New thread!
What y’all playing! I’m almost done with blasphemous 2. And will be starting starfield soon! Very excited
I’m on Starfield this week. About 12 hours in.
Have to admit, I’m struggling to have fun, which I really didn’t see coming. I have hundreds of hours in Fallout 4, probably over a thousand each in Fallout 3 and Skyrim, and I adore space settings, so this was my most anticipated game for years. Seemed like it would be a slam dunk.
Another huge surprise is that it might be the main story that’s keeping me going. I’ve never come close to being this invested in one of Beth’s stories.
I found it took a long time to really get rolling. On the other hand I’m 70 hours in now and keep finding more depth and things to do and mechanics I haven’t even explored, it sometimes is a bit daunting how much there is to do in it.
Make sure to also give the Freestar Rangers and UC Vanguard mission lines a try; they are both long and excellent: FSC Rangers is a love-letter to Spaghetti Westerns, and Vanguards line is a mini-Starship Troopers.
I’m still going with Baldur’s Gate 3, and it continues to impress me at every turn. Steam says I’ve played for 43.5 hours now, and I’ll bet I still have at least 20 hours ahead of me on this first playthrough. After primarily playing fighting games for the past few years, this game has reminded me of what I love so much in RPGs and created a backlog of games for me to play through in the next couple of years to follow it up, especially since a tabletop group of 5e probably doesn’t fit into my life right now.
Dave the Diver! Every bit of the journey is fun, the game broadens in scope bit by bit, you also upgrade in increments, and the story is cute and interesting.
I’ve put a few hours in and I agree, it’s just a fun little game that slowly pushes you bit by bit into slightly more challenging stuff. I really like how well the game meshes the diving and sushi restaurant aspects, too. (Plus, I’m a scuba diver – still pretty new to it – and I’m a bit on the larger side, so it’s a nice bit of representation.)
I’ve picked Dead Cells back up on Steam Deck, playing on custom mode to always get the gear I want. Not the “proper” way to play, but it’s just fun to spend a bit flying through biomes killing things for a while. It’s why I love games that build in all sorts of extra features like this; I get to enjoy the game on my terms.
Command and Conquer 3. I’m not very familiar with the series but I’m enjoying it, at least now that I figured out why the campaign was so hard. Apparently they patched the game balance after release with multi-player in mind and didn’t consider the consequences for single-player. So after a small mod to restore the original resource gather rates, the game is a great time.
Wow, that is a name I have not heard in a very long time. I got suckered into buying it on 360. It played OK on a console all things considered. 
It was fine, didn’t love it. What are your impressions so far?
As a super casual player, I’m mostly enjoying the spectacle of the campaign. Coming from rts like age of Empires 2, which has a sometimes pretty strict population cap in it’s missions (and also medieval technology), being able to build up an unlimited army of giant tanks and mecha is pretty fun. Maybe that loses its novelty at some point. Speaking of novelties, the fmv cutscenes are an interesting choice. I realize they were a fad when the original game was released, but I respect that they decided to preserve that portion of the series’ identity.
The use of only one resource is strange. It feels like there are only a couple places on the map (the tiberium fields) that actually matter, and the rest is just empty space. I haven’t seen what the multi-player maps look like, maybe they add neutral buildings or something to give the players something to fight over. They’ve been a couple of those so far.
My opinion is also heavily influenced by the fact that the game is from the time before all the modern bullshit with microtransactions and stuff. Like, I paid for a game, and I received an actually complete game that doesn’t try to sell me a bunch more stuff. Wild. Having just moved on from Immortals: Fenyx Rising, which really suffered from being a Ubisoft game despite its charming setting and characters really drives that point home.
I actually am a really big fan of FMV in video games. If that’s a subject that interests you, you should look at the games made by Sam Barlow. His big one recently was Immortality though he kind of made his name with Her Story and The Lies we Tell.
Finished Mass Effect 2 and loved it! I want to start ME3 but I think I should give it a bit more time.
Since everyone is talking about Starfield, I decided to play a bit… Of No Man’s Sky. And I’m completely lost since I hadn’t played in almost a year maybe? I don’t remember anything, what I was doing or even how to play. But since I started I already started one of the quests related to the settlement and I’m doing it now. It’s fun, I missed this game.
Finished Mass Effect 2 and loved it
Did you play it on PC or console? If it’s the latter then how were the controls? I’m planning on getting it on console, but I suck at playing FPSes with a controller.
Mass Effect is a very slow, very forgiving combat experience unless you’re playing on insane. Pretty much everything auto locks on or has some sort of AOE component. You could pretty much play the game rarely firing a gun if you really are worried about it. But even then it’s not bad at all.
