Hey y’all, what have you been playing!
Well for me I have been on a big helldivers 2 kick lol. I got into it kinda slowly but am fully hooked now and spent most of the week playing it 🫡
Still having fun playing Cyberpunk 2077. Mostly I’m just driving around Night City doing side gigs and not really doing the main story, ha ha!
Cyberpunk is absolutely great now, I’m currently on my 2nd playthrough. This time with mods.
Bought Outer Wilds yesterday and started playing it with the VR and voice acting mod. Haven’t gotten far yet but seems very interesting so far and the VR mod is so good that it feels like a native VR game.
I bought it but haven’t played it yet, I really need to overcome my laziness and do it 😅
I finally tried out Hardspace Shipbreaker. I’ve played a few hours and just finished the reactor tutorial. So far it’s that diamond in the rough I’m always looking for: an engaging but chill gameplay loop and enticing progression. Something I can turn on to relax and zone out with noncommitally, but that isn’t just an objective-less sandbox ala No Man’s Sky.
If anyone has recommendations for other games that fit the bill please let me know!
Nothing quite like Hardspace: Shipbreaker, but farming games/life sims often fill this niche for me. The classic one to recommend is Stardew Valley, I also really like Graveyard Keeper, Slime Rancher and Fantasy Life (3ds, works well on emulators).
ARPGs (Diablo style, so kill stuff to get loot to get your numbers up to kill bigger stuff) can be nice zone out games too, I recommend Grim Dawn (going to get an expansion soon, quite complex), recently released Last Epoch (very enjoyable, but might want to hold off for a while if you want to play online - the servers are a mess right now), and Chronicon (most casual of these three, very cheap, colorful explosions across the screens).
Other games I’ve tagged as “Space Maintenance” : Planet Crafter (pretty chill number go up/building kind of game where you’re slowly making a planet livable), Deep Sixed (short roguelike, try to keep a ship together enough to get through the game, very hectic and no progression between runs so may not be what you’re looking for), Delta V Rings of Saturn (top down space mining).
Thanks! I looked at Graveyard Keeper a while back, might give it a go.
I’m going through some more of The Outer Worlds. Still really enjoying it. It’s got a good pace to it.
Palworld is still my second screen game for podcasts and such. It needs some tweaking in the progression, but I’m at the point now where I can expand to additional bases.
I picked up Penny’s Big Breakaway. It feels great to play. The boss fights are really interesting. This could and should have been one of the best platformers I’ve ever played, and maybe it still is, but some bugs and jank occasionally get in the way. If you’re swinging from your yo-yo and hit a wall, you’re supposed to do a small climbing animation, but it doesn’t always work. Sometimes when riding your yo-yo, you’ll kind of just skip and jump off with poor feedback for why. Sometimes you get stuck in a wall. The design for air dashing by pressing the button twice can often get eaten by other inputs, and that doesn’t feel great. The bugs and jank are not the most prevalent part of the experience, but they happen enough to bring down my opinion of the game a peg or two. I’d highly recommend this game, but maybe wait a few months for a couple of patches.
My friends and I beat the main campaign of Quake II in co-op. It’s much faster in co-op and with the compass feature than they intended, but I wouldn’t have it any other way. Next we’ll move on to the expansions.
Still labbing some stuff in Skullgirls for my Combo Breaker grind. It’s painful going through replays for my losses, but it’s necessary, and I took good notes.
I had been dipping my toes into the waters of loot games with Titan Quest, and I think I’m at the point now where I can say I see the appeal with the genre and I’ll stick with it. For this game in particular, I do wish the bosses were more involved, because they don’t really hit a crescendo that a boss fight should have. Due to what defensive options the game gives you and doesn’t give you, they often just end up being running away from the guy in a circle until you can land some hits. Still, it’s fun. After this game, I might check out the sequel, Grim Dawn, or V Rising.
So did you end up finishing Hellblade? What did you think of it?
I did finish it. Liked it, really enjoyed the presentation. There was a bit of abstract in the ending, which isn’t really my bag, but I’m on board for the sequel.
