Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 24th

Pathfinder: Kingmaker. If anything, it's long. I though about doing replays with other character types, but its long campaign has me tired of going through it again any time soon and I still have a chapter to go. Whenever that starts. I'll probably finish it next weekend if i have time.

Got back into Elite Dangerous big time. Gathered the courage to go to Colonia finally! The journey wasn't as bad as I expected. Spread it out over two days and it's very doable! I'll stick around the Colonia region for a bit and then its on to Sag A*

Forbidden West's PC release. They made some odd choices about how the mouse should work with the weapons select wheel, but it's a damn good game which I can't wait to get to the new DLC content of, which I've yet to play.

Still jumping into Helldivers 2 for an operation now and then.

Just got Scarlet Nexus cuz it was on sale on Steam. So far it seems pretty interesting, tho I kind of suck at the combat lmao.

Arma 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, mixed in with some Ultrakill, Elite Dangerous and Voices of the Void. Got my whole range of games.

Rugrats: The Search for Reptar

Been really into call of duty unexpectedly after about a decade away, so I've been playing warzone with my friends. In my solo time, I've been inching my way through broken reality, it's a really great game with vaporwave/ retro aesthetics.

Picked up Immortals of Aveum on sale. My friend recommended it and the combat is fun! But I dislike almost everything else. I intensely dislike the main character and that's souring me to the rest of it. There's a "it's the end of the world" type war going on and while that can be an interesting setting I just can't bring myself to want the protagonist to succeed. Early on in the game you have to go through some kind of trial to be chosen for some elite status that he doesn't deserve. So you go through a fairly basic obstacle course with almost no fights to do and when you're done he's apparently the ONLY one amazing enough to actually finish it out of the group that were making attempts! OH MY GOD HE'S SO AMAZING! I actually alt-f4'd the game right then because I was truly hoping to complete it and be chastised for how long it took, and be told no I don't have what it takes and hey kid, you're pretty fucking arrogant and hard to get along with so we are busting you down to the worst rank we can. That's is what I wanted for this character. And if that had happened and the story revolved around him learning to get along with people and ACTUALLY have to try and prove his worth I would have been so on board. But no, he gets rewarded for being insufferable. I wouldn't wish for the villain to win in this world. But I certainly wouldn't mind this protagonist losing.

But combat is fun when you get to do it. Cutscenes are unskippable and that's not cool. Dialog is inconsequential so you can just bypass it when that comes up, or just pick the "let's get on with it" option.

I would give this game a 4/10 right now. It would be an easy 6 or 7 if I could skip all story, dialog, and tedious platforming. It could also earn higher scores by having characters and a story worth NOT skipping, but let's be reasonable. Just let me skip it pls.

Edit: I literally forgot that this game has a talent tree and crafting. But the crafting was going to cost me half of all the currency I'd collected up to the point I'd found the crafting machine to gain 1% damage or 1% more armour and I just scoffed because like no I am not going to grind that out. The game doesn't feel challenging enough to need any extra damage or defence tbh even on the hardest difficulty.

The talent tree may be bugged for me? But the talents either aren't working, or they work at numbers much less than advertised. Like using a type of ability to kill a mob is supposed to heal me for 10% of my max health. That's a big enough number you should easily see it happen on the health bar. That talent is NOT working for my save. I chose another that increases reload time by 10% but I honestly can't tell the difference before and after. I'd have to record it and count frames to actually tell if the talent works or not. So I stopped bothering with the talent tree because it felt largely, if not entirely, cosmetic. Maybe it's just bugged for me though. I'll get through the game without it if the game is worth getting through though. Little disappointed that there won't be anything I can do to guide the character's progress but c'est la vie.

CK3

Dragons Dogma 2

I'm 20 hours in and enjoying it immensely despite it's flaws, and the character creator is so good I made Arya Stark my main pawn.

Almost beaten Mars After Midnight, it’s a great little game!

I’ve also been playing the SW Battlefront rerelease on switch!

• I like 1 more than 2, 2 has way too many people rolling and I like the maps from 1 more
• 1 is also less balanced. I got 30 kills camping next to a gonk droid and recon droning orbital strikes over and over
• There’s not many players, the most I’ve played with on one map is 20
• Multiplayer crashes are annoying but otherwise I’ve been enjoying it
• Galactic Conquest is as good as ever

I was "done" with Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor, but a day later the first patch dropped, so I gotta go back to it.