Console, and it was perfectly fine. It’s in third person, which helps, and there are powers which don’t need to be aimed in real time. I never felt like using a mouse and keyboard would make me significantly better.
Awesome, thank you. Guess that’s my weekend sorted. :)
I’m trying Starfield again.
New playthrough, got some .ini tweaks which seem to help performance quite a bit so far, not screwing myself with traits and character background like I did initially, and making gameplay priorities.
I was too overwhelmed the first time with all the different mechanics and forgot to do what I do with most Bethesda games: focus on a few select areas and ignore the rest, so I’m not going to bother with a lot of the mechanics I’m not interested in.
If they draw me in at some other point, might give it a shot. Otherwise, unimportant to me.
Other than that, I’ve been on a FIFA kick for a while. Still messing around with that. I really wish women’s football was more popular. I’d honestly pay for a game specifically focusing on it and ignoring the men’s side of things.
Look into SP Football Life for even more/deeper/better soccer goodness on PC.
Still on a space game kick. Finished up Freelancer and started playing No Man’s Sky’s recent “Voyagers” expedition. It’s still got over a month left so I highly recommend checking it out if you haven’t played the game in a while. Just to see whats new; It’s come a long way.
And picked up Hardspace: Shipbreaker on sale for when NMS starts getting monotonous.
Ooh, was this your first time with Freelancer? It’s amazing that it’s twenty years later and it might still be the benchmark for non-HOTAS space sims.
I enjoyed Shipbreaker much more than I thought I would. Not typically my style of gameplay, but the setting is fantastic.
No, I played it at release and was HOOKED. I remember clearing a 3 day holiday weekend so I could play through the whole thing (for the second or third time) in one sitting.
I had somehow missed that a HD remaster was released a couple years ago, so I gave it a shot and got sucked right back in. Still a fantastic game, even if the cut scenes and voice acting are a little dated.
For anyone who hasn’t played it, it’s abandonware now.
Game: https://archive.org/details/Freelancer_201807
HD mod: https://www.moddb.com/mods/freelancer-hd-edition/downloads/freelancer-hd-edition-v06
I am about to finish Starfield. I did not enjoy my time with it. Luckily, I played it on gamepass, so very little monetary value was lost.
Might revisit once creation kit is up. That was the only way Fallout 4 was enjoyable for me.
I will head back to finishing my bg3 evil play through, filling the gaps with Darktide.
What’s sad is that Starfield was expected to be the next big RPG. The next Skyrim but in space.
Instead, most people are likely going to come out of their experience with the game with a “meh” opinion about it. It’s solidly middle-tier.
If there’s anything to be said, the visuals are incredible, but everything else is a retread of mechanics pulled from other games (most notably, half the ideas are taken from No Man’s Sky).
Got in late in last week’s thread so reposting. Got Gotham Knights on sale this week. It’s fine. All the technical issues seem to be gone. Enjoyable enough for $15aud. Also having a go at SYNCED, I like the aesthetic and could be a fun one for quick sessions. Doesn’t run very well though, getting pretty frequent frame rate dips even on low and on low it looks pretty rough.
Undead Nightmare on PC emulated with Xenia. Had just finished the original Red Dead Redemption using the same. Finally went for it when Rockstar made it obvious there wasn’t going to be a PC remaster (and I upgraded my PC so I could play it at non potato fps since emulating is pretty intense). Had just started Cyberpunk 2077 but had stopped as I didn’t want to get too far along since the new expansion was going to add/change a lot.
Anyway it was awesome to finally play RDR. Always wanted to but never had a console (nor did I want one) to play it on. Undead Nightmare looks to be good fun too though I’m maybe just an hour into it. Just killing time til Cyberpunk expansion drops.
Almost finished BG3 (at almost 100 hours on this playthrough), then planning to start Starfield!
- The Legends of Zelda: A Link to the Past
- Brotato
I’m deep in Earth Defense Force 5. It’s way more fun than it has any right to be. There’s no way I’m going to finish all the content. There is a ludicrous amount, over a hundred stages in a minimum of three difficulties with four characters who all have health and equipment that can be gathered and upgraded. It’s hard to make it sound fun, because it’s really just using crazy guns to shoot giant bugs and aliens and shit. It’s very simple, but the formula is so good. Flying around like a maniac as a Wing Glider feels so bad ass. I gotta figure out how to talk someone into playing it with me >_>
Ctrl Alt Ego. It’s a great little game that isn’t little. It’s a very complex immersive sim.
