So, what're you playing?

[Hawkbit]

Playing the new Borderlands game. Side quests are actually pretty funny. Not sure I like how 'encounters' work; I get the idea of it being like a DnD encounter, but just feels jarring. Shooting and looting feels pretty good though.

[Sky]

So I oddly found some good solo content in Madden 22. After the #fixmaddenfranchise stuff last year, they did make changes that some folks seem to like...but it became a buggy confusing mess in my experience. I've tried 5 separate times to get a franchise going, the UI alone has become a mess (make lasting choices without explanation nor respec...nor back button to undo a change during setup!).

I started poking around the menus and found out that MUT has a bunch of solo content that's actually pretty fun to play through (if not as sustainable over time as franchise imo). Basically, it's meant to learn the game and build up a decent team before taking on human opponents. But it also makes for a nice collectible game based on challenges. And I usually play on fairly relaxed custom settings (I see it more as a Harlem Globetrotter experience, given the utter shit of the simulation), so to pass challenges on hard difficulties is an actual challenge... though again, mostly due to the utter shit of simulation, like tackling an RB on a 3 and 7 after he runs for 3 yards....yay 4th down and...nooope he somehow slid through a pile in the most hilarious mess of animations (Madden is animation-based, not physics, root issue here) and made the first down. Right up there with the highly likely possibility that any long breakaway play you, the player, make will magically end on the 1 yard line (not 2, not 4, the 1...every time).

Anyway, it's kept me entertained enough this iteration to make up for franchise being such stinky balls that I've only played maybe 4 games total - I spent the season playing weekly exhibitions because they had up-to-date commentary from the previous week's games which is cool...except they only put up the current week games for less than half the weeks of the season 

The NFL really needs to de-exclusify their license so we can get some competition in the space. I'm glad I can laugh about it, but I also want to play a fucking football game some decade (as we're now 17 years into the EA stranglehold). There will be kids entering the NCAA that have never had a non-Madden option!

[Rendakor]

Playing the new Borderlands game. Side quests are actually pretty funny. Not sure I like how 'encounters' work; I get the idea of it being like a DnD encounter, but just feels jarring. Shooting and looting feels pretty good though.

Yea, I'm enjoying it. It's exactly what I expected, and that's totally fine. Voice cast is surprisingly good, too. You can melee attack the random encounters on the overworld and it just instakills them instead of having to do the random battle.

[Endie]

I played all the GTA games with KB+M on PC.  Except for the HEY COUSIN NIKO one, which is also the only one I didn't like enough to finish.   

Was that the one where you play a Russian immigrant taxi driver? That's the only one I played. They gave me a phone and I went to my flat and ordered pizza. Then I went out to a charity shop type place and bought awful, dreary, Soviet clothes. Then I went back to my apartment and watched TV until I ordered another pizza.

At one point I got a phone call but it was just some girl who wanted to go out. So we went bowling. Then I went back to my flat and watched TV and ordered pizza for a few days.

I eventually ran out of money so I went into an alley near my apartment and clubbed a man to death for pizza money. That kept me going for a day or two but nobody else phoned me. After two more pizza murders the police were no closer to deciding to stake out pizza murder alley and I was really bored of sitting waiting for Godot to call me so I logged out and never went back.

Not sure what the fuss was about with that game, rated 3/10 would NOT hit.

[Khaldun]

Niko's Serbian, but basically that's it.

I kind of liked that one in an odd way--Niko's basically a depressive and a lot of the game loops feel depressive, but I liked hanging with him more than the GTA 5 protagonists.

[Sky]

I loved GTA 4. I've been thinking of going back to play it again, given the current situation in Eastern Europe. But then I remember that at some point this year I'd like to finish GTA V :D

After I finish Cyberpunk, which despite its many flaws, is such a great game. Also feels very different as a hacker vs a hack-n-slasher.

Then I need to play Elex 2, which should be patched up enough by the time I finish Cyberpunk...then maybe finish RDR2....ugh need more game time

[Count Nerfedalot]

So The Countess and I picked up this early access game on Steam called The Planet Crafter and are enjoying it quite a bit.  You're dumped on a lifeless airless (very small fragment of a) planet as a convict with the job of terraforming it into a livable world.  It's another one of these Indy 2-man development team games built on the Unity engine, but it looks and plays very well with very few bugs, and compares favorably in those measures to Ark or No Man's Sky, though a bit content-lite.

