Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 16th

Four more levels of Final Doom's TNT: Evilution. After it's done, I'll take a classic Doom break for a while. I gotta play Dark Ages first, before continuing with Plutonia.
The some more Cyberpunk 2077. I'm a bit pissed at myself and the game, because of a glitch, that blocks some side quests. Foolishly, I just used a single save slot, and the auto saves don't go back far enough, before the glitch happend, so I might try something to avoid it. The cause is probably a mod, although from what I read this bug isn't uncommon and can happen without mods. Through the use of a save editor I've managed to make the next quest available at least, but wasn't able to get the broken quest working again or "finish" it. I just hope it doesn't happen again.
Then I started A Game About Digging A Hole today. Just like the title says, you're digging a hole. You find stones and ores along the way, that you can sell, to upgrade your stuff. I'm two hours in, and looks like there's nothing to upgrade anymore, which is a bit of a bummer. Now i just have to go deeper, blow stuff up with dynamite, and look for treasure. That probably also means I'm close to the end of the game.
- Reading this makes me feel slightly better about my obsessive and paranoid habit of keeping unnecessarily extensive backup save slots at milestones through any game I play, despite basically never using them.
  
  I usually do as well, but for some reason not this time.

Monster Hunter Wilds.

ufo50, specifically grimstone. just restarted chrysalis harvest moon gba

I'm processing some heavy grief at the moment so I snagged a copy of Spiritfarer during the Spring sale, it gives me a cozy feeling when I play. Was pretty deep into Resident Evil Village but needed a break. Also, I'm kind of always playing Skyrim to some degree hahaha

I've been working on Avowed and have been really enjoying it so far. My only real complaint is the weapons. Aside from some of the unique aspects, they all feel kind of same-y to me as far as damage goes.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I've been playing through the Castlevania Advance collection on Steam and this is the next one up. I'm up to the fight with Death but he's stomping me into the ground so I either need to level up some more or experiment with different souls.

I finished Pentiment yesterday, what an absolute masterpiece. It's certainly not for everyone - and I initially hesitantly added it to my backlog for this year as a very different game from what I'm used to - but it resonated so much with me.
I also started Castlevania: SOTN, which I quite enjoy so far - metroidvanias are usually hit or miss for me so I'm going in with tempered expectations.
And I'm attempting a fresh playthrough of 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim, which I shelved a couple years ago.

I've been feeling pretty nostalgic and wanting to ignore the world, so I've been playing Story of Seasons: Friends of Mineral Town. Before that I was playing Marvel's Midnight Suns for a while.

Been playing RoboCop Rogue City.
It's not bad, I like that it tries hard to be true to the movies. The character likenesses are there, the voice of RoboCop, and the one liners are all there. It plays like a budget title, though. Limited voice cast. Limited gameplay scope, crappy animations, crappy writing. It's not bad, as long as you go in with budget title gameplay in mind.
The big issue is the buggyness. I've had it crash randomly during the first part of the game. Sometimes bugs happen that prevent you from progressing in the game, so you have to restart from a checkpoint. You also can't quick save and load previous saves. You just get the one auto save. Video cut scenes in game won't play in sync with the audio. You have to edit the config file to enable HDR, or else the game appears washed out. Mouse movement and fov just feel wrong. There's a bunch of secondary weapons in the game, but they all suck compared to the auto-9. Fps are inconsistent and there's a weird bug apparently with how some Nvidia functions are implemented, so using specific setting is necessary to get better frame rate.
Anyway, gripes aside, I loved RoboCop as a kid and it's nice to play a game that's true to the character, unlike the loads of shitty RoboCop games we got in the 80s and 90s.

Played a bit more Library of Ruina, but couldn't focus so I ended up looking for something else to play.
Tried Ninja Gaiden (Sigma, from the Master Collection), but while I do like the gameplay I just can't stand the controls and the camera.
Next I tried Daemon X Machina, it's fine but it feels rather lacking when compared to AC6.
I tried Final Fantasy X again, and I do find the general story and themes interesting but I can't care about the characters and the gameplay is mind numbingly boring.
I ended up settling on Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster) because of the job system. I don't really like how the pixel remasters look, but it's fine.

No Nine Sols, absolute banger of a game

I've been finishing up random challenges in monster hunter wilds. There's not much left on the 'achievable without rng shenanigans' list for me to get, so I've started planning for the next one.
Metal bringer. It's a looter rogue lite in which you play as the daughter of amazing science family whose legacy has been besmirched or something, causing you to have to get out into a world of bots that need some good 'sploding.
The game loop eventually leads to starting with a massive mech and trashing the early game. The boss designs and weapons are really nice though some of the areas give me a headache.

Old School RuneScape, MTG Arena and tested out Hearthstone but not completely sold yet.
I am getting way deeper into OSRS. I feel like this could be a main game for a long time. The experience is so different from other gaming experiences. You are never done, and it is not really a question of going faster. The slower you go, the more you plan ahead, and executing that plan is smoother and more rewarding. Also you end up getting pleasantly distracted a lot, and that's fine. No rush. It is a slow game. Currently not using guides much, I enjoy the organic discovery for now.
MTGA is what it is (amazing). I am playing more bo3 instead of bo1 which is a lot more fun for me.
Hearthstone seems like a mess of overpowered cards. Sure I imagine eventually you get to know the meta, but compared to MTGA were you after the extensive tutorial can actually wim even with starter decks on lower ranks this just seems very stcked in favor of those with better cards that I am not sure you can reliably plan against, but maybe I should just read about the meta some more. Don't want to discard it yet.

Combat Complex posted an update, so have been enjoying some more high quality twin-stick shooter action. Finally got through the brutal room I was throwing myself at in floor eight (the update definitely makes it easier to get through hard spots, which has ups and downs), and have had a generally much easier time in the following rooms. Found an elevator to floor ten, in case I'm getting too cocky.
Odinfall finally opened their early access, so been exploring that crazy mess. Very Nuclear Throne like, but with extras like slotted weapon upgrades and some more decent looks. Runs are a lot like stepping on a land mine, but it's pretty fun.

Mafia 3. I'm probably half way through and starting to get burnt out by the grind and the buggy nature of the game. It is infected by Ubisoft formula, but it's much more notorious and less fluid. Glad they are going a different route for Mafia 4
- Sad to hear, Mafia 2 was at the time it released my favorite "gta" type game and one of my favorite cinematic experiences in gaming. It absolutely had a less is more attitude rather than ubisoft bloat.. There wasn't that much to do, and it was very linear which was a strength that made the characters and story feel well presented at all times for me. Haven't played it in ten years tho so might be a bit of nostalgia mixed in..
  What type of ubisoft mechanics have they jammed into it, out of curiousity?
  
  Mafia 1 DE and 2 both were largely linear and didn't waste your time with fluff. I really enjoyed those two. Mafia 3 on the other hand had good story drip fed to you after hours of grind.
  Ubisoft like mechanics:
  Each area has wiretaps that help a lot, but are very much like liberating radio towers, less grand.
  Once you open up a district, you've to do a checklist of repetitive missions, x2, and then go back to one of the areas from the already done missions to kill the underboss. Rinse and repeat 9 times. So that becomes more like (6 missions + 1) x 2 x 9. Some missions are optional. But it's quite a lot. There's some variety and some interesting story beats, but when it's given in such grindy manner you have to have a lot of patience to enjoy it.
  A lot of the missions are set up like far cry outposts or assassinate a target style. In fact you are incentivised to play stealth, to the point you start feeling like an assassin or hitman.

I finally setup my computer and started playing Life is Strange. I didn't expect to enjoy it like an art piece, but it has that feel to it.