Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 30th

https://beehaw.org/post/6879187

Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 30th - Beehaw

Whatcha all playing! I’ve been going hard in Pikmin 4. Also been playing shattered pixel dungeon and recently ascended for the first time which was super fun.

Just got to 1000hrs on my new Steam account. I am just playing DayZSA, modded hardcore PVE mostly. Rarely, I go back to minecraft.

Started the Mass Effect Legendary Edition, after wanting to replay the ME Trilogy for a couple years. Haven’t played them since they originally released.

Just started ME3 yesterday, and it is nice to experience the gameplay changes from 1 to 3 in such a short time. I had completely forgotten how terrible that Mako in ME1 was. Made it almost unbearable for me. The Hammerhead in ME2 was so much better in every way.

I’m about quarter of the way through 2, really enjoying it.
Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate. Gotta clear those last quests before Baldurs Gate 3 release.

#JusticeForLagi

3U is still my favorite MH. Don’t care what anyone says about the underwater combat. I loved it.

Underwater combat is great and the game itself is good but the monster roster… Plesioth, Agnaktor, Uragaan, and the worst ones: Stygian Zinogre and Lucent Nargacuga. #JusticeForLagi though.
Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, a game that hooks a lot.
After buying a Steam Deck during the sale, I’m playing Civilization 6 again. Never got into it nearly as much as the previous installments but now I think I’m finally getting it.
I saw Timberborn getting shilled a bit on here so I’ve been checking that out. Lots of fun so far. The droughts keep absolutely wrecking me, though.
Playing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on the PC. Bought it on a whim and it’s quite a good game with gorgeous graphics. Lacking polish in some areas though, for example there are many oddly placed invisible walls as well as points where the character can get stuck. Anyway, trying to finish the game before Baldur’s Gate 3 comes out.
I play Dragons Dogma DA for weeks now and I still love how fresh the combat feels everytime you change vocation. Right now I am a magic archer and I pretty much spend all the weight I can carry on blast arrows. This plus the skill where I can double zoom in on enemies from far away and do A TON of damage makes me the biggest danger in all of gransys at the moment. I can’t stress this enough: the combat in this game is just so good and varied it’s absolutely insane! But! I just can’t stop thinking about how great it would be if Dragon’s Dogma had lore and quests like the third Witcher! I feel like Capcom tried with a handful of quests like the one with the dude from the village who constantly gets lost and you have to rescue him. Or some main storyline quests also can be exciting. And yet, most quests are kill quests with just a little textbox explaining who wants what killed. Dragons Dogma made me realize how much of Witcher 3 is actually carried by the writing, the lore, the world and the interesting characters interacting in it and how bland, almost bad the combat is. So now I wish CD Red would hire the people responsible for the combat in Dragons Dogma for the next Witcher! Sounds like a perfect game in my book!
Getting absolutely stuck into Remnant 2, such a cool sense of exploration!
Still grinding away at Street Fighter 6, and currently starting another run of the FFVII Remake!
I’m deep into TOTK, though I’m looking forward to getting started with Don’t Starve on my Deck.
XCOM 2: long war of the chosen (lwotc). Have heard about long war every now and again and finally decided to try it out. Gotta say it’s pretty hard but I am starting to get the hang of it
Long war is practically another expansion. It’s insane how much content there is for a mod
Is that a DLC? I have never heard of it.
Yesterday finally bought Remnant: From the Ashes on sale after seeing the new one all over Twitch. Played 6h of coop with my brother and hell was it a lot of fun. There seem to be less and less good coop games, but this one does a good job. Of course there are many small issues though (e.g. a memory leak crashing the game every few hours on Xbox lol). Glad there is a second one already waiting after we’re done.
I’ve started Elder Scrolls Online again after a long break and do the dailies there every evening with all my characters.

Played Dredge on the Steam Deck, which was a nice, relaxing experience.

Besides that I’ve been playing Blood: Fresh Supply on my beefy gaming pc. Great fun, much glee when blowing up hordes of cultists.

Started playing InFAMOUS 2, i played the first one maybe 10 years ago and now just getting to the 2nd one lol.
What an amazing game it is!! It’s a shame we don’t have remakes of 1&2 on modern console or PC yet.
Yeah, they would do well with a remake. Gameplay is pretty solid, Hopefully Second Son and First Light hold up, those are next in the list
First Light is awesome front to back. Second Son drags slightly but has great characters.
I’m playing Team Fortress 2. It’s my comfort game.
Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart. It finally came out on PC and it feels so good to have a R&C game again.
I’m playing project zomboid very hard but such a detailed game.
Snowrunmer. Something about dragging big trucks through mud is just very relaxing and satisfying.
Same! Had mudrunner on steam then snowrunner on epic, just got snowrunner on steam with all the dlcs on sale, and really enjoying the laid-back vibes.
I just finished replaying the Arkham games. Thinking about not moving to the Uncharted series since I’ve only ever played the first game, a tiny bit of the second, and half of the fourth. Want to experience the series / story in full.
Persona 4 mostly, I really like it although I'm tending to prefer P5 from what I've played so far.
Discovering Octopath traveller II. Not a big fan for now, It’s beautiful but I’m a bit disappointed by the story. Hope it gets better 🤞

Just finished my first playthrough of Cyberpunk last night after about 120 hours. I had 3 or so gigs left but wanted to make sure I got it done before Baldur’s Gate 3 (will need to free up some disk space…).

