[Meta] Did we drop the "what are you playing" monthly thread? Also, mods haven't been active for a while, should someone take over?

Hey, mod here. Guilty as charged, I honestly haven’t played much in months so it’s been hard to come up with good posts. I do read everyone else’s posts though, but not every day. I’ll try to comment more frequently and check in more often too.

As for the monthly games thread, that’s been the other mod, I’ve been patiently waiting for a new post for a while but haven’t seen one from him. I might take over that duty if the most recent post hits 3 months without update.

If there’s anything you’d like from this sub I’d love to hear it!

I really liked the "Essential Games List" on Reddit, maybe we could do something similar? Or maybe best recently patient games? (games that are 1-2 years old)

Basically, I come here for game recommendations, so I'd really like a rotating rec list. Once/year would be plenty for me, since I just throw them on a wishlist and pick them up when I need games to play.
- That’s a great idea. I’m definitely going to look into doing that essential games list.
  
  As for the recently patient games, I just made a post about that last night! It seems to be well received.
Hello,

Good to see you are still around!

theyre just being extra patient

I've recently become addicted to realm of the mad god

Picked up MW5 Mercenaries the other day and liked it so much I picked up all thr DLCs for it too. Not sure that was the best move as a few early mechs have some annoyingly powerful equipment

Shouldn't we just keep waiting patiently?

This is a trial of our faith. Our patience will truly be tested.
I think we should create an "Impatient Gamers" community and send OP to that one (evil emoji).

Never noticed until you asked, but yeah, I don't think I've seen such a thread in ages.

I put Factorio on hold for now, as I'm waiting for the DLC. In the meantime I'm playing Project Zomboid with a few friends.

Mind selling me on the dlc? Never played factorio but I am susceptible to automation games. Currently on minecraft create mod and shapez.
- Automation games and never played Factorio???
  Screw the DLC (for now), you need to get started with Factorio ASAP. I started with Factorio in 2017 after I mentioned to a coworker that I liked Minecraft with mods that allowed for automation such as Industrialcraft, Buildcraft, and Immersive Engineering. I have played some Create, but when I did I found that it wasn't mature enough as a mod.
  
  The DLC is mostly aimed towards end-game stuff. Whereas the base game is completed once your factory has launched a rocket with a satellite on board, the DLC picks up from there, allowing you to build automated space platforms, visit other planets each with their distinct differences.

This is probably one of the more active communities I'm in, actually. Lemmy's just not that big, I guess? And that's fine with me. I don't need an endless scroll of posts daily. I catch up on my subscribed pages within 20 minutes each day. But if someone wants to encourage more conversation I'm all for it.

As for what I'm playing this month, I just got a used Steam Deck and that's dramatically opened up opportunities for me to play through my PC games that I haven't gotten around to. Started Psychonauts 2 and I'm pretty impressed with how little Double Fine had to change since 2005. It feels like 20 years just never happened and it's so far a very natural progression of the first game. Having a great time with it.

Coming into Psychonauts 2 straight off the first one was honestly great. The story beats didn't miss a single hitch, the reintroduction of Raz's powers was perfect, and I loved the new characters.
- I re-played the first a few years back and it's one of the very few games I've 100%'d. Despite the years long gap since my last time playing, it still felt like I just jumped back into the world. So far I'm liking the new characters, but I do miss the original cast of camp kids.
  
  I will say the constant references to the in-between VR exclusive game is frustrating. That feels like a crucial bit of story being dangled over my head that I know I'm never going to see because a VR headset is just not in the cards for me for at least the next few years. Maybe I just need to watch a Let's Play.
Psychonauts 2 is amazing. I had a really good time playing it and my kids were completely engrossed in it by my side.

Still playing Skyrim. Can't seem to put it down.

I've modded it a bit and started over. I'm picking up more hidden details that I missed the first time, and I'm abusing some game mechanics to be all powerful. Muhahah!

