Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 14th

Song of Farca.

A fun little hacky detective puzzle game reminiscent of games like Orwell and its sequel, but with a more engaging cast of characters.

I just finished Sonic the Hedgehog last evening and I'm trying to decide what I want to play next!

Finished watchdogs 2 And started watchdogs 1 with some mods. It's my first time playing watchdogs and liking it so far!.

I'm still on Helldivers 2. This game hits my sweet spot of PvE shooting, grinding and time sink. The Updates keep coming and rumors say, a third species will be introduced soon...

I wanted to play Baldurs Gate 3 multiplayer with my wife, but couldn't convince her. She really doesn't like turn-based combat, and the game has too much dialogue for her taste...

So, we are now playing Palworld instead. It's a lot of fun in multiplayer, but still quite grindy.

I'm currently playing 2 games.

1. Another Crabs Treasure. Currently, I'm at a point where I think I need to level up. Most enemies are nearly 1 shotting me. I think I need more vitality.

2. Xdefient. Mostly just to have an FPS that I can jump into and play a few quick matches

Finally bought Death's Door on Steam. At least for now it is challenging in a good way. But killing a boss and dying right after because one of their minions managed to hit me and then having to repeat the whole fight annoyed me more than once.

I'm doing a replay of Dragon Age Origins. Slogging my way through my least favorite part of the game(the Deep Roads) right now. I'm not that good at the game, so for the harder encounters, I've cheesed them by having one member of my party run forward to aggro one group, then run back to where the rest are in order to deal with them one group at a time. If I let my party fight normally, they accidentally aggro multiple groups and they get overwhelmed. That plus saving after every difficult encounter is helping me get through it.

My warden is an elven mage; she's mostly built for casting ice magic and healing. I usually use Alistair as a tank, Zevran as a dual wielding damage dealer and Leliana as an archer/support unit.

Just started the Talks Talos principle and have just found this thing!

Hopped on path of exile with a friend. We're slowing going through the acts and likely won't get to mapping by the time the new league drops. It's fine though.

Been messing around with Sky: Child of Light, that one mmo that is very reminiscent of journey made by the same people and got extremely frustrated. I 'finished' the game after getting stun locked, and proceeded to find some trials which required precise control of your character... Which is not a thing. Pressing jump doesn't always work. The physics aren't great, and the leeway for timings is much harsher than it needs to be. All in all, that was not the best experience. I ended up on the Farmville quest. First objective I could do alone, second one required another person. Third one needs 3 people..

Still catching up on the many Switch games I've missed over the years. Super Mario Odyssey, Starlink: Battle for Atlas, and Metroid Prime Remastered are getting lots of play. They are all excellent. Starlink gives me motion sickness though, so I have to limit that to 20--30-minute sessions.

i'm chilling slo mo to Potion Craft: Alchemist Simulator. No adrenaline needed.

I've been working through a replay of all the original mainline Ace Attorney games, via the trilogies on Steam. Played these all on DS/3DS back in the day. I just finished Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies, and now I've started Spirit of Justice, the last game of this second anthology. Love this whole series. Can't wait for the release of the "Investigations" spin-off games in September!

Otherwise, still playing FFXIV. I started Dawntrail, but I haven't gotten too far into it. I put a pin the MSQ (Main Scenario Quests) a couple weeks ago and just kinda left it there. I have enough other things to work on. Class/Job leveling, finishing up some Alliance Raids/Normal Raids from Endwalker, trying to suck less while healing on Sage, and whatever else side stuff I find.

I figure that it's gonna be at least a few months til the next big content update, and at least two years until the next expansion, so what's the rush? I'll get back to the MSQ eventually.

Dark Souls Remastered. Just hit the halfway point (Anor Londo), upgraded to Great Scythe +15 and things are starting to look up. Now the toughest opponent I'm encountering is gravity.

Just got some equipment for my first sim rig and have been playing a ton of Assetto Corsa and DiRT Rally 2.0

Still wading through Diablo 4: Season 4. I have one more objective to get all the rewards for the season, but I gotta choose between beating Uber Lilith, Tormented Duriel, or Tormented Andariel, all of which are a bitch to fight. I have all my glyphs upgraded to the absolute max, and most of my items are in a good place, but I need to go through The Pit some more to upgrade them further, but it's such a grinding pain that I get bored quickly.

Diablo 3: Season 32 started this week, and I decided to go with a Necromancer after the disaster of a time I had with the Witch Doctor last season. It's only been a day, but I'm already feeling better about this round.

