Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 22nd

Ive been obsessed with The Witness for a few weeks now. Some puzzles are so damn tricky but figuring them out is so pleasurable. This is one of the few puzzle games im actually trying to solve on my own instead of relying on walkthroughs so the experience is very fulfilling

The Witness may be one of the best puzzle games I’ll never beat. The repeated Aha! moments are something else
After you finish the witness, you should try The Looker. It's a free parody of the witness that's also pretty good as a puzzle game in its own right. Though, like the witness, I didn't finish it either.

Oxygen not included.

All my dupes fart so much that I can run a generator off them.

After mostly playing BG3 lately, I'm now back to Factorio. I figured that since my angelbob mainbuss save passed 1GB, it was time to start something new, so I decided to give Space Exploration a go. I hope to have it completed by the time the space expansion for Factorio is released.

I am just now starting through Fallout 4. I’ve had it in my library for a while but never got around to it.

I also started with Mario Wonder. The wonder effects are a lot of fun. I suck at 2D sidescrollers, so let’s see how Im gonna do in the later levels.

I recently discovered Snowrunner and have been having a ton of fun playing on the switch! I’ve also rolled down the same hill multiple times 🥲 though I’m learning to tame the mud

Stick with it, the juice is worth the squeeze!!
- It is! Last night I discovered the fleetstar had awd in the garage 🥴 I’ve built two bridges, fixed two rockslides, and pulled the truck to the farm in the time since!

I've been playing some Mario Wonder too (both co-op and single player). I'm not the biggest 2D platformer fan, but I think it does a pretty good job. I'm surprised at how difficult some of the levels have gotten so far (4 and 5 star difficulty levels ain't no joke). I'm not sure if I'll finish it, but there's fun to be had for sure.

I'm also closing in on finishing Chrono Trigger for the first time. I'm enjoying it, though I think the PS1 and PS2 era JRPGs are more up my alley. This game definitely oozes charm though, and I can see why many consider it a classic. After I beat it I'll probably try Chrono Cross again, though last time I tried playing it the game froze twice early on just talking to people...

Could kids play Wonder?
- I think so, though there are some optional levels they may struggle with. If they play as Yoshi they won't take any damage, which might help. Alternatively, someone more experienced could play as Yoshi and the kid could ride the Yoshi through some of the more challenging spots.

Playing this week:

DMC4: Still great
Vampire Survivors: still really addicting, my save files was deleted, so I started all over. As soon as I reach library level, then it's all about farming / grinding.

I played several games last week,

The Secret of Monkey Island: is still a really funny game
Call of the Sea: dropped it after first hour, the first person camera is making me nauseous. I had the same issue while playing Maquette, weirdly I don't have much issue when playing FPS (but I don't play them often)
TMNT Shredder's Revenge: it's an okay game, playing it solo is kinda annoying, since enemies tend to knock you back, and there's a recovery time.

Hi-Fi Rush had me going back to play through the Devil May Cry series earlier this year, and I didn't finish them before 2023 releases started popping off, but I left off at DMC4. I seem to remember the impressions of it back in the day being so-so, but I really enjoyed what I've played of it so far, and it feels the most like what Hi-Fi Rush became out of the series thus far. 1 and 3 were great, but 4 seemingly keeps what made those good without as many rough edges.
- I've finished 1 - 3 recently, and I wanted to finish the entire DMC series including DmC.
  
  I'm not a good DMC player, tend to mash buttons bit too often. After all the DMC games, I wanna start with Ninja Gaiden, properly learning the blocking based on a YT guide I've seen.

Started playing Space Wreck which has been fun so far. It's like playing the old Fallout and Arcanum games, or at least as how I remember them. The first act I basically talked my way through without fighting a single fight or passing any other skill checks. I really love these kinds of role-playing games so I'm a happy.. err.. person :)
I'm already thinking about how to replay this for my second and third run (it's supposed to be a short game)

Wishlisted, thanks. Love this sort of game but it's the first time I've heard of it. I'll check it out next time it's on sale.
Went back to wishlist it. I played the demo, but it was pretty buggy. The "Very positive" is encouraging.

I'm currently going through Pathfinder: Kingmaker, which is my first experience with the Pathfinder system.

While I do enjoy it right now, the beginning was kinda rough (super long rant incoming). Right after the short tutorial, I went to pick up some berries in a spider-infested cave, which wasn't too bad, just that the spiders have poison that reduce your stats. In hindsight, this wasn't that bad, just some missing information on my part and maybe bad tooltips, because the poison was supposed to go away after resting, but it didn't. What the tooltip fails to mention, the stat penalty can stack and every 8 hours of rest removes one stack, so you might have to wait around for a day or so, before you're back to normal.

