Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of June 2nd

I've been playing Hollow Knight the last couple of days. Sadly I'm now at a point where the bossfights are getting too hard. I'll keep trying though.

Good luck my friend. Hollow Knight is a special one, but those bosses can be punishing. A few of them took me separate sessions over a few days, which is a frustrating way to play games for me, but it's such a rewarding experience otherwise. I recently rewatched my recording of beating one of the bosses and I was fumbling so bad, I could see my own desperation in the way I was playing.

Apparently there's a secret phase for the final boss that I was more than happy to experience via YouTube. I was perfectly satisfied with just rolling the credits.
Hollow Knight is the greatest game of all time for me. I replayed it recently and it was such a different experience for me to move through confidently and quickly when I had a grasp of combat from the beginning. It took me months to finish it the first time because of getting lost and not knowing where to go next.

Some generic (no spoiler) tips:

go in another direction and come back to the boss later if that's possible. If a boss is way too difficult then there may be an upgrade you haven't gotten yet.

take your time. It is more important to save your health rather than rushing to get a hit in. Sometimes it's worth going to a boss and not hitting him at all and just focus on learning movement, patterns and figuring out where the openings are.

play around with your charms and get the best setup you need to help with the boss fight.

try to avoid attacks by running into the gap in projectiles rather than relying on dashes all the time.

if you're coming to thinking of quitting the game based on difficulty, then there's no shame in watching a boss guide video on YouTube. Or space it out with a secondary game so you can play something else and come back later.
- Thanks for the tips. I'm at such an early stage that I can't even dash yet. It's an ability that comes later right? Or am I missing something?

I finally started Horizon: Forbidden West - gameplay changes compared to HZD keep trickling in and I couldn't be happier. I love Aloy's character so I'm really happy to be in her shoes again.

This past week was pretty disappointing before that:

Hellblade II was good, but nowhere near as impactful as the first one for me. I'm left with a sour taste overall, although I'll admit they did a tremendous job with cinematography and character rendering.
Stellar Blade was insipid. Whatever could save it in my book - its gameplay - turns out stale pretty quickly, so I ended up abandoning the game midway. The story and characters were really uninteresting imo, couple that with how EVE is represented... I couldn't really find any redeeming qualities.

Horizon Zero Dawn is amazing, gameplay and story.
I'm working my way through forbidden west as well. I'm really enjoying it. It's always good to spend more time in an interesting game world. I really appreciate the more free form climbing system in this one, not quite breath of the wild climbing but way better than grab the yellow ledges only.
- Absolutely! You could sort of "cheese" your way into climbing some parts of the world of Zero Dawn, but Forbidden West's climbing is much improved - to the point that I've been getting sidetracked a number of times already just exploring and getting to great vistas.
I started it as well. Had weird sound issues that I had to fix by downgrading my system sample rate. It looks and feels amazing now that it works.

Still having lots of fun playing Diablo 4 Season 4. Got a necromancer and a barbarian to 100. Now, I'm leveling up a sorcerer.

Loaded up The Outer Worlds yesterday because I wanted some first person Obsidian RPG goodness after finishing New Vegas a couple of weeks ago.

Forgot how absolutely fucking saturated and vibrant the colours are. My old monitor must not have had the saturation turned up or something because, as someone super sensitive to bright or intense anything, I don't remember it immediately hurting my brain like it did last night.

Anyway, used ReShade and toned down a ton of shit. Then I realised I'm not actually feeling it all that much, so I'm going to start a new playthrough of New Vegas instead. I think this time I'm not gonna fuck Benny and kill him in his sleep. Well, maybe I'll still rock his world because it's hilarious, we'll see.

Edit: Oh, also I've been playing a bit of XDefiant. It's not terrible, honestly. Like, I'm not paying for their battle pass and I'll definitely lose interest fairly quickly, but it's not a bad distraction.

I finished Quantum Break, I loved it! I've never really played a game with superpowers, especially like these. I also love games that give unlimited ammo in the starting pistol since I have the worst aim ever, I constantly find myself having no choice but to melee enemies in other games. And the slow motion after doing the dash was so nice!

The final fight was so bad, I could not understand why I was dying even when I was doing exactly what someone on YouTube was doing but other than that it was so fun! And I actually liked the story, usually I'm not a big story person, I just like running around causing chaos, it also probably helped that I finished the game in 3 days, so I didn't forget what was happening.

I had to give up on Alan Wake Remaster, the visual bugs were just too much so I moved onto Control. I was expecting a more linear style, similar to Quantum Break so I ended up running around in circles being so confused, especially the elevator at the start, I spent way too long looking for that lol but having the force like a Jedi is super fun

I also started GoW Chains of Olympus and I kinda regret playing the series in chronological order instead of release order because going from Ascension to this is not so great, since it was Originally designed for the PSP but hopefully the original series will look better when I get there

Quantum Break got me to put down BG3 for now since I'm looking for shorter games that I don't accidentally spend 10 hours on a Saturday playing

Its also convinced me to get back into RE4 remaster. I started it in November and got to the part where I'm in the little boat on the lake but I got a bit bored of it. I think my expectations were too high, I loved 0,1,2 and 3 especially 2 and 3. And since everyone always says 4 is the best, I just expected more. I still want to finish it and continue the series because they are fun games tbf

Quantum Break was really fun. I'd love some more time travel games like that.