Overall I liked it a lot, despite its many flaws. It has some moments, characters and stories that are really engaging. Judy was a standout for me, and her voice actress really killed it. I regret not choosing Female V now, but of course I had no idea at the time. And I know it’s controversial but I kinda liked Keanu as Silverhand, even though his voice acting isn’t always “good”. The relationship between V and Johnny was the thing I enjoyed the most, and Johnny’s character development.

Not sure I’m super happy with the ending I got, though, and I might go back and play out some of the other alternatives.

From memory, I’m pretty sure Judy can only romance female V (if that’s what your regret was).

I’m one of the weirdos who had a good time with Cyberpunk when it first came out. I’m really looking forward to the DLC and trying hard not to play it again before the DLC so I don’t burn myself out on it.

Yeah, Judy made a big impression on me. I’ll wait a while after Phantom Liberty’s release until I’ll play again, but I’ll definitely play Fem V then so I can see the Judy romance.

I just played through another ending today, (Don’t) Fear the Reaper into the Temperance ending, and I much preferred that to the one I got at first (Rogue’s path into The Sun ending). I’m much more satisfied with the game now.

My first ending was Panam/Aldecaldo and it’s still my favorite probably.

I have heard people like that one, and I have read roughly what it’s about, but I’m saving that one for my next playthrough.

I think which one suits best depends a lot on both how you played your V and how you felt about Johnny.

For me, V and Johnny became like best friends, and so The Sun ended up feeling mostly like a letdown and a nobody wins scenario, and it felt almost out of character for V, too.

Temperance felt perfect for the story as I had experienced it, and it was also really cool to see the final dialogues inside Mikoshi from both the perspective of playing as Johnny and playing as V. Highly recommended.

SPOILERS When playing as Johnny (the first time), I actually thought V would interrupt a fourth time on the bridge heading towards the light and forcibly kick Johnny back into his body and make the choice for him. At least that’s where it felt like the dialogues were going. I think that would have been a cool moment, if your relationship with Johnny is high enough.

Remnant 2 has been a blast. I do wish there was 1 more world in it to make it feel a little more full, but I love every moment of these games.

Its crazy to find a secret secret area, pick up a melee weapon, then discover that the secret secret weapon unlocks a secret area with another hidden area inside it for a super secret ability.

Remnant 2 is so great! What an unexpected surprise treat of a game! It really scratches a lot of my gamer itches at once.

I agree that I wish it had one or two more worlds to explore but there is so much replayability already, it’s easily worth the $50 price of admission. Looking forward the first big patch; hopefully they make respeccing significantly cheaper.

Honestly I wouldn’t mind the traight cap if they would just let us do loadouts and pay a small fee in our inventory to swap them.

It feels stifling to need to run to Wallace to make any build changes in traight layout.

Basically my only complaint though. I want this team to keep making these style games. I’ve always been a big fan of randomized tiles or other forms of procedural generation.

It’s incredible how they manage to still blend some of the best puzzles and lore into this system of world generation.

I am playing Jedi Survivor. Having had a blast with the original I was excited to hear people say that the second installment is similar but better in many ways. I don’t know what it is about it but I’m just not able to get into it. Maybe it’s the semi-open world feeling of some of the larger areas? I dunno it’s just not working for me, which is disappointing.
I’m waiting for the price to come down on it. I never finished the original because I suck at souls games but we need more good Star Wars games like these. I want to support both single-player Star Wars adventures and Respawn because they made my favorite shooters of all time (Titanfall and TF2).

I just finished the story. I don’t know why it’s not working for you - I liked how it feels, but have to admit the story didn’t grip me as much as in the previous game. It looks like it’s setting up an interesting character journey for Cal for the third game though.

