What's everyone playing this week?
What's everyone playing this week?
I for one have been playing openmw non stop. Being able to replay morrowind on a brand new modern engine has completely enthralled me. The graphical enhancements you can add are superb, volumetric clouds and fogs keep the same aesthetic of the alien world Morrowind inhabits while also adding some much needed visual flare.
Also the gameplay still holds up...mostly! Finding your quests is an experience in itself. I'm getting terribly used to quest markers and maps that tell me where to go. Morrowind says fuck you "Your quest is by the old rickety bridge south of town besides the river. Good luck" no markers just exploration.
The game is not for everyone but everyone should try it.
I've been doing a Skyrim survival mode playthrough since I had it on the bucket list. I decided to cheese it as a stealth archer due to a combination of the increased difficulty from the hunger/fatigue/cold mechanics and the fact I haven't done a sneaky pew-pew build since like 2016. I'm using the alternate start mod, so there are no dragons in my world yet (except for the one in Blackreach, which I already killed so I could unlock Bend Will early). I pretty much just broke out of haunted prison and made a beeline toward Morthal for the homestead with the fish hatchery, broke the game's economy via alchemy, and right now I'm one Ahzidal's piece away from unlocking my doomsday weapons. Only then will I bother to acknowledge that Helgen exists and start the main questline.
I haven't been able to play video games for a while now (severe long covid) but I just started a new solo TTRPG and I'm really enjoying it! It's called Apawthecaria and it's about being an adorable little woodland creature who travels about, harvesting herbs and mixing remedies for the animals you meet along the way.
My character ended up being a pine marten traveling with her fuzzy bat friend, both of them taking to the road as a way of running away from something - for my protagonist, I know it's a near death experience she never really processed, but I have no clue what my bat buddy's deal is yet. When I last left off I was foraging for herbs to help an injured otter at a small lakeside settlement.
My vacation has started, so I decided to try my hand at Shadow Empire, a very complex 4x/wargame with a 400-page manual. You play as a regime on a post-apocalyptic planet after a large galactic conflict. Currently, I'm watching a 3-hour tutorial video. You manage various aspects of your empire, including politics, diplomacy, economics, and military operations.
There is a whole supply system; your units need food, fuel, or ammunition to keep fighting or suffer consequences. Supplies need to be sent via either trains or trucks, using roads or railways.
You also design everything your armed forces use, from tanks and planes to equipment your infantry uses. Most of which you first need to research, since it's a post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting.
Planets are randomly generated, and you can have anything from frozen hells to jungles teeming with alien life or even water or desert planets. Alien life / planets (if there is any) and history is also randomly generated.
Its a bit like a mix between Dwarf Fortress and Hearts of Iron
The game is made by a single developer and is available on Steam and GOG. In this case, I would recommend the Steam version because you get access to the new beta versions right away.
The UI and interface are archaic and cumbersome. It will probably take me quite a while to learn it.
Added a screenshot so you can marvel at the glorious next gen gfx
I caught Stardew fever and I made a new meadowlands farm to check out the content from a fresh run. It's been a few years since the last time I played, just long enough where I can tolerate another playthrough.
Before that I was on a mission to play all the SaGa games this year (except maybe Unlimited) which I'll continue to do, probably just switch off what days I play which. I am on Romancing SaGa 2 (remaster), which might be the hardest SaGa game I've ever played. After gaining an understanding of the game systems I'm having fun but it'd been nice if they added a few tutorials in the remaster.
My current empress is a pretty nereid named Pherusa and I'm gonna be sad when it's time to jump to the next generation and pick a new one.
I wish the pixels were less janky though. Thanks for the lazy mobile port Square Enix.
Openmw is a lot of fun, I got to play through most of it with a friend over TES3MP a few years ago. The only thing I change usually is getting a leveling mod, and I'm good to play forever.
My friends have been doing a group run of BG3 with the MC being The Dark Urge. It's been cool seeing the stuff I missed, like the area with harpies behind the grove and the docks below Moonrise (don't even know how I missed that one tbh).
Been playing Ultrakill, but it's getting a bit too hard on some of these bosses.
A friend suggested Pseudoregalia as both of us like really good movement in games. It's a 3D metroidvania platformer with some fun movement options that tries for the N64 or Playstation era feel. Almost done with it, but interest petered out as I'm at the point where I have to search the map for the last remaining things. It was still a lot of fun.
Picked up Kenshi again. Project Kathun is actually a lot of fun, Star Wars is a surprising fit with the Kenshi aesthetic Or maybe not surprising, lol.
