Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of September 29th

Chloyster [she/her]@beehaw.orgmod to Gaming@beehaw.org – 32 points –

Whatcha all playing?

I've got a few on my list this week.

Ufo 50 continues to be one of my favorite purchases in a long time. It's the best collection of games since the orange box imo.

The new Zelda has also been stellar. The frame rate issues are certainly unfortunate, and it may be worth it for some to wait on a more powerful switch 2 to play this title, but I highly recommend checking it out at some point. The game is really creative and the Hyrule you get to explore is super fun imo.

I want to get back to the plucky squire, but these games have kept me busy unfortunately

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Started Horizon Zero Dawn. I usually don't like open world games, but this one has an interesting setting and the gameplay seems fun, so I'm giving it a try.

Finally finished Trails of Cold Steel which was meh. It felt needlessly padded (it could have been shortened to like 30 hours instead of 60 IMO) and there were too many uninteresting characters (I actually can't think of an interesting one). Hopefully the following games are better, as now the setting should be more interesting.

Lots of Skyrim!
Also this game for Playdate called Spilled Mushrooms, I’d been waiting for it to come out a while. It’s a nice blend of simple card game and puzzle, each round only takes a few minutes. The goal is to pick animals to help collect your mushrooms from different areas, animals have different abilities and each biome can have modifiers. It’s pretty much endlessly replayable and very satisfying once you get into a groove! I’m glad it’s not on more platforms because I’d lose so much more time to it

I need to get UFO 50! It looks like so much fun

I have been playing Evoland Legendary Edition. The 2 games bundled are surprisingly dissimilar, with the first being almost a parody game of extremely short length, and the second being a fairly fleshed-out, 20 hour RPG-lite, with a story of real stakes (highly inspired by Chrono Trigger).

Very worth it if picked up on sale, just be prepared for the tone-whiplash between games.

I really enjoyed the first game years ago, but never really got into the sequel the few times I tried, although I never disliked it.

Got back into Yooka Laylee after a fairly long hiatus. Still on the first 2 levels because of the high amount of exploration and things to do, so I'm not far at all, but definitely having fun.

I tried darkwood this weekend, and it's left me torn. I really enjoy certain aspects about it, but I feel like the pacing is weird.

I finished Still wakes the deep the other day and I thought it was ok. It was an interesting environment to explore, but I didn't think it was all too scary.

I'm off to find a different horror game to play now.

What's up with Darkwood's popularity recently? I know Pyrocynical made a video about a week ago, but I started it before that, because of a friend recommended it to me like a month ago. And I think I saw it mentioned elsewhere somehere inbetween too.

I generally don't play horror games, so Darkwood scares me enough that I only play for maybe half an hour during daytime. Might take a month to get through.

My guess is that people are getting into the Halloween Spooky vibes already! But otherwise, I don't know. Darkwood was free on Xbox games with gold a long time ago, and I snagged it then, but I just never got around to it until now

Been playing lots of The Finals Lately, and recently jumped back into Titanfall 2. Really enjoying the creative gameplay of the Finals, and Titanfall is just so damn good.

I should replay Titanfall 2, that story is so much fun

I just recently finished the campaign. It was soo good. Definitely one of the goats.

Is titanfall 2's multiplayer still active?

Yeah always around 2k online. There was a jump to 5k lately because it was super on sale on steam. I can usually always find a match (anecdotally for me on steam anyways)

Finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution last week, and I while i enjoyed it I didn't want to jump into Mankind Divided right away. It was a fine game but I felt like going back for more straight away might make me burn out.

Decided instead to finally get through Metro: Last Light. I really enjoyed 2033, but when I started LL right after I just couldn't get into it. This time it's going better and I'm having a good time playing it - very immersive on Ranger Hardcore. I still prefer the first game so far though, I think. Still not thrilled about the way checkpoint saving interacts with the moral points system (you sometimes have to sit for minutes on end rewatching the same conversation), but it's not enough to completely sour me on it. Looking forward to eventually getting to Exodus.

Also playing some Deadlock games, though despite loving the game I'm already noticing it's not always great for my mood.

Making my way through Like a dragon: Infinite wealth Loving it so far, and think this might actually be the first Yakuza/LAD game I finish, always got distracted in the past.

I finished Doom II and some levels were an absolute pain. I gotta say though, this re-release (Doom + Doom II) is a bit disappointing. There are a bunch of glitches, although pretty minor, that are just annoying. The most frustrating one for me was, when you have the Pistol Start option activated (to automatically start all levels with just the Pistol), the Backpack is bugged and doesn't give double ammo capacity. Once you die and restart the level it's fixed, until the next level. I don't know if it ever made the difference with me dying or not, but it just sucks.

