Monthly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing?

Just finished Doom 2016 the other day. What an absolute fucking blast. I have not had that much pure stupid unadulterated fun in a video game in a long time. If Doom Eternal didn't exist, I would not hesitate to replay Doom 2016 on a harder difficulty just to keep jamming to the soundtrack if nothing else. RIP & TEAR

It's not actually a game, but I spent the weekend migrating a bunch of my Minecraft servers to Docker from standalone boxes. Went surprisingly well.

Now I just need to switch from Infrared to BungeeCord+Geyser.

I've been replaying Subnautica. It feels like a completely different game the second time around, but still fun. Plus they've got it running much better now than it was on launch.

I've been playing Minecraft for the first time.
Yup.
Idk why I hadn't, probably just the timing with my life when it came out I guess.
I'm a big fan of legos so that's not too far.
I'm playing it vaguely like Deep Rock Galactic, although even a diamond sword pales compared to a minigun or flamer.

Yakuza 0. Sorry, emotional and compelling main story, you're gonna have to wait. I need to make Majima's hostess club the top in Sotenbori.

I'm loving Mindustry recently. It's fun to see what I can do with the logic system.

Just started The Outer Worlds, which I got free on EGS during the holiday.

I love the aesthetics and voice acting. The movement feels a bit floaty, but it's alright. At least the configuration of the controls is intuitive.

I know some people who've played it. Some say they really enjoyed it, while others said it was rather bland. I'm really enjoying it so far, but I'm not too far in. It seems like a game where I could get caught up in the side quests without ever advancing in the main quest.

Nier automata, took the prequel too,

That's really good shit.
Good "chilling" vibes.

I've just finished Inscryption and it was one of the best gaming experiences i've ever had. On the surface it seems like a simple card game but it's so much more than that! This game is so wild and creative it's insane. Strongly recommend you play it, don't look anything up about it.

I bought it along with some other Daniel Mullins games for about 5 bucks total on sale. I almost feel bad cause it's certainly worth more than that, lol.

Monster Hunter Rise. I've been a big MH fan since Tri and have hundreds of hours in each one since then, but for whatever reason, when Rise was announced and came out I just wasn't really excited for them. Partner and I picked it up over winter sale for an all time low thinking, ah at least we won't be too disappointed at this price. Got just as sucked in as previous MHs and am approaching 100 hours right now, lol.

13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, it's beautiful!

Immortals: Fenyx Rising is on Steam sale for $6 standard/$10 with the DLC. It's a story with the Greek pantheon providing most of the characters that doesn't take itself seriously--it starts off with Prometheus telling Zeus a story, and Zeus is the world's worst audience. The movement and combat are satisfying, and it's a ton of fun so far.

Red Dead Redemption 2. Everyone seems to love this game but I'm still on the fence about it. I feel like I'm spending so much time hunting to not be underweight that I'm not really playing the game. The controls are weird to me and I'm not sure why.

I picked up Binding of Isaac: Rebirth and have been doing runs now and then. I played the original when it first came out and couldn't get into it; the years of development seem to have done it a lot of good, feels much more playable than I remember.

Started Assassins Creed Black Flag. The on-foot gameplay is nearly identical to 3 and the lack of a crouch anywhere but “concealing” areas like grass turns me off. Don’t forget the little quirks every early Assassins Creed has regarding traversal. You wanted to jump over the fence? Best I can do is climb it and run along it till I jump in a bush to the right.

However, the surprisingly deep naval combat keeps me coming back.

I'm on vacation and my shitty Chromebook made me rediscover how atmospheric Diablo 1 was. I'm using DevilutionX source port, pretty good IMO.

I recently finished the story of God of War (2018), it was on sale for $25 in the steam winter sale so I said why not.

It's pretty fun. The combat feels great, the story and acting is extremely compelling, and it looks really good too.

After finishing that one, I decided to go back and try to finish Horizon: Zero Dawn, and that ones kinda fun. The acting and story aren't nearly as interesting or good, but the machine combat can be kinda fun, and I've been treating it like a hunting game.

I'm perpetually playing Deep Rock Galactic, Halo MCC, and Team Fortress 2, but besides those, here are some other games I played in the last 30 days:

Desktop (Pop!_OS)

• CarX Drift Racing Online (2017) - way more difficult than I expected, but fun once you get the hang of it
• Hylics 2 (2020) - incredible art and soundtrack
• Landfall Archives (free - 2023) - nice collection of demos from one of my favorite indie dev studios
• Left 4 Dead 2 (2009) - went back and played with some friends, still awesome
• MUCK (free - 2021) - tried this out with a few friends, very fun
• Outlast (2013) - finally completed this classic and loved it
• POSTAL 2 (2003) - not a game I'd recommend to everyone, but if you're the type of person who would enjoy this type of humor, then you'll really enjoy it

Steam Deck

• American Truck Simulator (2016) - nice game to chill out to
• Finding Paradise (2017) - incredible story
• Totally Accurate Battle Simulator (2021) - also a nice game to chill out to, but some levels are a lot more difficult than expected (not a bad thing)
• Vampire Survivors (2022) - I am so addicted please help

Went back to playing Civ 5 and Civ 6 recently with friends, and even though Civ 5 is much older, we seem to enjoy it way more due to it being more simple. Civilization traits are way more easy to understand, AI feels better and more threatening and games are faster.