I've heard it feels very similar to SubNautica, but I never played that so can't say if that's accurate.  It has elements of No Man's Sky's starting game (pre-spaceflight) with similar graphics, base building and general movement feel (but solely first person and no terrain deformation), and Satisfactory with the general feel of hopping around the world gathering resources and doing crafty things with them to enable you to build resource extraction and world terraforming machinery until you get the ability to build even craftier things that makes all your old things obsolete, but without any of the automation stuff, sadly.

Your job, and only hope of survival and rescue, is to build up the planet's oxygen, temperature, atmospheric pressure, and "biomass" until it becomes habitable.  The development requirements increase exponentially (or maybe logarithmically?) with each stage, and your tools' effectiveness increases somewhat but less so as you go, so each stage takes longer.

There is no combat, the environment is your enemy.  You need food, air, and water, and will die if you run out of any of them.  In the early game you will have to scrabble for food and water along with the materials needed for constructing your gear, machinery and structures, but will develop renewable supplies for (almost) everything along the way.  You can build portable air canisters from harvested resources, but also recharge your suit's air just by stepping into any structure, the simplest of which is very cheap/easy to build.

There is a LOT of resource gathering, setting up resource extraction, and quite a bit of exploration required.  The early game has a steady pace of improving your personal gear allowing you to move faster, carry more oxygen, haul more stuff, etc., but this ends by mid-game.  By this point you've gone from barely being able to survive walking a hundred yards from a structure before you need to go back for air, to being able to cross the entire map (the long way) on a single charge of air.

Parts of the game are a still a bit crude or missing. You are often given a new piece of technology with no clue what it's good for or even why you'd want to do what it does (just build everything you can as soon as you can).  There is no mapping system other than a mid-game ability to install maps of the local environs at structures you build around the planet.  You can never see a map of the whole planet, not even the parts you've discovered, in game.  Feedback on how well you are progressing overall towards your next goal (a "Terraformation Index" or TI) is adequate but there is no direct indication of what your specific targets are for the individual metrics (oxygen, pressure, etc) nor how the TI is calculated from them.  You need to pay attention to units of measurement to understand what is going on, or you can ignore them and just do what it takes to keep the numbers moving up.

You can fill in most of the information gaps by googling it, but you can also spoil parts of the game.  World maps in particular will spoil lots of things, and eliminate much of the exploration grind for better or for worse.  Given the inability to generate any kind of portable map in game I'm just as happy to have gotten my spoilery map online for reference, but your mileage may vary.

I'm not sure how replayable it is, but I'm 72 hours in so far and not yet completed so I definitely got my money's worth even if I were to drop it now, incomplete.

Edit: and remember, this is Early Access, they are still working on the game with specific plans to address most of the things I complained about.  They expect it to be a couple more years before it's completed, but the next significant update is expected in May.

[Rendakor]

Yea I saw that and it looks fun, but I'm not really interested in Early Access. Best case scenario, I go hard now, complete what's available, and never want to restart when it gets finished (hello, No Man's Sky). Worst case, I bounce off it because of some minor glitch and never go back.

[Zetor]

Played through Triangle Strategy a few weeks back. Overall verdict: B-. If you are making an SRPG, commit to high mechanical complexity and/or build porn (modern Fire Emblem titles, FFT, Troubleshooter, Telepath Tactics, Disgaea I guess) or make it an abstract puzzle (Into the Breach, Invisible Inc, many recent indie titles). Also, dialogue (and especially filler dialogue) in SRPGs is always somewhere between 'inoffensive filler that may be fun in small doses' and 'I need to mash the skip button faster', please don't force me to go through all of it just so I can actually choose which branching level to visit. Or have better writing, idk. The mine level was pretty cool, though.

Also picked up Slay the Spire from a recent humble bundle and man, it's like that cocaine_cat.jpg meme. I am not much of a card battler and don't play roguelites at all, but I played the shit out of Star Realms in the early android days, and this reminded me a lot of that, only with more depth. Time literally disappears into a void while playing this thing (I can name all the games that gave me this kinda experienced in the last few years, there aren't that many: Disco Elysium, Elden Ring, Pathfinder Wrath of the Righteous and Underrail). This may be a searing hot take (and I'm 4 years late to the party or something), but... I think this game is kinda fun?

