So, what're you playing?

[Khaldun]

I'd had a bad time with Witcher 1 and 2 even though I appreciated the world building, so I was slightly ill-humored with Witcher 3 at first. The opening bit felt fedex-ish and the combat didn't initially appeal. But jesus, when I started getting into the Baron's storyline, the hooks sank in as deep as any game ever has.

On something that isn't quite as deep or satisfying but still has *a* hook in me, I did do a DMV-related quest in Fallout 76 yesterday that made me feel both amused and murderous in a fairly classic Fallout way. The people who made it, even the early robot-only quests, at least got the aesthetic, which I didn't really expect so much given all the thrashing and screaming about it when it came out.

[koro]

Played through the "Pixel Remasters" of the first 3 Final Fantasy games and now waiting for 4-6 to release at some point. Had a pretty good time with all of them and I think Square did a good job of walking the line between staying true to the original versions while offering some fixes and improvements (some QOL stuff and some "this was actually broken in the original" stuff).

I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised that they went back to the old spell charge system in FF1; the more recent remakes' swapping to an MP-based system completely neutered any possible difficulty FF1 had outside of superboss dungeons.

The default font is absolutely awful, though, and I swapped to a different one as soon as I learned how.

[Kail]

Finished Subnautica: Below Zero, not sure if I like it more or less than the original.  It's got more of a story, which I'm not really a fan of, and I miss the old vehicles, but technically the game seems to look and run a lot better, and there are a ton of little quality of life improvements for building and navigating and so on.  Seems kind of like one step forward and one step back, but given that the original Subnautica was one of the best games I've played in a long time, ending up on the same level isn't exactly a bad thing.

Playing Mechwarrior 5 since it's left the Epic Exclusion Zone and it's pretty fun.  I'm still pretty early on, the heaviest 'Mech I've seen is only 60 tons, and everyone hates me because I take jobs for every faction, but at least I'm not losing money anymore.  Though it is frustrating how many medium lasers and AC2s I go through with my lancemates losing their arms every single mission; the 'Mech lab in this game won't let you shift arm weapons to torso slots or anything like that.

[Velorath]

Played through the "Pixel Remasters" of the first 3 Final Fantasy games and now waiting for 4-6 to release at some point. Had a pretty good time with all of them and I think Square did a good job of walking the line between staying true to the original versions while offering some fixes and improvements (some QOL stuff and some "this was actually broken in the original" stuff).

I was genuinely (and pleasantly) surprised that they went back to the old spell charge system in FF1; the more recent remakes' swapping to an MP-based system completely neutered any possible difficulty FF1 had outside of superboss dungeons.

The default font is absolutely awful, though, and I swapped to a different one as soon as I learned how.

I've seen a lot of people complain about the fonts and how simple of a fix it is, but for whatever reason it just did not bother me. If people hadn't complained about it a ton in the run up to release it's just not something I would have even thought about.

And yeah, I'm glad that they by and large stuck true to the original games. I think FF2 sounds like it had the most balance changes (gain HP more often, back row no longer prevents characters completely from being attacked physically).

[Khaldun]

I get so close to buying Mechwarrior 5 now and again. I'm just afraid it's really going to disappoint me.

[Velorath]

I get so close to buying Mechwarrior 5 now and again. I'm just afraid it's really going to disappoint me.

Isn’t it on XGP?

[Rasix]

My first serious colony has met its end. Guinea pigs with space rabies almost killing two colonists followed by an attack by raiders while someone was on an ambrosia bender did us in. Funny thing is that the raiders got in by a guinea pig corpse preventing an exterior door from closing. Colony just didn't have enough muscle to hold off the dangers of space. Plus, now I know how to more effectively deal with exterior security.

[Cyrrex]

My first serious colony has met its end. Guinea pigs with space rabies almost killing two colonists followed by an attack by raiders while someone was on an ambrosia bender did us in. Funny thing is that the raiders got in by a guinea pig corpse preventing an exterior door from closing. Colony just didn't have enough muscle to hold off the dangers of space. Plus, now I know how to more effectively deal with exterior security.

