What are you playing this week?

I've been playing Factorio... Help

Don't worry, they'll be releasing the expansion soon. The factory must grow.
- I'm so excited for the multi level trains. They would help me so much
This one scares me for sure haha
- It's no big deal. You just play until you realize you made some critical mistake at the beginning, and decide to just yeet a 140 hour campaign so you can fix the problem on the next go around...
  I'm okay... I swear..._help

I'm playing Fallout New Vegas properly for the first time. Started not too long after Starfield released and I've been really enjoying myself

Excellent choice! I wish I could experience FNV for the first time all over again, it's so good. Got any idea which factions you want to align with?
- So I already got the chip to Mr House. I put up with NCR I suppose. But I do enjoy the Boomers

Been on parental leave, for a couple of days. I hooked up the PC to the living room TV and I've been casually playing No Man's Sky. It's utterly cathartic to fly around space with a 5 day old sleeping, his chest on my belly.

Hey, congrats. Ours is due early next year so I'll be doing similar
- Thanks! It's my second, the other is 6yo now. It brings me back to my first parental leave - I played through The Witcher III with my first sleeping on my belly in a similar manner haha
  Congratulations to you and the mom!
Nice! How do you like No Man's Sky? I've heard it's much better now than when it was released
- Can't speak for your interests obviously, but good enough for me spending a good chunk of 10h on it in the last 2 days. I'm a huge space nerd though, so the interstellar travel alone is worth it for me. The storyline is mostly a pretense for exploring, trade, mining stuff, which I don't mind at all given how pretty it can be. I also really like playing alone lol. I don't know how long it'll stick, but it's scratching an itch for the time being!

Just finished the main quest in Horizon Zero Dawn. Looking forward to the frozen wilds next.

Star Wars: Republic Commando. Hell yeah

Really wished this got a sequel. Awesome take on the universe and I miss squad based single player games like that.

Back into Monster Hunter: World on PC! There’s still a small community of players filling up the servers, and it’s been fun.

The Division 2 is a solid looter shooter and cover shooter, no cope necessary.

Replaying Grim Dawn for the nth time, finishing the main campaign and then heading into the DLCs. After that, I'm not sure.

Project zomboid. It's crazy how deep the game is and the mods make it even cooler

Civ V with Vox Populi overhaul mod

A lot of Kingdom Rush Origins. Working on beating the campaign on impossible. I definitely recommend it if you are a fan of tower defense games.

Except those last few levels, virtually impossible on impossible mode with the free-tier heroes:-(. I tend to like the original and Frontiers much better, though ironically Origins was one of the most "balanced" of them all, and that was neat to experience as well:-).
e.g. archer towers should shoot singly, fast, and at high range, while barracks hold the line and are focused more on defense, right? Nope, the former do AoE magic bombs instead, while the latter shoots arrows into the sky. And artillery should focus on offense and hit AoE in as wide an area as possible, right? Nope, there are tanky bears and the shots hit only a narrow space. I'm cherry-picking these examples, but you get the idea - every tower does stuff that overlaps with what you would think other tower types might do instead, which makes for some fun thinking to deal with the foes.:-D

Picked up Skyrim Special Edition for PS4 used a while back for $5. I got the free upgrade to the PS5 version and have been playing Skyrim with my son for his first time. I am enjoying playing it again with better graphics, and he's loving seeing it for the first time.

If I ever get back around to it I'd like to make a melee character. Seems like that would really up the challenge while fighting dragons

Baldur's Gate 3, I've been playing it since it came out and I'm only on my 2nd playthrough. Looking forward to my 3rd playthrough, hopefully by that time I'll have the heart to be able to play an evil Dark Urge run.

Space Station 14

Just started Dragon Age Origins, I'm still at the tutorial level but it looks like a game I'd enjoy.

This is another one I've been meaning to play but I haven't had the energy to start it and really enjoy it

Just got around to beating Titanfall 2 for the first time. It was a great plaaythrough, and not that long at all. You can beat it in under 8 hours, no problem. I think it took me 6 or 7 hours. Def recommended if you're into scifi shooters with mechs and kick-ass set pieces.

I've been meaning to play the campaign for awhile. The online gameplay didn't particularly appeal to me, though I haven't even tried it

I've been playing Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen for the first time. This is my first experience with the Dragon Quest series, and my way of dipping my toes into JRPGs. I've completed the first two chapters and I'm enjoying it so far. It's pretty straight forward gameplay and doesn't require much thinking. The story isn't exactly riveting yet. The translation is a bit rough, but that makes it kind of humorous. Thankfully it's still easy to follow what the characters are saying. I'm not seeing much replay value in this one though.