While Remedy don't own the rights and it can't officially be "canon" to Alan Wake and Control, there are some things that the community has kind of put together which establishes how it's a part of the wider universe/multiverse.
- Yes! I feel like there really aren't enough games like it! Just a fun little linear shooter with some cool time travel/ superpower elements.
  
  I heard there were references to each other, that's why I wanted to start with Alan Wake before playing Quantum Break but tbh I'm so bad with names and stuff I probably wouldn't even notice them anyway lol
  
  I didn't know Remedy didn't own the rights to it, that's unfortunate because its such a good concept but at least we got Control after it, hopefully they continue with more games like them
I kind of love Control's navigation. The map is helpful enough to point you in the right direction, but also shitty enough that you have to pay attention to the diagetic signage. It's uniquely immersive.
- I'm the type of player that needs the bright yellow markings, that people seem to hate, to be able to get around! So I constantly have to read the signs in Control and even then I still second guess myself.
  
  I did the part where you have to answer the phone at the end of the hallway thingy. The amount of times I just walked off the edge because I didn't understand I had to pull the chord is embarrassing. And then trying to get back from the motel thing I genuinely thought my game was bugged, I was so comfused lol
I wanted to love Quantum Break so much but it was just a buggy mess on my pc, I spent hours messing with settings but it just wouldn't run smoothly. I still managed to push through to mission 4 or so. Maybe I'll give it another go.
- Lol, it was buggy as fuck for me as well, so I "downloaded" another build and it worked perfectly.
  
  The Game Pass version is especially bad in this regard.
- Ah damn, I know how you feel! Alan Wake remaster kept going black screen every few seconds for me and the only way to fix it was to pause it for a few seconds every time so I had to give up.
  
  Maybe updated drivers or something could have fixed the bugs since then, I definitely recommend checking it out again for a fun linear single player game that doesn't take weeks to finish

Just beat Catherine Full Body last night. There are a lot of things I like about the game, and some things I both like and dislike. It's really more of a "this is the main character's story and you're mostly along for the ride" than it is a narrative experience where you choose every move the protagonist makes.

Because of that, I think how you feel about the story will be determined by your own stance on relationships and the morality of them, hedonism, marriage, and things like that. For me, I felt familiarity with my experience watching Breaking Bad in its painful spectation of characters who make questionable decisions and their creation of damning consequences.

Easy mode treated the puzzles well, just takes away the time pressure of the blocks falling away (save for the boss battles where you're being chased). I ended up quite enjoying the puzzles! In the end, I don't know if I'd recommend the game. If you're interested in games doing something neat and novel with the topic of relationships then I think you'll find value in it.

I am finally completely finished with We Happy Few, DLCs and all. It was a lot better and more fun that I really thought it would be, especially story-wise. The characters are surprisingly complex and gray while still be likeable. Sally and Ollie's stories were great. They weren't as long as Arthur's, and they didn't have as many side quests (that I could find), but it was still a good time. With differences in encounters between the main characters and going through the same areas, it kind of felt like playing the B story in Resident Evil 2. As for the DLCs, They Came From Below gives the game a fun little sci-fi twist. I liked seeing more of Roger and James. Lightbearer was surprisingly super short, and I wasn't expecting to hear Neil Newbon. We All Fall Down was by far the best DLC. It was pretty heavy, but did wrap up the ultimate fate of Wellington Wells pretty nicely. Also have to add that the music is so fun. I actually sat through the entirety of the credits each time because there were some great jams. Right now I'm dabbling around in Sandbox and Survival mode while I try to figure out what game to play next.

Knights of the Old Republic 2 :3 I'm doing a blaster Jedi run. It's pretty neat, actually :3 I think I'll play the first game next. Kinda want to get back into City of Heroes if this laptop runs it well and maybe only if I can acquire at least one adventure-buddy-critter to play it with 🤔 🤷

I did that with the first KoTOR a year ago! It was more difficult than using a saber for sure, you really get the impression they didn't really think anyone would want to main blasters. How is it in the second one?
- There are mods for the first to make it more blaster-friendly! The impression I get is that blasters are much more effective in t he second game and are, it's claimed (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1606481748), viable even for Hard playthroughs.
  
  I'm playing on Normal; it's mostly reasonably easy. Paying a bit more attention to keeping my defences in order would probably serve me well but I've not hit any walls or anything like that.

Roblox with my son. Love it.

Little kitty big city, quite amusing. Not that far into the game, but I loved the cinematic used to introduce you to the game and its very mellow

Just started the 3rd public release of Pokemon Vanguard. The almost all the regionals in the game look absolutely fantastic. Doesn't follow the standard 8 gyms, fight evil team, defeat them, elite 4 pattern from most official and fan games I've played. In this one you end up going to some trainer school (vanguard academy), becoming a legal pokemon trainer in the region, and do assignments. So far I've only done one and it's a pretty fun game.