All the strange words people use to describe this game make it sound amazing.  Is it?

[Khaldun]

Just about every time I've played it, something hilariously different happens, so yeah. I mean, there's common fuckups that are part of most games--fire, a raid that you're really not ready for, an attempt to tame a herd animal that sends the entire herd after your colonists and pretty much kills everybody. But there's also some new procedural surprise that makes almost any session feel different in some way.

[Rasix]

My first serious colony has met its end. Guinea pigs with space rabies almost killing two colonists followed by an attack by raiders while someone was on an ambrosia bender did us in. Funny thing is that the raiders got in by a guinea pig corpse preventing an exterior door from closing. Colony just didn't have enough muscle to hold off the dangers of space. Plus, now I know how to more effectively deal with exterior security.

All the strange words people use to describe this game make it sound amazing.  Is it?

Yes. It's an extremely accessible version of Dwarf Fortress in the ways that it generates its own content and provided for some very amusing situations.

A funny thing leading up to my colony's demise was when everyone was stressed out and banged up after the guinea pig attack and some weren't coping so well. Previously I had planted some smokeleaf to supply chemical relief to my converted ex-con, which helped wth their terminal cranky mood. My chief researcher, who was also the main doctor, ended up being so stressed out that he grabbed a joint, lit up, and promptly passed the fuck out requiring one of our only non-injured to resucue him.

He was still midly stoned when the raiders struck. Don't do drugs, kids.

[lamaros]

I've been playing bg3 early access.

It's got a fair way to go still.

[Khaldun]

Yeah, I'm not touching it again until they're closer to done.

[Sky]

Slowly creeping toward the finish of the main campaign in Avengers, it's not actually terrible. I could nitpick for days (and already have), but it's definitely worth a sale purchase if you're into Marvel or arpgs or whatever they call these now.

I have been warming slowly while playing Iron Man, I initially hated him after getting stomped many many times over in the Danger HARM Room. But on a side mission (to gear and unlock a couple more skillz), I realized I was playing him entirely wrong. He's a fighter jet that can ground pound in a pinch. So I load the team up with melee and Kamala to heal and let them fend for themselves while I go Stark and Awe on things. The 3 weapon modes feels really nice and the integration of air combat, while clunky, also fits nicely. He's now by far my favorite hero.

But what really sold me was on a certain mission where he's testing new launch hardware and Kamala loads up a track for him....and it's Flight of Icarus by Iron Maiden. Perfection, blasting through the clouds with exactly the right track playing.

Also got a nifty pedal that auto-tunes Rocksmith, making it easier to access about a big swath of my catalog. It sucked having to retune the entire instrument between songs!

[Velorath]

Avengers is fairly decent as a single player game. Haven't returned to it since launch to go through any of the added content, mostly because it was a bit of a pain transferring save data from the PS4 to the free PS5 upgrade (had to hook my PS4 back up, get the current updates for Avengers there which was like 25GB, then select the option they have for uploading the save file, and then of course getting the PS5 version downloaded and updated). I think Kamala, Black Widow, and Thor were actually the most fun for me to play. I would have liked Cap more but as you mentioned, he's not an easy character to use due to how combat plays out although I've seen videos of people doing crazy combos with him. Flight felt clunky to me so I never really got into playing Iron Man either. Haven't tried Hawkeye or Kate Bishop yet. Hulk is ok.

[Sky]

Kamala is kind of easy mode, somewhat similar in combat to hulk, but with better buff/heal. The lack of healing was one of the things bumming me out about Stark, so I started using his flight to go snag healing thingies from other parts of the level. That's when I realized, coming back from those heal jaunts, that I could lock-on with lasers and rockets in flight mode. Crop-dusting time! Getting used to the flight mechanics, when to use which button kinda thing, was important. It /almost/ feels fluid, though I'm not sure how they can improve it much from where it is.

I had Thor unlocked but was enjoying Tony so much I haven't even gotten to doing any missions with him.

