Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of August 18th

I...went back to Path of Exile.

It was originally just to see how things had changed, but a lot changed and it's very different. Not that it answered all of my personal issues with it, but I resigned myself to using a build guide. I've been enjoying it, surprisingly. Enough that, when I haven't been out of the house, I usually play it daily.

Progress is going really slow because I'm not that good at the game anymore. But I also made loot filter sounds that spark joy, and I've been managing even if I'd like to be at endgame. I'm on act 6 out of 10.

My partner is also playing but doesn't have a lot of experience. So I've been trying to help, which makes it more enjoyable to me because I like to teach.

Not sure if I'm fully going back yet. But I like the league mechanic and am having a good time.

Trying to actually get the good ending in Tunic, not too proud to admit I'm using a tracker this time around. And wow, I passed up SO. MUCH. last time around

Guardians of the Galaxy on my Steam deck. I would imagine the fps and graphics would be better on a more capable device but its been fun. Great dialogue, music, and settings.

Another week until the World of Warcraft Expansion releases, and I used the event to level all of my characters to 70. Even my very first character, who hadn't seen the light of day in over 15 years, is now properly equipped to take on whatever may come. Too bad it's a priest, which I really don't like to play, so back into the dungeon he goes. The Remix mode also ends tomorrow, so all of those characters will migrate over to retail, which means I'll look over those and do some final house cleaning.

Then I'm pretty much done with the Diablo 4 season, but not because it's boring or anything, but I kinda finished everything I wanted to do and more. I was playing a Chain Lightning Sorcerer, but found the final item to change my build to Lightning Spear, which is just completely overpowered this season. I kinda breezed through everything, killed all the giga versions of the bosses, cleared Pit level 100, the new Infernal Hordes mode on Tier 8, and upgraded all my stuff. Today I killed some more of the Uber bosses and even got two Uber Legendaries (which I salvaged to crafter another one). I might try and push my Pit level a bit higher, and try to kill Echo of Lilith, the final Uber boss, which got reworked somewhat last season or something, so it's not just you getting one-shot by terrible hit boxes all the time. (Edit: just killed her, wasn't too bad, but you need to learn the fight a bit, so in the beginning it just feels you randomly die.)

Also, this last year or so I've been "playing" Melvor Idle, which is Runescape, but as an idle game. The game recently launched it's third DLC, but I've been holding off on playing it, since I wanted to 100% everything else first. This week I finally got done with the base game and the first DLC and am almost finished with the second DLC, although it might take another one or two weeks just grinding stuff, so I can craft the missing items. I've played a bunch of idle or incremental games over the years, but this is definitely my favorite. It's not a clicker, there is no constant rebirth or whatever, you just choose a skill and you slowly train it. The best part is, you can actually close the game and fully progress offline. The game also has an in-game mod browser with tons of mods, kinda like the Steam Workshop, which is fantastic.

I've been playing Batman Arkham origins. Never played it when it came out but loved the other ones. It's pretty good so far!

I really enjoyed Origins. It embraced the "detective" aspect a lot better, IMO. Also enjoyed the, well, origins of what essentially became Batman and Joker's inevitable "love story". Troy Baker played him really well.

Also, it's pretty funny hearing Sonic voice Batman. I mean, I know he does a ton of other voices, but the contrast is always hilarious to me.

Anyway, onto me...

After taking a weeklong break from video games, I started playing something on my wishlist that finally went on sale again: Unheard - Voices of Crime. Detective game where you solve the cases by listening to conversations and identifying people by their voices/dialogue. The visuals are basically just floor plans and moving from room to room from a top down perspective in order to hear whoever's speaking in that room.

All the recordings are binaural as well, so wherever you move your "character", the volume and location of the voices change. It's pretty interesting and not too long.

Today, I began Dungeons of Hinterberg. At first, super fun. Then got a bit bored because stuff felt samey. Then got interested again. I expect this pattern is going to continue. Despite being a dungeon crawler, it's a pretty chill game.

Basically, think Breath of the Wild-type shrines mixed with Persona-style social sim gameplay. You do dungeons (or not, you don't have to if you don't want to) in the day, explore and spend time with people in the city at night.

Diablo 3: Season 32 and Diablo 4: Season 5 shenanigans. I'm doing pretty well in both, more so in D4 though; I am wiping the floor with my Necromancer.

I decided on playing through Alien: Isolation again. I only have two achievements left for it on my PC, so once I knock it out I can uninstall and free up some room for other games. But man, I forgot how terrifying this game can be. I always have called it the best stress I have ever experienced in a game, and it still holds up, even when I know where to go and what to do. I'm spending most of my time crawling around on the floor, lol.

It's been Deadlock the last couple of days since I got the invite. Not sure if I'll stick with it. The game has potential but I think I might be too bad at it to ever have fun playing it. Farming is insanely important and between lacking precision aim for last hits and not understanding neutral camp flash farming strats I guess I'm just always behind on economy.

I do alright in fights themselves and feel like I can theoretically perform with a couple of heroes at least, but that doesn't really matter once you get out statted.

Maybe I'm just getting too old for fast paced shooters, it's been a while since I played one.

P5R, almost done with the 2nd palace.
I'm following a guide to experience everything in one play through since I've already played the original one and this one on PS4, now this is in PC.

Under Night In-Birth II [Sys:Celes] - Made top 8 at locals. Then played a long casual set with the guy who eliminated me from bracket, came out of it feeling like I understand the Carmine matchup better now.

Kitsune Tails - Got to act 2 and I'm just replaying the same levels with a character who has a bunch of strong movement abilities. New levels designed for this character would've been great, but why am I replaying the same ones but now way easier?

Dungeons and Degenerate Gamblers - My opinions on this game keep going back and forth. I've found the strats to win more consistently by just relying on disrupting the opponent's deck, but doing so feels a little too linear. I saw there's a big balance update in beta now, so I guess I'll have to see how the changes feel.

Splatoon 3 - lol, lmao

Mahjong Soul/Riichi City/IRL mahjong - Came up with a new strategy at club this week where I just draw good tiles over and over.

I picked Satisfactory back up because I keep getting part way in and losing focus. Just unlocked tiers 5 and 6! In the process of setting up hypertubes to my major locations.

Went through the ports available on my retro handheld and saw they have all three Descent games from back in the 90s so I'm playing through all of those.

Origins was my favorite entry in the series, personally.

I'm still playing Caveblazers. Can't believe I've gotten almost 10 hours out of a game I got for 99 cents, but it's fun.

Started playing the Fallout: London mod over the weekend and it's such a joy to play. It's jam-packed with all kinds of great enviornmental details and map design that I always felt was missing to the Fallout4 base game.

Been playing “the isle” recently. Game has had/still has some questionable development happening around it, however, dinosaur. I’ve been enjoying it.

Blasphemous, a 2D Metroidvania game with a very distinctive art style.

So far loving the world design and level design, it reminds me strongly of Dark Souls, without feeling like a clone in any way. I do unfortunately suck at platforming, and this game is so far not forgiving about it...

Just got into Shantae and The Seven Sirens. Haven't had a good new side-scroller in quite a while. I'm enjoying it very much so far.

And ofcause, running around on Helldivers 2's new difficulty being stupid. Getting caught up in that whole debacle (what is life without a bit of drama). Fun, if a bit unpolished.

Ace Combat 7.

The Canyon Run is kicking my ass.

I just came back to Vampire Survivors and to my surprise it got new content updates and new DLCs since I last played it (last year). The reason for coming back to the game was a nice little indie game called Cozy Space Survivors which is exactly what the name promises.