The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion

Portal Revolution for me. I'm at chapter 4 and the Mod feels like a whole complete game. Totally worth trying and if you don't have portal 2, 1+2 are on discount right now.

Hollow Knight. Never played it before. Not a huge fan of the genre, but there is no denying that the game is well made.

Same for me. The setting is kind of a downer for me, but it‘s just so well made.

Was interested in Baldur's Gate 3 so I did the only sensible thing, started playing Baldur's Gate 1! Got the 2nd line up after that.

Valheim when solo, Deep Rock Galactic when with friends. 10/10 I didn't need all that free time anyway

Valheim is also great with friends by the way. We're currently playing DRG, but we played Valheim quite a while back and it was a lot of fun together.

Singleplayer I'm playing Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty, which is imo a stellar experience so far. I'm also playing Cassette Beasts on the Steam Deck, which is also a great experience. Like Pokemon, but also different in many ways.

Multiplayer it's still Deep Rock Galactic, and I've returned a bit to AoE 4.

I just finished the three King’s Quest remakes by AGD Interactive this weekend. I am playing Fallout New Vegas now.

Those were fun. The KQ2 remake was way better than expected.
I've got the annual New Vegas itch too, already got it perfectly modded on Steam Deck.

Suuuuper late to the game, but a few weeks ago my husband talked me into playing Detroit: Become Human (I shy away from Sci Fi games so I knew nothing about it/was hesitant to play).

Holy shit. That may have been some of the best fucking writing I've ever seen in a game.

It also got me really turned on to those butterfly effect/QTE games! I finished Little Hope by the Dark Pictures Anthology in one night (last Friday), and I'm in the middle of Man of Medan right now. The writing isn't as good, but they're still Hella fun and quirky!

If anyone else has any reccs for the Butterfly effect/QTE style games, I'm mad obsessed enough and will most definitely play it!

I've been thinking about it recently, might finally give it a try
- Ugh, I cannot say enough good things about that game! Top notch story!
  
  I went into it completely blind, but even if you've seen some game play, there are so many choices and endings that you'll end up surprised no matter what! Everyone that I've gushed about it to gushed back if they've played it already!

Playing through Monster Hunter: World again! World was my first MH game when it first came out on PS4, and man I struggled. I never cleared >!Alatreon!<* or >!Fatalis!<. I used Insect Glaive. Now years later, with time spent in Generations Ultimate and Rise (fully clearing Rise) and finding a love of the Switch Axe it's fun to see how different World feels now.

I also still have to beat it, can‘t remember where exactly I left it tho, I hope I can 100% it some day

I finished Jedi: Survivor last week. The story was really good, and all the systems are basically better than the first one. Definitely worth a playthrough.

Then I started playing Against the Storm (going in basically blind, only knowing it's a roguelike city builder), and boy it's fun. The only negative so far is that the rounds can take some time (1-2h if I'm unlucky) and I don't always have time for a full run since I've got two kids taking up the biggest chunk of my day.

Do I need to slog thru the first one to get the full experience? Sort of quit and never went back for really no specific reason.
- I agree with bitwaba. You'll get the most out of the experience if you finish the first one. Easiest difficulty and only focusing on the story should get you through it in a couple of hours.
  
  Edit: But also, if you really don't want to there is a recap in the beginning of Survivor that I believe will catch you up ok. (not 100% if that's enough to bring you up to speed, it's been a couple of weeks since I saw it)
- Not OP, and am only ~15 hrs into Survivor, but I feel like you should.
  
  The start of Jedi Survivor after the prologue is that the group of 4 from Fallen Orderwent their separate ways at the end of the game, and youre starting by tracking down one or more of them. So, it's gonna feel pretty bland if you don't know who these people are and why you might want to seek them out.
  
  Just put it on easy and don't go on any tangents.
  
  However, even without the story I personally really like the first one because it was my first introduction to a dark souls like combat experience. I enjoyed learning how enemies telegraph their moves and timing my parry and dodge.
  
  That's my take anyways.
Did you play on PC? Is the performance acceptable now?
- Yes and yes! At least for me. I've only got a 1060 6GB, but it managed 30-40 fps on medium in most places, which felt fine to me. I've heard that it's the higher end cards that have been having problems though, so can't comment on how that is now.

Finally got around to playing F.E.A.R. 1 & 2, now going through the DLC for 1, having a great time despite it definitely showing its age with some design choices, like the mandatory valve puzzles of early 2000's. I'm so glad I bought the RTX 4080 though, definitely getting my money's worth.

