I am playing the Forgotten City, after having played Pentiment last week (which I absolutely loved). The Forgotten City is okay but it was originally a Skyrim mod that became its own thing.

I tried to play Citizen Sleeper but because I am and have bad vision and my TV is too far away from my couch I gave up on it (text is too small).

COH2, and MOWAS just this night, 5 hour sesh.

Played 3rd strike for the tourney (won), played GGAC+R with @CamNewton and @Wolverine for the runback after-tourney, and played SF6 vs mith today

Civ2 and Starsector

Call of Duty 1 is one of those games you had to be there for I guess. Not a lot of people have played it these days and if you go back you'll find it's pretty janky.

Supposedly what set it apart was being able to fight alongside a lot of AI allies instead of slugging it out by yourself a la earlier Medal of Honor games. There are still a lot of times where you fight by yourself though

Tbh I think it was COD 2 that really secured the series' future, though it was already a big deal then. COD 2 was taken pretty seriously as a launch title for the 360.

And on that note COD is an underrated example of a series that started on PC but migrated primarily to consoles

As for COD 1, one thing I appreciate is that sidearms are actually in their own slot so you don't have to choose between a pistol and a much more versatile weapon. Not sure why they did away with that. Not good for console controls maybe?

It's also one of the hardest veteran campaigns. Not only do you have finite health, but there are no health packs on veteran either. You really do have to go through the whole level with one health bar.

Never played cod one, but i did play the very very bad cod 3 for the wii. Mostly just bad because it was on the wii and that system was so bad for shooters.

Thinking back it is crazy just how popular the wii was off of a silly gimmick.

Replayed system shock 2. Still pretty good but the balance is all over the place. You only need 3 points in standard weapons for the pistol and shotgun and 1 in heavy for the gl and that will carry you through the game. Exotic is fricking worthless and psi attacks are dogshit.

Started playing Blood West which is similar to system shock though i wouldnt call it an immersive sim. Shit's cursed in the wild west and you're a gunslinger that's been resurrected to deal with it. You get dropped in a large level with several points of interest containing cursed items. Once you find about half of the items you can fight the boss so you're given some freedom there. Initially its pretty tough since you die very quickly in an open fight and ammo is scarce so you want to stealth everything but being caught in close quarters is a death sentence. But then you get the hang of stealth and end up barely firing your gun. At the end of the first level i had filled up both my inventory and stash with ammo and items.

But its still satisfying to explore and wreck tough encounters by being overprepared. Breddy gud i recommend.

Also one of the enemies has butt

I've finally taken the plunge into Baldurs Gate 3 and it's pretty good, but man, the writers' room must have been 100% millenial white women considering the companions so far. Just gimme like one straight person.

Slowly picking away at Doom Eternal. I'm still not feeling it but I'm determined to get through it, so I'm probably going to play a level here and there for the next 6 months.

On the other side of things, I ripped through the main story of Fallout 3 this week and am now onto the DLC content. I can't put it down, and fortunately, work has been a lot of "hurry up and wait" this week so I haven't had to.

And finally, after finishing Blazing Lazers last week, I started on Soldier Blade for TG16.

This week I've been playing Factorio, mostly. Besides that it's been dungeon crawlers and Polismos, a very well done ancient greek city builder.

Getting really into the Gotterdamerung DLC for hearts of iron 4. The inner circle mechanic is cool and I like the raids. I'm also going to probably get back into Imperator Rome now that Paradox might get back into working on it since it just got a patch

I started Night in the Woods. I'm enjoying it so far (I'm in part 2 iirc) and I like the story, but it feels like it's moving a little too slowly. The visuals are really nice though.

Finished Stalker 2, which is why I was absent from these threads for a few weeks. Give people even a hint that you like a game and they won't waste any opportunities to spoil it for you.

Overall, liked the new Stalker - found it a good remix of the previous three games. Has a lot of familiar jank, which shows that some of the developers and code is still the same. Story was ok, although Stalker games never really shine in that department. A bit too many throwbacks to former titles, as almost every major location is tied to at least one main quest. I found some of them on my own and thought of them as cool little tributes, but then was a bit disappointed when future quests directed me that way.

