Weekly ‘What’re you playing?’ thread #15

NEW STARSECTOR UPDATE

I refuse to use mods because it's all unbalanced train coomer power fantasies, vanilla or bust.

Hollow Knight

Link to the Past

Most recently, randomly restarted Pokemon Heartgold a few days ago and have been marathoning it.

TOTK (lol @ tendies) and a bunch of cyberpunk things because I'm making a game with a 'cyberpunk' theme and need inspo

Cyberpunk 2077 is pretty good now actually. The story bits are good and the immersive-sim style gigs are good, but the missions with good story and the missions with good gameplay are miles apart, which really sucks. Game is also a bit too easy even on super-giga difficulty unless you intentionally gimp yourself. Playing a hackerman is cool but gets boring once you can just hack a dude and wipe out an entire squad, or ping a dude once and then use your tech rifle to kill every single person with a single headshot through 10 walls from 2 miles away.

Also, still playing Deadeye Deepfake Simulacrum (which has the best hacking system of any game and is still the best imsim I've played in years)

I just started hi fi rush last night. Its pretty fun so far, i really am enjoying the tone. Reminds me of a different era

I began playing Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Heard it was an old-school style RPG where you suck at everything in the begging but gradually, through trial and error, will be able to master all the systems. Currently it is quite enjoyable and lives up to the hype. Having it set in medieval Bohemia is quite cool, as I guess it is one of the few instances of a realistic RPG with no magic or fantasy elements. I do think some elements of making it a realistic experience are very cool, like the option of manually saving your game being a consumable and not just a button in the menu. Other elements are a bit annoying though, like the absence of healing items, becuz there is no way to immediately heal yourself irl so you have to be satisfied with bandages and teas made out of the local flowers.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1245560/Roots_of_Pacha/

Roots of Pacha, basically a farming sim with a caveman era angle.

I've spent way too much time this week playing Shadow Empire. It's an extremely complex 4X game but somehow it actually works. I especially like the logistics system, which seems like it would be boring but it's actually really easy and intuitive to deal with. Just don't do anything stupid like having your tanks drive way out far from the roads and you'll be fine. The guy has been working on these games for ~20 years and he's accomplished an incredible feat of autism.

Playing modded TW warhammer 3. Still baffled why CA don't just pay off modders for the cool mods. The fimir mod was quite cool.

Still haven’t beaten elden ring so that for the foreseeable future

Doing a final run of Rogue Legacy 2, the first few times I got to the "end" the game was still in alpha so there's a final boss I never beat. Great game, lots of content, high recommend.

Civ V. Trying to get some achievements.

Stellaris. New DLC dropped some time ago and reminded me of the game.

And, no I haven't bought that DLC. I don't feel like getting robbed by Paradox.

very very hard to get out of the dodge mindset coming out of the 3 souls' games

I've had work an' shit but what little vidya time I've had was spent on Everspace 2.

Thinking of buying Age of Wonders 4. Waiting to see if there's a Steam summer sale first: Might get Age of Wonders: Planetfall in that and see if I like it before buying the new one.

Mount and blade bannerlord 2

AI nirvana initial and zelda tears of kingdom

Somehow forgot how taxing it can be staring at book for 8 hours so AI nirvana initial is perfect game for me right now

I've been playing a lot of TF2 lately. Haven't felt like playing anything new, I've been watching more films/tv instead. So I just play a few rounds of TF2 after work then do something else . I bought the Resident Evil 2 & 3 remakes while they were on sale, stil need to start them. I really enjoyed the Resident Evil 4 remake (it was my first Resident Evil game), so I thought I might as well see what I've been missing.

Almost caught up completely with Star Rail, soon all there will be left to do is dailies. The writing is still consistently good and I’m going through the optional lore stuff rn and it’s engaging.

Mario+Rabbids: Donkey Kong Adventure, I wish all DLCs were like this. Also doing a playthrough of Zelda NES again before the new one comes out.

Still on my new Elden Ring file. Reached the capital and detoured to clear out the Mt. Gelmir area.

I've found the game a lot easier this time around, for better or for worse. The shield counter attack and certain ashes of war trivialize lots of annoying enemy types. And much of the balance seems centered on whether you know where to get the different smithing stones or how to find early/mid game reachable bosses that drop a crazy amount of runes. I know even powerful characters get knocked around in the endgame, though, so I'll find out how much my actual fundamentals have improved.

Donkey Kong December really helped reignite my interest in old school games, so now I got out my old SNES mini (I got it as a gift from a cousin a few years ago) and playing all the games I had on it, emphasis on Mario World and, of course, DKC

Also, now that I am out for summer, I'm thinking of catching up on Majora's Mask on my 3ds too...

Diablo II 1.05b (Feb 2001) no mana pots at vendors, no synergies, no runewords, no charms, no half-assed LoD classes, just perfectly balanced vibes and a 3% chance to goomble uniques

just unlocked bethany in binding of isaac

Apex Legends

Don't really have time for anything serious so I just play a couple rounds of TF2 when I want to unwind and distract myself a bit.

But then I inevitably get dominated by some 3000+ hour nolife spy and end up feeling more angry than I did to begin with

Downloaded another Stalker modlist, but on my living room PC and it sucks playing on Kb/M out there so probably won't stick with it and go back to RE4, try and get that professional s+

Idol Showdown

https://rdrama.net/h/vidya/post/168449/idol-showdown-a-free-to-play

PLAY IT

rimworld, but also on that apex grind

Pathfinder Kingmaker, playing it after Wrath of the Righteous, cuz i now actually understand the fricking Pathfinder system which WOTR communicates information, and gives better tutorials. Now i understand Kingmaker's bullshit better in retrospect.

Also go buy and play Owlcat games you straggots

Playing spider-man remastered and holy balls this game is fun as frick, it took a while but I'm more than adequate in combat with the demons and am just tearing this shit up!

Just started the shivering isles again last night so will be playing that for the next week or so

Also forza horizon 5 and valheim still.

Been playing Uboat during work. It's relaxing to hear and sometimes watch the boat plow through the waters. Bonus when listening to Welcome to Goodbye album by Rotersand.

Chiv2 update kinda fresh

Age of Wonders 4 looks cool but its too sandboxxy imho, a lack of a unique campaign and such means theres no order to the infinite freedom so it gets stale. After one campaign I couldnt find myself playing another. Its also mechanically offputting compared to similar games like HoMM

Mount and blade : Warband with mods

Mechanicus kinda. Been traveling so I haven't played much of anything

since redfall is predictably shit, i'm doing another prey playthrough

One of the guys on my team has started hosting our SS13 server so I've been playing that recently. I'll shill it here once we make it public, we're not going to start recruiting players until our codebase is distinct enough to justify playing on over other servers and we finish our unique map.

new eu4 dlc and valorant