I finally bought Skyrim Anniversary on the latest discount and was pleasantly surprised how stable it is compared to classic, I remember trying to mod the original one but I only got a buggy mess that didn't even open most of the time and constantly CTDs.

But after a friend said how stable it is I dipped in after playing through his share of Special Edition, I was able to reach 100 mods and the game had a stable framerate and no crashes, so I bought the AE version since a mod I wanted to use required it and I'm having a blast now with 200 mods as an unarmed Monk.

Been playing the shit out of battlebit. Just bought it for my friend as well and we played til 5AM last night

I'm continuing Daggerfall Unity now that version 1.0 is out. There were only 2 minor issues that I had with it when I previously played, and they both look to be fixed. I've joined a knights order, a temple, and the Dark Brotherhood, and got my character up to a high enough level that I would be comfortable with going for the main quest.

Borrowed Hogwarts legacy from my mate so I could play it during my vacation. Finished and got the platinum trophy on my ps5 within a week. I just could not put it down. What a great game.

Story was interesting and the world was just fun to walk through.

After that I started playing deaths door. Have beaten the story and now doing post end game stuff. I love these style of games. Playing this after I recently finished Tunic was just what I needed.

Also playing Fortnite, solo or with friends. Just had to get the Peter Griffin skin and his stupid little dance.

Bought some tables for pinball FX and mostly been playing twilight zone. Man, I just can't seem to have good ball control in this game. Also not able to make slap saves for balls that goes straight down the middle is frustrating.

Slowly making progress through death cells, just a game here or there. Fun to waste a bit of time on.

I finished up Moss Book 2, love it. I wish there were more VR games like this. Absolutely recommend Moss and Moss Book 2 if you are looking for something a little different. But be warned they are only around 4 - 5 hours long.

I just picked up Immortals Fenyx Rising which was 90% off on Steam. I really enjoyed the base game and looking forward to replaying and also diving into the DLC.

Street Fighter 6 is still my daily game, playing Blanka and just rolled into Diamond 5. I am also really happy that the Spy X Family collab event is not a complete rip off and is just 1000 drive tickets(looking at you TMNT event).

I got Spider-Man 2 for Christmas. So I'm playing through Miles Morales when I'm able to.

Also, playing Final Fantasy 8 on my phone when I have a few minutes to spare.

I've been playing a ton of Lego fortnite in between calls at work , it's very addictive . Also learned to play fortnite with a controller since I can't play it on PC until it supports Linux . I'm never going back to windows !

I've been playing a lot of Satisfactory recently. Seeing things swoop around is kinda interesting. Funnily enough I think the movement in the game is what I like the most, its so fluid!

Just finished Alan Wake 2. I've never liked survival horror gameplay much so I wasn't big on that most of the time, but everything else about it was great. I've never seen a game use music more effectively.

I think I'll be heading back to Atelier Meruru this week. Might also give Dave the Diver another shot; I'm a little bummed that I'm not enjoying it as much as everyone else seemed to.

Working on 100% in Inkbound, revisiting Dying Light 2 with some friends for the new patch, went back to Insurgency for my milsim fix, and reinstalled Last Epoch in prep for 1.0.

How do you feel about DL2? Have it on my wishlist, I loved first one, but I was a bit sceptical on 2nd and I am still waiting to buy it.
- Right now I'd say pass, after the big patch who knows. Really lazy writing in the story, every quest midgame is a fetch, and if you do a single event you will get OP in one session.
  
  If you grab it on sale, don't spec into wall ride for your parkour. It will constantly interrupt your jumps and hangs.. Makes me personally nauseous and I play in VR half of the time.

Still playing BG3! It's really fun but the combat can be quite challenging, even when playing on the easiest mode with a modded party of 6 and infinite money. There are just so many things I have to keep in mind... Or perhaps my build just sucks lol

Ah this reminds me of my Divinity OS2 experience. It was so tough but sooo rewarding. What I recommend is to look up some basic build guides. Trust me you’ll have have plenty opportunity to make creative decisions regardless. No need to make it unnecessarily frustrating for oneself. You’ll get the hang of combat eventually and still not see half of all the possible ways to deal with enemies.

I really had to look up some D&D lore for BG3 though. Had no idea what was going on during the first act so I‘m ending up spending even more time reading lore and watching videos about it despite growing up reading Drizzt Do’Urden stories and playing BG1. It‘s a very complex universe and challenging to follow as a non-D&D player I have to say.
If you don't have much experience playing CRPGs I think it can be quite difficult. But once you get the hang of building classes, even honor mode will definitely be doable.

Black Desert
Escape from tarkov
Octopath traveler II

This tarkov wipe is great
- The game is in the best state it's ever been!

