Monthly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing?
Monthly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing?
It has been a while since the last one. So...
Tell us what game you are currently, or recently played, greater than 6+ months old.
If the game happens to be on sale, a link would be a plus.
I'm finishing up Saints Row: The Third Remastered. I'm absolutely loving it, and I think I prefer it to GTA V. It's way less serious, but I actually somewhat care about the characters, unlike with GTA V. The side content is a lot of fun, and it has the turf war mechanic I loved about GTA SA.
I highly recommend it if you haven't tried it. It's a bit janky, but there's a lot of fun to be had imo, just don't take it too seriously (the game makes that really hard).
I just finished portal 1 & 2 for the first time! I was let down on the lore and story. I think if you were around on the internet when portal 2 came out in particular, you might understand. It just had so much reference in pop culture without explanation, i expected there to be more once you had context. I was let down.
That said DAMN these are excellent and fun games that are accessible to any player. The games are designed with fantastic visual clues to help you understand new puzzle elements. They are fun, not challenging to a frustrating degree, and the game is structured where you really can just play a bit before dinner or something.
The Long Dark.
Survival sim, in an arctic wilderness. It took me two weeks (occasional play only) to trudge through the snow and gather resources to smith some arrowheads for hunting. With that done, food is no longer an issue until my bow wears out. Better scour the forest for the right kind of wood, soon.
Playing Cyberpunk 2077, it's sometimes a little unintuitive. You're thrown into a world that doesn't explain anything about what's going on and is filled with so much stuff, but in general a really good game.
I've started Fallout 1 this week and not too long ago I finished Carmageddon 2.
Fallout is on sale (75% off);
https://store.steampowered.com/app/38400/Fallout_A_Post_Nuclear_Role_Playing_Game/
Carmageddon 2;
https://store.steampowered.com/app/282030/Carmageddon_2_Carpocalypse_Now/
I just bought Brotato on Steam. Shits fun af. It's like a roguelike but with no learning curve and literally anybody can play, but the higher levels are still difficult.
I just started a new Fallout 4 playthrough after binging the show, and my wife hopped back into Fallout Shelter. I guess they added the show characters to FS so that’s fun.
Stardew Valley and Kingdom Come Deliverance are the two big ones at the moment. I've played both a bit at a time for a while now.
Stardew Valley needs little introduction. It's a beautiful gem of an indie game. I'm in fall of year two and just getting used to married life and making that sweet sweet gold making wine and jelly.
Kingdom Come Deliverance is an awesome RPG in a non-fantasy medieval setting. You're the son of a blacksmith and your town is burned by a massive army leaving you a refugee seeking to avenge your parents. You're no war hero or chosen one, just a man trying to find his place in the beautiful but uncertain world...and maybe learn to read while he's at it
I finished Dave the Diver this weekend, great little game!
Now I've jumped board the No Man's Sky train again, for the first time in six (!) years. And so far it's been really fun and chill!
The Witness.
It feels especially relevant to this community because I'm picking it up again after a hiatus of over five years. I tried back then but got hard stuck on a puzzle that I just didn't get, and I refused to look up the answer and spoil the joy of discovery for myself.
Anyway, playing it is 2024, after walking around for 30 minutes to refresh myself, I was able to solve almost instantly 😅 so now I'm back into the game and loving it!
It's a quintessential patient game, with its slow pace (including the walking pace - glacial when compared to action games), and puzzles that you can puzz over in between sessions (even for years like in my case).
I told this story to a friend, and they asked "so did this puzzle take you 30 minutes to solve, or 6 years?" Which is a thought!
I recently replayed the entire Arkham series, including Origins.
They all still hold up incredibly well (maybe Asylum a tiny bit less, it was the first one and it feels a little clunky when you're coming right off of City or Knight), the acting is timeless, the stories feel like classic Batman tales... They're just perfect Batman games; and damn near perfect games just in general.
I've been playing fallout 4, got it a few weeks ago on sale for less than 8 bucks
Played and beat Final Fantasy 8 for the first time. Bit of an unpopular opinion, but I enjoyed everything about it more than FF7 (which i also played for the first time a few months ago). As a long time JRPG player, the mechanics were really interesting and fresh. I liked the majority of characters more as well. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm coming to these games 20+ years later and don't have the nostalgia for them - I'm not sure. I can definitely see why people loved FF7, though I'm not one of them.
I'd love anybodies thoughts on this and their opinions on the two games!
Playing Planescape: Torment for the first time, amazing game though the rather dated interface can get tiresome.
Finally started Fallout 2, I should have played it ages ago but it is kind of a slog at the beginning.
I'm also preparing to hunt Fatalis in MHW.
Replaying FO3 for the first time in ages and through TTW. A few sprinkling of mods to make the game feel more modern and omg is it a blast.
BOTW on CEMU. A bit overhyped perhaps, but I'm enjoying the playthrough so far
I’m going through Mass Effect 3 now. When I started the series I thought it seemed good, but I didn’t really understand why it was so very popular. And then the story picked up, and I understood.
Then the opening scene of 2 came, and that was amazing. What a way to start a sequel.
Now in 3 I feel like they nailed the atmosphere. I can’t wait to see where the story goes.
I got my (recently turned 12) son hooked on Civ5. He put 70 hours behind him in just a week during the Easter holidays.
So now we're playing multiplayer. I have my gripes with that game, but damn it never gets old.
Picked up Talos Principle 1 and 2 for 20$. Really enjoying the first one so far. It's like Portal but more serious, makes you feel really clever, lots of "outside the box" thinking.
