Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of July 27th

Finished Expedition 33’s 2nd act last night and still processing it! Beautiful game, I adore the story and world they created

It's rare to come across games that feel as much like a work of art as Clair Obscur does, especially in the AA+ budget space. It deserves the hype and the success they've had, and I really hope it ends up getting Game of the Year.
- I hope it does, it deserves it! The fact that most of my complaints are insignificant annoyances really says something to the quality of the game, everything works together so well!

Voids Vigil

Pixel art roguelike with like 30 different starting classes and different game modes. Working my way through the 221 achievements to 100%. It's highly addictive, has a sense of humour, and it's made by an indie dev that I admire.

Ghost of Tsushima. After completing both Horizon games because people on the internet + a friend said it was good... THEY ARE NOT ON THE SAME LEVEL AT ALL (imo). To me, Ghost is FAR better than horizon games, runs better, the story is muuuuch better, the characters are great, the gameplay is addictively fun, music is amazing, setting is beautiful (though not historically accurate), etc. If you are looking at ghost vs horizon on what to play, pick ghost a thousand times. Horizon is not a bad game, just not on the same league as people on the internet make it sound. Honestly the story and characters are bland and lacking. Idk why but it feels like people these days have a low bar when it comes to fantasy, likely because there is an insane hunger for it. Ghost is not a masterpiece at all, it is just better than Horizon. Looking forward to Ghost of Yotei.

Just finished BG3, now I'm debating retrying the last battle to see if I can get a diff ending, or starting a whole new run through. I'm also torn to maybe play one of the gazillion games in my backlog...maybe.

Modded Minecraft.

Picked up Spelunky2 again.

Just unlocked seeded runs, and there are a couple more missions to do before I call it quits.

I got back into Shapez 2 recently and getting the factory flowing has been really fun. I like that you don't have to try and figure out how to cram everything into a tiny space, you can take as much room as you like to make well-designed factories.

(I have absolutely no idea how to even start to build a Make Anything Machine though)

I read that they will do a new game mode where you dont have to remove everything you built in the beginning. Looking forward to that before I play it again. Only played back when the first release was but looking forward to the new mode as that was something that bothered me.
- Yes, I'm holding off on starting over until that comes out, too. :)

I'm back on a NG+ run of Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I had to take a break from the misery of Blasphemous. I might play both in parallel this week. I already missed out on the "true ending" of Blasphemous by not doing the DLC early apparently so now I need to decide if I can bother going for the "good ending" or just try to rush through the final area so I can get some credit rolling action and uninstall the game for good.

Mandragora has been fun though! NG+ could maybe use a balance pass perhaps, but it's hard to tell with the amount of build variety. So far NG+ has felt more like a victory lap than a challenge, but I did go for a fairly greedy multiclass build so it really only came together towards the end of NG. And even then, the gameplay is fun enough and traversing these beautiful locations is fun enough that I don't mind. And there is a certain ARPG style satisfaction in seeing your character grow in power and your build come to fruition. Easy free dopamine.

RoboCop Rogue City here. Picked it up on sale and have really been enjoying it. They did a great job of capturing the atmosphere of in universe Detroit, and made it feel like you are playing RoboCop. No diving behind cover, no massive arsenal, not even a crouch. The story line is solid, and the gameplay moves along nicely, which unlocks, skill upgrades, etc scattered throughout. 9/10

I'm excited to hear that! I also picked it up on the sale because it was outrageously cheap, but it's not near the top of my backlog pile. Should probably rewatch the movies first too, whenever it gets time to play it.

Been playing DK Bananza too! I’m taking my time, currently done with the forest layer although not 100 percent. Going back to the snow one today.

I've been playing The First Berserker: Khazan. I'm maybe two-thirds through the game and generally have a good time. It's basically Nioh with the faster paced combat, loot and mission based level format. For the first two regions, I mainly used the Spear, but recently have switched to the Greatsword. The monster bosses are fine, but some of the human bosses can be extremely infuriating, with how their stamina regenerates so quickly.