Picked up a little game called Fictorum that is like a wizard destruction simulator with a FTL like map layer to it. It's janky and unstylish, but then you get a winning combination of spell setups and the game clicks. Good value, I think I got it really cheap but I don't see myself playing it extremely long.
I wanted to get a physical copy of Unicorn Overlord this week as my Switch has limited storage, and I had some cash lying around. The local stores didn't have it, so I had to order and now I won't get it until tomorrow, but I'll be obsessing over Dragon's Dogma 2 all day.
Started Tunic and liking it so far. I enjoy the challenge and vibe of it. Kicking my ass a bit but I'm slowly learning what everything does. Collecting in-game instruction manual pages is a cool mechanic too.
Splatoon 3. The kids and I are getting all of the palettes in Side Order. I wish the stages in this DLC had a bit more variety, but the ones it has are very good, and the gameplay feels great as always
Also… Balatro
tetris, but in real life (i'm moving)
I've been playing Wreckfest!
Actually a really fun game. If any of you are old enough to have played Destruction Derby, it's similar to that in one game mode, but adds proper racing as well.
Slowly clawing my way through the "intermediate" lobby of the Celeste Strawberry Jam Collab. Just finished this one yesterday.
Doing my last run through of Disco Elysium, then going into full gamer retirement until the Bachelor route of Pathologic 2 comes out.
I'm playing a physical detective Harry and it's funny how much you can just force your way through the world if you know where your going ahead of time.
Helldivers 2 is my current obsession, but I've been meaning to do another BG3 and DE playthrough
Getting really into Pacific Drive. STALKER with a station wagon instead of guns. Super atmospheric with a great soundtrack.
Bought Balatro the last day of my vacation and proceeded to play it for 10 hours, woops. It's a rogue like deck builder masquerading as a poker game.
Game is utterly incomprehensible if you haven't played but also is pretty easy to pick up. Can't help but think this is what mobile games could have been if not for capitalism demanding micro transactions and time gating. It's almost a perfect phone game except for the fact that it's also a time blackhole like factorio. Surprised it didn't release on mobile tbh.
Morrowind is incredible. One of the most fun gameplay systems I've encountered in any game, in spite of some jank.
Have you tried Tamriel Rebuilt? That's probably the best mod ever made for any video game in terms of quality and quantity of content.
I've been playing modded Skyrim recently. I did not like it when I first played it, but becoming more familiar with the lore after Morrowind showed me TES is pretty interesting makes it better. It's a fun game, but both the writing and gameplay took large steps backwards in complexity in disappointing ways since Morrowind. If there's one thing that can be said about Skyrim however, is that it can look gorgeous.
...I probably should have played Oblivion first instead tbh, but oh well.
I ordered Yokai Watch. It should show up today. I got itbalmost entirely because of this creature:
She's so damn cute I had to see what this game was about
Been ass-deep in my heavily modded Minecraft surv lately to try and save my state of mind from terminal doomerism and find zen. Loads of Create stuff jammed into it, so I've spent 1500 in-game days becoming a fully-automated, 100% green-powered, luxury gay space factory lord. Only after 1500 in-game days did I finally have all the infrastructure in place to never run out of my favored building blocks for my actual house. Been doing all that building living out of a 5x5 rinky-dink oak ranger's outpost for about 5 in-game years lmfao
in my m2tw arc, back on my tsardoms bullshit
its a mod for the 1300s balkans, covering the rise of the ottomans. i'm reading abt the ottomans right now so its complimentary. recently i've redone units for the beylik of aydin & bulgaria so i'm running campaigns with them. playing sensibly and soberly is old hat now so i'm going wildly overaggressive in pursuit of silly ambitions (Bulgaria must conquer 'Grand Vlachia'--Thessaly, because Asen & Peter said they represented Vlachs in the 1190s, we must rescue them from the Serbs and Greeks!)
I was trying to get a OpenMW mod list running but I can't figure out how to get the file merger to work and I'm kinda loathe to have to redo the whole 100+ mods by following the 6 1/2 hour long tutorial video. I'm now playing Salt and Sanctuary which is a 2D Souls like that's been sitting in my library for a couple years.
Finally trying Honor Mode in BG3. Wish me luck!
Helldivers 1 because it was cheap and I’m a cheap bastard.
Helldivers 2 finally has working crossplay with friends, so I've been catching up with my bf and his friends. They are way better at the game than me so it's been fun being the hapless space cadet sent on missions way out of her league.