Hey, if you're into checking items off a list, Legacy of the Dragonborn might squeeze some more hours out of skyrim for you. It's about creating a museum with everything in the game. You have to get pretty much everything, from a leather armor set to daedric weaponry, and store it in the museum. You can still keep the cool items by making replicas for the museum instead(and you can always take the item back from the museum also). It's been a while since I played so maybe some things have changed in newer versions, but after finishing that mod I pretty much put down skyrim - nothing else to do at that point (other than mods with new quests, or skill/perk overhauls)
- Thank you, I'll check it out.

I'm hooked on Marvel's Midnight Suns right now. It's a little bit XCOM, a little bit Persona, and some deckbuilding on top. Some exploration and light puzzles in the hub area between missions if you like, mostly for the friendship/lore/cosmetic stuff. Got it free from Epic last month, but I'd say it's at least worth $25 or so if you find a sale.

Edit: Also Nico Minoru is a possible party member, and I fucking love Runaways.

I'm nearing the end if my Marvel Suns phase... picked it up on sale on the PS5 a few months back. Played through twice... am hanging on to that last little bit of the playthrough.

I still snagged the Epic one immediately. Downside is that if I ever get back to beat the PC version, I'll probably have to grab the DLCs... not so much for the missions and characters as for Morbius' lab, which allows you to bump up your stats and make your characters even more OP and take on harder difficulties.
I enjoyed the XCOM-like parts, but couldn't stand the running around, material gathering stuff. Just let me be super heroes non-stop battling bad guys, with a little bit of room between fights for upgrades. I don't want to go fishing with Blade.
- Gathering materials does suck, yeah. Rarely an activity I enjoy in any game.
  
  I can respect the opinion of wanting to skip the social parts, that's definitely not for everyone.
  
  Some of them I really like though, like Nico's always doing these side-eyed references to movies without actually naming them (Pulp Fiction, The Room, etc.)

Day of Defeat Source for an hour or so each night. I rock a lemon for a computer but it can run DoD and I still get kicks out of it.

Are there still servers/players for DoD?
- I don't know about DoD but DoD Source has servers. For folks down under the ANZAC server starts to get going at about 6pm AEST each night with friendly admins to help shoo the dickheads away.

I'm back into Shattered Pixel Dungeon. It's whipping my ass.

I've played off and on for years and don't think I've ever made it past level 20. I have no idea why I'm so terrible

To me it feels like a big drop in activity on Lemmy over the past 6 months? So the weekly and monthly post are being forgotten and some are letting standards slip.

The HDD in my Xbox One S was starting to die so I decided to swap it for an SSD. Surprisingly easy to do with just a torx screwdriver and a spudger. So now I'm starting Red Dead Redemption again as I got so close to completion but didn't quite finish the story.

To me it feels like a big drop in activity on Lemmy over the past 6 months? So the weekly and monthly post are being forgotten and some are letting standards slip.

Number of active users is more or less stable, but it definitely feels like some people left (at least temporarily) indeed.

Maybe people are just taking vacation.

Well I caved and started a new Minecraft world, but I'm not sure I like my seed. Playing the original Moving Out with my kindergartner and he's surprising good at it.

Thanks for the Moving Out tip! I'm always looking for couch co-op stuff to play with my daughter, and this looks right up our alley.
- It's on crazy sale on the Nintendo e-store right now, maybe other platforms, too.

Yeah, I miss those threads cause I don‘t have enough to say about the games I play to fill out a whole post. And I don‘t want to follow stabdards or make a draft or spend more than 5 minutes really to casually talk about games, and if I make a whole ass post I feel pressured to deliver.

Having someone active be moderating would obviously be good.

As for what I‘ve been playing… Wuthering Waves and Genshin Impact for a couple minutes a day, then Marsupilami and Balatro on my own, and Trine 5 with a friend. I also started and had a look into a lot of other games, but nothing stuck with me as much.

