Sunday is Gaming Day: What Are You Playing Weekly Thread

The emulator ate my Earthbound save twice madeline-bruh so I'm back to Celeste Strawberry Jam Collab. Finally unlocked the intermediate heartside yesterday after finishing up "The Tower" and "Pointless Machines." Up to flag 10 4.

@Guamer@hexbear.net how are you making out?

It's fun so far! I just arrived in Twoson (I only play a few hours every week with a friend, and talk to everybody, so progress will be slow lol) and am in the middle of exploring, Ness currently at level 11. I'm playing the Wii U VC version, so no technical difficulties yet thankfully.

I'm trying to beat Malenia Blade of Miquella.

I hear she has never known defeat.

Uh just some Shiren the Wanderer 1 on DS, I'm so stuck help where is my 200 hour tactics game...

Oh and some Wii U minecraft, the spiritual Hexcraft player

playing a lot of hexcraft it just pulls you right in.

I just completed Hades for the first time an hour ago. What a truly well made game.

So much Morrowind

playing hexcraft a lot, chapograd is going nicely. shout out to seryph!

i also still play overwatch and valorant. i suck at both, but hero shooters just scratch an itch in my brain

I finally got a g-sync monitor, so i reinstalled cyberpunk and some others to see how awesome it looks and my god, v-sync sucks sooooo hard compared to this. the input lag wasnt that bad for v-sync, but wow, seeing things above 60fps has been amazing. Hell, even if i max out Alan Wake 2 and it goes down to like 45, its a constant, perfect 45 fps and it looks better than 60 with vysnc. Truly remarkable.

Anyway, I was playing Diablo 4 through the week. Mostly just to see the story and I'm in act 4 and no longer give a fuck so I stopped. Installed RDR2 because I played it at launch on my old ps4 and wow, seeing it maxed out, 1440p at 90+ fps is crazy.

And of course, Helldivers 2. That's my every day game. If anyone else is still playing or wants to, please hit me up. Easily my favorite game right now and I need some more buddies.

I want a TV and a monitor with freesync and/or gsync so bad, input delay on fifteen year old TVs is painful. I wanna play fightan gaems on something other than a CRT!
- I looked around for a while on a good budget monitor and came down to the Dell G2724D. 27 inch, 1440p, 165hz, g-sync. 180$ at dell's website, plus 20 for shipping.

My favorite JRPG about an Irish folk hero: Chron O'Trigger

After I cruise through that, I'm probably trying out Aska, getting bored with it after a few hours, and resuming my BG3 Dark Urge playthrough whenever the fuck this next major patch drops.

Dragon Quest Builders. It's a collect and build stuff block game with the dragon quest creatures, it's relaxing. My only gripe is that the combat is way too easy, and that's coming from someone who sucks at games.

That game is so comfy I love it when people clap. I just wish it had the mod support of Mine craft because I'd love to import other Dragon Quest locations.

I’ve been playing a lot of speed freaks lately. It’s a team based car combat game that’s very orky. No text or voice chat, only premade ork voice lines, so no toxicity really. The cosmetics are kinda dogshit so there’s no fomo really. They just make it hard to unlock the newest vehicle, so the f2p aspects aren’t too bad.

It’s cool how the capture an area mode ends with a race that can swing a close loss into a win.

shapez 2 came out a week and a half and it's been consuming my free time quite a bit. I checked and I already have 50 hours in which is a lot for me in such a short time. if you played the first one, it's basically a lot more of that with a lot of QoL stuff and some new fancy stuff. You can build 3 floors tall now, and instead of unlimited build space, you have a certain amount of foundations you need to place to build on. It's an interesting mechanic, but at first I was worried it was going to be limiting but you get so much foundation points as you go that it's not an issue.

They have a legit blueprint system now which is huge imo. You can copy and save small factory stuff like cutters and stackers but you can also copy full foundation sections for really easy re-usability. Basically if you need a shape painted, you can plop down a full 1x1 paint factory that takes 4 input belts for shapes and a total of 12 inputs for paint and plop them down similar to modular stuff from Factorio. I tried doing a combo stacker and painter in a 1x2 foundation but found that just using a stacker and a painter 1x1 and putting them right next to each other is more handy.

Also they got motherfucking trains now and it's probably my favorite thing. People have been struggling with them on discord but I took to them real quick. You can low 3 floors worth of shapes onto a single train car and offload them into the vortex via basically a trainyard type set up, but the devs added fucking train launchers where basically the trains launch off of a ramp into the vortex and you can just bypass belting shapes in. It's ridiculous and I love it. You get a theoretical unlimited amount of train cars that you can attach so it could make for some interesting stuff.

