The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion

Dark Souls 3. Well I say Dark Souls 3. Reality is its Sister Friede. Over and over and over again. Stage 3 is easy to get to. But she kicks my ass in stage 3.

My friends have been getting back into Monster Hunter World recently, so I decided to pick it up as well. I stopped in High Rank when I first played it, and hit Master Rank over the weekend. I'm looking forward to smacking bigger monsters with bagpipes.

Trying TemTem. Palworld made me realize I never even tried TemTem!

after the wife and I put ~350hrs into BG3, we were hungering for more. We went back and played Divinity Original Sin 1/2. 1 was tough to play by modern standards but 2 definitely holds up. There seem to be a few easter eggs here and there but I don't see any reason you'd have to play 1 to understand 2. The combat and skill system is a little different but still very intuitive once you get the hang of it and is definitely a solid recommend for anyone who wants more baulder's gate but has already done every playthrough under the sun.

Escape From Tarkov and souls games

I may have a self hate issue

Shining Force II for the Sega Genesis! I'm not very far into it yet, but it's a good old classic JRPG.

I tried Last Epoch. 10 hours in and it's the most boring thing.

Been having fun in PalWorld though

• Yakuza 0 -- doing the real estate thing as Kiryu; already beat two Kings
• Lunacid -- the atmosphere is amazing, but this game desperately needs a pause button

Also about to try Factorio once again

Last time I tried it I found it nice, but overwhelming and without much incentive to continue playing it. Maybe this time this changes

Caught up on all the Vampire Survivors content that got released since I last played, now I’m finishing up GRID (2019) and Spiral Knights, with a race or two of Mario Kart.

My friends finally got me to play Fortnite a few weeks ago.

I'm in too deep.

I'm level 157...

I've been replaying Loop Hero on the Deck. I never finished it the first time but now I can do a few loops before bed.

Other than that I've also been playing a heavily modded Project Zomboid. Working on building a base to fend off enemy bandit NPCs and zombies. Having to fight something that can shoot back at you has given the game new life.

I've been playing Like a Dragon Gaiden: The Man Who Erased His Name and I'm in love. This feels like a perfect bridge between Yakuza 6 and Like a Dragon. The play styles for fighting feel really clean and are actually fun, compared to some of the fight styles in earlier games.

Call me lame......But Fortnite and NHL only.

Enshrouded.

So far it's as addicting as Valheim. Maybe more, since it has more guiding.

Hegemony: Wars of Ancient Greece

I played it years ago when it came out and it's still really good. It's an indie grand strategy game with low production values but a game play loop I find very satisfying. The fact that it's played on a realistic map of ancient Greece adds a lot of flavor and I love how the geography actually has important implications for strategy.

Valheim and Talos Principle 2, alternating

I've just renewed my WoW subscription after many years away, wish me luck.

I finished up Guardians of the Galaxy this past weekend, which I enjoyed. Nothing world shattering but a solid title. I'm on a sports game kick right now, so I decided to start a franchise in Madden 23. I would have gone with 24, but it doesn't seem to work on Linux.

I was a teenage exocolonist. I hadn't even heard of it, but it's one of the best games I've played in the last 5 years.

Kind of a visual novel, card puzzler, and social sim. Like if persona had poker instead of turn based battles.

Grounded. Awful xbl sign in experience that turned out to require turning off the pihole type AdBlock or whitelisting like 70 weird m$ domains. No dedicated server so can't self host on a desktop and playing with friends requires the save owner to be available or use a janky save sharing thing that probably can't solve the case of co-op team accidentally hosting it separately and progressing because steam notifications are annoying and turned off. Game is decent enough otherwise and most of the things I didn't like in gameplay turned out to be upgradeables that would eventually become less irritating. It's a buildcraft survival with bugs and spiders and the player characters are small enough that a blade of grass is more like a tree trunk.

Pokémon Scarlett and a mobile game called Ragnarok online. Used to play it on PC back in that day on a Korean server with my brother

Finished Lost Odyssey over the weekend, and I've moved on to Xenoblade Chronicles 2 Torna.

The menus still drive me nuts like they did with the base game, but it's still fun to wander around. The characters are already growing on me a bit too.