Then, while I was still recovering from that (mentally and in-game) I stumbled on a text-only event, where you're going through some marshes and find a seemingly evil idol. Me, being the Lawful Good monk that I am, of course decide to destroy it, but get cursed in return (-2 constitution). Curses are of course permanent, until you can start to remove them at level 5. I was level 2 at the time. Consumable items to remove them exist, but for some reason, drinking a potion can fail. I guess your character just spills everything over the floor. These potions are also super expensive and the vendor had just two of them, while I had four or five people in my party. Thank god my character is also a time wizard, so I cast Quick Load, and was good as new.

After those two experiences, like an hour into the prologue or act 1, I was ready to get fucked at every turn, but that was basically it. No idea why the devs chose to put these quests and events super close to your starting base.

My only other gripe with the game is the Kingdom Management. After you become a baron, you have to start managing your lands, which is fine in general, but I don't think the devs have found a good balance, because there are just so many events that are constantly popping up, and I felt like I was making no progress with the actual CRPG part of the game. Regularly I'd leave my capital, just to get a notification that something happened, after like five seconds. So I go back to check it out, and it's always some unimportant stuff. Experienced players might know that you can ignore these things for a bit, but as a new player, this was just super annoying. Then you also have some projects that force you to skip 14 days of in-game time, while your character is busy, and a few times, when I did that, I got notifications for like eight new things that happened. That's when I called it, pulled out the mods and basically nerfed the shit out of that mechanic. Events now take only a fraction of their normal time, I can't fail, and most importantly, I can manage most things, while out on the road. I'll probably have to skip a ton more days manually, but I take that over the default implementation. FYI, you can turn down the difficulty of the management stuff in-game or even completely automate it (that way you lose some throne room events and interactions I think), I just had the mod installed already, because of a different reason, so I just used that.

Anyway, I still enjoy the CRPG part of the game. The combat is fun, although for a complete beginner to Pathfinder (and little experience with DnD) some tooltips are really lacking information. There are tons of keywords and mechanics getting thrown around, that I have no idea what they do. On your character sheet you're presented with tons of different scores, and for half of them I don't know how they got there (the others list a neat breakdown for each bonus you get). I think there are also some bonuses that only apply in certain cases, but aren't reflected on your character sheet, but I wouldn't know, because it's not explained. I'm playing on normal or whatever is the recommended difficulty for newcomers to Pathfinder, and it's not that difficult, so you can get by.

Other than that, I did "finish" Wolfenstein 3D and killed Hitler. There are more episodes and an expansion, but I'll skip them. Like I said last week, I found the game kinda boring, it's just too basic for me nowadays. Just a handful of different enemies, just three weapons, and the levels look all the same.

Now I'm deciding on the next retro shooter, that I want to tackle. Right now I'm thinking either Ion Fury or Doom 64, but something else might catch my eye.

Ohhh, one of my favorite all-time games, only surpassed by the successor.

So first off: Wrath of the Righteous is far more approachable. Better tooltips, better tutorial (including a dynamic one that pops up when relevant), better interface. Just in case you feel like more pathfinder. Note that the powerlevel is far higher in WotR because of mythic powers.

Right after the short tutorial, I went to pick up some berries in a spider-infested cave, which wasn’t too bad, just that the spiders have poison that reduce your stats. I

Fun story: This encounter was heavily nerfed (twice actually, once shortly after release, and then overhauled a few months later). It used to be mandatory and much more brutal :D It literally made some people stop playing :D

Consumable items to remove them exist, but for some reason, drinking a potion can fail. I guess your character just spills everything over the floor.

Hah :D So essentially the potion is a spell in a bottle. Wait, not essentially. That’s what it is. It has a caster level that depends on the creator of the potion. So with that caster level when drinking it, the spell casts Remove Curse against the DC of the curse. And that is what can fail.

After those two experiences, like an hour into the prologue or act 1, I was ready to get fucked at every turn

Sounds like you didn’t encounter the overleveled undead random encounter on the western side ;) Owlcat generally overhauled quite a lot of the encounters to remove difficulty spikes.

My only other gripe with the game is the Kingdom Management.

That is a very common complaint. I liked it, and the time pressure it added. Though only for the first few hundreds of hours (1283h played in total, and without beta testing), later I did what you did.
- Wrath of the Righteous is far more approachable
  
  I've read that, but I was planning on playing both anyway, so I decided to start with Kingmaker. Depending on the game, it can be hit-or-miss to go back to an older release by a developer. I just played Divinity 2 after BG3, and missing a lot of the changes and QoL additions that Larian has made, was a bit of a pain at times.
  
