Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 3rd

I've been working through my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 - it's fairly enjoyable, I'm glad I ignored it outright until well after big patches rolled out. There's something very satisfying about blowing up enemies through a camera.

I've also picked up Dwarf Fortress (Steam) for the first time. It has a lot of depth but has been fun to learn and try and figure out. I just flooded a section of my fortress by digging into an underground river.

My chill-out puzzle game has been Can of Wormholes and it's pretty fun! It's weird for sure... but definitely fun.

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Working on stocking up on Torment 16 bounty caches for the Avarice conquest (completing a 50,000,000 gold streak). It's taking me longer than I anticipated, but then again, I keep getting distracted by the Visions of Enmity. I really need to start ignoring those portals.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Snagged the Razorplate chest armor with around 15,000 Thorns and a level 925 bow, so I've been kicking ass and actually surviving Helltides. My current goal is reaching level 90.

No one lives under the lighthouse - This was the first time I played this game, and it was amazing. It's been sitting in my Steam library since this past spring, and I didn't really know a lot about it going in except that is was more or less atmospheric horror. It was not what I was expecting, and in a good way. It was way more horrifying and lightly Lovecraftian than I thought it would be, since I was expecting something more similar to Dear Esther or What Remains of Edith Finch where I just kind of walk around while learning the story, so I was pleasantly surprised when I actually had work to do lol. I thought I'd get sick of the pixel art graphics, but it held up pretty well, and I even got some nice screenshots out of it. The only parts that were relatively frustrating were two weird chase scenes, but luckily the game gave me the choice to skip them after dying so many times. I've read that there's multiple endings, but I was satisfied with the one that I got (whichever one it is), since it was pretty much like a light bulb going off in my head and made sense with the story as I understood it. Parts of it felt very Amnesia-like as well, which is always a plus for me. I don't plan on 100% it any time soon, because it's definitely one of those games I like to finish in one go, but I think I'll have fun whenever I do.

A bit of Slay the Spire again and a tiny bit if Spiro Remastered with my daughter.

Atlas Fallen. Open world action/adventure with light rpg elements. The new ideas this game tries are all amazing, but the execution is... fine? Combat is great with very customizable skills, the story exists, exploration could be better. Lots of mixed reviews, but for a new ip from a medium-sized developer, deck 13, I'd say it's very enjoyable. And it's on sale on ps5 already.

Hogwarts legacy: I think I already reached the last quarter of the game and it is fun so far. The main story feels more like a side quest, but the world has the right feel that the books and movies left behind. Only the side activities become a little too much. I still keep finding new stuff I could do, but always in so many iterations that I already know that I will not do all of them. Why can't there be just 20 Merlin trials that are fun and diverse instead of 100(?) that quickly become repetitive?

Just learned there was a new Grim Dawn expansion announced so replaying that again.

I played a fair bit more Backpack Hero, and made some more progress in the story mode. Still a bit too grindy for my tastes, but I'll either finish it or just stick to the classic roguelike mode.

I've been playing more Starfield, and the recurring thought I have every step of the way is, "this should be better". To go into much more detail than that would be to right a dissertation, but the short description is that the game has barely changed compared to Fallout 4 and Skyrim.

I got through another few missions of Wargroove 2. It continues to be a worthy successor to Wargroove.

Combined with Starfield, Pillars of Eternity is helping me resist starting a new run in Baldur's Gate 3. I also have that feeling of, "this should be better" here, but it's pretty much entirely down to production value. Number 1 with a bullet is that I wish it was fully voice acted, including narration. Still though, loving everything else so far despite real time with pause, which has been less of a problem than I thought.

I'm nearing the end of Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. It's still really mediocre, but I got into that mindless grind of those 300 side missions. The main story is pretty lame, the only interesting bits are those directly connected to FF7, basically when you're in Nibelheim, although even that is a bit of a let-down.

I also played more on my Steam Deck than expected, mainly because I got sick a few days ago and would just dabble a bit here and there while lying down. I did a some Vampire Survivors runs, but it's basically always the same, so I need to look into those unlocks I'm missing. Then I tried Boneraiser Minions, but I'm not sure about this one. It's a Vampire Survivors-like, but here you summon different skeletons to fight for you. The first few runs felt really slow and boring, but some of the unlocks improved it somewhat. I'm still not sure about the minions fighting for you thing though, since it feels a bit too RNG, but I'll give it a bit more time.

Unbelievably, I'm playing (and enjoying) Fallout 76 after avoiding it for so many years of following it's travails from afar.

It's buggy in all those Bethesda ways that are almost comfortable in their familiarity at this point, and it's got a lot to explore. This can tide me over until Starfield is discounted and improved.

Also been playing Teardown a bit, which has a really cool look and feel. Hyper-real except a voxel universe, if that makes sense. Lots of fun to destroy the environment.

