2d ago

Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing?

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Control is surprisingly fun. Got it on GoG.
- They gave it away on almost every platform when it came out, but I still haven't gotten around to it.

Finally getting into chess. It's apparently a really old game with a very vibrant community. Such a great hidden gem. 😀
Aside from that, finishing up Hogwarts Legacy and some short Indies.
- I’ve always wanted to get into chess. I’ve got a friend who’s really good at it, and when my wife was in high school she was in the chess club and was top in the region
  
  Do it! It's a lot of fun, but it's definitely hard.
  Once you know how the pieces move, play some chess puzzles to get better at seeing patterns. I used to be decent (joined a chess club in elementary school), but never really "studied" it in any sense, and my nephew ended up beating me at a family reunion, so I decided to get better. I started watching Gotham Chess on YouTube and learned a ton, but honestly, puzzles and just playing is the best for beginners.

Path of Exile 2. I really like that feeling of progress. No other game has that feeling of not wanting to stop playing because you want to see what happens when you get the next skill or weapon or armor.
- I'm also playing poe2, but I mix it up with some Tales of Maj'eyal and Lord of the Rings Online. I'm a dirty casual like that.

Today, I’m playing the original devil may cry (ps2 via emulation, so smoothed and upscaled). I’m all in on retro/classics this month, as it reminds me of my mid-late teen years, and these enhanced games look pretty good actually.
It’s kinda short, and pretty good overall, but I really can’t recommend it. The controls are absolutely awful; static camera with frequent angle shifts, and character controls that require changing movement direction with every camera angle change, even while fighting, is just.. very very bad coming from playing more modern stuff.
If it had a dynamic camera, even a poorly placed or inverted one, the game would be quite good. Instead it’s super frustrating.

I just finshed resident evil 7. When it came out I ignored it because the setting didn't appeal to me. But re8's setting does so to get the story I played 7 now first and I really really liked it. It was scary, it was intriguing and it felt close to re1 though it lacked some more puzzle sections.

Frostpunk, I think it's still discounted on steam. Pretty cool game

Some more Death Stranding. Really wish there was a better way to measure the zip lines. I tried to get right in-between two and was 4M off from the limit of 350M for one of them so it wouldn't connect.
Also playing Deaths Door and it pretty fun art style. Excited for Tunic once this is finished. About 60% complete.
- you can use your binoculars or whatever they are to mark waypoints very precisely that will measure distance on the map. just stand at the zip line tower you're building from and check with that first.
  you need line of sight anyway so it usually works pretty well for me.
  
  Ok that is a good tip. I was measuring with points on the map.
- I spent more time going back and forth while trying to max out the zip line range in Death Stranding than I'm willing to admit.
  (Death's Door and Tunic are also fantastic)

A little bit of Brotato and Slice and Dice because I need to be one-armed when holding the baby and is sleeping on my shoulder.
Otherwise, a bit of Dota2 lately. I have to finish up on Tainted Grail on the backburner.
- We just found out a couple weeks ago that my wife is pregnant with our first child, I suppose I’ll need to start looking for games I can play one-handed
  
  Congratulations!
  Anectodally from other fathers in my cycle, roguelikes are the genre for dads now. Especially things like Slay the Spire, Monster Train and the like.
  You are generally a bit sleep deprived, because you have to sacrifice sleep for entertainment, therefore you tend to prefer one-off games then end in about an hour or so, instead of story rich games like bg3, because you don't have the energy or mental capacity to remember what's going on every time you begin a gaming session.
  After a while, about a year in, things settle a bit and you start more complex one-off games, like dota, path of exile and so.
  Second child and on, maintain same pattern because you already know how to handle things with the kids. It's a lot easier.

I‘m planning to play Bread & Fred with a friend and get the platinum time trials even though we both kinda suck at the game, we have a backup plan with GOD EATER 3 to calm ourselves down after too many failures though LOL
I‘m trying to play We Were Here (the f2p one) with my gf but there‘s a weird choppiness to the camera when you walk around which made both of us motion sick, not sure what that‘s about.

A lot of Sonic...
Sonic Adventure DX, Sonic Adventure 2 Battle, Sonic Heroes, Shadow the Hedgehog and even Sonic 06.
Sonic 3 was a fucking awesome movie.

I'm still staying with the last week's list for the most part.
I'm continuing my low combat Daggerfall ~~playthrough~~ "lifethrough". I'm just traveling around and focus on doing everyday tasks for people. It's nice.
Time management in The Sims is slowly getting easier - it's still a bit of a pain but I'm improving. I'm thinking about reinstalling TS2 to compare whether it's just me or if these parts of the game were improved there (I genuinely don't remember as it's been a while since I played the game).
I'm mostly fine with Medabots: Kabuto combat system now as it can be worked around to some extent. More surprisingly however I'm not as annoyed with random encounters in this game as I usually would be, even though games like Pokemon or Final Fantasy tend to have shorter fights overall. Don't know what's the reason for this change but I'll take it - I'd have a difficult time trying to finish it otherwise.
Last but not least, I've been playing a few games of Counter-Strike 2 here and there. I don't expect to stick with it for long but it was interesting to jump back after few years of not touching the game (the last time I did CS2 wasn't even out). I'm positively surprised I'm not complete trash despite my break though it's not like I had any expectations to begin with. No way I can compete with peeps playing it nonstop for years.
Edit: welp, I tried to run CS:GO to check out whether some of my hangups with 2 are new or existed back then but the game won't even launch. Thanks for the legacy branch Valve.

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