The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion

Factorio, hours upon hours of Factorio. I go to bed planning my next expansion. I wake up from dreaming about it. It’s consumed my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Finished Milk inside a bag of milk inside a bag of milk last night and picked up the next one Milk outside a bag of milk outside a bag of milk.

It's definitely very strange and unsettling, but I like it.

I just played these a couple of days ago. Fascinating games, both of them. And the difference in production is staggering.

I've been feeling the Elder Scrolls itch and with the spooky season upon us, I decided it's a good time to finally dig into Tamriel Rebuilt (which just got a new release BTW). The quality of what I've seen so far is stellar, it feels like it's an official Bethesda content (and I mean that in the best way possible).

Tamriel Rebuilt is just so so good can't recommend it enough to anyone who wants to try
- It really is! It's honestly amazing how much love Morrowind is getting even even 21 years after it's release! Between Tamriel Rebuilt and OpenMW, the game actually just keeps getting better and better with time!

Abandoned Starfield a week ago. Have been and mostly will be playing:

Batman: Arkham Knight
Death Stranding: Directors Cut

Got them last week on discount.

Death Stranding is SO GOOD
- Yes. Strange that an idea of hiking simulator actually works.
Death Stranding might be the exact opposite of Starfield in design philosophy

Permanently Deleted

It’s been a long time, but I remember liking Jaal, Vetra, Drack, and Peebee a lot. I also remember Peebee being controversial in terms of you love her or hate her.

Got way too much on the go right now.

Baldur's Gate 3
Astroneer
Ion Fury
Timberborn
Sea Of Stars

trackmania, full speed maps. v addictive.

Diablo 2 hardcore. Currently gearing up to take on hell with my javazon.

Also playing some super Mario wonder. It's a very fun and enjoyable game so far.

I went back to playing Slay the Spire for a bit, since it's almost N7 Day, but I might just replay Disco Elysium in stead. After ME, maybe it's time to try Starfield? Have seen too many negative reviews to really want to pay full price for it, but we'll see.

Just finished Sea of Stars. I never 180'd from a game so much.

I started it a week and a half ago, and I was in love with the game. The story was cliché, sure, but everything else was perfect, and the characters were kind of cute.

But the third act feels too rushed and the ending... Oh boy, the ending. It just doesn't feel like an ending at all. I was extremely disappointed with it, and too many setpieces just led to nowhere.

And the true ending was even worse, in that it not only has very arbitrary requirements to unlock (including finding all 60+ collectibles scattered across the map in random locations), but ruins one of the best and arguably the most emotional moments of the game as well.

spoiler

I despise time travel. Always. It just doesn't work, unless you put a lot of thought into it, and the Sea of Stars developers clearly didn't even try.

I recently bought Invisible Inc., a turn-based tactical stealth game. I had my eye on it for almost 8 years now, but I seldom found time to play any other game than DotA. Now that I have beat my addiction, I can finally enjoy some games I had on my wishlist for a very long time. I also bought the first two Thief games and Grim Fandango Remastered.

Grim Fandango made me tear up. I have never had so much fun in years playing a video game. I really enjoy adventure games (played Myst, Monkey Island, Beneath a Steel Sky) but I have the feeling that this style of game is a bit out of fashion currently. Any recommendations for modern adventure games?

Can only talk about my watch list :

Dave the Diver, on my Mac . Sadly, steam only.
dredge, PS4
thinking about cyberpunk but ps4 might grind
also BF2042 maybe for a shooter

Also looking for some kind of chill farming / city building thing, for the mac, to play in bed, if anyone has anything ?

For farming, I'll assume you've tried Stardew, but if not that's the obvious answer.

There's a new one out called Vexland which might interest you. I haven't tried it.
- Another stardew is what I’m looking for !

Trying to finish all levels with all characters on Mario 3D World.

Then, it's always "just one more race" on F-zero 99

I just started Dave the Diver on the switch and I’m hooked!

Been going through Gotham Knights on Gamepass, it's solid. It doesn’t stand up to the best of the Arkham series, but it's at least an interesting twist on the idea, and the Arkham formula still holds up.