  Sounds like you didn’t encounter the overleveled undead random encounter on the western side
  
  I might have gotten it today (two undead, level 14 and 17 or something), but I was already level 9, so it wasn't a huge deal. Actually, I'm surprised at how much higher level enemies the game throws at you, but you can pretty comfortably win against, as long as you're prepared (I'm playing on the recommended difficulty for someone new to the Pathfinder system). A few times I had to reload and get a different weapon to actually kill an enemy or change and refresh my spells, because I wandered into an unexpected fight, but did manage to get them down.

I played through Far: Lone Sails and really enjoyed the light puzzle and management of the machine. It was super atmospheric and I really loved the game overall. It was a perfect casual game that really absorbed me into it. Going to play the sequel as well soon.

I should try out the sequel! I played the first when it originally released and it felt just right for what I was looking to get out of it.
- It’s on sale right now on switch (which is where I played the first as well) but not on steam.

Been playing Mario Wonder that last 2 days, but I gotta put it down and finish The Legend of Zelda: The Monish Cap. I was on the last dungeon. Great game, I don't know why I waited so long to play it.

Ace Combat 7. Never played one before and loving the just-right arcade feel of the controls.

Every time this goes on sale, I'm debating on whether to buy it or not. Like you, I've never played one of the Ace Combat games before, but some arcade style gameplay could be fun.
- it is fun! I loved both AC5 and AC7, didn't really like 3, 4 and 6 and didn't play 1+2.
You should definitely try the earlier ones !

BG3 and Halo: Infinite with friends, Doom: Eternal, Crusader Kings III and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous solo.

Mass Effect Legendary Edition (ME1), just got Liara & did the DLC mission as well as a bit of uncharted worlds & rogue VI on Earth's moon.

The game looks a lot better and most controls are nicer. Although somehow the Mako is even worse to control in LE than the original ME and I get some stutter/loading while running around in presidium.

Being able to skip while in the elevator is nice, but I would've liked to see the option to be moved directly into normandy added to the rapid transits like in ME2 & ME3. Having to go to C-Sec, take the elevator, and wait for the decontamination process every time is really tedious, and it's why I rarely visited the Citadel in the original ME1 as well.

Honestly ME1 LE is looking pretty nice and I would recommend it to anyone who hasn't played it yet, but it was always the story that was the highlight of ME1, the gameplay isn't actually that great and I've already replayed the original several times so I think I'm just going to go ahead and play ME2.

I’m a bit in a not-yet-released slump. "Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous" gets a new DLC in late November, so not playing that until then. The same company releases their new game "Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader" in December, so I’m not playing the Beta until then. "Vagrus - The Riven Realm" gets a new DLC some time this year, so also waiting there. "Colony Ship" gets out of EA and releases November 9, so obviously not playing EA either.

I had enough of BG3 for now (finished it only twice, it’s not as captivating as the Pathfinder games) and will only eventually replay it with one of those "make it like actual D&D5" modpacks. Regarding D&D5, I should some time check if there are updated fan campaigns for Solasta that use the higher DLC level cap :D

I did plan to replay Wasteland 2, but that will take quite some time, and as I mentioned, upcoming releases.

So after telling you what I have not been playing, what I currently do play is alternate between my typical fallback games: Stellaris (a game I never once finished despite 1080h of time played) and Civ V with the amazing and mandatory Vox Populi mod.

Skyrim Anniversary Edition. I'm backlogged obviously. The updated graphics make it feel like a modern game. I am really enjoying it.

Slowly but surely playing through xenoblade chronicles 3 and X4 with the interworlds mod

Laika: Aged Through Blood

I almost never buy metroidvanias before they go on sale pretty heavily because there are just so many good choices, but I played the absolute hell out of that first flash bike game that you controlled balance front and back. This is that, but with a big map to explore and combat I'm really enjoying. You block bullets with your bike, reload ammo with a backflip and a bullet parry with a front flip, and aiming your gun is bullet time, but because you're aiming in the air a lot, you still have to pay attention to your rotation, so there's a nice tension to it. I'm two bosses in, and both are decent takes on the unique flavor of their mechanics. I'm hooked hard.

Steam has a demo so you don't have to buy it without knowing if it clicks for you.

Diablo 4's Season 2 started this week, and I'm having a lot more fun playing with my rogue this round than I did with my druid in Season 1. They made it a lot easier to level up, which is nice. I could have done without the story though. It was super short and the new character Erys was not likeable at all.

My Ghost Recon team in my second playthrough of Baldur's Gate 3 got past level 8, and they may as well have ascended to godhood then and there. There are several achievements for killing some boss or another before they get to do some kind of attack, but this team just bursts them down before they get the chance to take a second turn. I'm in Act 3 now and just checking out a few remaining plot threads that I missed in my first playthrough.

