Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of October 8th

Been plugging away at Armored Core 6. I'm kind of over it. It's been a fairly average experience and at this point I'd like to wrap up the story and move on to something with a little more meat.

No man’s sky for the first time. It’s fun for a bit I think. Dunno if it’s “I’m gonna play this forever” fun - seems a bit repetitive. But it was on sale and it’s amusing enough. I tried it out because I thought starfield was so boring, and felt like playing a space game.

The tutorial is quite long. After you have a ship, you can abandon the questline and just do whatever you want.

Requires reading the wiki a lot, but it lets you do whatever you want.

Gunship battles with aliens on the surface? ✅ Dogfights with pirates in orbit? ✅ Arbitrage and space merchant trading? ✅ Planet exploration and flora/fauna identification? ✅ Base building? ✅
Starfield is indeed boring but NMS isn't much better IMHO. It is better, but I agree that it gets old quick.

Depending on your tolerance for jank, you might want to check out "X4: Foundatons" for a great space empire game. Start in a one-person scout fighter and work your way up to whole fleets, build stations, pirate, trade, explore, etc etc.
Ibplayed for like 60 hours the past 2 weeks. I still like it, i never found it too repetitive, because there are so many things. Like i still see completely new things every now and then.

I finally finished Baldur's Gate 3. Loved it. I immediately started again with a Ghost Recon team, where everyone is a rogue assassin/fighter battle master build so that you can get a ton of actions, create opportunities for advantage, and then get bonus sneak attack damage. It's working really well so far, and I've done more than half of the content in Act 1 with this team, though to be fair, of course the game will be easier when I know what's coming around the corner.

I also started up System Shock, a game that sorely needed that remake and shows that the difference between what made it good back in the day and what would make it good now are basically just graphics, controls, and UI.

That's awesome. I'm at the tail end of my first playthrough, but I'm already thinking about and all druid run with Halsin, Jaheira, Tav, and a respecced origin. I think druid is flexible enough to pull it off. How are you finding system shock, then? I never played it originally but have played many of its 'spiritual sequels' in terms of immersive sims. I was tempted to harken back when the remake came out but never bit the bullet.
- I played the beginning of the original release some years back and found the controls unusable, even with a mod that "fixes" them. This new game adapts the way the original basically has a console printout for everything you look at and interact with while still allowing it to control like a modern first person video game. I'm not very far in it yet. Only about an hour. But it's one of those games where you're scouring for resources and navigating a map with keycards and turning the power back on and such, and it does all that well so far.
I've played through BG3 around launch, and have been lurking the web, looking at what others have done. Right now, I'm also watching a streamer play through the game, and everything I've seen really makes me want to do another playthrough. Act 3 was a bit rough at times though, so I think I'll wait for some more patches or a Definitive Edition, if Larian does it like Divinity.
- Same, my friend and I gave up on Baldur's Gate and will let the developer "finish" tweaking it. I like what Larian tries to do in its games, but I really, really despise the need to mash the quick save button after anything representing even minor progress because you might stumble into TPK combat while exploring. This happened to us in Divinity and when we got a whiff of the same in BG3, we wrinkled our noses and left the game.
  
  I subsequently went on to play CP2077 v2.0 and really enjoyed myself, which I just "finished" yesterday with a satisfactory, bitter-sweet ending.

I've been crushing maggot-filled mutant satanist-skulls.
The latest patch for Darktide finally made it functional for me.
If I cap it at 60 fps it does not crash every 20min anymore.
Darktide really did not like my Ryzen 9 3900x and rtx3080 "ufo rated" rig.
But now it works at least, and it's fun.
Maybe a bit boring maps though.

I've just dipped my toes into Darktide on xbox gamepass. I love the visceral, impactful feel to melee combat so far. I have been playing with one friend so have come afoul of the lack of communication with others that don't chat, but so far have found it to be acceptably stable in terms of gameplay

Finished Divinity: Original Sin 2. Beast became a god and everyone loved him. Some of the fights in the final act were kind of bad, and I wasn't a fan of the "twists" at the end. Still good overall, and I'm glad I finally beat it after over six years.