I played a bit of daggerfall.

I decided to roll with a bard, slapping on a full suit of chainmail and taking up a bow and fist fighting style. I learned a few recovery and utility spells, and began my first adventure!

I regret to say it was more tedious than fun. Clearing dungeons is an enormous hassle, and theres no way (that im aware of) to find the quest items in them other than just scraping the whole thing. If there's a way to make that experience better, I'm all ears.

The cities really made me appreciate the later game's deliberately reduced scale, I'll take the 20 residents of whiterun over the exhausting and innumerable randomly generated creeps in Daggerfall city.

Finished the Metro series, i played the first two years ago and playing it again now is still so good! The story is engaging and i love the setting, gameplay might be dated but it still work.

Then there's Exodus, if the first two is a roller coaster, then Exodus is a 20 hours road trip, sometime it's interesting, sometime it's boring. It's a downgrade from the linear story telling of the first two games, with 6 chapter split into 3 linear, 2 open world and 1 semi-open world. The open world chapter is basically ubisoft level of boring, with mostly empty landscape and not a lot of interesting thing to see(caspian level are the worst offender), and it takes away the urgency from the story, with character telling you need to hurry but you can just spend a few day cycles wandering without consequences. There's some story element for the open world chapter that weird me out but i'm not sure how to talk about it without spoiling the story. Artyom being a silent protagonist this time makes it feels like he's a mute, everyone have sooooo many thing to say but artyom is just sitting there quietly it just felt weird.

On the plus side, the linear level is all fantastic, with the final chapter bringing the game back to form, back to what Metro is really about. It just too bad half of the game just isn't as interesting.

With friends:

• Age of Empires 4
• Deep Rock Galactic

On my own:

• Red Dead Redemption 2
• XCOM 2 (a steam sale got me the War of the Chosen, plus some other stuff, for less than $10)

Returning to Atelier Meruru. It's slowly growing on me, like a pink-and-yellow fungus.

I'm enjoying playing The Witness with my wife! It's been a really engaging and relaxing time to spend together. It's even more fun when we can pick it up over lunch and just chill together.

On my own I'm playing Peglin, a rogue like Peggle. It's been a blast and is a great game to play while relaxing and playing some tunes. I'm also playing Death Must Die but I'm finding the viable builds to be kind of one note. Some of them are just too overpowered, but I'm still experimenting.

Assassin's Creed Origins, I picked up the 3 pack last year of Origins, Valhalla, and Odyssey on sale, and am just having the time to sit down to play Origins.

I wanted to play a souls like but was bored of all the actual Fromsoft games (I've played them a fucking lot) so I started up Remnant: From the Ashes to give it another shot. I got passed 2 bosses a few years ago when I was given the game, but didn't get into it at all.

I'm reading more of the text this time and the story is kinda cool. Very Stargatey. The style is kinda weird for weirdness' sake though, and the RNG is fucking annoying (I keep getting super unlucky and having event swarm after event swarm and then I don't even get any good loot!). The bosses are hella bullshit difficulty. Like knowing the patterns isn't really helpful since the main boss doesn't really do much, but so far all of them have spawned swarms of small, fast moving enemies that do more damage than the giant monster does when it hits you with a big-ass brick.

I kinda want to see if the second one is better. I would imagine it has to be to have gotten somewhat popular. I hadn't heard of the first until it was gifted to me; but the second one was all over the net when it first dropped.

That isn't to say it's a bad game. It's one of those things that has the right ideas, but the implementation is just not very well done.

Edit: God damn. I just finished it. When I made this comment, I thought I was only half way through. That was short as shit. I got... 12 hours on this character. My God. I wasn't even rushing! I was checking every single nook and cranny and exterminating every enemy before leaving a zone.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl. A classic, it still has decent graphics that could be improved with mods.

No game beats the level of immersion STALKER series' atmosphere gives me, especially the first game.

I could replay the trilogy over and over, but there are also tons of mods with unique stories, mechanics and new levels.

Not sure if that really counts as "a game" for this community, but I reactivated my old Neopets account after a long hiatus. The site is still broken AF but just as fun as I remembered, and there is talk of an upcoming plot across the boards.

I've been accumulating a lot of games and decided to play through some random, short (<10 hours, most <5) indie games.

Played recently (in order of enjoyment):

• The Long Reach - point and click, story has good surprise, with only a couple of obtuse puzzles near the end
• Little Echo - point and click, great hand drawn graphics, really simple gameplay and odd story; very short (like <2 hours)
• Arida Backlands Awakening - simple adventure game about drought; pretty charming, though it's a little janky to play

I enjoyed my time with each, but I'm not outright recommending any of them.

And here's what I probably play this week:

• Firewatch (Steam sale for $2) - 4-ish hours long
• Darq - 2-4 hours long
• Hyper Light Drifter - 10-ish hours, 30-ish for 100% completion

These three have fantastic reviews, so I hope I'm in for a treat.

