Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of December 10th

I can’t for the life of me stop playing Rimworld. Man that game is addicting.

Minesweeper

I just finished replaying DMC V. After replaying DMC 1 - 4 + DmC in the past 6 months, made me realize that I don't like playing as Nemo. He feels underpowered at times, and his skillset are kinda boring compared to Dante.

In DMC V, I enjoyed my time playing as Dante and V.

V is a change of pace, being slower and ranged, while Dante has really satisfying moves and weapons. I like Nemo's robotic arm, but the idea that it's a consumable and sometimes you might ended up picking up an arm that you are not familiar with, does disrupt the flow. Even his basic swordplay feels kinda lacking.

Isn't his name Nero? Also I feel like he was meant to be an accessibility gateway for new comers.
I played DMC3 years ago and never really understood the genre. It was fun, but every other game like it felt exactly the same to me. Then Hi-Fi Rush came out this year, and it clicked, so before this year's releases started really kicking off in summer, I played through DMC1-3 and half of 4. I'll get back to it soon enough, but I really liked what I played of 4; it was the best one so far, honestly. Were your problems with Nero limited to how he plays in 5, or did that criticism also apply to 4?
- IIRC, Nemo was bit unsatisfying to play in DMC4, and the issue kinda exacerbated in DMCV. He feels underpowered compared to others.
  
  I also remember being really frustrated by the platforming for the secret stages in 4.
  
  They are still good games though.

I decided to buy a Switch yesterday. Don't know why. Something piqued my interest to play Nintendo. I bought it with Super Mario Bros. Wonder. It's fantastic and light and fun and my kid loves it too. I almost regret not buying it on launch. It is such a pleasure to play a cartridge-based game without load times or hearing a fan whirring.

There are definitely load times in that game.
- You're right, but it isn't like some games I've tried with my son on PS4 where is has enough time to go to he toilet while the next level loads.

I started GTA V for the first time. Until now it seems pretty funny, even if controls feel clunky

Finally finishing Celeste, after not playing it for a couple of years

Lately I've been playing Plants vs Zombies, and I was planning on playing Halo Infinite as soon as I can get the campaign to stop crashing when it first loads

Celeste is a wonderfully brutal game. I love the characters and the whole idea behind, "conquer a hard thing just to say I did it." To be fair, that is what it feels like when climbing mountains or other large rock structures

Plants vs Zombies is the best tower defense game out there. Y'all can fight me on that.

Started Terra Nil today and it's a lot of fun! I suck at strategy games so even the easy mode made me frustrated lol, but it's so beautiful and clearing every stage is totally worth it.

started a new terraria world and am grinding my way to moon lord again. definitely a comfort game for me.

Pikmin 3

I have been playing NO Man's Sky since the autumn Steam sale. Unfortunately I feel like I have gotten to a point where I'm a little bored. It feels a bit repetitive and I feel a bit aimless. Will probably start on The Talos Principle 1 and 2 next.

Witch Spring R

Apparently this is an old series with a few other titles? I had never heard of it before.

Key features: cute tone, anime styled, Japanese/Korean voiceover, 3rd person travel, JRPG turn based fighting, lots of things to grind and craft for making items and upgrading things, visual novel style dialogue, low stress mood while playing

There's a lot of good about it. Particularly I think the lead Japanese voice actress is good and the overall presentation of how screens transition, the flow of gameplay from section to section (exploration, story, combat, crafting, minigames) are executed well.

I am only about two hours in but I find myself feeling satisfied with just that much play. It's less of an indictment on the game itself and more me feeling that the game is not personally for me. While the polish is nice and the relaxed feeling to WSR is very pleasant, I prefer stories with more tension and conflict.

Age of Wonders 4

Very nice polish, horrible tutorial, hated it immediately for reasons I am not even sure about. I have played too many 4x games, I guess. It struck me as a game that wasn't bringing something new to the genre while also not excelling in a specific area either.

If you liked this game, try to sell me on it. I still have it installed and am open to changing my opinion on it.