Today I started Final Doom, specifically TNT:Evilution, which I've never played before. Just like before I'm trying UV, Pistol Start, no mid-level saves, but depending on how it goes I might start using saves. I'll probably try a different source port though, since this KEX engine port isn't the best.

I also played through Horizon Forbidden West: The Burning Shores DLC, although only the main quests and almost nothing else. It was kinda meh. The story was fine, but the final boss fight was complete garbage. The romance part also felt really rushed, especially since I went through everything over just two days/seven hours in total.

Then, I'm also kinda in-between games right now, since I'm waiting for the Diablo 4 expansion release in a bit over a week. There are a bunch of games I want to play, but probably won't finish in time, so they have to wait. I tried Ace Combat 7, played through the first mission, but it didn't really grab me (KB+M is definitely more playable than the Steam forums made it seem). I'll probably play through one of the dozens of metroidvanias I bought, but never played.

The new Kex port is great for it's accessibility for new players not used to the Doom sourceports scene, but I guess there's still a few kinks to solve. I still end up preferring to play on my other sourceports (Woof! Is my favorite) but I gotta get back to it to actually finish Legacy of Rust later. At least this new port is MUCH better on the console versions now, if only the Switch version had proper access to the player uploaded addons...

In the meantime Ive been going through Freedoom 2, and I hear people are adapting the assets of the new mapping format into an open sourced version. Looking forward to that.

True, how easy it is to get into the games with this port, along with the mod browser, definitely outweighs the few minor issues.

I've actually downloaded Woof myself for my Final Doom playthrough. It takes a few minutes to read up on how to create a batch file to make launching the game more user friendly, but once you're in, it's has everything you'd want.

There's even launchers that do the work of the batch files for you! I like using Doom Explorer or Doom Runner for that. You set it up with your ports, point it at your wads folder and then you can save preset combinations of mods, it's so practical.

Good to know. If I get more into Doom an non-official stuff, I might look at those, but for now the batch file will do.

Working on a last hurrah for Diablo 4: Season 5, just finishing up max leveling glyphs for my Scorcerer before I completely set it aside for next season.

Right when I was getting bored playing Sims 3 in my current save, my eldest... disappears. I mean, I saw her die, the Grim Reaper showed up and got her, but that means nothing to this buggy mess of a game. She left no tombstone or anything. So, my current save now is now at four generations, due to an adoption. But, I'm at a point where I want to play other stuff, so this game's going back on the shelf for a while until I need another reset.

Finished Amnesia: The Bunker and managed to get a couple achievements out of it. I might do some serious achievement hunting, but I also kind of want to play a new game, so we'll see how this week goes.

I made the mistake of starting Frostpunk (1) since I saw that 2 released. It's an incredibly well-made game. The art style is beautiful, the game is intense, there is a lot of emotion, and it does its one thing just so well. Unlike a lot of modern games these days, Frostpunk wants you to lose, which is fitting for its setting. It sees that you're behind, then kicks you in the shins for good measure rather than lending a helping hand. I've lost so many hours of my time to this game in the past week.

I've read that Frostpunk 2 is a completely different game. That one might be next on my list if I get to it before Factorio updates and the expansion for it comes out.

I'm about halfway through FP1 (I have the DLC). I want to go back and finish it, but like you said, it just kicks the shit out of you. It's legitimately stressful for me to play it, so I've kinda been like "Ehhh...do I really wanna play right now?"

But I am hoping to eventually complete it. Because FP2 does look interesting.

This is so strange to hear. I loved Frostpunk, but found it to be the very opposite: Far too easy and forgiving, which made the finale in particular, as the music swells up dramatically and the storm reaches its peak, feel kind of anticlimactic, because everyone was well-fed and warm(ish) in my settlement on my first attempt of playing it. Not one person froze or starved to death, no kids were sent into the mines and we most certainly didn't serve a 19th century spin on Soylent Green.

I know this sounds like I'm bragging, but I think the reason why this game felt so trivially easy to me is that I grew up with far more complex, challenging and punishing city builders, like Caesar 3, Pharaoh, The Settlers 2, 3 and 4, Anno 1602 and 1503, etc. I must have played many hundreds of hours of Caesar 3 alone, watching city after city succumb to fires, pestilence, barbarians and unrest until I figured out how to deal with these issues. There are so many more variables and difficult decisions in these games compared to Frostpunk, despite their idyllic presentation. Frostpunk's core city building mechanics suffer from the very idea the narrative and the few scripted decisions aim to avoid: Pretty much every problem the player has to face when building the city has an ideal and obvious solution (if you know your city builders). It's more of a puzzle game than an actual city builder. A very pretty and atmospheric one, which is why I enjoyed the brief campaign, but still.