Did you end up playing around anything further with the combat and the combos? I ended up really enjoying fighting in the game, I just wish the bosses were a little more refined maybe. The feeling of being in sync with the voices and dodging instinctively when they yell a warning is really cool, and unlike any other game I’ve played.
The ending didn’t click for me immediately either, but I ended up replaying it and giving it some more thought and I think I get what they’re going for. Really looking forward to the sequel.
And sorry again that I spoiled that trial! I hope you enjoyed it anyway, it’s still my favourite part I think.
No worries. I was not really able to deduce any more depth out of the combat, really. There were some defensive options that seem to always cancel into offense options to feel snappier, but I think it was really a matter of what the game bothered to teach me and what I needed to do in order to make it through the game. If they want to make it a priority on the sequel, I trust them to know how to do that.
Yeah, the combat has some depth to it but it’s never really explained nor needed. I guess the only truly useful one is the melee button pommel smash after a parry which stuns the enemy for like 15 seconds, very useful against the horde fights. I liked playing around with it and the animations and combos are satisfying, but that’s about it.
They had enough of a foundation there though that I’m hopeful for the sequel.
I’m trying to get back into Elden Ring, but I forgot how late I was into the game when I stopped playing last time, so I’m getting my ass handed to me. But the DLC trailer got my hyped to play again, and I never finished my first playthrough, so I have to beat the game. I am also working on Animal Crossing: New Leaf on my 3DS. No idea what I’m doing, but I’ll take the challenge.
I may also load up Tears of the Kingdom on my Steam Deck if I feel so inclined this week.
I’m also struggling with the itch to go back to ER, busy in a similar boat (around the Haligtree entrance, but it’s been around a year and I don’t think I have the chops anymore). I think I’m going to try and hold out until there’s more info on the expansion.
I jumped into Noita this past week. I had put about 5 hours in over a year ago, but I was intimidated by the systems and the initial difficulty. But I get it now 😭 The wandcrafting and fluid reactions are so fun now that I am more familiar with it all. I had a good run and I love the game now.
Played a few rounds of gunfight in Modern Warfare 2019. The official game has a ring 0 anticheat so Linux support with proton/wine is out of the equation. But there is a way (old dev build, offline-only and most maps don’t work).
Also played some Minecraft with a ship building mod. Here’s what I got so far, I’m going to sail the seven seas!
So what’s Noita’s appeal? I’ve tried getting into it several times, but it never clicked. It feels overly difficult, but not in a fun way. I’m sure I’m missing something, as this kind of game would be up my alley otherwise.
The difficulty seemed absurd to me, too, the first time I played the game. This time I began seeing the fun once I began discovering a few things the other day, TL;DR at the end:
- Keeping your cloak stained seems key; blood is good and gives you increased crit chance, but water is usually easier to keep soaked. As long as you have that, you won’t go up in flames in fire or explosions. And water/blood can also wash off toxic sludge, oil, etc. so it’s really important to have a bottle of it on hand to shower yourself with.
- Adding onto that, if you have a bottle that has empty space and you are holding it in a pool of a liquid, it will fill up with that liquid.
- Kick everything! It’s super fun to kick explosive barrels or lanterns all over. I bound ‘ctrl’ to kick so I can more reliably kick.
- Drink everything! You can right click on bottles in your hot bar to drink them, or you can press “s” to drink the liquid you are standing in. There’s some fun reactions, though most just make you vomit.
- Tapping space to keep upward momentum > holding space.
- I had the best luck sticking in the first area and getting familiar with those enemies. I like to have 3-4 wands before I go to the holy mountain and as much gold as possible (my best run I had like 600 by the first, bought lots of spells). To the left there are the mines. They have more gold, but stronger enemies.
- The chainsaw spell is great, you can emulsify enemy corpses for their blood.
- Chain bolt is really good if you can get it, that carried me in my best run so far.
- Oh, also read the spells a wand has before using it. Some spells will hurt/kill you if they’re not matched with something that casts them away from you.
- There’s tons of enemies, loot and areas to discover. The coolest part for me was finding a way to return back to previous layers once I had better spells.
Anyways, it’s still masochistic in nature. My best run came to an end abruptly and unfairly.
