Hey all!
Figured we’d try something like this. Let me know what you all think, and if you have any feedback on what you would like a weekly thread like this to look like. Thanks
What are you all playing? Anything you got from the steam sale you’re enjoying?
Stray!
And I did get it from the Steam sale.
It had been on my radar for quite some time. Partly because it’s gotten such great review and partly because it’s from Annapurna, they seem to release pretty sweet games.
And it’s great! Highly recommended. :)
Kinda found that the game falls away somewhat around the final third. Don’t want to spoil anything for you, but I’ll say that I found the games moment to moment a bit lacking. Real shame as the first hour or so is genuinely pretty good.
I’ll try to remember to report back when I’ve finished it and let you know what I think!
Star Wars Jedi Knight Academy! Enjoying an old game that my parents wouldn’t let me have because it was “too violent”
Also FTL! Snagged it for $2 on Steam.
Wow, both of those are among my all time favorite games. Good taste!
For me, I am playing through Oblivion for the first time!
After seeing the starfield trailer I figured it was time for me to fill in this gap I had in the bethesda library. I am using some mods from the “through the valley” mod list and have been having a great time so far. The game is really goofy, but the exploration has been great so far. Also got the mods set up on my steam deck, and its been working great!
I’ve tried to get into Oblivion a few times and never stuck with it. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game and it’s hard to go back.
Also open world games are kind of daunting these days… I like the idea of spending hundreds of hours exploring a game but I don’t actually have the hours to do so.
Yeah I def feel that. Having it on steam deck helps a bit though. Feel like I can chip away at it, especially during travel times
oblivion is so good, the goofiness is the biggest draw for me ^_^
I found it way too late and couldn’t get over the dated graphics, but I LOVE Skyrim. I’ve put 300 hours into it just exploring, haven’t even finished the main campaign.
Wow, for the first time! Such a great experience. The goofiness adds charm. So many of my best and weirdest moments are from that game.
Just started playing Hollow Knight again and I’m HOOKED. I love almost everything about the game so far from the music, the visuals, and the gameplay. Although it gets mighty frustrating when trying to platform through those fucking thorns or off the bouncy purple mushrooms but I take my break and then I’m back at it again :)
I picked it up again this week, too! The ambience is perfect, really on point for immersion.
Not sure if those mushrooms you mention have been in my way, but at the moment I cannot beat those damn explosive jellyfish in a reliable manner. Breaks definitely help; after a while I’m
filled with determination.I hear ya on the determination part, playing last night I was hit with the realization of truly how big the in game world is and I want to know all about the L O R E. But I’m trying so hard to restrain myself from watching a YouTube synopsis like I usually would for something like Dark Souls.
With those jellyfish, if you’re talking about the ones in Fog Canyon my tip is to kill the little ones and just avoid attacking the bigger ones altogether. The explosives the big guys have are so powerful and I don’t think I have been able to avoid said explosives except maybe a couple of times. But keep on chugging my fellow knight :)
It is a beautiful game, for sure.
I beat my head against Hollow Knight when it was released and set it aside after a while. I recently went back and somehow was able to get through it (I’m convinced they made it easier vs me getting better).
Make sure to explore and find all the story and world building tidbits. It’s definitely worth digging into, and I love some of the little side stories and character interactions as you go deeper into Hollownest.
You probably got better, but!
As I understand it, the initial release of Hollow Knight had some absolutely awful input lag and other performance issues. If you first played in the initial patches, you likely experienced this.
Hollow Knight is one of my all time favorite games. I replay it via randomizer quite frequently.
Definitely, I’m doing my best to try and do everything I can without a guide (unless I get stuck). Plus, if I miss anything I probably will do another play through or something because I find the game to be very comfy especially when you get into a groove.
Been playing Heaven’s Vault, a game I kept seeing recommended for people who liked Outer Wilds and Return of the Obra Dinn. There’s this big overarching mystery to solve, and a core part of the game is translating a written language. There’s limited options you’re given for what each word means, but you still have to compare symbols and use context to make deductions, it’s very cool.
Outer wilds and obra dinn? Sold 🙏
Oh god yes, Heaven’s Vault is great. I love love love that the language rules are so consistent that once you learn what an individual symbol means and roughly how the order-of-operations work, you can make some very educated guesses. Especially on a second go-around, you feel like you’re making way more progress than your first playthrough.
Great explanation. I’m greatly intrigued. Thanks!
Okay so I’m continuing with my Bloodborne play through. Made some progress the last two nights and I feel like I’ve finally accomplished something.
I also started a few smaller games on my 'Deck, namely Spin Rhythm and Bleak Sword DX.