Playing persona 2 IS, Persona 3 reload and Persona 5 but I've been ill and progress has slowed down. So far I'm enjoying all 3 but Peronsa 2 actually feels quite unique
Working towards finishing Nioh 2 (just did the main quest where Nobunaga dies), playing a bit of Total Warhammer 2 (Nakai's campaign suuuuuucks), thought I was close to finishing Vtuber Survivors but I'm not so I'm probably dropping it for now (apparently you have to max rank every single character which is like another 40-ish hours minimum).
Occasionally playing some Monster Hunter: Rise when my friends are available, but I did a bunch of the MP-only HR quests solo (do not do this) so they're way behind me. Also did a round of Gunfire Reborn as the Yu-Gi-Oh Owl and it was... interesting.
Tomorrow I've got a game of High Frontier, a space exploration game. Features actual rocket equation stuff as you build up your spaceship and yeet your astronauts to various rocks around the solar system to set up advanced space-based manufacturing.
Friday I'm playing some 1849: Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, where you compete as robber barons to build railroads in 19th century Italy. Features tons of stock market fuckery, like true capitalism!
Saturday will be a session of Dune, the classic game of war and intrigue on our favorite desert planet. I'll be trying out one of the newest expansion factions, the dastardly House Moritani.
OpenMW is a wonderful piece of software.
I've been playing, variously, Starcraft: Brood War, We Love Katamari Reroll, and McPixel 3. The first two games need no introduction.
The third game I saw a talk by the guy about how he programmed it in C instead of using a preexisting game engine and that was enough to interest me. For the $2.00 sale price it was more than easy to convince myself to buy it. I think it's an intriguing game. Not the best ever, but a sort of pleasant surprise. Maybe if WarioWare Inc were a little more like a point and click adventure style game.
Attempted to play Pacific Drive but the driving made me queasy. I get motion sickness with first person games, and turning up the fov and turning off blur didn't help. I felt like I was on a boat when I was driving.
Sucks too because it looked like an interesting game.
Crusader kings 3 as always because I'm extremely autistic for that game, also I've been doing a disco Elysium hardcore run with my nbf where I stream the game and we make all the decisions and stuff together. we're doing a moralist play through because I've heard that that's one of the best questlines next to the communist one and I've already done the communist one
I’ve been getting really into overwatch lately. The complete rebalance has been a breath of fresh air.
I've been playing Rune Factory 4S. I was going to trans myself so I could gay marry Dylas, but I've grown to like the female MC so I guess I'll be straight for awhile.
Son and I are playing Pokemon Scarlet/Violet in multiplayer. He also makes me play Minecraft. I am playing Baldur's Gate 3, but work has been exhausting lately - not quite done with the game but I am in Act 3.
I've been playing hell divers 2, it's hilarious. For a while I was playing a worker cooperative in stellaris, pretty successfully. I'm actually making my way up the difficulty ladder this time
Ive been playing a ton of a game called vintage story lately. It's basically super in depth minecraft. It's been really good at keeping my attention. I found a server with some cool trans people on it and not any people openly being bigots and it's been a blast.
Just started Persona 5 last night!
I'm mostly playing Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. It's nice to play an Owlcat game that's not the IE-style real time with pause combat. The space battles mini game seems like the best of the side games in the Owlcat RPGs so far - it feels a bit like the X-Wing miniatures tabletop game.
I recently finished my second playthrough of Persona 5 Royal after getting it gifted to me for Christmas, so I picked up Persona 5 Tactica. It's alright? Feels a bit similar to the Mario vs Rabbits game (though I think MvR is probably better).
Total War: NAPOLEON with Darth mod
I've been playing Nightingale. It needs fleshing out and a better tutorial of the advanced mechanics, but so far, it's pretty great. Victorian Fae realm survival crafting with a lot of aesthetics taken from both Victorian adventure novels and Jonathan Stange and Mr Norrell. (yes I know that's regency)
Tears of the Kingdom, I found all the light roots recently so I recently returned to the surface and finished the Zora region quest and started on the desert one now. I already have master sword and like 100 of every item so I can do pretty much anything. Just enjoying exploring and solving the micro puzzles.
Stardew Valley dropped its 1.6 update which adds so much stuff so I started a new farm. I haven't gotten past year 3 ever but that was like 6 years ago so we'll see if I can get to late game farming stuff this time. Perfection sounds insane but sometimes you need a time sink.
And dragons dogma 2 releases at midnight so it should make me feel guilty about not playing the two games I mentioned above.
I also got some survivor clones, soulstone survivor, and death must die. They're fun games, death must die leans into hades style of upgrades. And soulstone is big and colorful with a billion unlocking things. We'll see if I keep at them.
BALATRO is always there to now. Clawing it's way into my brain, so I'm sure I'll pick away at it.
