Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of January 7th

Started cranking Monster Hunter again.
Finally finished Iceborne. Monster hunter's gameplay always blows me away.

I wish I could get into it. I'm into games that are inspired by Monster Hunter but not so much Monster Hunter itself. The monsters are too tanky, and you and the monster trade turns rendering each other unable to attack rather than having the proper push and pull of a boss fight. Plus MHW in particular (the only one I spent I any real time with) waits until you're in "the end game" before it lets you start setting your objectives by hunting something because you want its parts. Before that point, the latest thing you found is always objectively better than any other thing you found, regardless of weaknesses.
Know any good guides for getting back into MHW? I forget all the nice tips I knew before
- Absolutely none lol.
  I have found jumping back in and just trying to follow the Iceborne quests to be easy enough to get back into...
  
  I am in "Endgame" content now.

Holy fuck is there a lot of content in Cyberpunk 2077. I remember when the game came out people complained of it being as wide as an ocean and as deep as a puddle but those people can fuck right outta here. It’s chock full of interesting stories to learn about and tons of fun gameplay. Same goes for Phantom Liberty which takes countless hours to get through.

I get that cost does not directly correlate to play time when it comes to video games, but it’s hard for me not to gawk at how this game was sold for the same price point of the yearly reskin of .

No, the irony of how CyberPUNK was almost ruined by corporate interference is not lost on me, but it’s clear that the developers, artists, writers, programmers, and designers behind this game are true masters of the craft.

This year, I’m most looking forward to playing through it again after I’ve taken a good couple months off.

I enjoy Cyberpunk quite a lot too, but if you're going to criticize the depth of the game, it's not necessarily because the writing is subpar or anything. It would just be a reflection of how differently the game can play out with different builds. It's a little better now with the 2.0 update, but the designers still very explicitly allowed for a hacking option here, a strength option there, and so on. Compare that against something like Baldur's Gate 3 where you're free to break all sorts of rules by just casting flight or invisibility on your party and solving a problem in a way that you came up with that the designers didn't go out of their way to plan for. The latter is real depth. A deep RPG should probably feel like your experience was pretty different from others' experience.
- That’s fair. I guess I read the criticism like they were saying the game lacked the depth of the Witcher 3 which I would say is far from true. They’re roughly the same imo

I‘m having a blast alternating between Tunic and Sleeping Dogs to get an unusual, but not unpleasant mix of action, adventure, and puzzles. I’ll probably pick up Cyberpunk after finishing the latter, as it seems to set the mood for it (at least in terms of the city vibes and the protagonist’s story somewhat).

As for 2024 games, I’m trying to steer clear of any announcements. In general, I don’t enjoy the “hype season” phase; for me that time is better spent doing something else - carpe diem and all that. Path of Exile 2 is the only game I can name for this year and that’s because I used to have a borderline unhealthy amount of hours in POE1. Time well spent.

My fiance and I just finished the DLC for The Case of the Golden Idol, and not only is that game awesome, but the story hooks for the DLC were a pleasant surprise. We can't wait for the sequel.

I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity, and I made it to Act 2. It's impressive how insanely good this game is. And then on top of that, it's impressive that I think everything I like about it is done better in Baldur's Gate 3.

I finally made it to Master rank in Street Fighter 6! Still some input frustrations until the game can get a season 2 patch, but I'm just happy to finally have something like an Elo rather than the superficial league system, even though my master rating settled slightly below the default 1500 value.

EDIT: Missed the bonus question. Of the games I'm confident are coming out in 2024, I'd say Avowed, which is why I'm playing Pillars of Eternity now.

I splurged on the Steam winter sale and bought a set of smaller games.
Right now I'm busy playing I Was a Teenage Exocolonist which has been more fun than expected. I really like the story and the multiple paths and endings. The card games are meh, but once you find a good modifier they become very easy.

At the same time I'm also playing Shadows over Loathing which is very very funny in short sessions.

I'm still slowly working my way through Rogue Trader. It's a lot of fun, but something about it makes me feel satisfied with a session after around an hour in. It's slowing down my progress, but probably the only thing not leading to me burning out and never actually finishing the game.

I am getting an itch to play a gag, so I might pause RT, but I'm also afraid I won't end up coming back to it if I do.

I'm trying out some FOSS games.