OTOH now that I am getting into the ascension levels, I'm starting to see some seams. The tactical decision making feels extremely simplistic (you could probably make an AI that made optimal plays every time), the difficulty is mostly on the strategy level. I play Watcher, which is apparently a bit OP, and it's kinda easy to tell whether the early opportunities in world 1 will ultimately result in a deck that has a chance against the endboss in world 3 -- basically 'can this potentially go infinite y/n' and if the answer is 'n' then the chances of getting proper fucked somewhere in world 3 are pretty high (though there's always a shred of hope, so I always play the games out anyway). Like, if I can't remove most of the trash in the starting deck by then (and at least upgrade Eruption so it only costs one mana), I'm gonna have a bad time. And even then sometimes I will just get completely RNG fucked, but I can just as easily get insanely lucky and win something I had no business winning, which I assume is part of the game's appeal...

[Sky]

Still really enjoying Cyberpunk, taking it slow and rp-ish. Trying to not fast travel, first-person driving, and turning off the HUD. At max graphics on the big screen it's wicked immersive, as much fun just soaking in the world as actually playing the game.

[Mosesandstick]

Nearly finished Yakuza 0 and then gave up. Just couldn't stand slogging through the combat again and again. Especially when the story is practically a movie and I can just watch it online.

Been playing Steamworld Heist and it's surprisingly good. Probably a good warm up to trying X-COM 2 after the EGS freebie.

[Comstar]

I was playing Pathfinder: WotR but restarting 20 times and getting to chapter 3 eventually ruined it for me.

I'm now playing The Old World - what if you took the first 20 turns of Civilization, made it in into 200 and added some of the character gameplay from a Euro game. I do think they really need to just remake SMAC instead though - SMAC + The Old World would be amazing. The responses to the other characters in SMAC to the Old World problems would be hilarious.

[Khaldun]

I would give a lot for a genuinely good remake of SMAC.

I should do Old World again. It felt like a near-miss to me, though.

[Rasix]

Weird West is very interesting so far. I don't care for the combat or camera, but the premise and execution of this type of game is pretty remarkable. No one will probably play this (niche of niche) and it'll be an abject flop, but I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have gamepass. If you like "immersive sims" like Dishonored or Prey, this is probably worth checking out. Also occult heavy western is a neat setting.

It's got a lot of neat systems and environmental interactions. I just wish the combat was something else entirely. Turn based would have been ideal, but then perhaps some might conflate it with Fallout or Wasteland. I'm probably playing this to completion just to see where the story goes.

edit: Weird not Wild. Heh.

[Rasix]

Weird West is noticeably buggy in some areas, mainly pathing and AI. Kind of a shame.

[Mosesandstick]

Decided to try XCOM 2 for a bit and was enjoying it until I got to a level with the Avenger and the most obvious way to meet the objectives seemed to be to shoot my own panicked soldiers who kept running from the safer extraction area into the enemies.

[schild]

Weird West is very interesting so far. I don't care for the combat or camera, but the premise and execution of this type of game is pretty remarkable. No one will probably play this (niche of niche) and it'll be an abject flop, but I'd recommend giving it a shot if you have gamepass. If you like "immersive sims" like Dishonored or Prey, this is probably worth checking out. Also occult heavy western is a neat setting.

It's got a lot of neat systems and environmental interactions. I just wish the combat was something else entirely. Turn based would have been ideal, but then perhaps some might conflate it with Fallout or Wasteland. I'm probably playing this to completion just to see where the story goes.

edit: Weird not Wild. Heh.

It's on XGP, so plenty of people will play it.

[Sky]

Had an urge to play Civ V again, started a good old huge archipelago map and drew the Mayans as a civ. At one point I was trying to pin down my borders with Sweden and noticed they were rushing a ton of catapults to the unclaimed territory. I got all bellicose about it...and then saw they were heading for...Kiev. As soon as the first missiles fell, Kiev appealed to me for aid and units.

I figured they were a lost cause (most of my army across the map), so I sent a warrior (so they had a military unit to prevent the catapults from moving into the city) and went about my business. Kiev was reduced to defenseless several times, but the Swedes couldn't do enough damage to crack it. Due to me cutting off their supply line and a lack of any reserves, Kiev destroyed all but a single catapult (which limped back to Sweden via embark).