Also been on a totally random RollerCoaster Tycoon kick. Haven't played in years, but for some reason I felt like getting into it again. It's incredible how well it still holds up.

Darkest Dungeon

Fascinating game that beats your ass non-stop and yet you ask for it again.

Finished three games this weekend:

The Talos Principle. I've had this game for years, but always bounced off during the second world. Finally stuck with it in anticipation of the sequel. Overall, not as difficult as I imagined, but some puzzles are quite frustrating, either because the solution feels like a bug or because the setup is long and a mistake requires a full reset. Still very enjoyable even though I didn't care much about the story.
FF7 Remake Intergrade. Not much to say about this one. Very solid DLC and just the right length. Next up: Continuing my playthrough of the original FF7 from where Remake ended.
Cocoon. Probably my favorite game of the year beside Hi-Fi Rush. Really cool main mechanic that's explored at a very enjoyable pace. All puzzle elements are clearly telegraphed as well and unintentional red herrings get blocked off to avoid confusion. Didn't really see this game get noticed though, which is a shame.

I just started EVE Online and I might be ready to rage quit.

Sounds like you’re doing it right! A good corp can help; I think it’s most important to get into something fun ASAP so you don’t think the whole game is just grinding missions or whatever. When I started I fell in with a small gang of wormhole explorers and eventually joined the big Reddit corp. Good times.
- Thanks for the tips. I got a new ship and almost immediately destroyed it because I did dumb things. Hence the desire to rage quit.

Cities: Skylines 2! Poor performance aside it's easy to see the potential, and it's still a lot of fun. I still get around 30 fps at 1440p in my small town

Yeah the performance is crap but at least it is the kind of game where you can play with worse framerate pretty alright.
I'm waiting for the mod update, hoping they will have fixed most of the bugs/performance by then and the mods can fix the rest.

Glad that the base game seems to be sound.

Cocoon - Big puzzle game fan but this one has me underwhelmed so far. It feels disappointingly linear, and I haven’t needed to think very hard to solve anything yet. The design and atmosphere is fantastic, but I hope it gets a little more confident in its mechanics soon (just 2hrs in).

Curse of the Golden Idol - Played the first DLC. Great stuff, still has all the weirdo charm of the main game with some new logic puzzles to figure out. I thought the last chapter here felt a little too straightforward to solve for how complex it seemed at first glance, but overall it was a good expansion. On to the next one!

Factorio - 70 hours into Space Exploration and currently trying to plan a transition of my base from a main bus design to city blocks. I started SE immediately after my first vanilla Factorio victory, so it’s been a bit of an uphill climb but very fun. I really enjoy reaching a new science tier and then pausing for a while as I automate and upgrade everything that I unlocked. No rush in space!

+1 for city block design in SE. It has too much recipe interaction and breadth of ingredients for a main bus to be pleasant.
- Thinking through how to transition from my bus to a modular design feels like it’s leveled up my Factorio-fu by an order of magnitude lol. I realized that I don’t need to start with full block design as long as I can work towards getting everything on trains. That’s gotten me moving again and I’m well on my way to the first off planet resources now. What a great game.

Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty and the 2.0 update have brought a lot of life back to this game. I’m having a blast running through the city doing jobs here and there. The PL missions so far (only really played the opening one) have been awesome and very well put together. Despite the hate the game got for bugs at launch, it really is one of my favorite FPS RPGs.

iRacing - The continuous one. I’m not terribly fast at Simracing, but damn do I enjoy it. I have a league race at Bathurst in a Radical SR8 on Friday that I’m looking forward to.

CS2 - Been dabbling in CS again with the new releases. I’m absolute trash at the game now, and that impacts the enjoyment sometimes, but as long as I’m playing in a duo it’s bearable.

Apex Legends - Probably the game I have the most hours in outside of minecraft. I’ve played well over 10k games of BR, and thousands of mixtape. The new season just dropped yesterday and I’m thinking it’s time to get back on the ranked grind.