Death Must Die was my replacement for DRG, but the game is a bit boring, so I'll wait for more patches. It's basically Hades but Vampire Survivors. So far there are five characters in the game, but four are very similar. The different spells or upgrades are also not really too interesting and barely change the gameplay, so most runs feel the same. I hope further updates can improve the game.

Then, I started both Horizon: Forbidden West and Dragons Dogma 2 on PC, but right now I'll stick with DD2. The game is basically what I remember DD1 being, but with a fresh coat of paint, for better or worse. Back when I played the first game, I had a great time for like 70 hours, but by the end, I never wanted to see the game again (and never played the DLC). Even though it's been eight years since then, I still feel a bit burned out, so seemingly so few changes don't really help. I started out as the mage and just recently switched to the sorcerer, but imma be honest, it's pretty boring. I'll give it a bit longer, since I barely got any spells right now. The archer and thief look more fun, so I might give these a shot, if the giga wizard doesn't improve things. I also gotta say, the Pawns are some of the most annoying NPCs in any video game ever. They spew one of their dozen different voice lines every 20 seconds, which is just awesome. You can mute their audio, but then you might also miss useful callouts like when they find a chest or info about enemies. The subtitles for their lines would of course still clutter the screen though.

Horizon Forbidden West, stunning graphics. I find the main character a bit off-putting as she can be a bit arrogant and rude and those are traits I don't have a lot of patience for, but it really does look good.

I've been meaning to play Amnesia: The Bunker for a while now, since I love the series. You're in a tighter space than the previous installments, and it doesn't go as quite deep into the lore as Rebirth does, but it felt so much more like an Amnesia game then Rebirth did, since you're learning the story through the notes and whatnot, and there's not really any other characters to interact with for the most part. My first playthrough was super stressful because of the fuel and shitty flashlight situation, and there were a couple of times I didn't think I would actually end up finishing the game. But through the power of crawling around in the dark Alien Isolation style, I did! After finishing, I was going to set this aside until I saw all the features I could change and switch up on a ng+ customized difficulty, which I thought was really cool, so I ended up playing another round for some mild achievement hunting.

During a monthly get together with a few of my friends, we played Worms W.M.D. as a filler between conversation. I had never played any of the Worms games before, but this one was so much fun. I'm sure part of it had to do with us not really knowing the game and just fucking up trying to learn it, but it was still a good time all around.

Stardew Valley! but...extremely modded SDV. I'm playing multiplayer with my partner and we have almost 60 mods going. quite a few of them are aesthetic but we have some area expansions and stuff like that as well. I really like tweaking the game so that it's more difficult, I've played it so much (over 300 hours!) that it's more appealing to me that way.

I love modding games in general. it's my curse.

Slice & Dice get a new update in 2 years. So, I am playing it to complete new achievments.

Been playing a new farm in Stardew Valley after the 1.6 update. I hadn’t played much since back before 1.5, so there is a lot of new content! Also still grooving on Cyberpunk 2077, getting some of the main quest done.

I'm still hooked on Backpack Battles. It's slow enough that medicine-induced-brain-fog ridden me can play it, and it's a lot of fun.

I am playing Monkey Island, Balatro and Cyber Hook. I don't think I need to introduce Monkey Island, so a bit about the other two.

Balatro is a card game, where you have to play pokerhands to reach increasingly higher scores. You can upgrade cards, get special effects and comboa going, all centered around the basic poker hands (pairs, flush, full house etc.) It is really fun for now, but I am not sure how long it will keep me.

Cyber Hook is a fast paced 3D platformer. Basically you are Spider Man, trying get through a level as fast as you can, swinging from structure to structure, running, jumping etc. It is inexpensive, bought it for ~2€ and it has a good set of mechanichs to make it not too complex but gives you a lot of possibilities to finish a level.

Great Ace Attorney Chronicles.

Only finished the first game and really enjoyed it. Eager to see where the second goes.

Localisation team's done a fucking fantastic job as well. Didn't expect to see that much rhyming slang in an Ace Attorney game, although looking back at the wackiness of the series and the ridiculous puns, I probably should have anticipated it.

NFS:Heat. Picked it up for only a couple of quid ages ago but have recently started to enjoy it. When i first got it it didn't run all that well on Proton, but now it is silky smooth. There's a real sense of speed as the camera moves about. I'm just about getting the hang of the drift mechanic and making some good progress. It's quite a lot of fun really.

Been playing Vanquish. The game feels like a Japanese take on then-popular cover-shooters like Gears of War, but with faster pace and mechanics like sliding that incentivize not relying on covers too much. Like with Platinum's titles, there's deep mechanics and really getting into the game starts when replaying the game's missions.