I hope this encourages you to pick it up again. It may seem difficult at first glance, but once you figure it out, you can cruise your way through it with little effort and spend most of your time looking at the pretty graphics, waiting for the next scripted event.

For what it's worth, I feel the same way about normal settings for FP1 in that it's pretty easy. Switching to extreme though, it felt as though I needed to play perfectly to finish a scenario. To me, I think it comes down to most of the difficulty being frontloaded. A solid start sets you up for the rest of the game, while a rough start can ruin a run as the game continues to kick you down with every temp drop, event, etc.

So I've played a fair amount of the Settler games, as well as the more recent Anno entries: 2070, 2205, and 1800. I find those games super micromanage-y, especially the Anno games. But not stressful. Like in Anno, you can just kinda keep things on autopilot, not doing very much, and things will be OK (though the AIs might start getting stronger).

Anyway, that's a good take that Frostpunk is more of a puzzle game. I hadn't considered that. If that's the case, that might explain some of my, aversion. Because that parallels somewhat an experience I had with another game: Wargroove. I was looking at Wargroove as a TRPG/SRPG (akin to Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy Tactics), where I have wide latitude to execute my own strategies. So in Wargroove, I kept trying to do my own thing, but kept losing the level. It took me awhile to realize the game wanted me to complete the level its way, not my way. And that's when I realized it was more of a puzzle game and less a strategy game. Which is weird, because I played Advance Wars as a kid. Though maybe it's because I was a kid I didn't realize it was a puzzle game at the time.

It might be with Frostpunk that I'm doing something similar. Expecting a colony manager, a la Banished, but not seeing the puzzle game aspect. I'm making those narrative decisions based on nothing logical. Rather emotional: "Oh these kids are gonna starve! I better do this instead of helping the workers!"

Thanks for this; this was helpful, for real!

Darkwood and Disco Elysium, as games recommended by friends. Darkwood scares the crap out of me, maybe because I'm more alert to sounds in general. Disco Elysium is very interesting, but a tad slow, and not as engaging as other games.

Most of ny playtime now is Dark Souls 3. I only played 1 and 2 before, and this is about what I expected, more, slightly better and different Dark Souls. I'll probably replay it more than DS 2, but that depends, because I might prefer 2's less linear progression.

Also, still grinding supports I want to see (which is a lot) in Fire Emblem Revelations on bus rides.

Elden Ring - Shadow of the Erdtree

I'm 160 hours in, completed the base game, and now am on what I believe to be the final boss of the DLC. I got to phase 2 on the first try, only to hit a brick wall lol.

The DLC is a lot bigger than I was expecting, and some of the bosses are the most difficult I've faced. The highlight for me has been Cerulean Coast and ::: spoiler spoiler Putrescent Knight - such a pain in the ass, but looks extremely cool while doing it. :::

Looking forward to NG+ and beyond as I work towards the 100% achievement - speaking of which, it's a little disappointing how little is required to get it compared to DS1/2/3, especially since ER is so much bigger of a game. I really enjoyed hunting down all the rings for DS3 and felt they could have had a talisman achievement to match in ER.

My favourite moment of the past week was when I summoned two players for a certain boss (another phase 2 kicking my ass), but we got invaded by "Jesus" who just kinda lore-walked around and gestured, and eventually we followed along. Nobody got hurt, and they even gave some gestures of encouragement for us to go beat the boss.

Ilamentia

Very weird indie puzzle/platformer. It feels like a fever dream. You have a FPS view and (some of the time) a set of hands that shoot projectiles (reminds me of Gauntlets of the Necromancer from Heretic), except they don't necessarily do damage, they interact with the puzzles in each world.

There are some abstract hints for each level, but I find myself really having to think about what's in front of me to solve the puzzles (in a good way). I noticed a negative review complaining about the game mechanics not being consistent, but I think that is completely intentional and serves the overall feel of the game nicely. It's not meant to be obvious or easy, you have to figure it out. I don't think this is a game for everyone, but I am enjoying it for what it is. Apparently there are 96 levels so I'm more than getting my money's worth.

Bleak Sword DX

Action/roguelike/soulslike? Each world is broken into about 10 levels + boss fights, and from what I can tell there are about 10 worlds. I'm enjoying the feel of the gameplay a lot - blocking and dodging are satisfying like a souls game. The difficulty is starting to ramp up as I work to finish world 3. Surprised I hadn't heard of this sooner. Probably a good one for Hollow Knight fans, but there isn't exploration. It's bite-sized action and it's done well imo.