Finally finished Subnautica! While the last stretch was a little grindy and tedious, the ending was nice, and overall, I'm really glad I stuck to it and made it through. I can see myself revisiting this in the future, if nothing else that to see how building different bases in different locations would affect how quickly I could get things done. Or to just see what amazing base I could build in general. I thought about playing Below Zero, but I haven't heard as great of things compared to this one, and I'm also not sure if I could stand another 60ish hours of swimming around lol. I did end up getting it on Steam anyway during the Summer Sale, so at the very least it's on the To Play List.

Had the urge to play Resident Evil 3 REmake again, so I did. I forgot it was so short, especially for a Resident Evil game.

For my next non Diablo game, I think I want to revisit The Darkness series. I've only played each game once, but I had a fun time with both, so I might see what achievements there are and do some hunting.

For some reason I can't put down Pokémon Pinball: Ruby & Sapphire. I'm playing it on my handheld emulator so it's very easy to just pick up and play a round when i have some spare moments. Pinball has never been my favorite genre, but the loop of actually catching Pokemon across sessions has been weirdly compelling. Idk if all pinball tables are this way, but most of the time when I lose a ball, it feels like I did nothing wrong and the game just decided to bounce off a pixel the wrong way and shoot into the out lane. I will probably put it down when I get the retro achievement for catching 100 Pokemon, because I seem to be getting worse the more I play. lol

Also finally playing Jedi: Fallen Order whenever I have more than just a few moments to game. I'm a big Star Wars head (in the non-toxic way 😅), so I will go in and out of phases where a Jedi video game sounds super compelling. It finally hit me, and man is this game fun when you're just playing and mowing down Stormtroopers. My only gripe is that the game still feels buggy and hitchy, even 5 years since it came out. I don't mind it most of the time, except the game is quite fond of in-engine cutscenes. and when these happen, I want to shut my brain off and enjoy the story like a Star Wars show. But little tiny bugs and glitches (jittery cloth effects, characters facing the wrong way) keep taking me out of it. I definitely feel like i'm committed to seeing it through, though.

Playing FFXIV. I'm not really enjoying the Dawntrail story, but I'm only about a third of the way through it. I'm hoping it'll pick up.

I also finished a playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 as a dark urge devotion paladin who didn't break oath or give in to the urges.

On occasion, I'll play a bit of Space Engineers if I need some mindless gameplay.

Some more Powerwash Simulator. It's neat, but has two super annoying issues. First is the water jet aiming, which just loves to jump around a bit on its own, because the game thinks there's something in the way. This is basically only an issue up close, so just moving away a bit helps (although not always possible). Second you get stuck constantly, if the ground isn't super flat, like on a roof or one of the levels is a skatepark with a bunch of ramps. That one just sucks.

Then I pretty much finished the current content in Slime 3K: Rise against Despot. It's a Vampire Survivors-like which I usually enjoy, but I'm not really sure about this one. The current Early Access version has 10 levels, that kind of try to have a gimmick or theme, but most of them are the same. They all look the same too. The final level is definitely the most Survivors-type thing. Just tons of fodder enemies, coupled with some stronger elites, with more than enough time to get all the items you want and upgrade them. It's not like it takes a long time to get there, but if those earlier "gimmick" levels are what the devs aim for in the finished release, I'm not a huge fan.

Next I tried Maniac, which is GTA 1 (or 2), but as a rogue-lite, Survivors-like game. It's just you, running and driving around a city, causing mayhem to get points and try to survive for 20 minutes until you get nuked. So far, I've done a couple of runs and won once, but it's not really that fun. The upgrades and weapons are also pretty boring. I unlocked a few more characters, which I've not yet checked out, so I'll give it a bit more time. I just hope it's not just a difference in starting weapon or something.

Finally, I'm really in the mood for a CRPG again, and thought about Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, but I know it's gonna take me like two months or more to get through, and in a few weeks the new Diablo 4 season will start and the World of Warcraft expansion after that, so Pathfinder will have to wait. So I chose another game, that hopefully won't take as long, Solasta: Crown of the Magister. I played through the tutorial a few months ago and started the game proper earlier today. I'm still at the very beginning, just left the first town, but it's a turn-based CRPG I guess.

Tears of the kingdom over here. It’s bringing me joy

Lots and lots and lots of Pinball. I picked up Pinball M (horror-themed tables, such as Dead by Daylight and The Thing) and a vintage table pack containing a few digitized versions of tables that actually existed when I was hanging out in video arcades as a kid. (Most notably, Funhouse, which had a ventriloquist dummy head that mocked you during the game.)

I also picked up Yet Another Zombie Survivors, which is a Vampire Survivors-styled game with a zombie apocalypse theme. It is a BLAST.

Total cost of all of these was $14 bucks during the sale.

It's a good time to be a PC gamer.

As I am now more in “jump in, jump out” mode, CS2 from time to time, but mostly The Hunter (COTW) with friends and family, mostly as a background to talk and hang out, eventually some solo missions if there is more time or on a rainy day.