I absolutely loved it. I wanted to try each of the Dragon Quest series and started from the 1st (single-player), then 2nd (three dedicated characters), and 3rd (party-based with classes), and watched like the development of how they handled keys (single-usage & type, up to dedicated & multiple types), and inventory slots (to shift something you have to give it to someone else, or else everything below it to someone else and then back again), and so on. 4 was the culmination peak of it all before moving to a different console iirc in 5, with such an enormous storyline moving over several chapters each with entirely different characters, until they start merging later on. The auto-battle feature was truly horrific and you may want to read a guide or else you can get stuck in the final battle, like I am talking full-on idiocy i.e. casting insta-death spells at the final boss, entirely uselessly. For someone who likes grinding and story though - and why would you play an "older" JRPG like that if you do not!?:-P - it is a fantastic game. Poor graphics, especially by today's standards, but a fascinating into the past when it must have all been so "new". On the other hand, everything I am saying here is in regards to the NES game, so if you are playing a re-release somewhere, a lot of that could have been improved.
If not, other alternatives to get a feel for JRPGs without needing to grind as much are Chrono Trigger (very short game, heavy story, very easy progression that makes grinding entirely optional, one of if not THE best game of all time in fact! bad gfx but think of it as a "choice" as in comic book style and it makes it more bearable, plus it's even true b/c they were really bad even for its day), or Dragon Warrior/Quest 7. Another thought that does require a bit of grinding but is still old are the Lufia series.
- You could also try Suikoden I & II! Cult classic

Apart from my usual rounds of Fortnite and casual Cities Skylines, I've been re-enjoying Office Jerk on iOS again and got a few laughs out of it 😁

I haven't heard of Office Jerk, what's that about?
- You throw stuff at your colleague, but there's a fan producing wind influencing the direction for each throw. You have some objectives to do, like getting him to pull a pencil out of his ears or swallowing a phone. It's a rather short game but it is funny.

Not super old, but I'm working through Borderlands 3. I'm also playing through some old-ish games with my 9 y.o. like Portal 2, Supraland, Spyro remastered in an effort to change up his usual Fortnite/Minecraft/Roblox.

No man’s sky Disney Dreamlight valley Cult of the lamb.

Java Minecraft will always hold a place in my heart. I picked up Valheim recently and found it scratches a very similar itch, but it's different enough to not feel like a clone at all

Just finished Cacoon pretty looking easy puzzle game followed by Heretics Fork

Core Keeper with a friend mostly

Grey Goo and Satisfactory.

Remnant 2. Still haven't got every item.

Factorio

It being currently reduced by 50% made me finally pick up "Return of the Obra Dinn" and I love it

I'm playing Witcher 3: Blood & Wine, Dragon's Dogma and Tunic.

Damn, that's a lot of adventuring! How's Tunic? I've never heard of it
- It’s a bit of a souls-Zelda-like. It’s quite nice, especially because nothing gets directly explained.

I just finished Cassette Beasts, which was pretty good. I picked it up during the last sale not knowing if I’d like it since I’ve never been a huge Pokemon fan, and surprisingly really got into it.

I also started playing Toca Race Driver 2 since I’ve been itching to play a new (to me) simcade racer after the new Forza Motorsport bombed. It holds up really well and it’s fun seeing where the GRID series started. It’s also depressing how little the racing genre has progressed in 20 years. I’ll probably start Toca 3 immediately after finishing this one.

Just finished the main storyline for Pokemon infinite fusion. Great game, highly recommend. There are a lot of custom sprites for fused Pokemon so the product end up looking pretty goofy/creepy/cool/cute/weird depending on which Pokemon is head and body.

Next up is probably going to cyberpunk 2077 or Nier Replicant.

I'm on New Game+ on ME: Andromeda, casually going through Forza Horizon 4, forever playing American Truck Simulator when I get the chance.

God of War (2022 pc), and I picked up Elden Ring and Obra Dinn on sale so they are next.

Into the Breach. Best Mech strategy game out there.

Oh man ITB and FTL are my comfoet games

Jump Ultimate Stars online!

Had to hit pause on it this week, but recently I have been working through Final Fantasy IX, the PC remaster on Steam w/ Moguri Mod. Started my playthrough in early September, and I just got the boat and entered the grindy minigame hell portion of the game.

After hearing the release of Ac mirage, I replayed the og AC. Its quite fun, but some things didn't age well (like the blue filter on the game).

Its funny how in "returning to roots" they took the worst parts of the game, the investigations. Which could work, but finishing thw tatget them 5 mins after meeting them is not great for characterization. The idea of doing more sidequest means more info for the finale of the chapter is nice, but most of the infos are really trivial, like "Guard gonna close the castle gate after alert" or that the scolars can get past the guard, which is the main way of getting into the city itself, and is also tutoriaized.

Theres some dumb shit you can do, my favorites were synchronizing while hunted, and the guards just stand around you on the roofs, dumbfounded, or fooling around in combat and realizing the hidden blade can instakill even after alerted, if they are on the ground or you are behind them. So its possible to run aroun 6 guards and backstab them one by one.

NFS Heat and Kaze and the Wild Masks. Both games are fun enough but not my favs.

TF2, the greatest game ever made.

A classic. I never was very good at it but I always enjoyed it