How'd you get into sim racing? I'm an F1 fan and have been tossing around the idea of getting a rig but not sure what would give a decent experience for the money. The sim racing community here and on Reddit seems to just be people posting pics of their rigs. I have a microcenter near me and they have a rig builder on their website but I don't really know what to look for.

I recently got to do a sim experience at an expo but they had a very nice fanantec F1 set up with a direct drive wheel and VR set that was an absolute blast, so I'm worried any entry level setup just wouldn't come close to comparing to that.

Just finished Breathedge. Subnautica in space? Sort of, but with a 'ha, aren't we game developers funny' kind of humor. Portal is an immersive game that's really funny. The humor in Breathedge, however, insures you can never really settle in to the game. Even so, It's most impressive what such a small team was able to accomplish.

Just started Plague Tale: Innocence. Stealth survival with hordes of rats - a little creepy and I'm not really expecting an uplifting ending, but we'll see how it goes.

I've been getting into Underrail. Isometric turn based post-apocalyptic RPG, heavily inspired by the original fallout games.

I've never been into turn based games, but the setting and style with this one convinced me to try it. I've also had this problem with RPGs for years where I try to create a perfectly balanced character. I always want to be able to dabble in all aspects, and that basically makes my characters duds. My first few experiences with this game fell flat for this reason.

Finally, I decided to commit to a specialized build; melee, intelligence, telekinesis. It finally clicked and I started feeling like I was actually roleplaying as my character and not just checking off virtual boxes. Only a few hours into my playthrough but it's fantastic so far.

Wasteland 3 is a very approachable CRPG styled game. It’s not as granular in character build as Underrail because rather than playing as one character, you always have a party. You are encouraged to hyperspecialize each character, as dialog and skill checks will roll from whoever has the highest skill in the party.

I recommend WL3 over WL2 because the presentation is much more polished, a lot of unnecessarily complicated skills from WL2 have been collapsed in WL3, and the story feels more focused and doesn’t drag in the middle as WL2 does.
- Tbh I've wanted to try one of them for a long time, just never got into the genre. Now that I'm more interested I may pull the trigger, although I'll probably go through Fallout 1/2 first considering they've sat in my library for years😅

Rotating between God of War, Overwatch, Genshin Impact and a second playthrough of Elden Ring (now with a big stick)

Currently playing a classic: Pokemon Emerald. Really solid.

Still playing The Outer Worlds. I feel like I’m closing in on the finale in the next gaming session.

I want to come back and write a full review because the game has been a strange experience for me. It has so many gameplay and quest design choices that are baffling, usually in a negative to mixed way. There is no single issue that is a killer negative, just a death of a thousand papercuts of small issues.

Yet despite what will be laundry list of issues, the setting is so strong that I recommend the game. This is a game I’m happy is getting a sequel because it is exactly something that needs another attempt.

F1 Manager 2023, my interest in the real sport has completely disappeared over the last few years but I like management games and it's doing a decent job.

Jusant, recently added to gamepass and so far I'm really enjoying everything about it. The gameplay, art style, lore and mystery are all excellent.

Titanfall 2, decided to replay the campaign but the spider bomb machine things trigger my phobia so taking a break with the games mentioned above. Such an amazing game even with my issues!

THE BIG THREE

project zomboid
barotrumua
beamng. drive

I can tell you what I finally with a heavy heart stopped playing after 7 years: Overwatch.

I love that game but I just couldn't overlook all the bad stuff any longer.

Now I'm sitting in front of my PC not knowing what to play.

still playing starfield and fortnite. got back into call of duty world war 2 and tried ghosts but campers are everywhere

I've been balancing between Dark and Darker, Outpath, Cattails: Wildwood story, God of Weapons, Vampire Survivors, and lightly dabbling in BG3. not to mention my endless backlog. I keep telling myself I'll stop once I hit 1k and get that badge on Steam but I know I'll keep going.

Back and forth working on Baldurs Gate 3, Death Stranding, Sekiro and Dead Signal