FFO: Factorio, Satisfactory, Dyson Sphere Program, and of course shapez 1.

Wukong, demons souls (4th playthrough) and legend of grimrock. Wukong is brilliant, I haven't finished it yet but i already want to play it again which is a sign of a decent game for me.

legend of grimrock

i played legend of grimrock 2 (i think?) when it came out for a while, never beat it but I remember it fondly and always think about downloading it again. good to hear wukong is cool, I'm looking forward to playing it when it's cheaper or gets cracked.

Finally gonna start Metro Exodus. I gotta finish the series at this point, I've read the books and everything.

Half Sword play test. It’s a physics based medieval fighting game where you move your mouse to swing your weapon

I'm going through Subnautica right now. I wanted to buy it for years ever since I watched it in development. I really need to upgrade my computer's graphics though, the game would look much better on a more powerful PC.

Fallout : London, Rimworld, Crusader Kings 3, Squad, and I'm prepping a cyberpunk red homebrew in 5e (yes, I know it would be better to just play cyberpunk red).

Monstroscopy. Super basic controls and some kick ass music. It makes me want to pick up the guitar. The zombie cowboy is too damn fun.

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=uPXJ4lYAL2w

I been playing Deadlock. was never a big fan of mobas in the rts style, but make it a hero shooter and all of a sudden im addicted?? oh well

Just started playing a patched English version of Boku No Natsuyasumi 2. For what's basically a chill, summer vacation simulator, I ran into some surprising character depth.

One of the characters you come across is an older girl named Yasuko. She lives with her little sister and grandpa, because her parents "aren't in the picture".

Her bedroom can't be accessed from within the house, because the door is locked. Her mom "took the key when she left". So you have to go around to the back of the house to get to it.

The room itself is full of books, records, and paintings that belonged to her dad. So there's a lot going on with this one character, and now I wanna know what her deal is!

Also, her room is cool as fuck, look at this shit!

Blew through Signalis last week since I was on PTO. This week I'm thinking of either continuing my 3rd playthrough of Disco Elysium or starting Atomic Heart since its been on my backlog forever.

I've also been continuing my playthrough of Cassette Beasts in short bursts throughout the week. FC24 or World of Warships whenever I just want to waste some time.

I finished the resident evil 4 remake. Which is a pretty solid remake, does a good job with the plot, making things make a little more sense. Has a combat system that is more or less the same as the original but I'd say probably quite a bit harder since they do expect you to parry everything (which I never did except in krauser fights). And cuts some bits for reasons, I'd guess pacing maybe? But it still feels like the final chapter is too long despite being noticeably shorter.

My main grief with it is the game feels like it was ashamed the old game was campy and didn't take itself seriously and tries to be more serious (it's still goofy but less) and overall part of the originals charm is how it doesn't take itself seriously. For me anyways. Also the weapon exclusive upgrades feel bad now, and show up very late. And knife durability is like a kick in the teeth to original game players who just want to shoot once and knife 4 times. Oh and the aiming system feels horrendous, I missed so many close shots because the game has a bullshit random spread if you move your target reticle too fast.

Finished the new Vampire Survivors content. The Darkanas are cracked and make the game into super ez mode. Also wrapped up the Amogus DLC and finished the major characters for the Contra DLC.

Playing Elden Ring with a friend who insists on skipping all the cutscenes, so he had no idea what the fuck was happening when we entered Rennalla's boss room.

Did a few hunts in MH Rise with a different friend and was really struggling to do anything to Rahjang with my greatsword. Luckily it was just high rank because he hasn't made it to the DLC, but damn, this is why longsword is my main.

Did a US run in Vicky 3 and ended it with a perfectly normal flag.

Only realized the "100 states on the flag" cheevo existed in like 1920 which meant I had to rush european heritage states for the 5 year incorporation timer, so the borders are a little cursed:

Earth Defense Force 6. It's great - wave after wave of mysterious monsters (ants, wasps, spiders), basically humans (frog-people), and hideous non-humans (greys), now with more robots and terrifying demon gods.