TL;DR: Be slow and cautious, play around in the first area to get better gear and understanding of the mechanics.
I’m currently hooked on Balatro like everyone else not in this thread. Took a long time to figure out the strategy (a two-and-a-half hour video helped a lot) before I won my first game (red deck). Won my second game (blue deck) on the next try. Next game (yellow deck), bombed out in ante 7, so I got close.
Geometry Survivor is pretty good but kinda simple. I’ll play for the trophies (survive 20 minutes) but will probably stop after that. I’m up to 10 minutes on the first sitting.
Working my way through NG+ on Nobody Saves the World. It almost feels easier so far but I’m only a few dungeons in. I guess the challenge will be in some of the later dungeons since I apparently have to clear them all to get to the final boss.
It’s been a few years, so I’m replaying the Ace Attorney games and enjoying myself.
Alpha Protocol. A spy RPG released by Obsidian. I’ve only really gotten past the tutorial so far and I have no idea if I’m going to enjoy it. It uses the Fallout 4/LA Noire style dialogue system where you don’t really know what your character is going to say that I really hate.
That game is worth putting up with its jank. You may not know exactly what the character is going to say, but each option is always channeling either James Bond, Jack Bauer, or Jason Bourne.
So far it’s been pretty good. I find the patrols NPCs do a little odd. Kind of jerky and I can never really tell if they are going to see me. There haven’t been a lot of super unexpected outbursts from the protagonist thankfully so I feel like you might be right. Everything has been pretty subtle. I’m not choosing the Aggressive option and just having the protagonist responding with “Fuck you”.
I have one season objective left for Diablo 3: Season 30, and it’s to complete another conquest. All three that I have left are driving me nuts because I just am not fast enough and/or get bad layouts. But I still have another month or so left before the end of the season, so I might be ok.
I finished my first run of Dead Space (2023), and it is absolutely amazing. I could rant on and on about it, but for the sake of sanity I’ll just say, this is probably one of the best and most faithful remakes of a game I have ever played. They lift so much from the original, and every change in the story only adds to it, or makes it better. Plus, while I understand that the original never intended Isaac to talk, I love that they gave him his voice (with the same VA from 2&3, I might add, which makes it even better imo). It makes him seem more like a part of the Kellion crew rather than just some dude running around being told what to do. It’s all just chef’s kiss.
For this next week, I think I might find a quick one/two night game before I go into ng+ for Dead Space '23. I need a breather before I reboard the Ishimura.
I just picked up some games from Humble Bundle that I’m going to play while waiting for Unicorn Overlord to release. I think I’ll start on Loop Hero first, but some of the other games in the bundle look interesting too.
The Skull and Bones beta motivated me to start a second playthrough of Assassin’s Creed Black Flag, 10 years after my first one. Having a blast, it’s honestly even better than I remembered and runs great on the Steam Deck.
I saw some skull and bones vs ac black flag comparison videos and am now getting mildly interested in the game as well
I completely binged a pokemon fan game last weekend (Radiant Topaz) and just couldn’t get myself to quit. Besides that, I decided to move my Pokemon Keishou (another fan game) save over to my laptop so I can play it at a much better speed than my desktop can handle.
I definitely recommend Keishou so far, and I don’t even have a single badge yet.
I had no idea that there were Pokémon fan games! The possibility never even crossed my mind, for whatever reason. How cool! Good luck with Keishou!
just started a new play through of Batman: Arkham Knight
Simcity 2000. I am a huge fan of Blade Runner and Simcity 2K has a very Blade Runner esque soundtrack and I’m LOVING it. I never picked up on the Blade Runner aesthetics in SC2K until recently, particularly after watching the movie for the most recent time. Sure, I played it as a kid, but I didn’t watch Blade Runner till i was an adult, so revisiting it now made it very fun. I made a cyberpunk city with high crime, a large focus on commercial zones, and building only the Plymoth and Draco super buildings.
What a great game and great memories for me. I remember, as a kid, building this huge coastal city and putting signs down to buildings I thought my grandmother would like and showing her. She loved architecture so it was always a nice experience for me.