Really cool emergent scenario. Also basically ended Sweden's advances and stunted their growth for a hundred years or more, and gained an ally (my Mayans) that will eventually surround them, guaranteeing their peaceful existence for the rest of the game (hopefully).

[Khaldun]

I do Civ V every once in a while. It's still more fun than Civ VI for me.

I picked up The Iron Oath, may give that a shot soon.

[Zetor]

Managed to get some closure in the #1 representative of the deckbuilding digital crack genre aka 'Slay the Spire', it's a liberating feeling... finally I can look at other games now time to ascend with the other 3 characters   Seriously though, game is good and stuff, but it is an absolute time destroyer. edit: and apparently there is a secret fourth world too, fml.

Still on that tactics / srpg kick, and as I was looking around on steam, it turned out I have too many of them sitting unplayed in my steam inventory anyway (from various kickstarters and whatnot). Will prob be looking at King Arthur: Knight's Tale, since it came out of EA last week. If it's shit, there's always the rerelease of Telepath Tactics. Maybe try Phoenix Point again, have they patched in the fun yet?

That said...

I do Civ V every once in a while. It's still more fun than Civ VI for me.

I picked up The Iron Oath, may give that a shot soon.

Yea, Iron Oath has been on my wishlist for a while, this is relevant to my interests!

[Sky]

Ye gods, there's some Persona tracks on customsforge. 100% not my jam but goddammit if there aren't a bunch of bangers (at least in Persona 5, the one I've played) I'm still grabbing to play in RS. The bass in Last Surprise alone...

[Rasix]

Finished Weird West. It was fine. The story and setting were interesting, but I didn't particularly care for the gameplay. It's worth it if you have PC Gamepass (which is how I played), but I'm not sure I'd pay more than $20 for this title. The polish also wasn't there with this title. Very limited voice acting (narrative voice over), bad graphics (interesting style, but it looks bad), and lots of bugs. Also seems like everything could have used a balance pass.

Maybe I'll go back and continue Yakuza: Like a Dragon. I feel like I should stay away from PoE for a while. Arm is not enjoying really clicky titles.

[lamaros]

I've been playing King Arthur, Knight's Tale.

It's fun enough for what it is, turn-based squad tactics. I've played around 40 hours and the combat is mostly satisfying, the classes different and fun, the equipment ok.

But I think I'm about half way in and the issues are starting to become a lot clearer. The colour palette of the world is really lacking, the strategy level choices on base development boring and tedious, the general plot and narrative simple and largely uninspired. Basically everything tying together the sequences of individual fights is a bit lacking. And now the fights are also starting to be very samey.

It's a fun game, and I would recommend it at half price. If they narrowed the scope a little and trimmed some of the bloat it could have been a really good game, but as it is it can't quite deliver as big as an experience as it's trying to achieve.

EDIT:

Also tried out Trials of Fire. Not really a fan.

I generally have a problem with games that just take Slay the Spire and add on a bunch more stuff. Slay the Spire gets the deckbuilder combo fun stuff in the right amount of time for what it is. Those games that stretch this out vastly longer and add more systems on top don't work for me.

Edit edit:

Tried The Iron Oath. Like a simpler, better looking, more narrative driven Battle Brothers (with some light and unnecessarily nicked elements of Darkest Dungeon). Diverting for a while, but still needs a fair bit of development to round it out.

[Falconeer]

I highly recommend Citizen Sleeper. Which is free on XGP.
It's a densely narrative RPG where gameplay is minimal but somehow this makes it feel slightly more like a tabletop RPG than a CRPG. It sits in a special category for me which only comprises 80s "adventures" (as they were called at the time) and then Disco Elysium or Sunless Sea in more recent times. Mind, the writing is not on par with neither Disco nor Sunless, but I still think this is really great. A very good Cyberpunk setting with a story told through choices, switches and triggers instead of dull walking around or meaningless combat. And the music is also great.

9/10

[Samwise]

I just started on Citizen Sleeper this morning and so far am enjoying it.

[lamaros]

I played and finished it. It was ok. A little forced at points and a bit repetitive, but it does a lot well. It really opens up a mood and some different threads have a good balance of co-existing.