But it's one to play after playing Earth Defense Force 5, because it does have an actual plot - well, a mashup of monster b-movie tropes that somehow manages to be impressively grim and cheerfully absurd. It's just that it mostly assumes you've played EDF5 as it only cherry picks a few notable line. A lot of levels are some of the better levels of EDF5 with a twist, and since the game itself isn't a dramatic upgrade in mechanics (though there are a lot of little improvements) it's not worth skipping 5.

It does need more Crazy Space Laser ~~Lady~~ GOD though. She's the best.

Been playing on the Turtle WoW pvp server the last few weeks, it's good. Smaller community than the PvE server, feels more tight knit.

Aside from that, Deadlock. It really feels like it'll be the next big thing, the gameplay is tight and just FUN. It's a TREAT.

Back up on my bullshit, playing Ultima Online, this time on a smaller shard. Slowly working my way up to owning a castle tower (my favorite home in the game).

I was complaining about Pillars of Eternity in the last thread and everything still stands as I've now just beat Act 2. However, it has become somewhat more tolerable now that I have access to higher level spells and better equipment so I don't get alpha'd by drakes anymore.

I had to choose one of the main three factions in Defiance Bay and I really didn't like any of them but that's probably the point.

About that choice

The Dozens are a populist mob of mercenary thugs who hates soul scientists and want to make the Dyrwood great again. To be fair, many soul scientists are basicslly nazis experimenting on people, but its shown that its possible to research it without torturing people.

I sided with them with the reasoning that I could channel their energy in a more positive direction but no matter what you do, they end up rioting and burning down the sanitarium in the city and killing random people.

Then there's the medieval police, the Crucible Knights, who want to build giant iron soldiers and bind people souls to them to use as slaves. To be honest, they're portrayed the most sympathetically aside from this. You don't ever see or get the sense that they're abusing their power or roughing up commoners. They're usually trying to help people and there's just a few problematic members that are racist toward Orlans but it isn't like a policy.

What is a policy is rejecting people based on soul readings of their past lives, meaning that those who have committed crimes in the past can never be knights unless they forge their documents. So there's never any opportunity for redemption and only 'good' people will get to keep being knights and create a self a perpetuating system of discrimination.

The Doemenels are just the mafia. They murder and steal to gain power. The objectively evil option that helps nobody.

That's as far as I've gotten in this game before since I usually stop playing before traveling to Twin Elms. I'm determined to finish this time though.

Have you tried using a toy box mod? I only manage to deal with rtwp by either using a turn based mod or just nuking combat encounters so I can get to more of the characters and narrative.
- I haven't used any mods but I know that Deadfire has a turn-based mode that I will probably use pretty heavily once I get to that. I'm not a purist by any means, but I do try to stick to modless except maybe unofficial or performance patches until I've gone through a game once. Sometimes I'll do restored content if it doesn't unbalance the rest of the game.
  
  I'm kind of owning combat encounters a lot more than before because I have two ciphers that both have Dominate Will, which is an AoE that charms the target and enemies surrounding them. All but my two tanks also have guns, so I instakill whatever I target in the first turn with blunderbusses. I'm also better at actually using all my resources before I have to rest, because you get so much money and so many supplies that you can rest whenever you want, making conserving spells and such not really worth it at all.

This week's Chaos Waste quest in Vermintide 2 is fucking bullshit. I've only made it past the first map once on Legend before we all died on the second map. Exploding rat bombs spawn too frequently.

I've been working on customizing my Balatro cards, which is fun. I wish more games were this simple when it comes to modding. I get it they need security for multi-player games due to cheating, but single player games don't need basic artwork hidden in their own custom file type.

Magic Arena has Wilds of Eldraine drafting back for a short time. Currently 4-1 with a Junk brew built around Griffin Aerie and Up the Beanstalk. Have a few more rounds to go, but I'm sure this deck will end up with 7 wins. I still think blue is unplayable in this format, despite it being well-balanced otherwise. It's like they playtested only 4 colors.

Finished Fear & Hunger 1. Incredibly massive CWs of every type on it. It's... interesting. I really like the idea of a Survival Horror JRPG, but it's fairly unpolished and buggy. Still, the rich lore kept me pushing to the end, the sequel is supposedly much more polished and complex. Overall, good game, but wouldn't say it's an all-time fave.

Still waiting on the next patch to get back in and finish Fallout: London.

Next on the list is Crosscode, this time trying it on Steam Deck. Ran out of steam about 2/3rds through last time, so hopefully the Steam Deck will be convenient enough to keep the momentum going. I loved it last time, but it became more of a chore with how my personal circumstances were last time, so that's why I am going in fresh again.