Diablo 3: Season 29 - Completed the Guardian chapter! Now I have only one more objective/conquest to finish out the season. I was going to try to go for the one of completing the campaign under 1 hour, but I quickly realized I would not be good at that by any means. So I'm working on the one for going through a level 55 greater rift with 6 different set bonuses. Sounds easy enough, but since I usually only use one character per season, I'm having to level up another for their set run.

Diablo 4: Season 2 - Still working on reaching level 90.

Gray Dawn - I've played my fair share of bizarre games, but I'm not sure if I've ever said "wtf" so many times while playing a game. So much so that I just kind of gave up on trying to figure things out about halfway through and was there for the ride. Before I actually started it, I read it described as a "priest simulator", and that it did seem to be at times. I'm not really into structured religion, so there were probably a lot of symbolism that went over my head and/or didn't make sense. (I also got a strange feeling towards the end that I wasn't actually the target audience? Like this was a horror game, but not for people like me.)
Apparently I got the "good" ending, which didn't really seem that good at all, so I went and got the bad ending... which was just as much 'meh' as the other ending was. Overall, the pacing was a little slow and at times it seemed to drag on at times. Some of the voice acting also left something to be desired, but it wasn't horrible, and the main redeeming factor is that the imagery was really cool.

Rant

Even though some of the imagery isn't explained? Like there is what looks like a bloody wax child with one eye in a glass case in this dude's library, and it's just... never talked about? I mean there's a lot of things in this game where it's just, oh something spooky! Satan's out to get you! Blood and guts, bleh! But like I was sitting there wondering, is this dude just not going to mention it? Has it always been there? If it has, why? If it hasn't, why isn't he saying anything about it!
Also there's a lot of Latin in this game that whenever I tried to look it up it just ended up being lyrics to old metal songs, which in itself is kind of hilarious to me, given the subject and themes of the game.

I also did a quick run through the original Dead Space (2008) since I'll be jumping into the remake soon. I've only heard good things, but I'm eager to see for myself how the new one compares, since it's one of my favorite franchises. I'm stoked that they brought back Isaac's voice actor from 2 and 3. I can't imagine anyone else but Gunner Wright as Isaac Clarke.

I just finished Detroit: Become Human.

I decided to play it after I upgraded my Deck's SSD to 2TB.

And I've been spending a lot of time on Halo: Infinite.

Continuing to work my way through the Duke Nukem 1+2 Remasters on Evercade. So much love went into these its ridiculous.

I've still been on my Monster Hunter kick as well, playing through Rise's endgame with my friend. And Lethal Company with my friend group, we got a modded lobby for 6 or so players. It's been fun being scared together! However my interim games have been lots of indie games I'd be unlikely to play on PC, where the format fits better for the steam deck! I've been going through unsupported games since most tend to work.

Revita has been the core one, it's a nice rogue like with a blend of Hollow Knight style play and The Binding of Isaac rng runs with a killer soundtrack. Highly recommended!

Other than that...

Dark Futures, a part real time part strategy game that revolves in an apocalyptic Twisted Metal style setting. You are a car/caravan taking on missions, it's very unique and feels pretty 90's through and through.

The Ascent, which isn't really my kind of game but it's a topdown isometric 2.5d (I can never remember the right term for this one) in a cyberpunk setting. It was interesting, I didn't play much but I may go back to it which is more than I can say for most of that style.

And a small bout with the runner survive style games, Fotonica and Barrier X.

I also got my switch set back up so I briefly was playing Super Mario Maker 2 and F-Zero 99. The story mode for SMM2 was actually a pretty cool concept, and F-Zero 99 was alright. I also checked in on my villagers in Animal Crossing after over a year, they missed me and I had bedhead.

Spent some time with The Ascent, wish I liked it more than I did. I was looking for a good pick-up-and-play game, but the save mechanics in The Ascent are...not clear. If it supported a save anywhere/anytime feature I probably would have gone a lot further.