Been playing Assassin’s Creed Odessey lately. It’s fun and big, but I think, ultimately, Origins was a better game. There was a lot more cultural diversity present and they changed some mechanics for the worse imho. But it’s kinda cool how smooth it runs on my Linux machine!
I actually liked Odyssey way more than Origins. Haven‘t even played Origins through, simply didn‘t hook me.
I played a decent amount of Odyssey (didn’t get close to finishing it) but bounced off Origins pretty quick. What mechanics did they change in Odyssey that you miss? Might be worth going back to play it if I know what’s different!
What made AC Origins superior to AC Odessey for me was the scenario. Origins pulled me right into the protagonist’s emotions and motivations. Whereas in Odessey I never really got why I was supposed to massacre masses of Athenians, then Spartans, then Athenians, then some more Spartans…
Just picked up Terraria and I’m loving it. I played Starbound a while back and read that it was more or less a spiritual successor to Terraria. Terraria has all the things I wanted to see from Starbound. The crafting system is so expansive. The difficulty is real though, I travelled through 2 biomes and hit something with large beetles and cave worms that chomped me to death. Zombies, floating eyes, and slimes were no problem. Same for the mobs in the desert, easy…but once I hit that 3rd biome I was in trouble, even with my metal armor.
I had been making steady progress in Expedition Rome from the sale, but then the siren song of RimWorld pulled me back again. My melee moleperson cult is going strong!
Currently playing Horizon: Forbidden West. I love it but it can get somewhat tiring after a while. It’s my third open world game in a row and I definitely feel the need to play something smaller and more focused.
“The Ascent” on gamepass. My buddy and I are always looking for fun coop games, and I saw the trailer for this and thought it looked fun. We are only a couple hours in but so ar it’s been a pretty enjoyable cyberpunk twinstick shooter with some great visual design. There are some bugs and the shooting takes a while to get used to but lots of fun so far!
Roguebook was one of the Prime Gaming free games recently so I started playing that. Very fun. It does feel very easy to get overpowered, which is one of my favorite things a roguelike can do. I’ve already been able to beat it twice out of three attempts, so it’s probably undertuned, but I’d prefer that over the alternative.
I also dipped into WH40K: Mechanicus, which was free on EGS a while ago. That game is much less fun. The UI is kind of clunky and the upgrades and gear are very underwhelming. It seems difficult to really get synergies going with any of your characters. Probably will not even finish a run.
Pokemon Violet. I’m trying to complete the Pokedex as much as I can, as I try to ignore the blatant perfomance problems of the game 😅 But I really like the game and its open world nature.
It’s so irritating that S/V could have been the definitive Pokemon experience but it ended up being what it was. I guess I can’t really blame them for not putting the effort. I mean why should they when everyone bought it anyway (I did too, I’m part of the problem)
I guess for me there was so much fun to be had grinding out an optimized team by breeding and training them up, and the new games sort of trivialized all of that. Totally understand why, but it took a lot out of it for me.
The open world in them is nice initially, but imo they failed to make exploration rewarding enough, so really it’s like… What’s the point.
I still like catching 'em all but it even seems like they’ve de-emphasized that.
Sorry to rant just an old Pokemon fan who can’t really move on.
Grinding through nightmare dungeons in Diablo 4, and because I fell down a YouTube tutorial hole I’m retrying Frostpunk. Hopefully I can stave off the guilt from slapping makeshift prosthetics on orphans long enough to finish it this time.
Path of Exile. I can’t even say it’s great. It’s OK. But they must have nailed that Diablo-esque addictive quality because I can’t stop.
addictive quality
That’s exactly why I stopped playing that. I realized it was addictive rather than fun, and I could no longer stomach the business model based on annoying the player into paying (by deliberately making inventory management a living hell and then selling stash tabs to alleviate the problem).
It takes awhile for Path of Exile to truly click. I think it’s the best ARPG ever made, but the initial learning curve is pretty steep. Things really open up in the endgame. And we have Path of Exile 2 right around the corner which is awesome.
Interesting. What counts as the endgame? I’m in Act 9 now.
So once you complete the campaign you will begin maps. There are 3 tiers of maps, you have white, then yellow, then red. I consider mapping to be the endgame.
If this is your first build, the endgame will be rather punishing and you might not make it very far. It took me until my third character roughly before I was able to successfully push into red maps and beyond. There are special bosses to hunt down, and all the side content like Heist and Delve are very rewarding and fun.
Additionally you get another passive tree that allows you to customize your mapping experience however you want. Zizaran has a really nice video going over the endgame. It’s quite long, but very helpful. https://youtu.be/uf4wnvkS-mI