Quake 2 got patched and the game-breaking bug I had got fixed (constant CTD in a specific room in a level), so I can finally play it again. I mopped up the rest of the levels for the second expansion, Ground Zero, which had a disappointing final boss. The levels also got a bit more confusing for me, but the remaster added a compass, which shows you where to go next, so it wasn't a big deal. Now only the new campaign, that was made for the remaster, is left, and I'll try to finish that this week.

Now I'm debating whether to start Pathfinder: Kingmaker or go through the Pillars of Eternity expansions. I kinda want to play Pathfinder more, but I just put 150h into D:OS2, so going straight into another one of these massive RPGs might just lead to some burnout (I did want Divinity to be over by the end, but that was also because parts at the end weren't that fun for me). The White March expansions for Pillars 1 might just be different enough to serve as a pallet cleanser (even though it's still a CRPG).

If you haven't played the Robocop: Rogue City demo yet, you have 10 seconds to comply. Your move, creep.

A free demo? I'll buy that for a dollar!!

Uhm I'm new here. Do I tell about the game I've played in this week, or what will be played on the next week?

If it's the first one, then I'm in the middle of siphoning as many titles as possible from the Karling and Makedon dynasty in Crusader Kings 3 as the Piast family with Polania/Poland. Somehow I've managed to create an heir from the Piast family to the Byzantine Empire just with marriage. Karling dynasty still has 2+ kingdoms and several duchies. Another priority is to take Jerusalem from the Muslims.

I love violence and superior gene breedings. :3

Por que no los dos?

Games you played last week makes more sense in my opinion, since you can potentially talk more about that (since you actually played them already), but you can of course also just say what you plan on playing next, and maybe others can give tips or answer questions.

Lego Jurassic World on the Switch. I bought a Switch for me and my kid for Christmas, and have picked up a few games for the two of us to take it in turns on. I haven't played a Lego game properly before, but this has hooked me.

It's got a few downsides, like the rolling ball level looked like a cutscene at first, so I didn't even try to control it, and some levels are made for you to come back to later with a different character, so it feels like you're stuck when you're not sometimes.

They're easy to overlook though because the gameplay is good, and it's got dinosaurs :D

Lego games with the kids are great fun. Lego Marvel Superheroes/Superheroes 2/Avengers are great if you want to keep exploring the Lego games. I have found that the older the Lego game, the harder it is. Some of the puzzle-solving in them can just be annoying and frustrating. I'd stick to the newer ones and work your way backwards rather than the other way around. They definitely learned from their mistakes!
- I'll keep that in mind, thanks :)
  
  I haven't played a Lego game for years. I think the last one was either Star Wars or Batman, and didn't start off very well. I'll definitely be trying more now though :)

GT7 mainly running Michelin Raceway Road Atlanta. There is a race there this weekend and it makes me feel slightly better when I see pro drivers mess up the same corner I do.

Forza Motorsport comes out... today? Looking forward to that myself!
- I might check that one out, haven't played a Forza game in years. The screenshots I saw had an IMSA GTP car so that might be enough for me to buy it this time around (on PC).

Baldur's Gate (in act 3 now), Lies of P, and just dipped my toe into Warhammer 40k Darktide. It's quite nice having very different games to bounce between.

I've got Cocoon waiting a well. I heard it's quite short so maybe I'll boot it up on an evening where Lies of P is kicking my arse too much lol

Warframe and grime.

The update coming to warframe mid October solves a lot of qol issues and should make it one of the bets mmorpg grind game.

I'm still working through Phantom Liberty. It's so well done, a step up even from the original game.

I'm quite sad that Cyberpunk 2077 is all done now, but I'm excited that they have started production on the sequel. Say what you will about CDPR and how they botched the launch of CP2077, they game as it stands now is fantastic and probably one of my favorite games of the last decade.

On the side, I've been playing a fun little indy twin-stick shooter rogue-lite called "Shape Shifter: Formations". I tend to pick up a lot of these kinds of rogue-likes... they're generally dirt cheap so it doesn't take many hours of fun to feel like I got my money's worth. I'm 20 hours into this one so far... $6 well spent!