Mindustry. I expected Mindustry to be a Factorio clone, but it's uniquely fast-paced and messy. I find it difficult to tell the buildings apart, though, so I may have to hunt down a graphics mod.

Beyond All Reason. I really enjoyed Planetary Annihilation, so this seems like a natural pick. I've barely sunk my teeth into it, but I'm impressed so far.

Happy new year

Currently playing Coral Island (stardew valley but on an island)

Persona 3: another remake. Is probably my most anticipated game and it's coming out in February

Hahaha “another remake” got me 😂

Happy new year.

I've been playing Remnant 2 which I'm really enjoying. Fairly similar to the first one, the moment to moment gunplay and exploration just clicks for me.

Also done a few rounds of Take and Hold in Hotdogs horseshoes and hand grenades which is still my favourite VR game. The new Institution level is kicking my butt though, haven't worked out the best spots yet.

I'm really looking forward to Hades 2 this year. I especially enjoyed the die to get more story mechanics from the first one.

Diablo 4 the whole week.

I'm near the end of the main story, and started the final act. It's kinda whatever, it has some good moments, but the first half was a bit boring. After you get your mount, the world is much more fun to get around. It's just massive and there's so much shit to do, it's pretty ridiculous. Lots is repeated of course, just like every open world game, but I still have a good time.

Gear progression is pretty lame right now, since I need to finish the main story to access the higher difficulties, and gear doesn't drop above a certain level. So I've not really gotten any real upgrades in like 30 hours.

What's really terrible though is the network performance. Running around solo in the world is fine for the most part, but some of the event areas, where you're fighting alongside other players, it can be terrible. Constant lags, stutter, and rubber banding. I really need to check if it's a problem on my end, maybe my pi-hole is blocking some domains or something.

The lags and stuttering could possibly also be a hardware issue too, depending on what platform you're playing on. When I first started playing Diablo 4 a little after it first came out, it was on Xbox One, and I had terrible lag around legion events and word bosses, like you do. But when I finally upgraded to the Series X, I noticed that the game greatly improved, and I rarely have any lag problems anymore, so I'm sure an upgrade in specs helped.
- I'm on PC, decently powerful (100+ FPS with an Ultrawide resolution). I read that maybe crossplay could be an issue, so I disabled that, and just did a Legion event by myself, but it was still horrible.
  
  It's mainly the Legion events, since they're the most frequent for me (World Tier 2). I barely see any other players in the world, but occasionally in one of the Vampire zones, where it's fine. World Bosses have been alright, but I've not done as much of them.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Got all the items for Midwinter Blight, so now I'm back to working on season objectives. I only have 2 more to complete in order to get all the rewards. Right now my focus is on upgrading 5 glyphs to level 21. So far I've completed 3.

Diablo 3 - Logged in to do the Darkening of Tristram anniversary event for fun and realized I was missing a reward for a challenge I have never got around to completing, so I'm currently working on killing all the unique monsters for the event for the classic demon portrait. I'm only missing two and it seems like those bastards are just refusing to spawn.

Alan Wake 2 - I still haven't finished this, and it's mostly because I keep getting sidetracked with exploring and trying to find every little thing. But I am loving every second of the story, I don't even know how to describe it. I've been having so many emotions seeing characters from the first game being what they are now. I'm also starting to run into some visual bugs that are weird, but nothing game breaking. I feel like I'm toward the end of the game, so I've been backtracking a lot to find things that I may have missed. I'm kind of hoping I get it done this week, because I would love to get to the Dead Space remake.

As for what I'm looking forward to in 2024, I'm really hoping Outlast Trials gets out of Early Access. I love the Outlast series, but don't really like jumping into games when they haven't been 'officially' released.
I think Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 is supposed to come out this year (hopefully), but I don't think I've seen an official release date yet.

Just started Alan Wake 2 myself yesterday. In the past couple months I played the original's remaster and then replayed Control (including the DLC).

This game's an absolute trip. I've said before that I wasn't terribly hooked by Alan Wake the first time I played it way back, but I fucking loved Control. The world building was fascinating, and there was some new, mind bending idea around every damn corner in the oldest house. But one of the best things it did was expand the world of Alan Wake in a way that benefited them both.