It has 3 difficulty options, options for turning every battle to be a double battle (I assume this doesn't work on wild pokemon but I have no clue), doing a monorun of every type that won't let you catch anything other than the type you're using, and a streamer mode that replaces music that could get you copyrighted. All before you begin the game. Also, I think you can find just about every starter from any of the games, with most of them being regionals with new types, like poison fire chimchar. Even has gen 9 pokemon, which I'm glad is becoming more common.

Oh nice, I haven't heard of Vanguard! I love how creative some fan games are, especially compared to the main games that have gotten a bit stale. I'm definitely adding it to my list now, thanks!

Selaco

Netflix has some good games I don't expect. I love playing their Pinball and Slay the Spire.

Also on Netflix:

Play Wonderputt Forever if you like physics-based and/or golf games. I found it pretty fun and fairly challenging in the later levels.

Desta is also a really interesting narrative turn-based tactics game with some poignant emotional moments (it can actually be a bit heavy at times, especially if you've dealt with LGBTQ+ prejudice personally).

And I'm also really glad Netflix resurrected Cut The Rope from its grave. New puzzle daily and several months worth (i.e. hundreds) of puzzles to play if you'd like to catch up.

Finally patched up the old pc port GTA: SA (cause rockstar can’t be arsed) and am playing through that again for the first time since the ps2

Selaco, and everyone who is interested in first person shooter should try it out. Its just a really really well made GZDoom based Boomer Shooter.

the first chapter is released and stuff will be added later during the Early Access phase, but I trust them to deliver.

I've been getting back into Guild Wars 2 lately! Nobara Linux has made the game run the smoothest it's even been, and ReShade has it looking even better.

Always a great game to get back into. Or get into in the first place.

The latest patch was kind of disappointing and I hope they do tweak some of the issues, but I'm still looking forward to the new expansion reveal tomorrow. The teasers were pretty neat so far.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim. I am about 25% through with both Remembrance and the battles... Destruction? I'm in awe of the narrative's complexity. It's also a little overwhelming, it feels impossible to get any kind of handle on things. The game adds new layers every time you think you're getting it.

Im really enjoying it though, the mystery is really fun to dig at.

I also beat Malenia this week, which is pretty much the last major thing I had left in my first Elden Ring save. I got help of course (thanks superelva11), but it's been really satisfying tying a bow on that. 140 hours, plus another 30-35 on a second save - Elden Ring is officially the most time I've ever spent on a single game by quite a large margin.

Still playing Dark Souls 2.

I also started playing Grapple Dog for something casual/relaxing.

I probably have about 3-4 hours remaining on Tales of Xillia on the PS3. I've really enjoyed this one (this is my 4th or 5th Tales game, AFAIR). Hoping to finish before the week (weekend?) is up.

Been playing a lot of super punch out, started a stardee valley playthrough just now too.

Just started The Forest and Stardew Valley. Was looking for something like minecraft, but with flavor

Started Valheim again with a friend of mine. Having a blast! No mods but we kinda wanted to add a few for an immersive no-map run.

been mucking around with Far Cry and Space Invaders.

Played a lot of Wuthering Waves since it launched. It's a tricky one because it has a lot of flaws and weaknesses, but at the same time the core is actually really solid.

The combat feels amazing, and that really is the big selling point here. Parries and perfect dodges feel great, the bosses have fun movesets and the pace is fast and fluid with lots of tech like animation cancelling and character swapping. The character gameplay design is also excellent, with each character having a unique feel and playstyle, and a unique way of building and using the Forte gauge.

I wish the main story wasn't complete garbage, but hey ho. At least there is a skip button. Even the good characters (like Aalto and Encore) feel out of place and too goofy in a supposedly post-apocalyptic setting. Funny enough some unvoiced side quests have been better than the main story by a long shot (I'm thinking of Eternal Concert, for example).

Also the localisation is insultingly bad and it definitely seems like Kuro actually disregards the importance of non-chinese regions to the point of not employing a single foreign language speaker even to their localisation team. Even their announcements are worse translations than Google translate, and it's the same for all languages. You'd think they'd at least care about the JP translation. Puzzling and almost offensive.

Still, the game is mechanically satisfying enough to have me hooked for now. And it's free (and very F2P friendly at the moment).

I picked up Star Wars Rogue Squadron and it has been great fun and very nostalgic to play on the Steam Deck. I was looking for a modern alternative and picked up Everspace, which I like, but am finding it incredibly difficult to get good at so far.

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door quite a lot. Also getting back into Minecraft and Euro Truck SImulator 2. And of course, Cassette Beasts.

Tomb Raider: Anniversary. The classic games are so much better than new ones.

A lot more World of Warcraft Remix mode for me.

Apart from my "main", a druid, I've now also leveled a priest and warrior to 70. I didn't enjoy playing the priest at all, and just spent all the event currency once I hit max level and won't touch that character again. The warrior was actually fine, and I'm still playing a bit here and there at max level. On my druid I'm still clearing all the raids once per day, it's still generally fun, but I've switched to tanking for a change of pace.

Picked up Rogue Trader in the WH40K "Skulls" sale, so been playing that.