Sunday is Gaming Day: What Are You Playing Thread

Just got a new keyboard. Was playing Doom earlier, but I think I'm going to follow in @Guamer@hexbear.net's footsteps and load up Earthbound in bsnes.

Started playing some Gamecube games via Dolphin which now supports RetroAchievements pog-dolphin

Currently getting mad at how woke this wind is getting in Wind Waker. frothingfash

Been playing Metal: Hellsinger this week. Rhythm-based Doom (2016) like game with some good headbanging jams that you have shoot your guns to the beat of the music. Get a high enough multiplier and the lyrics kick in. It's really fun. kirby-jammin

I also started Borderlands 3 this week and I'm playing as the soldier Moze.

When I'm not in a shooting mood, I've been working through the first Ace Attorney trilogy still. phoenix-think

Subahibi w/o looking up content warnings. Yeah uh don't do that folks. wtf

Been playing the hexbear minecraft server, working on the railroad all the live long day

Permanently Deleted

Bought Phantom Spark after watching a streamer play it, decently fun so far.

Still on my Victoria 3 Prussia->Germany playthrough. Trying to get the achievement for having a positive lobby group in every great power by using a loophole: you automatically get it if there are no other great powers. The US has a lobby (provided they don't end it due to my rather high infamy, anyway), so I'll only have to go after France, Russia, and Great Britain. Might be some problems with that last one because they keep having civil wars. Coming pretty down to the wire at any rate, only 12 years to go. Might have started too late.

Going to fail the "get all tech" achievement, I just can't get my literacy high enough (doesn't help that all the communist options lower authority to near-zero). Fun bonus fact: there are two of my states that have over 100M GDP on their own.

Got it

Managed to get all the great powers (except the US) down to sub-400 prestige and it popped. There is still not enough oil in the entire world for end-game (I held all the oilfields in Ukraine, Texas, California, and China, but I was still on a shortage with a LOT of production methods disabled).

Was literally 1 tech away from the "get all techs" cheevo though

I found a fan made remake of Fire Emblem Echoes: Shadows of Valentia and I'm loving it so far. It's based on the FE: Sacred Stones engine, so it's a GBA game, but the experinence is so clean and polished, possibly even more so than the official 3DS release. For this game, "Sacred Echoes", I'm taking the opportunity to do some things I didn't on the 3DS, like play on classic mode. I also mixed up the initial character classings, and while it's weird after doing a whole playthrough with these characters on other classes, it's fun and fresh to mix it up.

only FEE: Shadows of Valentia players will understand

I made Kliff an Archer, Gray a Cavalier, Tobin a Mercenary, and Faye a mage. Quite different from a Kliff Mage, Gray Mercenary, Tobin Archer, and Faye Pegasus Knight.

Just clocked 20 hours in Pillars of Eternity. My desire for narrative decisions clashes so hard with CRPG gameplay. I will forever feel that real-time with pause is one of the worst control schemes in video games. Closely followed by and related to click to move in ARPGs. Endlessly frustrating micro, pausing to re-adjust party members (hmm almost like I'm taking TURNS with the enemy anyway), terrible pathfinding, dumb AI when it's even available. I'm so glad Baldur's Gate 3 blew everyone out of the water to the point it started an argument about whether it makes sense to expect that kind of quality from developers going forward (the answer is yes, sorry).

That said, I knew I would hate it for those reasons. The narrative is so far more interesting in some ways than something like BG3, because it talks about ideas a lot more rather than just individual situations. Like:

spoiler

Is it ethical to treat people differently based on their past lives in a world where soul migration is a real and somewhat understood phenomenon? It's understood that at least some part of a person's personality is influenced by their actions in their past lives, plus whatever bits and pieces of other souls they pick up. Does that make it okay for the Crucible Knights to deny entry to people who have 'subversive' souls even if they haven't done anything bad in their current life? In general, how does criminal justice work in that kind of universe? What level of responsibility should people bear for their past life actions? Should they forced to remember them, or allowed to forget them and move on?

The questions aren't as interesting as those of identity in something like Planescape: Torment, but they get to some fundamental concerns that BG3 doesn't really. There's a theme that leads to ambiguous questions even if the presentation itself isn't always the best.

I'm going to finish it for sure but it'll probably be a while before I try to get into Deadfire. Might jump to something like Underrail since that's turn-based instead.

Fallout: London continues! Or, it would, if I hadn't run into a broken quest. Taking a break while it gets patched, supposedly the next update will fix it. I'm about 60% through, though. Having fun, again, full review to follow completion.

For now, playing Fear & Hunger. By far the biggest CWs necessary for this game, but I can't help but feel compelled to push further. It tickles that masochistic and inquisitive section of my brain. I am going semi-blind, want to complete it once legit and then grab an S ending or 2 before moving to Termina.

Before Termina, gonna restart and fully play through Crosscode. Got far in the past, but had to take a break and lost momentum, even though I loved it.

EVE-O

Corp is evicting a persistent scabies infection from an allied wormhole.

I really didn't have fun on the structure bash, one member was drinking an entire thing of malt liqour and was really loud and obnoxious.

Had to repeat "CHECK, CHECK, VINDICATOR" THREE times to announce incoming hostiles and get a solid copy sadness

Yesterday I started playing Songs of Conquest, it came out of early access this year. It's a spiritual successor to Heroes of Might and Magic III. I've played for around 3 hours and so far I'm enjoying it. As a fan of HOMM3, it hasn't disappointed me. The tactics gameplay is fun and engaging.

Before that, I started playing the Multiverse mod for FTL - Faster Than Light. The writing is not great but overall I like it since it adds a lot of new content. I like that one of the bad guys factions is explicitly fascist so I can bash the space fash. fash-bash

I need to finish the Ranna campaign. I got to the final mission like a year ago. I don't even know if my save file still works lmao. We're getting the next two campaigns in a free update soon (maybe already have?) and a new faction DLC.

playing submachine: legacy which is a collection/remaster of a popular flash game series. it's basically a series of escape room puzzle games. this whole genre was the rage back in early 2010's. it's very well done and the art style is very distinct and i don't know if i subconsciously remember the puzzles or are just experienced with these games in general but i find it a little on the easier side.

Just wrapped act 2 on my Karlach run.