I'm only a few hours in but Remedy is so far promising to deliver on the best of both worlds with renewed vigor. I am hooked this time.
- Control is amazing! Probably one of my favorite games. I'd also recommend Quantum Break since it seems like Alan Wake 2 also references it in some roundabout ways (and Quantum Break has a couple neat little Alan Wake easter eggs). And I definitely agree, the game is a trip.
- Alan Wake 2 is the reward for doing your Remedy homework, I feel. Like sure, the game is good enough that you can probably enjoy it if you just watch a story summary on YouTube and jump in, but it really has a different level of impact if you not only played the first one and Control, but are also familiar with Max Payne and Quantum Break.
  
  I think what Remedy are doing is so cool and I'm glad they're getting the recognition they deserve. It's also a drop dead gorgeous game and a great advertisement for their Northlight engine.
  
  Game of the year for me, despite having played BG3.

Duck Game

Vecter

Mostly Against the Storm and Granblue Fantasy: Versus Rising! I'm actually really enjoying GBVSR and as someone that has struggled getting into fighting games in the past despite really enjoying them and wanting to get better at them, this one has got me hooked so far.

As for anticipated games, the latest Momodora game comes out very soon. There's also Granblue Fantasy: Relink which looks interesting, and the latest FFXIV expansion, Dawntrail, this summer!

Started a modded Minecraft server with friends. Center mod is the absolutely rad Create mod ecosystem focused on steam-punk-esque factory automation. I will let the mod trailer speak for itself: https://piped.video/watch?v=rR8W-f9YhYA

If anyone has questions about self-hosting MC in a docker environment, ask away.

My fiance and I just finished the DLC for The Case of the Golden Idol, and not only is that game awesome, but the story hooks for the DLC were a pleasant surprise. We can't wait for the sequel.

I've been playing a lot of Pillars of Eternity, and I made it to Act 2. It's impressive how insanely good this game is. And then on top of that, it's impressive that I think everything I like about it is done better in Baldur's Gate 3.

I finally made it to Master rank in Street Fighter 6! Still some input frustrations until the game can get a season 2 patch, but I'm just happy to finally have something like an Elo rather than the superficial league system, even though my master rating settled slightly below the default 1500 value.

I've just finished replaying the base FF7 Remake, in preparation of FF7 Rebirth. Also I haven't touched INTERmission yet.

Some of the games that I'm excited to play in 2024: FF7 Rebirth, Metaphor ReFantazio, Eiyuuden Chronicles, and maybe Dragon's Dogma 2.

It really sucks, that the next FF7R will probably only come to Steam in a year or two. I liked the Remake far more than I thought, but I'm not going to buy a PS5 for the sequel.

I've only played Civilization V since New Year, but I'm thinking of giving Old World another try sometime. On the surface it's something I should really like, but it hasn't really grabbed me.

Nothing I've seen on the 2024 slate has me really excited yet, but I'm somewhat interested to see how Manor Lords and Life by You turn out.

To be fair, we've seen very little of the 2024 slate. We've only got release dates for about the first few months of the year.
- Exactly, hopefully there will be something I'll like announced! But if not, I have old favorites to go back to as well.

I installed Gemcraft (the newest one) again after completing it ages ago. Having a blast 🙂 Sucks that FPS is limited to 30 though. I have since bought a 144hz monitor

ff7 rebirth (i've resisted all spoilers!)

and dawntrail (NEED. PICTOMANCER. NOW)

Permanently Deleted

I've found myself playing Armored Core VI with the expanded weapons and balancing update. Burned through my first playthrough, now working on NG+ for more parts. I've spent hours designing color schemes for my mechs, and then immediately pounding others into the sand with it. Glorious. Anticipated? The Horizon Forbidden West PC Port, I am going to take 2 days off work when that drops.

Just recently started my fourth playthrough of Baldur’s Gate 3, with occasionally playing Starfield and Divinity Original Sin 2.

I played “The Expanse” (on Linux PC) and I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t put the controller down for over 6 hours (https://beko.famkos.net/x/1CMPu)

I've given another chance to Lords of the Fallen as I've realised I might have held it to the absurdly high standard of the masterpiece that is Lies of P and it's a fun game, I've just reached the last dungeon.

It has a ton of problems: the jump is terrible, the lock on mechanic is the worst I've ever seen, camera is bad, the only challenge the designers seem to know is to gank the player with 50 enemies all the time, quests can be failed by beating a boss too early, selling an item(no buy back) or opening doors, bosses are kind meh and so on BUT it somehow is still fun and good, it's like it's more than the sum of its parts. 8/10 and I actually would recommend it.