A new week and a new thread.
What are you all playing!
Mostly “Against the Storm”, an Early Access Steam title.
Just started playing Grim Dawn again while waiting for Baldur’s Gate 3.
Sorta weened off of Dave the Diver but started it back up again. What’s great is that they keep introducing new mechanics that (no pun intended) hook me in again. I previously spent a ton of time (pre-Klaus fight) in the fishing + sushi bar loop, but now that I’ve continued the story, more interesting things are being introduced. Also, Klaus was a weird spike in difficulty—you go from the easy Giant Squid fight into the Klaus fight thinking it’s gonna be similar and BAM! you get a spike in difficulty.
Also planning on trying to get into Planet Coaster if I have time. It’s been in my Steam library FOR YEARS but I haven’t mustered up the energy to learn it. I tried once but was turned off by the fact that you can’t make large plaza areas, only single pathways. But I found a YouTube tutorial that seems to have a workaround for this. LASTLY, I might boot up Civ 6, but I’m afraid of re-learning it’s mechanics again.
Return to Monkey Island, Vampire Survivors and Northgard.
Plus, my boss bought an arcade cabinet for the office, so I’ve been playing lots of different arcade games, mostly Golden Axe, Bubble Bobble and Street Fighter II
The Finals season 3
And lots and lots of Redout 2.
Forbidden West on weekends
Just finished Final Fantasy XVI and feel vaguely disappointed and unsatisfied. The story kinda fell apart in the last third.
2 weeks until Baldur’s Gate 3, no idea what I’ll do until then.
Haven’t touched RimWorld in a few years. Got addicted to it again this week. Hopefully soon it will pass.
One of the best games ever! Doing a vanilla Royalty run now, and looking forward to try Biotech later.
I haven’t bought any of the DLC yet. Every steam sale I’m like not yet haha.
I’m surprised nobody else is playing Remnant 2. It just came out and it’s pretty damn fun.
They called the original “Dark Souls with guns” and it’s definitely that sort of game in the sequel. But it’s not as punishing as a typical souls-like since there’s no death penalty. It’s perfect for my preferences since I hate the “losing all your money when you die” thing in Elden Ring.
Apparently it’s very fun in co-op but I have been playing solo so I can’t speak to that.
At only $50, it’s a pretty solid recommendation from me if “dark souls with guns” piques your curiosity even a little. AA title with no jank and I’ve only seen a single bug so far in my playing on XSX.
I was just watching a couple friends of mine stream Remnant 2 earlier and it does look pretty slick. It seems there is at least one puzzle that requires co-op to fully solve, and there may be more further in just so you and others are aware.
pikmin 4! so excited to finally have my hands on a new pikmin game. the game is very streamlined and a lot of the minor annoyances of the older games have been eliminated by one design choice or another, and it is just really easy to sit down and play.
would recommend for new players and fans of the series.
Without any major spoilers how would you say it compares to pikmin 1/2? Pikmin 3 was okay but imo 2 was the best, and 1 suffers a lot from poor quality of life. Ive played every game so far around release and Im tempted to get 4 on my next paycheck. Is it more like the caves and exploration of 2 or the slightly more linear gameplay of 3?
its different from the other ones, mostly in terms of ui and game feel, but it plays the most like 3. the caves are great so far (if a little short, but there is still plenty more for me to do), overall its just been lots of fun but i do wish it was a little harder. The big areas are super cool, and the design improvements allow you to just go diving into any caves or dandori battles you find in your travels without having to worry about where are my pikmin, do i have everyone, do i have the right types, etc.
would definitely recommend it to any pikmin fans
ESO, picked it up because it was free and I have some friends who play it. The difficulty spike from literally anywhere else in the world and the imperial city is nuts, kind of wish every zone was this tough. I could do without the PvP though, I got floored pretty much any time another player showed up. Worth it for those extra skill points though.
A bit behind the curve, but I just finished The Return of the Obra Dinn. Wonderful game, I took the time to 100% it and it was very rewarding.
If you are looking for another game with the same feel, try Case of the Golden Idol. I genuinely thought it was the same developer until I looked it up.