I finished Mario 3D World on Switch and went on to have a look at Bowser‘s Fury and oh my sweet Jesus, it‘s so good. The music! Sadly it‘s just 30 fps, which is the only bad thing I have to say about it. 3D World was fine but the 2D/3D mix didn‘t feel right.

Faster Than Light. It's so addictive and such a nice chill game

One of the few games I always come back to

Started a Professor Oaks Challenge in Red. I'm still not out of the grind in Viridian Forest. So much grinding.

For those who don't know, the challenge is to catch, and evolve, every possible pokemon line before each gym leader. Doing this in an OG game is pretty painful, and slow at the start.

Kinda have Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous burning in the back of my mind, though. That new DLC. Kinda wanna roll up a Bladebound Magus. Kinda getting tired of running in a straight line repeatedly.

Does that include buying magickarp for extra pain? Hopefully you are using an emulator so it at least loves faster.
- Yeah, I'm planning on pretty much grabbing one of the high levels I'll have and just switch training Magi on the trainers in Mt. Moon before doing the Cerulean Catch-and-Grind, and having to add Abra into the mix for a bit.
  
  Oh yeah, emulator with FF on with PKHex at my side to make some things a bit more gentle, but manually grinding, catching, and including Trades since I can just fake it and have a "legal" one.

Looks like it's on you now.

Finishing up AC: Brotherhood and looking for some cool indies. I've got a few in my library, but I'm open to trying something new.

I finally played elden ring. I got pretty bored after 10 hours. Is it just learning the precise movements of the enemies over and over and over again until you can fight all the enemies?

The design is cool and the creatures are amazing and it's fun, but I don't like how restrictive movement is in a game that demands of movement.

I'm playing inside now and that is fun as all hell. I loved little nightmares and the sequel, so this is a pretty familiar fun game.

My kids discovered stardew valley now I'm hooked again. Sweet, fun, addictive gameplay

Same, started playing with a friend and now I'm back on the Stardew grind in singleplayer too. Doing a challenge run where I try to complete the community center without ever buying from Pierre (except for the backpack upgrades) or Joja, and without ever going in the mines. The real blocker on this is quartz. My only route to obtain it is fiddling in peoples' trash and it is a rare drop.
- No mines is going to be a real challenge alright. So7nds fun

Playing Disco Elysium for the first time and it's really good. Reminds me a lot of Planescape: Torment. Really a breath of fresh air after Fallout 4.

Fallout 4 had fun gameplay, but my god did the writing suck. There were a few good bits, but overall it was garbage. The 4-options-only dialogue system blew anyway, but the options were always "Yes", "No", "Meh/Sarcastic Yes", and "Tell me more!" It was terrible.

At least in Skyrim you were a nobody that everyone wanted a piece of, you lack of internal motivation was understandable. The conflicts were between the groups were rooted in a history you woke up in the middle of. There were literally chaos gods (daedra) fucking shit up. For the love of god Bethesda, please just make the next Fallout game an actual RPG.

Oh, and I also need to circle back around to Dave the Diver now that the Godzilla DLC is out.

Playing DayZ on a PvE server with my FIL. It's very comfy.

I didn't know DayZ had PvE servers. I like to watch DayZ streamers sometimes, but I could never play it PvP. That kind of thing is too stressful for me. I might have to check out PvE.
- It's fun times. Everybody helps each other out, there's trading, events etc.

Spending an unhealthy amount of time in Dicey Dungeons currently.

I'm starting XCOM for the first time and it's pretty fun so far, pretty brutal at times though.

It's lots of fun, I keep coming back to those games even years later.
The key to XCOM is never to sprint (run with both halves of your action meter) if you can avoid it. Move with half the action, the fire or overwatch.

The news of KSP 2's death has got me playing KSP [1] for the first time in years. It's still abyssmally optimised, but nonetheless fun as ever!

Not that much when the weather is great motorcycle riding weather, but I've just gotten to level 16 in Palworld and beat the first 3 boss fights.

Started playing Rain World. I'm getting huge ICO vibes.