One of the funnier things is how a lot of online discourse around this game throws around the "Far Cry with a Stalker skin" complaint. I don't know if it was /v/ or some other cesspit that came up with that description, but it is absolutely r-slurred. People don't understand how much the visual jank worked hand in hand with the gameplay jank and made it all seem right. If you were to put any of the original three games through the same filters and graphics and they would look equally silly. The only thing I will give to these folk is that the "radiant" ai which brought a lot of fun and edge to the exploration in the older games is absent. It has a feeling similar to the original release of Cyberpunk, where enemies would spawn behind your back. Hopefully like the former, it will be fixed in the near future.

Currently bouncing between a wild array of games, waiting for January to start replaying Kingdom Come in preparation for the sequel. Mostly doing Noita, HoMM4, Pathlogic and Cyberpunk, which the new Stalker game somewhat reminded me of in certain places.

factorio -- will i ever even need another game?

Back onto Pokemon Scarlett after about 8 months of hiatus. The nostalgia is strong and I'm enjoying raising up a bunch of randoms for each gym / gang leader. Surprise trades are also fun - but would be better to avoid the perfect-generated pokemon you see every so often.

playing Poe2 reached lvl75 on my Witch and after realising endgame was kinda meh i've been levelling a Monk.

A Hades-like game that came out in November called [REDACTED]. Good gameplay, seems a little too grindy. Gimme better gear now! But I'm diggin' it, comic book colored gore 'n guns.

Also played Ballionaire, the latest Balatro inspired sensation. Apparently sold 100K already and was released last week. These kinda games aren't really my thing, knowing what a thousand different cards/items do and how they sync the best. At least Balatro took poker skills and strategy, which was fun. This game you just drop the ball like The Price Is Right Plinko or a very rudimentary Peggle.

And shitloads of old stuff, as always.

Got back into Warframe after the 1999 update. Wow the new dev team is way better than the old one. They know actual good game design lmao.

I've been grinding atylss, may join some of the rp servers too at some point

Need to find more people to play with that aren't randos, but I refuse to join a groomercord to do so

OSRS Leagues 5 actually kinda hooked me this year, gonna play a shit ton of it when I go on break tomorrow. May even reach mithril rank!

Next week make it a "what is your game of the year" thread please. It will be a bit monotone for everyone who played Rise of the Ronin, but it will still be interesting to know about less informed opinions and lower refined tastes.

I've played a few things recently.

The first is Kingdom Come: Deliverance. It looks really nice with some really believable environments and I really like the effort they put into the codex and if it sounds like I'm condemning it with faint praise then... yeah. I'm not averse to games that take a while to get going, but I played it for like an entire evening and I had barely got anywhere. The movement and especially the combat feels weird and floaty, and I managed to get stuck in the ground a couple of times. I also managed to accidentally launch into a DLC that's basically just a retelling of the prologue chapter from another character's perspective and I am nooooot having a good time with that. Maybe it gets really good later on, but it hasn't given me anything to grab onto so I'm not sure I'll be finding out.

Speaking of games that begin slow, I finally started playing Songs of Syx after having it in my library for like a year. But at least with this one, I want to see what happens next. I just made it to the first population milestone and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from there. I've barely scraped the surface but I've enjoyed what I'm played so far and it has a lot of promise. There's apparently a whole empire-building aspect to the game, but right now I'm just building a privy. The townsfolk make fart noises when they use it, which I always appreciate. :)

Finally, I've played Planet Crafter with my friend. It's a pretty straightforward and perhaps shallow crafting/survival game but it's nice for what it is. The goal is to terraform a planet by increasing oxygen, heat and atmospheric pressure, which basically just translates to plopping buildings down that increase the rate a few numbers increase. Currently we're at the point that lakes are forming... my base is located at the bottom of a basin so the rising water levels could make things awkward.

King's Field 1 (jp)

Sweet game, beat most if it in one long session

Chivalry 2 when I want to get wasted and turn off my brain and kingdom come deliverance since the second one drops in a couple months.

Finished D5 on brotato with one character

"GRINCHES could be here" he thought, "I've never been down this chimney before. There could be GRINCHES anywhere." The fetch wind felt good against his bare chest. "I HATE GRINCHES" he thought. Santa Claus is Comin' to Town reverberated his entire sleigh, making it pulsate even as the $9 eggnog circulated through his powerful thick veins and washed away his (merited) fear of grinches after Thanksgiving. "With magic reindeer, you can go anywhere you want" he said to himself, out loud.