I'm also playing some Magic: Arena here and there.

Currently playing Halo 2 in MCC as well as Yakuza 0. Just started Divinity Original Sin 2 with the wife. Arkham City is next on deck.

No one lives forever can be downloaded free online. The Wikipedia says the devs shared the source code at some point and it's in copyright hell so pretty much only way to get it. Was pretty fun, playing on the hardest difficult was kind of annoying though. Last boss fight was ridiculous. On to f.e.a.r.!

Played Super Mario Bros 2 for the first time since I’ve been an adult.

I was watching the Awesome Games Done Quick marathon and remembered I loved that game as a kid. Might do Sunshine again next.

Lost Odyssey, a bit under 20 hours in. There are elements of it that are driving me nuts, but there's a lot I really like. I wish I'd played this 15 years ago.

Just finished hypnospace outlaw, great game, you moderate internet pages in a fictional 1999, so if you feel nostalgic of that time the game might interest you. I enjoyed the story, though the ending was a bit anticlimatic, at least compared to what started the last arc of the game

Gemcraft Frostborn wrath. It's a very well done tower defense with a huge amount of levels and nice meta progression system.

I'll be finishing up Shin Megami Tensei V this week. This is my first "smt" title, persona 5 was my introduction to this franchise and slowly working my way through.

I love the gameplay, managing teams and this is also the first game I've played where you're really supposed to use the items liberally, the items to recreate spells is actually going to vary based on your stats instead of a fixed amount, so they are always helpful even late game.

The maps. The maps are a headache. It took me many days to find the entrance to an important location. It is frustrating but maybe it's not my strong suit. I love playing it though, the fights don't get boring and mobs can still be challenging if you aren't paying attention.

Next I am going to finally play portal 1 and 2 because it is on sale for $7 on switch!!! I don't have a PC and have been wanting to play for years!!!

And I somehow avoided all spoilers besides the meme. PORTAL BUNDLE ON SWITCH

Helium Rain

@InEnduringGrowStrong Apico! Very relaxing game.

I've got a base PS4 and started playing God of War (2018) over the holidays. The wife and I love it so far. She's really into Greek and Norse mythology so she's really invested in the story and is sitting with me while I play it. We're already excited to pick up Ragnarok next.

Finally got around to trying out Nioh, pretty fun game. Im probably playing it terribly but its still enjoyable. Stay away from ledges though

I‘m mainly playing Black Ops III Zombies, Spiral Knights, DOOM (2016) multiplayer, and Genshin right now.

Out of these I can recommend DOOM the most, it does have notorious cheaters though that nobody‘s banning. You‘ll know once you get oneshot by guns you shouldn‘t get oneshot by.

Black Ops is fun but ridiculously expensive for its age. Spiral Knights is fun if you have friends to play with cause it‘s pretty dead. Genshin‘s Genshin.

I'm currently playing Brotato. This game is 7 months old, but due to its low price (currently 4€) and hardware requirements I bought it.

I was playing a lot of WWF No Mercy recently. Absolutely a gem of a game, it's very fun despite the wonky N64 control scheme. Kid me would've probably loved this game back in the day, but alas.

I just replayed Little Inferno after something reminded me about it and I noticed there was a DLC released (in late 2022).

It's a sandbox puzzle game where you burn stuff in your fireplace and try to find combos. There's slightly more to it, but really just stuff that's there to stop you buying + burning everything at once and insta-completing the game.

The DLC adds a new catalogue and more combos; if you're replaying you don't need to replay the main game too as it just adds to that (with a few changes).

Atomic Heart. DAMN this games good!! I know it won the steam award for visuals, but it feels like no one is playing this thing? I'm a little ways before the end of it, but it's already rocketed up to the levels of Prey or Titanfall 2 or the bioshocks for me.

Outward Definitive edition

I recently got a bonus from work and decided to buy a PS5 (I’m usually on pc). As a massive souls fan who’s never owned a PlayStation, my first two games I’ve tried out were Bloodborne and the Demon’s Souls remake. I always like to keep a non-souls game in the rotation too, so I’ve been blasting through Spiderman Remastered. All have been a ton of fun so far.

A cousin of mine came to my house in the past holiday days and he helped me to regnite the Yu-Gi-Oh! that lives in my heart.

He plays the new rules and such, I only know the very old ones so we had a few matches with the older ones.

With that said that motivated me to get a videogame of that, I first tried with Duel Links and Master Duel for Android, but then I noticed that Link Evolution was a thing for Nintendo Switch and I got it, it was perfect as it has all the Yu-Gi-Oh! plot I know and more, so I'm gonna use it kinda as a tutorial to learn the new stuff as it kinda takes you by the hand at the start of the new arcs... And you can play with historic decks (the ones that characters used to fight, or at least the most similar) which makes it fun and frustrating depending on the RNG of the CPU lol, anyway if it is getting hard you can create your own deck and pretty much beat them easily.

So yeah, any old Yu-Gi-Oh! Players around here?