No interest in the online bullshit. Biggest downside is the effort clearly put into multiplayer, and the MASSIVE amount of cool costumes locked behind a paywall. Spider-Man got that right, nice steady pace of costume unlocks. This one looks a lot grindier for the non-story unlocks (which there are less of than $ unlocks).

[Velorath]

Very little actual effort seemed to be put into the multiplayer. Post game stuff (whether you're playing alone or with other people) is essentially a handful of variations of the same maps and enemies over and over again. I just went through Kate Bishop's mission arc and even that is pretty much the same. I'm a little way into Hawkeye's missions now and that's much closer to the quality of the single player (although still probably only 5-6 missions long I'm guessing). The Wakanda stuff that's releasing in a few days seems like it's at least bringing in some new enemies. Kate and Hawkeye both play fairly well. They're similar to each other but there's enough differences that you'd probably find one or the other more fun to play. Thor is still my favorite for now. His hammer throwing feels a bit like playing Kratos in that last God of War game.

[Sky]

It's a weird juxtaposition of a game clearly meant to have the single-player as an intro to the multiplayer, that then cut development of the multiplayer content.

Played a bit more as Cap, and he's a wicked fun brawler (as usual, once you actually grind to unlock the fun stuff, which is the design mantra on deck here). But the amount you have to perfect dodge to evade means he does get tossed around a lot. I've gotten good enough that he doesn't get swamped as easily as Iron Man on foot in a big melee, but he also can't fly with 3 separate weapons platforms. Just a weird mishmash of cool moves in a system that was balanced poorly with Cap as the main loser. Other than red attacks, I feel that, similar to Stark's flight controls, Cap's shield is a cool mechanic with controls that don't quite jell for it. Trying to queue up enemies with sluggish thumbstick aiming while they're actively shooting crap at you that needs to be dodged just feels unsatisfying, and I'm wrestling the controls and taken out of the moment of what's happening on screen.

I hit a weird thing where the table was slow to give me new generic missions, so I couldn't level Cap (the Danger HARM Room is crazy slow for that compared to missions, even the really short ones). Really any game that's handing out dailies and weeklies is something I'm already biased against, but at least give me a surplus of missions to mess around in! Two short missions the other night, then nothing but a single +25. Logged out and played Madden. I have to learn which missions feature which maps, too. When I had a lot of time to play, I kept getting wee little missions...last night the table actually refreshed in time to do another quick one and it ended up being the longest random missions I've done (big map into big facility with multiple levels and challenges). The long mission was pretty cool, but halfway through I was ready for bed!

Thor's up next.

[Velorath]

The few times I actually played with other people today instead of just going it alone, I ran into a couple Caps (and you can actually double up on heroes in a group now unlike at launch) a couple Iron Men, a couple Hawkeyes and a couple Thors. No Black Widows, no Hulks, no Kamala's, and no Kate Bishops. The benefit to Thor and Iron Man is that they can fly, which makes getting around big maps and getting to high up places without doing a bunch of platforming quick and easy. That alone makes them better to play than most of the other characters unless you're just going to do a ton of hive missions. Don't know if people don't like playing the female characters, or if it's because none of them have particularly noteworthy costumes. Half of Kate's are variations of a disguise she wore in like one or two pages of an issue of Hawkeye (which I only recognize now because I was rereading Fraction's run). Hulk has a couple cool looks, but his traversal ability might be the worst of all the characters.

In regards to missions to level up with you might have to redo some missions and there's a difficultly setting on most of them. Usually things seem set to whatever difficulty suits the character you're using but I don't know if it refreshes right away if you switch characters.

[Sky]

I was just playing Hulk last night, key to his traversal is planning ahead so you can make the big jump you want to make on his second hop, as the first is a normal jump. I'm still not a fan of thumbstick aiming, which makes a few things in the game awkward, like the other half of Hulk's traversal bag, camera-relative orthogonal jumping off walls. If you can get those down, he's pretty close to Kamala (though obviously not as good as a true flier).