I'm also trying to finish a run of 30XX. It's good, and the level generation is slightly less repetitive than its predecessor, but it's mostly just more of the same. New bosses and such, and the game is still good, but I was hoping for more of an iterative improvement over the first game.

Currently emulating the old Crash Team Racing as I make my way through most of the Crash Bandicoot games. The racing game is pretty hard as racing games go.

Still working on Divinity Original Sin 2. Game is fun and it’s a lot better than #1 in that series. It’s a large time investment but I do love the game.

Started Kingdom Come: Deliverance yesterday and it's pretty good. I only just got out of the tutorial phase of the story and I'm impressed by the realism in the game. It's like a non-magical recreation of TES 4 Oblivion, and the Bohemia open world feels very alive.

NPCs have schedules. You can see them through the windows as they sit down, do the sign of the cross, then eat their meals. Although a lot of them are generic NPCs, the unique named characters can have speech skill checks (your character vs theirs) to determine outcomes as well as to haggle on prices.

I like the freedom it gives your character when it comes to making money like through thievery. That gameplay loop is pretty well developed, with noise and visibility playing a role in your success. Playing as a thief is almost as satisfying as in the Thief games, which is impressive considering that you don't have any of the cool gadgets in those games and only have lockpicks.

The one thing I haven't gotten the hang of yet is combat. I'm flailing around slashing and stabbing but my character isn't strong enough yet to really hold his own against anything more than one or two bandits. Maybe I'm too used to the simplistic hack and slash style in Oblivion or Skyrim, but I feel like the combat system could be polished a little better (like let me switch focus between enemies a little easier so I won't as easily get flanked.)

taking a break from Baulders Gate 3 due to a bad DMing event, and picked CP2077 back up for the Phantom Liberty DLC

I only recently watched Guardians of the Galaxy because a coworker whose opinions I hold in high regard recommended it. I enjoyed it very much and thought it would make a fun video game. Lo and behold, there is one! So I bought it and have been playing that when work and school allow.

I was looking at that, how is it?
- I haven't played too deep into it, only gotten past 2-3 boss fights, but it's fun so far. I'm enjoying the gameplay and the music. The story is pretty much the same flavor as the movie.

I bought Dragon Age: Origins on the recent GOG sale, and after spending a week or so assembling mods, setting up a load order and creating and fine-tuning a ReShade preset finally got to start playing it.

I've only done the prelude so far, but I'm really enjoying it. I'm hoping this series can keep me busy until some more content patches are released for BG3 for a second playthrough. It's definitely scratching the same itch right now, with the added benefit of being unfamiliar to me. I'm actually quite impressed at how it holds up, though the difference in voice acting quality is definitely noticeable.

Starfield was just making me want a better space game so I reinstalled Elite and am getting back into it. I had bought Horizons and Odyssey as they came out, but I haven't really sat down and played since about a year after Power Play released. The game is so so vastly different now, it's like an entirely new one.

I'm doing exobiology for some capital and then I wanna go do stuff with thargoids. I wanna befriend an alien.

I got myself MGS Master v.1 because i wanted to play mgs3 on my ps5. MGS1 is utter bullshit, loading times feel slower than what they were on original psx, i much prefer the pc version or even emulated.

Wish i could habe just gotten mgs3 and waited for the mgs4 so i can finally retire the pooor old ps3

I've been playing a bunch of Street Fighter 6. I just started getting back into fighting games after dropping them early in university. It's been a lot of fun, and I've managed to climb to p platinum playing as Cammy

I'm on a continuing multiplayer campaign in Baldur's Gate 3 and I'm also playing Atelier Totori.

It's amazing how much new stuff I'm still seeing in BG3, and I've gotta be in hour 350 or something like that. I'm playing with a long-time video gaming partner and I'm just letting her run with it because I've already played through the game.

I really started to get into Atelier Totori once it started rolling, but I'm beginning to run out of steam. I'm really missing some of the UI/UX improvements that were in Atelier Rorona DX, and I also feel like the combat isn't quite as sharp for some reason. I'm genuinely interested in the story at this point, however. If it wasn't for that, I probably would have just jumped to Meruru.

I've been continuing my streak of playing Spelunky 2. A true masterpiece of a roguelike platformer.

I just got the last achievement, and now I'm considering whether I should try to push for a full cosmic clear. That's next-level hard, though.

Took a break this week from Starfield. I fired up Beneath Oresa to find out it was out of EA and had a bunch of changes. So what was meant to be a one off time killer turned into the thing I was playing this week.

I've been trying to progress in Forza Motorsport, but the infinite loading screen bug is stopping me from playing. After almost every second race it doesn't save my progress and I have to kill the game and lose all the progress because it refuses to save.

Also I got a new controller for PC, can anyone recommend good controller games that are on PC Gamepass?