Noita

What a game. Alchemy, wand-building, every single pixel is trying to kill you. Especially the water which is also on fire. It's amazing and highly addictive. I have no idea how large the world actually is yet, since I've been busy discovering new ways to blow myself up. Pretty much every run I see something new. This will easily get 100+ hours out of me.

The Forever Winter. Released in early access due to popular demand. It's rough, divisive, and difficult as hell. It's also incredibly grim and hauntingly beautiful. It's a PvE-only, stealth-based, extraction (non-)shooter where you scavenge resources to survive in the shadow of a military-industrial complex run absolutely amok. You are incredibly underpowered, outnumbered and outgunned, to the point where if you need to start shooting, you're probably already dead. Gameplay is tense, frightening, and really drives home the overwhelming feeling of being a small fish in a really fucking big pond. It's the opposite of a power fantasy and I'm really glad someone is doing something that different.

I'm not sure I'd recommend it in the state it's in, if at all, but it's definitely making me feel some kind of way. I don't normally enjoy extraction shooters, but I find myself coming back to this one. Not that it's really a shooter. Maybe that's what's doing it for me. The most divisive part is the water mechanic. It's a key resource for your settlement; If you run out of water you lose all your stuff. But, it drains in real time not game time so it's kind of a big commitment at the moment. Personally I understand both sides of the argument and I haven't decided where I fall yet. It's definitely worked on me because I find myself thinking about the game when I'm not playing, but if I end up taking a break I'm not sure I'll have the commitment to build back up from scratch again.

::: spoiler screenshots

:::

Finished Limbo after it was sitting in my library for years and it was really emjoyable. I did not expect to like it as much as I did but the puzzles were all completely doable (

::: spoiler Tap for spoiler except that one with the minecart and the electric rail grr) :::

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Also played through Mouthwashing and was pleasantly disturbed. The lasst 20 minutes get a bit long in the teeth but overall a great experience.

Let me try this

I have been playing City of Heroes, which is a superhero MMO and I'm surprised how much I dig it despite multiplayer games not being my thing. PVE is much more comfortable for me and the game let's you make any kind of hero you want, and u can make ur own battle cry as well which is funny.

Also it has one of the best gender options in gaming: Male, Female or Huge. Badass

Another one I'm playing rn is Alex Kidd in Miracle World DX, this is a remaster of the old Alex Kidd in Miracle World game which I never played but I'm digging this remaster as well. The new graphics and art is gorgeous and the ability to switch seamlessly from new to old graphics is spectacular. I have always loved old 2D side-scroller even though they are always more challenging than modern games, I like having to fight through something after multiple tries. I was having trouble with the game and after reaching one of the later levels of the game, my save file glitched and reset everything(cloud sync issue probably, I need to turn that off) which almost made me quit the game but I had learned so much so I gave it another try and was surprised that I got to where I was in an hour and beat the boss I was on before in first time. Very very satisfying

There are some other games I'm playing rn but I don't wanna write too long so here are just their names: CLeM (amazing, intriguing puzzle game), Skies of Arcadia (emulated through Flycast with RetroArch, has achievements even!) and Peggle which I'm trying to 100% even after 30 hours haha

Late to the party, but I finally picked up Helldivers 2. My friends have had it since it came out, but I was being the "hipster gamer" and didn't get the popular game. Plus, our group has a tendency to do "flavor of the week"/FOMO gaming, where 1 or 2 people buy a new game, convince/guilt trip others into buying the game, we all spend $30-50 on it, play it for like 2 days, then never touch it again. So I was hesitant to get it, lest I get burned again (a la Starfield). Lastly, I'm also not a huge shooter player.

But I wanted to played with the boys, and they were playing it again recently, so I picked it up. And I'm glad I did. Because it's fun. Stupid fun even. Which is right up our alley. Already put 20hrs in over the last week.

The mechanics are simple. The missions are straightforward. And I like that it's a pickup/putdown game. Play a 20-40min round, then come back later or tomorrow. It's not like we're playing hours on end, which is great. We'll play a match or two, then maybe do another before we start signing-off for the night.

Currently? Potionomics. I just wanted something that I can finish quickly, because of the upcoming release of House of Light, but now I am still not done with my play-through, so I kinda cannot start House of Light just yet.

But in a couple of days, as soon as I am done with Potionomics?

House of Light. And that for quite some time, I expect.