[lamaros]

Desperate for something fun to play in lockdown but nothing is working. BG3 is shit, Larian doesn't understand anything about writing and they won't be able to fix it. Companions/npcs/etc are at the same time  too much and also boring and not cohesively integrated into a narrative. Combat is worse than their old silly Divinity stuff. Bleh. So I started playing Yakuza: Like a Dragon.. and it's a really slow, kind boring attempt at a film, but with wasted time of running back and forth winning easy combat and playing silly minigames? Ugh. Warhammer Total War was good fun, but unfortunately the strategy layer and the combat layer quickly become very repetitive - no desire to replay with different factions.

Wildermyth is still the most fun I've had in a while from something new. I'm now eying off re-installing Civ or even XCOM...

[Trippy]

Humankind is out in 3 days if you want to try something new that's Civ-like.

[Zetor]

And if you're interested in tactical RPGs released recently, I'd recommend taking a look at Troubleshooter and Horizon's Gate -- both of them are really solid in the areas I care about the most (encounter design and character building). Troubleshooter is a Korean game with an 'eh' anime-style story and translation, but the gameplay is really good with insane character and party building options, getting (a lot) harder as the game goes on. It also has a metric asston of content (I've played about 120 hours, and that's without touching the dozen or so missions and two new characters that have been added since then).

Horizon's Gate is on the other end: it's a bit more light-hearted, and focused a lot on exploration (both over the sea and in dungeons). The character building and combat system at the heart of the game are really fun and much more deep than it looks at first glance, and you can tweak a ton of difficulty options to make the game feel right for your tastes.

(both of these games have FFT-style combat with individual character initiative, if that matters)

[Mosesandstick]

I've been playing a different kind of RPG: old. Been playing Baldur's Gate (EE) to tick it off my list, and it's kinda enjoyable, though so dated in design.

I've also been playing Legend of Runeterra's roguelike modes in Lab of Legends. It's fun and addictive, but incredibly infuriating and driven by the RNG.

[Trippy]

Humankind is out in 3 days if you want to try something new that's Civ-like.

This game needs work. A lot of it. Whoever did the UI needs to never work in the industry again. May want to wait a while for a deep discount if you want to try it.

[Sky]

This game needs work. A lot of it. Whoever did the UI needs to never work in the industry again. May want to wait a while for a deep discount if you want to try it.

Thanks for the (quick) update on that one.

Avengers also updated their UI for character info/gear/skillz/yada. It's nice to have stuff sort of unified onto a single screen, but it added another layer of dumbstick navigation to most interactions, split things out very oddly (can't just break down junk gear from inventory anymore, need to navigate to another screen and then back again). Navigating with buttons in the old UI was clunky but fast, now it's clunky and slow. Nice.

I'm impressed with just how terrible humans are at creating user interfaces. Like 90% of my feedback on the Rocksmith+ beta was the shitty UI (which is a complete redesign of their former shitty UI).

[Rendakor]

Humankind is out in 3 days if you want to try something new that's Civ-like.

This game needs work. A lot of it. Whoever did the UI needs to never work in the industry again. May want to wait a while for a deep discount if you want to try it.

It's on XGP which means free.

[Velorath]

This game needs work. A lot of it. Whoever did the UI needs to never work in the industry again. May want to wait a while for a deep discount if you want to try it.

Thanks for the (quick) update on that one.

Avengers also updated their UI for character info/gear/skillz/yada. It's nice to have stuff sort of unified onto a single screen, but it added another layer of dumbstick navigation to most interactions, split things out very oddly (can't just break down junk gear from inventory anymore, need to navigate to another screen and then back again). Navigating with buttons in the old UI was clunky but fast, now it's clunky and slow. Nice.

I'm impressed with just how terrible humans are at creating user interfaces. Like 90% of my feedback on the Rocksmith+ beta was the shitty UI (which is a complete redesign of their former shitty UI).