2 things

• Resident Evil HD Remaster

  • I followed a guide, and finally got my infinite rocket launcher around 2 hour 41 mins!
  • Skipped all the cutscenes, got the bad ending, I have no idea what's happening in the game, and somewhat learned some speed running moves (e.g. stair skating and kiting).
  • I'm excited to finally playing the game properly (with rocket launcher) in the future, both Chris and Jill scenarios.
  • There's quite a lot of work involved, I used the IGN video walkthrough, spliced the video into like 13 parts for 13 saves, then just redo those parts until I feel like I've finished the section without losing too much time

• Final Fantasy 7

  • I'm replaying it again, the last time I finished this game must be at least a decade ago.
  • It's still my favorite mainline FF, I still love the Materia system and how you can chain them together. The combat is still very speedy, especially compared to FF9, the characters and story still hold up. You can definitely see Shinra Corp existing in our society right now.
  • I'm also surprised at the parts I've missed. After the temple morphed into the black materia, did Cloud shove Aeris to the ground and punch her repeatedly? I was shocked at that scene, didn't realize what was happening when I was younger.
  • With knowledge about what's happening with Crisis Core and FF7 Remake in hand, now I could definitely understand some of those scenes, the voices Cloud is hearing, etc.
  • I'm playing the PS4 remaster / re-release. Liking the QoL features (fast forward, battle assist), but there's still an unfixed bug where the music would just stop playing.

Just finished Chants of Sennar. Decryption game with puzzles and light sneak bringing people of a babel like tower to speak to each other again :) I'm always in a weird indecision for what to play after I finish a game...

Thinking about subscribing to the pc gamepass to play Lies of P.

Star Citizen. It's a buggy mess as usual but it's such a fun mess. Especially the Siege of Orison event going on right now, I've had some really amazing emergent gameplay moments come from it that have me very excited for the future of this game.

Kind of in between games at the moment. Been digging through my backlog, looking for something to play, but nothing has really clicked yet. In the meantime I've been doing this little gaming advent calendar thing with Mission in Snowdriftland. It's a platformer that used to be a flash game that was used to promote Nintendo products back in the 2000s. It's set up like an advent calendar, with 24 levels. You could probably beat it in a few hours, but I've been enjoying taking it one level a day,

Since getting a PS5, a good chunk of my time has been spent with my PS4 library I fell off of when loading was too obnoxious. I had a Last of Us Left Behind save on grounded difficulty that I had never beat because, while I enjoy the brutal difficulty of the last encounter, waiting to load every time I died was miserable. The much faster (but slower than PS5 games lol) load time got me over the hump.

I'm getting into the Last of Us 2 next.

Replaying Pokémon Fire Red as a ROM hack with Throwback. It's a vanilla + experience and it's really quite fun to play old games.

Just got into Backpack Hero recently after someone I watch online released a video a week or two ago going back to the game now that it's released. I kinda became a little addicted as it's pretty much been the only PC game I've been playing since I got it.

I just got the jingle jam collection and started playing Godfall. Straight forward smack-em-with-a-sword game but lots of fun so far. Kinda reminds me of kingdoms of amalur. Hoping to try out a few more games from the collection as well as I've heard good things about quite a few of them.

Super Mario RPG and Civ 6 still getting tons of mileage

Back to catch up on Baldurs Gate, finally tied up act 1. Also back to Tarkov, the masochism is in full swing.

Aaand back to counterstrike, did i mention masochism? CS2 has brought the gang back together though, really feels like almost a decade ago when we had full lobbies every night.

Still playing the field since finishing my second BG3 playthrough a few weeks ago:

• Sniper Elite 5: I wish I'd known about this series 10 years ago. SE5 is a surprisingly fun stealth action game, with enormous sandbox levels that encourage varied approaches, styles, and paths. Lots of unlockables and customizations (and unlike the new Hitman games, those unlockables can be used across all levels once you get them). Unfortunately I'm just not super into this kind of experience anymore, but I still had a lot of fun for the time I did spend on it before getting worn out. I'm keeping it on my system because I'm sure it will scratch another itch soon.

• Bus Simulator 21: I wanted something I could zone out with, just kind of dive into mundanity and focus on little details. The game does meet that criteria conceptually, but the gameplay just doesn't feel super well-tuned, and you get these little penalties for everything that goes wrong. I didn't play it long enough to deal with the business management aspect, which I think is a significant part of the appeal, but it really just didn't click like I wanted it to.

• Firewatch: Skipped this when it released and was a huge deal. I didn't know anything going into it and really liked the format of the game, exploring the woods, pulling up the map and compass to navigate and all that. Characters and performances were exceptional. But ultimately I was kind of disappointed because ...