But never being quite certain where I'd pick back up killed my motivation to play too many times.
- Oh shit, if that's the case then I probably lost my progress! I didn't get very far and definitely did not learn the save mechanic!
  
  Sounds similar to how I felt for the grab and play and it clicked more than I was expecting but not enough to keep me in it

Dwarf fortress (original ascii version)

Still conquering the Old World in "Total War: Warhammer". I'm playing as Dwarves. I killed almost all greenskin tribes and conquered the Badlands. Now turning my attention north to the undead.

Rise of the Tomb Raider

The Talos Principle 2

It's beautiful, and often really engaging both in gameplay and in story/setting, but I'm already feeling a bit of puzzle fatigue after ~20% through the game. I'll see how far I'll continue.

I've been trying to finish up Backpack Hero, now that, after some meandering, I finally figured out how to progress the story mode. In a game all about UI, it's kind of impressive how much the UI either isn't very good or just breaks on a functional level, but the game is very fun. After I finish it, I'll be heading back to Starfield and Wargroove 2.

Guilty Gear Strive also got a really great new patch, adding Elphelt and addressing some pretty glaring problems with the new mechanics they added. It feels like it's in the best spot it's ever been in.

Replaying CP2077 after the new patch, it's awesome

Elder Scrolls Online. According to Xbox's 2023 year in review, I've spent over 750 hours in Tamriel this year.

Also been enjoying Fallout 76 and the new invasion season of Mortal Kombat 1

Fortnite, but like, not the battle royale part.

The Rocket League Racing, Rock Band clone, and LEGO survival mode are wild additions that I honestly really appreciate. BR got old ages ago, but now there's a whole swathe of new free stuff to play.

The Rock Band Clone you are talking about is actually made by the Rock Band Developers.

Love what Fortnite is doing with joining with all different sorts of games and making it work on Fortnite allowing you to have your Locker have all the items between games.

I finished Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion and even 100% it. I still think the game is mostly a waste of time, that adds very little to the overall FF7 story. The characters (that aren't from FF7) are super boring, and the main antagonist is probably one of the lamest in any game. If I wasn't sick that one weekend, I'd probably not have bothered to go through those side quests, but at that point it was an alright, mindless grind. Asking 50€ for this seems completely insane to me.

So I'm between games once again, and don't have anything specific lined up right now. I was holding out for Rogue Trader, but Owlcat being themselves, it seems like it'd be best to wait a few months for patches.

I did a bunch of runs of Peglin on my Deck, and finally managed to clear a Cruciball 10 run (small difficulty increases, that you can unlock after you finish the game, like the Heat system in Hades, just that you can't choose the modifiers).

Then I decided to give the first Octopath Traveller another shot, also on the Deck. I loaded up my four year old save, where I made it like a third through the game. Of course, I have no idea what's going on, and I was directly before a boss fight, but managed. I'll try to go through a few chapters and then decide if I want to keep playing.

Churning a stable of characters in WoW to unlock appearances. And various grinds in Destiny 2. Trying to play more Starcitizen.

Permanently Deleted

!thelongdark@lemmy.ca, which put out a new content patch with some very nice immersion fixes this week. The new zone is very challenging.

Finished Jedi Survivor over the weekend. Art, world design, and the graphics generally (playing on XSX) impressed me a lot.

(edited for length as I remembered this is a weekly thread, not a list all the games I've played in the last few months...)

The marketing for Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth and The Man Who Erased His Name seem to have worked on me because I decided to start playing Yakuza 0 on my Steam Deck. Sticking to pure easy mode and mainlining the story. It's got some weird jank to it but I also kinda like it? If it hooks me, maybe I'll take the plunge on the others. Yakuza: Like A Dragon looked like a lot of fun so I'll probably stop and smell the roses when I get to that one.

Otherwise, Fights in Tight Spaces is my current non-story focused game I'm making my way through.

I’m playing Starfield on Xbox cloud. I only get to play an hour or two a week so progress is very slow but I think I’m about 50% of the way through the primary story.