Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

Mad Max

I've played it before and own it on a few platforms but it is £2.99 on Xbox at the moment so thought why not. It looks and plays great with the auto HDR and FPS boost and is kind of the perfect game to jump in/out of using quick resume. Started a new save this afternoon and will probably try and get some of the achievements I missed first time round.

Also been playing some demos on Steam and looking forward to a few of them. Tavern Keeper is my favourite so far.

I bought Detroit become human on the steam sale. Gonna finally give it a go

Decided to give Baldur's Gate 3 another try, though this time I'll also be doing some modding. I wish I could remove most of its D&D-ness, but then again, at that point I might as well just replay Original Sin 2 instead. I'll at least have a mod with 2x or 4x Spell Slots, because that's one of the most obscene mechanics in a TTRPG with spellcasters, but also other general gaming changes like merchants dropping items or better highlighting.

Still having fun with Deep Rock Galactic, unlock the Hazard 5 difficulty but don't see myself getting too deep into it. Though I also wish the game had 'pointless' Assignements besides the weekly one, I play a lot better when I have a fake objective to pursue, rather than just going through missions at random.

I'm finally playing Alan Wake 2 again this week, playing through the Final Draft before doing the DLCs for the first time. Sadly something seems to have gotten borked when I moved PCs and transferred my save manually - only some of the stuff that's supposed to carry over to NG+ actually carried over. Very strange. I had looked forward to having Saga's whole arsenal from the start but oh well.

Game is great. Having waited for so long to return to it has only made the experience better, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that. Having a significantly better PC than last time also only makes the visual splendour more impressive, although I still can't even come close to playing it maxed out. It's a gorgeous game, beautiful HDR implementation and just perfect art direction.

I don't have much to say as I've not only already played it, but also just love it. I guess the collectibles are a little unnecessary, grindy and annoying if you want to 100% it. Also the case board stuff is a little tedious on subsequent playthroughs as a lot of it is unskippable. That's it for notes. Play it if you haven't already, it's wonderful. Try playing some previous Remedy games first if you can, the Remedyverse is cool.

One thing I've noticed while playing the Master Chief Collection is that each game I play sounds quieter than the last. Reach > CE > 2 > ODST - every change of game required me to pump up the volume to get thing were I want them to be. Not a huge issue but certainly a weird one.

Also, and this might sound like a hot take, so far Halo 1, 2 and ODST all had certain segments that felt way too long for what they had to offer. As fun as these games are, these segments did little to help keep me engaged and slowly strengthen the feeling of exhaustion whenever they happen. I'm still planning to go through the rest of the MCC but I hope they'll won't become too common going forward.

I dunno - is this because I'm playing on Heroic? Does it extend combat encounters or cause any similar changes to the levels? Am I "reaping the fruit of my hubris" or are the games just like that?

This probably sounds more negative than I'm feeling about it so don't take this criticism too seriously. It's annoying, sure, but not in an experience ruining way so far.

I‘m still playing GTA Online (legacy) with a couple friends. Sadly, we were unable to do 4 men heists so far, we tried looking for a random fourth but we got kicked due to „inactivity“ while searching for someone cause it took too long; seems kinda dead.

Hades was on sale a while ago, is fun. Cities Skylines finally added above-ground metro, now I can finally add the L to my city!

Installed Reverse: 1999 on Monday or so and already have over 20+ hours of play time.
Nonetheless, it's a gacha game, so I'm slowly reaching the ceiling.
There are several mini-modes to waste your time in and sadly, they're fun to play - for a while at least.
Don't know how long this will last, but if you're into gacha games with weird plots and a ton of words and audio, this thing has plenty of 'em.

After seeing comments here on patientgamers I was reminded that I wanted to play Yoku's Island Express. So I did. 97% complete. Not sure what's left to do but I'll figure it out.

Also around half-way through Pepper Grinder so I'll be working on that for a couple evenings.

Dead space. Such a simple and fun game. Like literally just follow the white line and shoot the baddies.

Broke my normal rule of waiting for a 50% discount (or better) and picked up KCD2. I've just been mainlining it. It's a bigger, better version of the first game (which I loved, hence the early purchase), and picks up right where that one left off. No complaints, except maybe that horseshoes are a pain in the ass to forge.

I don't remember if it's been less than a week since I last played it, but I started Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE recently. Judging off the first case, it appears to be simultaneously the smartest and dumbest game ever produced.

X-COM 2: War of the Chosen:

I've played this game off and on for years. Fondly wishing I could get back to it and just not having the time. Then I caught strep throat and literally couldn't do anything but just play games.

Honestly? Finally. I felt like crap, but I was so happy to have an excuse to just enjoy myself instead of being obsessed with what I "had" to do.

The game changed a lot since I last played so I had to start a new save, and I'm having a blast. I love this game so much even with some of its flaws. Do your squaddies miss a 90% shot sometimes? Yes. Infuriating.

But when they make that hail-Mary hit that saves a teammate, or you sneak through a compound to break out an imprisoned comrade and exfil, it's ADDICTING.

Also, not gonna lie...the game hits a little different in 2025, seeing as it's about being resistance fighters waging insurgency and a propaganda war against an alien occupying authoritarian regime that is kidnapping people and hauling them to blacksites. Man, that uh, is a little uncomfortably close. (But it's only a game...The aliens are actually competent.)

The custom voice packs are incredible too. (My sniper with a Bob Ross voice calmly saying "Let's do a little painting today." Or "Let's get a little crazy." When setting up a shot from across the map never gets old.

This game's complete version I've seen on Steam for like $5 before. This is one of the best tactical experiences there is, and at first I hated the "pressure" this game puts on you, but I've come to enjoy the urgency and being forced to weigh difficult decisions rather than just sending my "A-Team" of snowflake OCs to clear every single mission at a leisurely pace haha.

And the soundtrack. Oh man. Once that "Ready for Battle" track hits where you select everybody's loadout, you really feel the weight of assembling the right squad when you never know 100% what you're about to send them into.