Street fighter. Currently grinding my way through plat.
I've been playing through the PS2 Tony Hawk games. I beat THPS3 and THUG and am starting on THPS4 now (my least favorite). Still having a blast, so I imagine I'll also go through THUG2 (never played) and American Wasteland (a better game than the way its talked about).
Probably going to play Dragons Dogma 2 this week though.
Morrowind/openmw rules. I agree with you, everyone should give it a shot. The combat feels weird because it's a dice roll, but there's a cadence you can get into that feels satisfying. That might just be nostalgia talking though.
I'm currently playing Grand Theft Horse 2 for the first time ever since I recently bought my first gamer PC. I'm 20 hours in and pogging the entire time. It's definitely one of the greatest games of all time.
In regards to OpenMW, are there any mods that make combat more realistic or similar to Skyrim? Morrowind is one of my favourite games and I'd love to replay it but it's annoying when your character misses 9 out of 10 times that they swing the sword.
I'm kind of getting tired of Balatro, could go for an action-roguelite next, but no clue what.
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Mostly Enshrouded. I generally play whatever early access open world survival crafting game has my partner's attention at any given time. They know what they like and I like playing games together.
I have recently finished playing morrowind for the first time on my original xbox
Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen. Got that shit on GOG for like $3 last December and I finally got a decent computer that can run games from the last decade.
Horizon Forbidden West finally came out on PC today, so that's gonna be my next couple weeks.
factorio, specifically Pyanodon's Alternative Energy
i want something i can sink 1000 hours into without it getting monotonous
I've put about 15 hours into Kenshi over the past week, but I probably haven't actually made that much progress compared to what other people could have because I'm still trying to figure the game out. I've got a team of 4 (used to be 5, RIP Sawg the bonedog), and I'm trying to build up an outpost that will let me recruit and train enough people so I can go out and build a bigger outpost in more fertile land.
Maybe Hell Let Loose but im going to practice for sure alot this weekend
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Grinding out ranked Overwatch and a bit of Disco Elysium.
Took a break on Persona 3 Reload so I don't get burned out.
Also started a fresh New Vegas playthrough in hopes that I can finally finish it this time around.
X-COM: Apocalypse, SimCity 3000 Unlimited and RuneScape private servers. Yeah games from the 1990s just seem to have this special charm that many new ones lack.
Also Flashpoint for all the childhood Flash game nostalgia when going to Newgrounds at a time when I was far too young and accidentally found out what "Hentai" means
Games with the Backsteet Boy's Heart. They keep telling me to quit. Reminds me of mgs2.
Fr though, getting my times down on f-zero x and getting to learn drifting finally and some Katamari. My parents have finished with super Mario wonder for the time being so they're gonna bring it by tomorrow so I can have my turn.
I started Rabi-Ribi and besides the yikes character designs it's pretty good. I hear that the post game is brutally hard and I already need to use consumables in bosses so I don't know how it will go
Alpha Protocol is back on pc now so that's what I'm playing, at least until Dragon's Dogma 2 releases. edit: I'd be playing OlliOlli World as well but I can't find my damn controller.
I'm in those Dominions mines, grognarding. Dominions 6 came out just a couple months ago, so it was a great time to get back into the game for my seemingly seasonal interest in it. This time around, I'm finally feeling like I have a good enough grasp of the game to start to tell what's good, which might be helped by the meta being pretty shook up by a new kind of magic, and a bigger emphasis on armies vs mages, along with the very cool addition of mounted units separated into mounts and riders. I'm incredibly close to winning my first multiplayer game right now (honestly, I got very lucky with a lot of map stuff), but it's absolutely going to come down to the wire and a single turn of timing one way or the other might make or break it.
I finished out the AoE2 tournament I was playing in, made it out of the group stage, but got swept in the first elimination round. Was a bit salty about it, might take me a bit to want to play that game again. Game is still really fun.
Last night I started Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader. Just dipped my toe in a bit, didn't even clear the prologue. I had played a bit into the game proper in early access a while ago, but I wanted to start over and experience it properly. There have definitely been some improvements and changes. I haven't fucked with the system long enough to really know it and I'm going to try and avoid looking up builds or anything, since learning on your own is fun. So far, it feels pretty intuitive to be honest, at least as someone pretty familiar with a stat spread. Not too much to say about this one yet. I've really enjoyed, (but not finished) Owlcat's previous Pathfinder titles, so I expect this will also scratch my crpg itch. Beyond that, 40k activates my slop neurons hard, so I'm gonna try and just have a good time throwing Sister Argenta bolter blazing and headlong into heretics, and not take it too seriously.
s on Hexbear