the mechanics around quantum computing is quite unique.

Splatoon 3
Great game

Noita!: I agree with many in dubbing it my favorite single player game.
It is a pixel art alechemy and magic roguelike where every pixel is physically simulated and destroyable. Find spells and wands and combine them in programmer like ways to multiply their power. Many tricks in the game are so strong they feel like cheating, but the game has been built with challenges that surpass every trick.
It is the epitome of endlessly repayable. Especially switching between the few mods that drastically change the map.
I can easily have a god run last me 5-10 hours. But I still have a lot of fun with the more common 30min-2hr runs.
- It is something I have always been undecided about. The whole spell creation thing sounds like something I'd love, but I've heard the game can be frustrating, and aside from !hades@lemmy.zip roguelikes are not my thing. I should probably see if it has a demo or watch some early gameplay…
  
  Definitely watch some gameplay. The super early game is quite self explanatory, but noita quickly escalates to puzzles so hard a community needs to get together to solve them.
  Playing Noita with all the knowledge of the wider community has made so many cool bosses actually beatable, and made the whole game a lot more fun for me.
- That’s pretty cool! I never heard of it before but it’s on my Wishlist now. I’m definitely curious to check it out.
  
  Its great! It will not hesitate to kill you until you learn it.
  Binding of Isaac has a bit of invincibility after every hit, and that works for the game really well. You need to be able to recover and not die immediately.
  Noita has no invincibility frames like that. You need to be able to die immediately. An instant death is essential for the game tone and balance.

borderlands pre sequel

Antimatter Dimensions. Free, I have 1,000+ hours. Incremental/idle game though.
- Heh. How is that a game? I ran it for a couple days. There wasn't a whole lot going on.
  But I have a similar pursuit. I have 396 (56%) achievements in Idle Champions of the Forgotten Realms.
  Most of it is offline time, of course, but it says I've played 6,323 hours.
  
  To me, it's a game. I get some people might not think so because the game is all menus and numbers, with minimal other graphics (not counting achievement backgrounds). But for me, it's fun. A lot of people like these number go up games where the mechanics are about increasing the numbers fast without much other intermittent gameplay. !incremental_games@incremental.social. It's a whole genre. https://paperpilot.dev/garden/guide-to-incrementals/defining-the-genre/ might have some discussion on whether it's a game or not, I forget, but it sure is a nice read about incrementals.
  Also, there's more, but it does take time to unfold.

The new update of 7 days to die
yea it's not perfect, but if played with friends and some settings are tweaked, it's pretty fun

Tony hawk pro skater 2, played it often when it first came out and hearing about the 3/4 remake coming out soon reminded me of the games and it's been decades, I wanted to see if it holds up. It's showing some age in the fighter combo style tricks and arcade style levels, but the soundtrack is still good, and progression with unlocking stats and levels through goals is fun and wanting to beat a goal after failing a couple times keeps me coming back.

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