I can't really check my overall playtime but once again I'm being sucked in by Minecraft.

As a teenager it was my default game and if I could see my playtime I recon it's 5 times higher than my next biggest game which was Skyrim at about 500 hours across both editions. When I was a teen, I'd adored how I could just get lost in this peaceful, lonely world.

For the last 6 years, I've been trying to play more innovative indie games that I can broaden my love for the medium, but every now and again I yearn for the mines. It's basically the only game I can enjoy after day of work too.

Im playing the last of us on ps4 for the first time. Its pretty good.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Awesome, awesome game that I can't put down. I started the series in 2020 and played through the whole thing that year, so all the references to the past games make it that much better.

Finally jumped back into Octopath Traveller 2. Time to finish those quests.

I'm playing Skyrim. Kind of. 5 days in to rebuilding my mod list since playing last year.

I recently got Demon's Souls up and running on my Steam Deck, it ran so well and I got totally absorbed in it playing it once through with the Blueblood sword.

This got me in the mood for more Souls-likes, so I just finished off The Surge 2.

It's a better game than the first, more interesting combat, but suffers from similar issues to the first in long travel times, sometimes confusing level design and sometimes the combat can be frustrating.

Suicide Squad.

I started last night after work and had to force myself to go to bed. The movement and combat in the game are a ton of fun and giving me Doom Eternal vibes. Dancing around the battlefield, using the right attack on the right npc, and just making things explode.

It’s damn fun.

Galactic Civilizations III. I'm about 10 turns away from filling up the Ascension Crystals with a custom civilization focused on research.
The research tree seems endless with many 1-turn tech still left to unlock and I have no idea what to focus on in order to build the Ascension Portal/Gate thing.
But I unlocked the Huge design for ships, so I'm going to try and make one before the time is up.

I spent around 8 hours total on this match, most of it Sunday. I'll probably finish it tomorrow if I have time to play.

Assassin's Mirage. It's not good but not bad as well. Better to wait for a sale and complete it ASAP before Ubisoft shuts down the servers in a few years.

Elden ring (had to stop playing on release due to arthritis, hands working better atm). It's pretty good. I got up to volcano manor on release, doing liurnia atm so still on the easy/familiar stuff although finding a few things I didn't get last time.

Dual Scythes are fun but garbage slow in pve so I might respect after the fight with empty nester. Trying a dragon communion build but there aren't many dragons early game so mostly I just have no useful stats so far haha.

Palworld. It's also pretty good.

I've been trying to get into the Borderlands games, since surprisingly I've never played them (though I've played games that my friends have told me are "spiritual successors" to the BL games, such as Destiny). Though, I am getting stuck at the first bosses for BL1 and 2 haha.

Playing the waiting game to see if Helldivers 2 manages not to fumble the bag and becomes my no-life addiction again

Infinifactory. I always get the free Epic games and take them for a little spin, but this game is way more interesting than I expected! It's a level-based puzzle game where you make automated factory lines.

I was blown away when I beat the campaign and the second campaign unlocked. 10/10

I'm still on Nioh, but I'm almost done having only a few main missions left. I still think it's great, but it does suffer from its blocking mechanic being so strong. While bosses are usually the best thing about soulslikes, I often find myself having only one or two fights against a boss to succeed. Once you know their entire moveset it's really easy to execute the fight, mostly blocking and poking the boss. Dodging as a mechanic is harder to execute due to the timing required instead of just holding the block button, but it's hardly ever required.

I've been playing Shadow Gambit: The Cursed Crew and have been having a blast so far. It's a little like a cross between a MOBA style game and Metal Gear set in the Caribbean and you basically play as the undead Barbarossa pirates as they quietly murder their way through a mission.

TEKKEN 8!

If you like competitive fighting games, play them early on release. Its when ranked mode really does feel wild. It balances out as the game ages but those early rank battles are an absolute blast. Plus the game looks incredible and always has an absolute banger of a soundtrack.

Picked up Sonic All Stars Racing on the Deck, and it's super fun. Never heard about the game when it came out. It's basically Mario Kart with Sega characters, but thats... really fun.