Yakuza Infinite then to FF7 Rebirth. They both have japanised Hawaii in it
I'm playing the original Phantasy Star via the SEGA Ages version on Switch. Very much enjoying the simplicity of an 8-bit RPG, but it's amazing to see how much they were able to push the Sega Master System to its limits.
Also trudging through Dirge of Cerberus on PS2. It's clunky and jank as hell but I love the atmosphere.
Doom 2016 & flatout (whatever edition was recently steamdeck verified).
If you haven't tried Spiritfarer, it's absolutely worth the playthrough. So many feels...
I‘ve recently finished Fallen Order, Unravel, and En Garde.
Fallen Order was a nice game although I always felt like the game valued celebrating its animations over how in control I felt. It felt kind of sluggish to fight and the frequent traversal stutters were also a bit meh. It sounds like I didn‘t like it but I‘d give it a 7/10. There‘s also no fasttravel at all. It‘s absolutely worth picking up on sale if you‘re into soulslikes.
Unravel is a really old game, but it‘s a 2D platformer and through its realistic style stood the test of time thus far: It‘s great to look at even today. The story‘s somewhat emotional but if you don‘t like it, you can ignore it since it plays out wordlessly in the background. Puzzles and platforming sections weren’t frustrating and just fun. I think I looked up a solution like twice and it usually turned out there was an object I could interact with that I wasn‘t aware of. Fantastic music. The game‘s cheap and great, I‘d give it an 8/10. If it crashes on start up, you need to download and install the basic version of K-Lite Codec Pack, the game uses an old codec for videos that you might not have.
En Garde is a cheesy indie Zorro game with Sekiro mechanics and lots of environmental interactions. It‘s on sale on Steam right now for 10 bucks and absolutely worth it. Great music, combat feels snappy, the game does its thing and then it’s over, no fluff. It‘s also tough at nails to do no hit runs and pretty hard even on normal runs (it ramps up in chapters 3 and 4). However, it has „accessibility“ options which are basically just cheats (infinite health, auto parry, etc.), so tune to your liking. I‘ve beaten a lot of soulslikes and found normal difficulty enjoyable. 8/10.
Now it‘s back to Skyrim and Monster Hunter World.
My wife and brother in law and I have been jamming on Valheim. I'm not usually one for survival crafting games, but it's great with other people.
Returned to my beloved 3DS to play a fan translation of the Japan-only Rocket Slime 3. The translation itself is solid, though there are a bunch of text rendering issues. Nothing that ruins the experience. I loved the previous game and this one is a very similar experience, but I think I preferred the mecha fights of 2 over the pirate ship battles of 3.
The gameplay balance is all over the place, unfortunately. Regular adventuring off-ship is dead easy and a little dull. The boss fights in particular are incredibly uninspired. But the ship battles wildly fluctuate in difficulty. Some I manage to Perfect without much challenge, others have me hanging on by a thread and landing me on the Game Over screen more than once.
I'm on the last chapter of the main quest and will probably give up soon on trying to complete everything as I've read the final post-game gauntlet is absolute hell.
I started a long journey for discovering Dragon Quest (only played to 9 and completed 11). I already finished DQ1 (very nice, simple but interesting nevertheless), and I am now playing DQ2 (and I love it :D).
Sekiro
Tale of Two Wastelands! Fallout 3 and New Vegas in the same game.
Jumped back into slay the spire because of the announcement of the sequel.
Driver: San Francisco and loving it!
Just picked up Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origins. Maybe 6 hours in.. Never heard of it when it came out. It seems like a pretty great fusion of Nioh minus the stances, and one of the more actiony FFs so far. The story is... there. It seems to be heavily based on FF1 so far, so I'm not expecting much. The rest of the game is fun and batshit crazy enough to make up for it.
Tomb Raider (2013).
I just finished Dave the Diver and I was going through the backlog of unplayed games on my Steam Deck. I'm not even sure when I bought this game, I feel like it may have come with a humble bundle or a graphics card. Anyway, I'm about 3 hours in and so far it's pretty great!
Custom Robo for N64. Cute little 3d shooter where you have a robot made of 5 customizable parts that you can mix and match to build the strongest robot and be the greatest "robo commander". I think people say the idea was a "sci-fi collectible game loosely similar to pokemon".
I know it's late but posting for content.
I got Elder Scrolls: Online last summer when it was free on Epic. I love it! After playing for six months, I knew I wanted more and was willing to pay, so I got the latest chapter bundle (which includes all older chapters) for €19.79 on Steam. Absolutely worth it. I've since received two other DLCs for free just for playing the game. The lore of TES is just so good, and the environments in ESO look beautiful. There's so much story in the quests too, so even if it's an MMO, I can play it exclusively as a single player game that just happens to have other people in it.
Edit: The game is 10 years old this year, and there is more free stuff because of the anniversary.
I dove back into Division 2. Played the heck out of it on release but the RNG was just so fucking bad. Like...not D4 bad, but pretty close. Now the game is a lot more relaxed, and in some cases will allow you to select the type of loot youd like, as a percentage chance when rare loot drops. Anyway, besides that I've been spreading my democraseed in Helldivers 2 with some friends. Blows my mind we are doing Suicide on a normal basos now when that used to be a wet dream. Not a brag, I just usually cant hack it in shooters anymore. I also have Raft in the rotation. Really good zen game that I highly recommend. Can usually pick it up for cheap too.
Just finished my 260 hour Xendar's mod playthrough on Factorio.
Thinking of playing Pyanodon's, but my start is giving me second thoughts.
I've been playing a ton of game dev story. To the point where now I want to try my hand at making my own simulation type game in that style
Got a bot impatient
Bought balatro and stacklands
Both fun
Red Alert 2 again
Minecraft...