Overall I think the Avengers update was pretty lackluster. The new enemies they added aren't especially fun to fight and they have some that cause a status effect that completely blurs your screen. I don't know who thought that was a good mechanic but it's fucking terrible. Stilling getting the hang of playing Black Panther, but he's not really clicking with me. As you mentioned, a lot of the UI changes somehow made things worse, which is baffling. Only two more villain fights in the story, and the rest gets padded out with more "destroy this big machine" bits, complete with the same weak-spot vents that every other big machine in the game has. This was probably their last big opportunity to get people to take another look at the game (aside from maybe whatever the do with the Playstation exclusive Spider-man content) and I think this was actually a bit of a step back in a lot of ways from the Future Imperfect stuff.

[Sky]

I'm leveling Thor now and really this game just needs fliers for so many levels. Unless it's one of those small indoor maps, and even a few of those are way better with a flier. I think my dudes are roughly 19-21 for the core group I played with (Cap, IM, Hulk, MM), with Thor at 9 and BW at 11. They really don't start jelling until 10ish and around 20 start feeling like they are developing a style. I'd rank them, from favorite to least: IM, Thor, Cap, Hulk, MM, BW. Haven't done the archer stuff yet, wanted to level up Thor and play around with him at the same power/level as Iron Man to compare them. I like both, so it's finding where the animations slow them that bothers me least.

[Fraeg]

tried Grim Dawn, path of exile, Baldurs 3 beta, and back to World of Tanks...

Looked at the Ascent... and honestly, if it had elves and dragons, and orcs I would probably think it is awesome. However, my reaction was "oh, another grim dystopian, steampunk, scifi thingy... did they re-skin Anarchy Online?"... totally not fair but that is how i reacted.

[Rasix]

RimWorld is becoming somewhat of an addiction. I like the ideology expansion, but it's also adding a layer of pain-in-the-ass that can be a bit burdensome. I've got my dominant ideology and a group that I keep capturing/recruiting from. We're transhumanists, while the other guys are a band of "noble" misogynist, human supremacists. Everyone's unhappy and now my transhumanists want me to start replacing body parts. I'm sure that'll go well considering both my surgeons and crafters are subpar at best. Throughout this I've had one plants guy (literally, no one else has any skill) and no artists (colony is ugly). I give it a couple years before I stagnate due to component resource exhaustion or some fucked up raid that kills someone important.

Also loaded up Red Dead Redemption 2 again. I need some cowboy time.

[Sky]

I'm going to try to finish GTA V before I go back to RDR2  I've actually made it further than ever into the story, so I've got that going for me.

Actually I was trying to mop up the story in the Avengers but then got distracted by the announcement of new State of Decay 2 gameplay and went to play the old new gameplay mode. Since my last few playthroughs were with bonii from my previous communities, I'm at the 'where are all my free guns and power/water!?' and also 'plague samples are WAY more valuable now'. About as close to a hard mode as I care to get, still fun af but constantly sketchy.

Also, following up on my new tuning buddy for Rocksmith: hate the muddier sound/slight latency but it's not in much danger of being unplugged. So convenient and opens up a significant portion of the catalog to lazy me (not skipping Ghost or Mastodon = Good). My latest favorites are Between, Beneath, Behind by Rush and Race with the Devil on a Spanish Highway by DiMeola.

[lamaros]

We've been in lockdown again here so with nothing else to do I've gone back in to play more BG3 EA.

I've adjusted a bit to some of the frustrations and I have to acknowledge there is a lot to enjoy about the game. There is a bit of work to be done on the party system and some tonal and UI elements, but it's got a lot of potential and quite a few really fun bits in it already. More of a larian does D&D than a real BG sequel, but that was always likely to be the case.

[Raguel]

Is Pathfinder:Kingmaker any good? It's on sale atm(steam and 60% off on humble bundle). Unfortunately I probably won't be able to get it now so hoping for a Christmas sale.

[Soulflame]

Is Pathfinder any good?

Yes, until very no.

Where it hits very no will vary.

[Rasix]

That's what everyone says. Keeps me from loading the thing up. I think I bought it a year or two ago.