Having a blast with Greedfall :)

I've been playing Diablo IV on PS5. I avoided paying full price after reading reviews, but the recent sale seemed worth it for some mindless hack n' slash grinding. It was worth $42, but I would have been disappointed if I'd paid $70. Not a fan of the always-online, especially since I don't have PS Plus, but one nice perk has been being able to play it on my PS4 when the main TV is being used without needing to manually transfer saves.

So did you need to get PS+ to play D4?
- No, it's playable without it. You just can't group or trade with others. It does have local co-op, though.

Fallen London. Very big browser game, a little bit unclear where to go for what but fun anyway. Second is brain it on, a little game where you have to solve tasks like: Divide those magnets. I think it really improved my understanding of physics.

I got foxhole and oxygen not included on the last say of the steam winter sale and they are both amazing games

Oh boy, which side? Foxhole is a game you love and hate and it will take your time if you let it so make sure you're doing things you enjoy and remember that you can't win the war on your own so don't try to.
- Colonials. I am solo right now but I never do anything without other soldiers

Just finished Lies of P. My hands are still shaking from fighting the final boss, that one was a nightmare, took me 3 hours of attempts.

spoiler

(yes, the true final boss)

Still, this is a great game for fans of Soulslikes - more of an iterative improvement than anything revolutionary, and not as thematically interesting as Fromsoft titles, but a very polished experience. Really good boss fights.

Trying to 100% Black Ops III on PC. I‘m moving on to Zombies now and hope people still play that lol

Mostly Victoria 3, Warthunder, and League of Legends.

Just finished Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty over the Winter Break so a bit too soon for me to jump back into a strong narrative focused game. Just want to chill for a bit and play some multiplayer stuff with friends.

Just bouncing between Overwatch 2 and MW3 as currently I'm still burned out playing SP games since playing AC6 to NG++, AW2 on hard, miraculously managed to finish a durge honor mode run (this is what burned me out, too stressful playing CRPGs with only 1 save, with a durge run at that).

I've also found that Warzone 3 is surprisingly good so most of my old Warzone 1 squad are reinstalling the game and we started playing together again.

Reassembly.

If you liked the concept of captain forever but wanted more of a full game than an experience, try this one out. You build your ships with similar blocks but there's factions with their own hull piece shapes and weapons and you can use a single ship or a fleet.

A warning though: it's like civ or grand strategy games as in you'll sit down to play for a few hours in the evening and suddenly the sun is coming up so I should save and exit right after I conquer this block over here.

Maybe this week I can go back to playing a little bit. ATM I'm doing some backlog with Secret of Mana and Fallout New Vegas.

I forgot to buy anything from my wishlist during the steam sale, so I've been playing Libby.

I recently finished playing Deliver Us Mars. I'm happy with it for the most part, but it only reinforced my suspicion that Unreal Engine games are not being optimised well enough 🫠

In case anyone wishes to know what I thought of the game:

The story is fine. It feels like so many problems would be solved with a simple conversation and characters make decisions impulsively. The voice acting is spectacular, and the background music, while not cinematic by any stretch of the imagination, was definitely really good for setting the mood.

Part of my review from Backloggd

Nioh

I've played most of the original Soulsborne games and this is my first game in the genre not made by Fromsoftware. I'm quite enjoying it! I like the loot approach to gear and the Ki pulse is a great addition. Bosses do feel quite a bit different from Fromsoftware ones, blocking being this strong makes it a lot easier to learn and fight them.

I started up a new city in Cities Skylines 2. Trying to build a city mate up of little pit stops along the highway with no industrial zones at all. It's been an interesting experiment so far! The game does track the jobs generated by retail and city services, so if you balance it just right you can have enough work to attract residents and use the highway connections to just barely generate enough sales for the commercial zones to stay profitable. And the city as a whole is getting closer and closer to a positive balance in the budget, so I might just pull this off...

I've started a new Minecraft world on the All the Mods 9 modpack together with a buddy of mine!

it's been a blast so far!

just getting ae2 setup going, beginning to automate all the things, it's great!

Third play through of Lies of P from scratch, only this time with a balance build. Not sure if it’s because I’m used to the games enemies but it seems like balance is very op compared to motivity and technique builds.

Hogwarts Legacy is up next.

Let's see... FFXIV, I was going to carry on with endwalker but ended up levelling crafters instead. Foxhole, a new war started so I was doing naval landings with my regiment yesterday. Trying to get into BG3 but I'm not sure. Satisfactory, it's been a fun little game so far, I was doing my first playthrough with a few people but half of them have been a bit occupied this week.

YO MAM-