[Sky]

Fiiiinally finished Cyberpunk 2077. Fun ride, end was a bit of a bummer (Judy romance) but it worked. Going to miss just hanging out in the city, even with the wonky stuff that crops up it's such an immersive and beautiful game world to dick around in. Honestly, the ray tracing just clicks in another of verisimilitude for me. I think it's the first game I ever turned off the HUD, avoided fast travel, and just drove around in 1st person doing things as they appeared near me. I'd say my completion time was in the 200 hour range (after playing roughly 100 hours at launch, heh).

Sad that they're not using their own engine for the next game, but I get it. Even 'fixed', the game has a lot of engine issues. But losing another bespoke engine that looked unique, in favor of another Unreal Engine game? I'm hoping the fact that they have an existing engine team means they'll do heavy overhauling. And of course, the first Witcher post-tv show, so the hype is sure to be unmanageable again anyway.

Now that weird time after finishing an epic rpg with great graphics...playing the next one that will likely look like crap, comparatively. Don't really want to start Elex II immediately, as much as I love Piranha Bytes, it won't stack up well right now. Still tooling around in Civ V, but I think I passed critical mass with my empire and have begun the facerolling era.

[schild]

Fiiiinally finished Cyberpunk 2077. Fun ride, end was a bit of a bummer (Judy romance) but it worked. Going to miss just hanging out in the city, even with the wonky stuff that crops up it's such an immersive and beautiful game world to dick around in. Honestly, the ray tracing just clicks in another of verisimilitude for me. I think it's the first game I ever turned off the HUD, avoided fast travel, and just drove around in 1st person doing things as they appeared near me. I'd say my completion time was in the 200 hour range (after playing roughly 100 hours at launch, heh).

Sad that they're not using their own engine for the next game, but I get it. Even 'fixed', the game has a lot of engine issues. But losing another bespoke engine that looked unique, in favor of another Unreal Engine game? I'm hoping the fact that they have an existing engine team means they'll do heavy overhauling. And of course, the first Witcher post-tv show, so the hype is sure to be unmanageable again anyway.

Now that weird time after finishing an epic rpg with great graphics...playing the next one that will likely look like crap, comparatively. Don't really want to start Elex II immediately, as much as I love Piranha Bytes, it won't stack up well right now. Still tooling around in Civ V, but I think I passed critical mass with my empire and have begun the facerolling era.

is this what not playing elden ring is like

[Sky]

I'll get it on sale at some point. Not my jam.

Likely I'll make another effort at finally finishing the last third of GTA V  Or maybe RDR2, while I'm in deep immersion mode and used to slow travel.

[Samwise]

I played and finished it. It was ok. A little forced at points and a bit repetitive, but it does a lot well. It really opens up a mood and some different threads have a good balance of co-existing.

I ended up finishing it in my second sitting; "one more cycle" syndrome got me and I just powered through it.  I agree it gets a little repetitive toward the end, maybe because the amount of freedom you have to advance different threads at different rates means you can end up having not enough to do (whereas at the start of the game it feels like you have way too much to do with too few dice).

I really like the core game system and the anticapitalist theme.  Would play more from the same developer.

[Falconeer]

There is more. The developer is one person, and they made this highly praised game before: https://store.steampowered.com/app/890720/In_Other_Waters/

[schild]

whoops forgot to buy it while it was on sale, was sitting in my cart for days

oh well

[Sky]

I'll make another effort at finally finishing the last third of GTA V 

Ehh maybe not, for some reason there is now a black hole by Franklin's 2nd house (in the hills). I believe I was last logged in as Franklin, but it starts me at Michael's front door (as Michael). If I switch to Franklin, crash. If I drive up to Franklin's house, crash when I get close to it. In both cases, reloads as Michail at his front door (when I restart the game). Takes so long to load a game that I'm not sure I have YET ANOTHER round of troubleshooting for this game. I think I've had to spend time getting every PC version of every GTA working properly...multiple times, and it's seemingly a different problem every time. Ye gods.

So I should probably cross off the idea of finishing GTA IV, too.

Sucks because just the drive up to Franklin's pad (and doing a couple missions that popped up on the way) was still fun. Goddammit Rockstards.

[Samwise]

Started in on Lake, and it might be the most Falc game that's ever Falc'd.   

[Rasix]

Rogue Legacy 2. Never played the first. This game might be a tad too hard for me.

Probably sitting out the PoE expansion tomorrow. No balance changes and I'm enjoying not having arm pain.