Started a fresh play of Mindustry this week and forgot how much I enjoy it. I play primarily on PC now to save my hands, but the mobile apps are free if someone wants to try it out!
Great game! And very playable on mobile too. I also enjoyed Shapez a lot. Looking forward to the sequel.
Shapez ruined me on Factorio. It feels like it took Factorio, removed all the weird distractions, and got down to the distilled essence of the genre. Everything else feels unsatisfying now. Send help!
Still Final Fantasy 14. I’m done with Heavensward, except some optional trials, which I’ll do before starting the next expansion.
I thought most of the post-patch story was either trash or extremely tedious. The conclusion to the Dragonsong War was generally alright, just everything leading up to it was a chore. The Warriors of Darkness story felt like complete filler and a waste of time. After that is the stuff that leads into the next expansion, so I’ll have to see how that plays out.
Imma be honest, I’m really close to just starting to skip most of the story, it’s such a drag sometimes.
Stick with the story through the end of Shadowbringers there is a good payoff.
I doubt it, but as long as I enjoy most of my time with the game, I’ll keep playing.
I can vouch for the payoff in Shadowbringers. I did not like all of it and I personally dislike the development of the story afterwards and into Endwalker, but Shadowbringers has some good moments.
Since you’re done with HW now I’ll also warn you, Stormblood can be slow at times and has more narrative problems than the other expansions. The post-Stormblood patch quests were excellent though, in my opinion, so try to stick with it. The far-east stuff is pretty good but the Ala Mhigo parts are probably the games absolutely low point for me.
Stormblood also has some of my favourite music in FFXIV.
I feel like every couple of years or so it changes, when the game supposedly gets good.
When I first played two years ago, everyone just said ARR is a slog, just get to Heavensward. Now I read occasionally that Heavensward still isn’t when it starts to get good (and I’ve seen the extremely boring stuff for myself).
Soon people might say the same thing about Stormblood. “Just get to Shadowbringers.”
I think a lot of it is Shadowbringers overtaking Heavensward as many people’s favourite expansion during that time.
I still think the “just get through ARR” bit is true to some extent, and you can notice the increase in production value each expansion if nothing else. Stormblood is where the shackles of the PS3 were finally broken for example, so it does have that going for it.
I personally really enjoyed Heavensward, so if that doesn’t hit the spot then I don’t know. That’s not to say it didn’t have slow and/or boring parts, of course (they do tend to pad the runtime), but the overall Dragonsong War story and the Ysayle/Estinien bits were great to me.
Soon people might say the same thing about Stormblood. “Just get to Shadowbringers.”
I think people have kind of been saying that since Shadowbringers came out, honestly. Or at least “get through to the patch quests”. Stormblood was overly ambitious and tried to tell two stories at once, which resulted in too little screentime for either to really develop and hit home. Also they had to split the writers, so the Heavensward writer only worked on the far-east stuff, and Ala Mhigo ended up being pretty boring and forgettable.
The base HW story and the first few patches to finish the Nidhogg stuff were good, except for a lot of those extremely tedious quests, that constantly send you to the other end of the world. It didn’t take a lot of time, since you can just teleport everywhere, it’s just super boring. As far as I’ve gathered from comments, that just the type of game this is though and I gotta accept that.
I like generally the combat and would like to do more (during normal quests), but instead I just often queue for duties, so I just get nothing done.
They do add a lot of tedious stuff to pad the length, and I agree about the lack of combat duties during the story. It does get a little better in Shadowbringers, if my memory serves.
Diablo 4 with my wife, and replaying GTA V. Both have been a lot of fun.
How’s diablo 4 for a (I’m guessing) casual player? Was looking to pick it up but haven’t heard that much positive about it.
I thought the game was spectacularly bad, but I seem to be in the minority. Makes me feel like I’m taking crazy pills! It’s a very pretty game with super shallow mechanics and it’s designed for maximum grind. I can handle grind in an ARPG since it’s kinda their thing, but you gotta have some good mechanics to go with it or it’s just an idle/incremental game with prettier graphics.