I guess someone else could make a monthly or weekly thread until we see what happens. I generally don't have a lot to say, so I just lurk most of the time. So it's nice to have posts like that to have an excuse to contribute to the conversation!

I decided to start playing The Sims 3 again over the weekend, and I played Morrowind for a few hours as well. Not sure which one will win out for my attention for the next while, I guess we'll see!

I’ve got 50% completion on Marvel’s Spider-Man. The swinging mechanic and combat are great and never wear out their welcome. What gets old is the unending cycle of finishing two missions then running into someone who starts yet another collect-athon with, “Help me find my lost pigeons strewn about the city,” or “Fight five groups of enemies in each New York neighborhood”.

Forza Horizon 5. Just got all I could for the Retrowave event. Couldn't get the DeLorean or the F50, but I do have an extra F40 now and the GMC Syclone. Kinda missed some of the events due to working on other things.

Also the Hyundai N Vision 74 is a meh EV. No way to gear it for more top speed, and the Porsche Taycan is way better.

I just hope they haven't abandoned it completely. But it would be nice to hear from the mods about the issue you raised. Would be a pity to lose such an active community.

As for games, I started Earthbound, finally

Like the old super nintendo rpg featuring Ness? Gosh why the rush? Seriously tho that's a neat one. I played not many years ago for the first time. It's wild seeing so much of what I love in games so old. Even if we owned a super Nintendo back when and I logged absurd hours....

Super Mario RPG was major for me, I got it because it said Mario. Hated it for the first few nights, loved it for years. Equally realized rpg was a genre of games.
The most active one hasn't been around for a month, so I'm a bit worried they might be gone.

But that's not an issue per se, someone else can take over

I'm playing Blacktail, it came out last year and went under the radar but it's really good. It's based on classic fairy tales before they were disneyfied.

Finally got around to playing Oxenfree II after finishing Dave The Diver. Slow progress as I'm getting distracted left and right and center by other games, but I like how they kept the semi-creepy atmosphere from Oxenfree. Really neat presentation, and I love the voice actress for Riley, she did great work.

Just wish the game had more characters than me and my sidekick, atl east so far.

I'm playing "curse of the dead gods" right now. I wanted to scratch that hades itch while hades 2 is cooking. Pretty good, different, more random approach to the weapons system.

and a very invasive mechanic around lighting the rooms with a torch and immobile fireplaces. By default you get hit harder in the dark but there are also modifiers to give you benefits in the dark to change up the tradeoffs

I'm not sure I like it as much as Hades it's a bit clunky but I'd recommend getting it in a sale for sure

I've been playing QuakeWorld for a few months, and I started playing EverQuest on Project Quarm. Been kinda wild playing EQ to see how the MMO genre has evolved over time. Only level like 8 or 9, but it's been fun.

I've been having trouble focusing on a game and finishing it, but I've recently played God of War (2018) which was quite disappointing, and last week I've played Trails in the Sky which I enjoyed, except for

the incest, which was a bit weird

I've also been playing the original FFVII .

I've been playing Metroid Prime 3 and largely enjoying it. The most recent boss fight was incredibly fun and refreshing, easily the best in the game and high in the rankings for best boss fight period.

I was playing AC Valhalla and Jedi Survivor, but then my game pass expired and I didn't like the games enough to renew it. So now I'm back to Red Dead Redemption 2.

I'm playing thronefall.

Difficult but super fun. Only made it past level 3. A bit too preoccupied to play further.

Also playing on a steam deck!

Thief, Power Wash Simulator, Dead Cells, South Park: The Stick of Truth, Car Mechanic Simulator 2021.

I recently finished Mass Effect Legendary, a very nice experience. I’m now starting Andromeda and so far I’m enjoying it a lot. The game is gorgeous! Its flaws may start showing later, but for now it’s great - and it’s not like the other ME games don’t have flaws.

Got roped back into Tarkov because of the PvE mode. (I got the EoD edition on sale a while ago)