• Concrete Genie: Really stellar artistic achievement. The quasi-stop-motion style of the in-engine game, the animations of the genies, and the sketchbook style cutscenes all looked phenomenal in their individual styles. The story was touching and I loved the idea of a hero whose value is his artistic drive, but I was a little bothered by what I felt was a fairly reductive approach to bullying. But the biggest problem was that the game feels really incomplete. Exploration is competent, but the drawing mechanics are not nearly robust enough to tap into the creativity it's trying to celebrate, and the final act of the game introduces a whole new set of mechanics that, again, are really shallow. By the halfway point, the game felt more like a really, really sophisticated proof of concept than a completed game.

• Two Point Hospital: This game is doing a much better job with what I was hoping to get out of Bus Simulator 21. Love the art style and UI. No complaints, just something easy to dip into from time to time.

• Paradise Killer: I just started this and it is fucking nuts in a very sincere way. Opening lines: "The Syndicate created the first Paradise Island to worship their dead alien gods. Guided by Leader Monserrat, the Syndicate attempt to resurrect the gods by forcing Citizens into psychic worship rituals. However, the worship invites demonic corruption from beyond the stars. The islands always fail. The islands die and a new Paradise Island is born. The cycle repeats." Really unique art style and game world. Time will tell if the investigative core lives up to the rest.

Dave the Diver & Factorio

Those two are the main drivers and the below are games I slot in once I feel like it’s becoming a grind

Vampire Survivors, XCOM: Chimera Squad, and Portals 2

I’m thinking something like AC: Syndicate or Metal Gear might also work as a change of pace. Anyone playing longer form narrative games on the Steam Deck?

Currently re-playing Assassin's Creed 1 and playing Vanilla WoW for the first time on a private server.

Im remembering how much I liked AC1. I know many people say it wasnt that great of a game, but to me its exactly what an Assassin's Creed game should be - stalk, plan, stealth, assassinate, escape.

WoW is also really fun. I tried getting into retail a few times over the years but there was just too much. It was way too overwhelming. Vanilla seems to be just right for a new player.

Dorfromantik this week. One day I will have the time and energy for something more complicated. My enormous list of unplayed games is staring at me.

I grabbed "Total War: Warhammer" in the steam sale last week. I'm about 35 turns in trying to wipe the greenskin scum from my ancestral dwarven lands. I like it so far! I've never played any other Total War games.

GTA IV. I had started playing around August but had to leave it because of Uni. Just remembered that I had it downloaded now that I've finished this semester.

Also the monthly Ridge Racer Type 4 / wipEout 2097 replay

I just finished my second ever playthrough of the original goldsrc Half-Life. It gets all the love it deserves. So few games craft an atmosphere of horrific mystery like that game, and I love the payoff of that tension. I know Xen gets hate for being rushed and the levels being chaotic, but I like that. EVERYTHING about Xen feels alien and terrifying. Then when you find out more about the alien society it turns the entire “invasion” on its head. What a great fuckin game.

I think now is as good a time as any to finally finish (after restarting) Half-Life: Alyx

Grim Dawn
Old World
Phantasy Star IV

I'd like to be playing City Skylines 2 but my stock AMD cooler doesn't like it lol

Diablo 2 Resurrected. Rolling a new character as Sony decided I needed to pay for online access to play my other character.

Fuck that. I only do single player. I'll just make a new one!

Video Game: Star Ocean: Till the End of Time

Tabletop Game: Atlantic Chase

Styx: Master of Shadows. Been meaning to play it for years.

On paper, I should be enjoying the fuck out of this. Stealth is my favorite genre, I enjoy fantasy, and it even reminds me a little of Thief in some aspects (mainly art design and some of the mechanics).

Yet, I'm just not enjoying it. I don't know why. Maybe it's the skill tree gating basic abilities like aerial/ledge kills, but I never had an issue with the skill tree or gated abilities in something like Dishonored, just as an example.

Maybe I'm finding the AI overly aggressive and hyper aware, but I rarely have that problem with most other stealth games, some of which do have acutely aware enemies who'll spot you immediately.

Maybe it's that it feels like there are just too many guards/enemies in each level, while also feeling cramped (like there's oftentimes no corner you turn without a new enemy to deal with), which makes it crowded and much more difficult to navigate.

Maybe I'm just not vibing with the controls or the story or something.

I honestly don't know. It just doesn't feel fun for some reason, despite checking nearly all my boxes. It's missing something that I can't quite put my finger on.

Been rediscovering factorio after a few busy months, it's not for everyone, but if you look it up and it seems interesting I wholeheartedly recommend you give it a go, it is truly an amazing game

Pyramidia

it's an indie city builder in which your first goal is to secure the survival of the settlement. Graphics are adorable and retro-ish and the gameplay is challenging. Although it could use a it more polishing and there is some getting used to the games quirks. But it's quite cheap (~3€) so I feel it's okay.

Stranded Deep is on Game Pass, so figured I'd give it a shot. Good so far. Kind of a mix of Raft and The Forest. It is a little rough to start since you pretty quickly need to travel to other islands to get materials and the starter raft is not fun to use. Once I built my own it really picked up though