Among other things, it sounds like Cyberpunk had a lot of technical debt that they struggled to overcome, hence the move to Unreal engine going forward. With the lessons learned from the last one, they're surely on to bigger and better things with the sequel, maybe even the multiplayer they cut from 2077. I think Baldur's Gate 3 has shown how much hunger there is for a proper co-op mode in an RPG.
Just finished CP myself yesterday, with a 9 hour push through the "final day". I had previously in my run rejected the (possible) helpful offer at the end of Phantom Liberty to find my own solution to my problem and, after spending far too much time debating over a single dialog choice, I settled on one that lead to a satisfactory, if bitter-sweet, conclusion.

The sense of finality was quite profound and pleasing. I have no wish to play my V anymore, as I think their story is done. While this means I may never revisit NC again (which makes me a little sad), I can live with that. I guess I can look forward to CP: Boston in 10 years :-).

After a Pirates of the Caribbean drinking game, I'm getting into sea of thieves.

Wuppo.... Let's see. Metroidvania... Steam Deck verified... On sale for $1.49

Yup, thanks for this! Looks like I'm playing Wuppo!

Haha yeah! I somehow added it to my wishlist at some point and got the notification and was like... ok why not!

Dragon Age: Origins and Fallout 76.

The former is a masterpiece and the latter I'm having fun with but required a massive perspective shift and 3 play attempts to do so compared to previous Fallout games (even FO4).

Nothing. Don't have the time.

The new Talos Principle 2 demo. Wanted to make sure it plays Ok on Ubuntu and it does!

Shameless plug for the new community I started so i could discuss all of the TTP games with people:

!the_talos_principle@lemm.ee

I loved Wuppo, but the clearly Dutch names for all the creatures threw me off a little. Their names are sometimes a little bit too literal for my taste (for example, a blusser literally means extinguisher).
Anyway, I've stopped my first play-through of Baldur's Gate 3 and started over as The Dark Urge. It has been... interesting :)
Other than that, I've tried to get back into my play-through of Lost Judgment, but I've completely lost the plot.

Between Diablo sessions, I've been replaying Metro: Last Light (the original, not redux), and man, I am having a blast. I absolutely love that game. Out of the three Metro games, it's probably my favorite. Even choosing to be stealthy is a lot of fun. I've been playing with a silent revolver/Kalash/Ashot combo, and I can't wait to get my/Artyom's hands on the Kalash 2012.

@chloyster been playing Cyberpunk now that is in a good state.

Finished Divinity Original Sin 2.

Now trying MW5.

Gotham Knights.

It's not terrible, but it's pretty much what I was expecting.

Could really do without the crafting shit and leveling system. I know the Arkham games also had skill trees and what have you, but it wasn't ever as bad as this.

I do think I fucked myself over a bit in not focusing on the main story early on, because I very nearly burned myself out on the side activities.

Turns out that a lot of my issues are kind of addressed at key points in the main story as well, so I really should focus on it more (like getting the glider thingy from Lucius, which I had no idea existed and would have been a tremendous help earlier on when I was navigating the unnecessarily large - and, to be honest, very boring - open world).

I tried Star Ocean The Divine Force, up until the port town when they introduced a very anime character (after getting the healer), that I stopped.
- The story didn't grab me, and while I like how fast the combat and how agile the DUMA are, ultimately the combat feels very simplistic, even with the skill upgrades. It's really a middling game
- The only other Star Ocean game that I've played is Last Hope International, and I really dislike that game, because of Lymle.
- tri-Ace has been insolvent, and it's sad to see them struggling both financially, and in making good Star Ocean games. Maybe they should have gone back to 2D style to reduce budget, and to rely less on the exaggerated anime character animation style
- Star Ocean 2 remake is coming out, and that HD-2D looks really good, hopefully that would help the dev a bit.

Replaying the original Wild Arms
- The music is still really good in this game
- The battle still feels very simplistic compared to Final Fantasy
- Story wise, it's less memorable than others, but there are parts that do feel melancholic
- I found out that Media.Vision has 5 titles in development as in 2022, the last game they co-developed was Valkyria Chronicles 4

Just picked up Darktide again. They released an update that overhauled the class system and rebalanced a lot of the weapons.