I’d say, try not to get distracted with the open world - explore a little bit, but try to stick to the main story so you can finish it before you burn out on the open world (I learned this the hard way with Witcher 3 and AC: Valhalla).

iRacing… I only ever play iRacing
I am playing Time Wasters on the Steam Deck and Final Fantasy VII Remake on my main rig for my game club.
Me and my spouse are getting back into Elden Ring. Created a new character and chosen a build that’s enjoyable for both of us, so we sit on a couch, passing the controller back and forth, exploring, doing quests, reading lore and praising the Erdtree. Good Times!
what class have you choosen?
The wretch, of course! Gonna respec into a mad dervish poet, wielding bloodhound’s fang and flames of frenzy once we clear the Academy.
Discovered Car Mechanic Simulator and it’s so so so satisfying. I know (knew?) absolutely nothing about the mechanical systems of cars, but it just clicks.
My initial reaction was to laugh, but honestly, after further thought, I could see myself getting hooked on a game of this nature.

Still Final Fantasy 14, I’m near the end of the Stormblood base story (some general spoilers in the comment).

This expansion has been a massive disappointment so far, and this time it’s not even about all the time-wasting (of which there’s still plenty). It’s about a war to end the occupation of two different regions / nations, but it’s just not executed well at all.

The scale of the fights, that are supposed to drive out the invaders, have like a dozen people on either side, so they are just really lame. The villains are not compelling at all and have a really dumb reason for fighting you. Some of your companions, that should play a bigger role, basically don’t matter at all. It’s just not interesting at all.

I can’t wait for this to be over, hopefully the post-game patch content can improve things somewhat. I should at least get a bunch of dungeon unlocks, probably a raid, maybe more, which will most likely be a good time.

Just finished Marvel’s spiderman (main storyline) and it was really great. Loved the graphics, the story telling and especially this view from the top of the Empire State building

I was offered a month of PC Game Pass for $1, so I took MS up on it. I’ve mostly been playing Forza Horizon 4(my computer can’t handle 5) so far, the game’s really fun.

I’m open to suggestions on games in the PC Game Pass library, btw. I plan to cancel before Aug 26th, so I want to get my gaming in before then. I honestly do prefer straightforward action games and RPGs(and strategy as well). Things I prefer to avoid are puzzle solving and super open world stuff. I generally strongly prefer single-player experiences, too.

Forza Horizon is just a sheer joy to play. 4 or 5, you can’t go wrong. I’m not that into car games, but I have such hundreds of hours into both.

Don’t know if you’ve played/heard of these, but some good short singleplayer stuff on gamepass that might fit the types of games you like and you could easily finish before then:

A Short Hike is getting added today and is something I’d recommend to anyone if you haven’t played it. Very pleasant game, and as the name suggests it’s very short, you can complete it in an afternoon.

Celeste is on there and is one of the best 2D platformers, if you enjoy those and haven’t played it definitely try it out.

Death’s Door is a top-down zelda-like, and one of my favorite takes by indies on that type of game.

Doom 1/2 are classics that are still very much worth playing and hold up well.

Mirror’s Edge is a first person platforming/parkour game, a bit older at this point but holds up pretty well.

Monster Train is a deckbuilder roguelite, which I know is a polarizing genre, but if you’re either into those or open to the idea of trying them it’s one of the best. Might not fit as a shorter game depending on how much of the stuff in it you want to do, but you could at least get a good taste for it and see if you like it.

Both of the Ori games are good metroidvanias that are relatively short.

Prey is a great immersive sim/fps/stealth game, if you’ve tried other Arkane stuff like Dishonored, or the Deus Ex games, it’s similar to those.

Both of the Psychonauts games are great 3D platformers. 2 is especially good and a big step up in gameplay, as you might expect with the time gap between them.

Tinykin is a 3D platformer with some Pikmin inspiration, where you’re a tiny person exploring a giant house, very fun if you like platforming and collectathon type stuff.

Still playing Diablo IV (just hit level 72) and Puzzle Quest 3 (because functional addiction, which probably applies to Diablo IV as well).

Oh, and Cookie Clicker – 459 days and counting.

Still deep in Tears of the Kingdom, but I am close to 100% of shrines and light roots. Have not even tried fighting Ganon yet, but with my power level it shouldn’t be that tough. Gonna finish it this week and then hop back to Final Fantasy 16, which I binge played release weekend and got over 50% through according to the PS5 progress indicator.
I got sucked into playing Witcher 3 again. I swear I’ll finish it this time! I’ve also been playing an early access indy game called Inkulinati, and when I need some mindless kick-ass action, I have my go-to TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge.
I just finished Tears of the Kingdom last week. No spoilers, the final boss fight felt like a dragon ball Z episode. The health bar busting out of its usual bounds and hitting the edge of the screen was a “shit just got real” moment for me and the kids, lots of hype. I didn’t think I would see anything top Breath of the Wild in this generation but glad to be wrong.

FFVIIR and enjoying it. I’m getting the hang of the hybrid battle system, it’s a good balance of the two, curious about other titles that mix action and almost turn based style commands. Still a little annoyed at the camera and target locking, but have gotten used to it after switching to d-pad targeting.

Also just escaped fort joy in Divinity Original Sin 2. Such a great game.