The Weekly 'What are you playing?' Discussion - 25-09-2023
Have you been spending hours trying to pass a level? Or maybe you are completely addicted to a newly bought game. Do you have a question about a game or would like to share something else? In the Weekly Discussion Thread, you can do it all!
Please don’t forget to use the spoiler tag as soon as you start talking about a storyline.
I'm still playing the hell outta Baldur's Gate 3. I've played through so many times, have multiple multiplayer campaigns going on, and I'm just having a lot of fun with mods.
Also still playing but still on the first play through. Such a good game. I didn’t try any mods yet. Are there any you can recommend?
The Improved UI mods are definitely nice. Better Containers too. Uncomplicated mods that improve general usability. I also like the Pretty Font Project.
Achievement Enabler, the Mod Fixer, and the Native Mod Loader are all also helpful, though I'm not entirely sure they are needed for the UI mods, though it doesn't hurt to have them. The Achievement Enabler allows you to still earn achievements with mods if that wasn't obvious, and the native mod loader allows the game to load the achievement enabler.
Beyond that, I'd recommend just looking around on Nexus. There are thousands to look through, ranging from improving classes and races to adding spells to straight up making you a god.
I about 120 hours paly time and still on Act 1 in Baldur's Gate 3. I have a problem. I want to pick up everything and sell it. That takes a lot of time. I also switch my party around all the time to try to work companions quests
I think most people pick a group and stick with that group. Also most people don't need to pick up a fork and sell it. I may have to change my play style it i want to finish the game anytime soon.
Oh and I am loving this game. It plays very well with my Ubuntu/Nvidia/Steam PC.
I have a similar thing, but I got over it by committing to robbing every vendor of everything they have. Then there's no one to buy the stupid fork.
In my case I'm finishing Sea of Stars, a very good old-school RPG. You get 22h+ of main story in easy mode, I think it is worth the price.
I finished that one up last week and loved it! Might be my GotY, honestly.
I'm looking forward to getting into it. It looks so good! Loved the demo
I gave in to the hype and bought BG3. And this is the first time in ages where I've bought a brand new AAA game and not been disappointed.
I have a brand new PC, so it's about time I ran something more demanding than Factorio on it.
Factorio is a pretty demanding game as long as you play long enough
I know. I have an angelbob megabase save that clocks in at 788MB. To play it I need to add an additional 16GB of swap. I figured that it was about time the GPU did some heavy lifting too.
Completely in love with Starfield. Just finished a big storyline that had the feel of a good TV serial. The sort of self-directed epilogue of looking at my quest log and trying decide what I want to do next felt awesome and I’m going to be chasing that for while.
Same here, played the UC SysDef undercover questline yesterday and couldn't stop playing, so i ended up playing until 3 am lol. The amount of stuff that's in all those side quests is amazing.
I've recently started playing deep rock galactic and it's an amazing game.
Such a great game and community which I feel was enabled by the devs who has the forethought to make spamming a cheer button so enjoyable! End result: everyone cheers and the community gets just that little more happy.
Rock and stone!
Rock and Stone!
Did I hear a rock and stone?
Rock and Stone brother!
Rock and Stone!
I've been playing Cities Skylines a lot - got pulled back in with all the talk about the new one - and also Going Under.
Going Under is one of those games I bought a while ago because it seemed fun, played for a bit, got my ass kicked more than what I was used to with roguelites and stopped for a while. I started playing it again recently and think it finally made sense to me. Looking back, I probably wasn't paying much attention to the game the first time I tried it because I didn't understand there was an indication for weapon damage on different weapons - which made weapon choice feel random - and I also didn't understand how the mentor system worked - which is a big part of the strategy of the game. I've been having a lot of fun with it now, though.
Borderlands. Always thought it was an arcade/retro shooter, turns out it's an rpg. It was exactly what I was looking for. Although I don't really understand why some of my shots miss
Noita, kind of. It's daunting knowing how much there's to the game and I seldomly get past the first level
Great game I could never get past the bad generated items and associated stats. The effect it had on boss item drops reducing the value of them so much it became little reward to me.
Metro Last Light, Lies of P and RDR2. Mid, fast and slow paced games lol.
Got Hardspace: Shipbreaker on sale the other day on Steam and been pleasantly surprised with it. Sometimes I'll blow the ship up for giggles and restart.
I also just got it on sale. I told a friend my dream game was a sim where you scrap and dismantle different Star Wars ships and vessels - they pointed me towards this game right during the sale. It's been a lot of fun!
Playing Starfield. I love exploring and I love the atmosphere. The least buggy launch I've seen from Bethesda. It's great.
I wanna get back into AC6 and try my hand at pvp but every time I try I get nervous and chicken out. If anyone knows of a place for noobs to hangout, chat, and learn the game please let me know.
I've always been a PC gamer but I just got a retroid pocket 3 plus so I've fallen down the rabbit hole of old console games that I never played. I'm having tons of fun just building a rom collection and seeing what this thing can do. Best $150 I've spent this year, hands down.
Dynamite cop on the Dreamcast is awesome, soulcalibur is possibly the most enjoyable fighter I've ever tried, and all the Mario karts are great stupid fun. I really need to rebind my controls though, Mario kart is killing my thumb lol.
There's also some great android games that are just so cool when played on the TV with a controller like Streets of Rage 4 and TMNT Shredders revenge.
Those little handhelds look so cool! But I just got a Steam Deck a couple months ago, and I have a modded 3DS, and I work from home and don’t really have a legitimate use for another portable system haha
Maybe I’ll get it for myself for Christmas or something. What’s the OS situation? Or more to the point, is it easy enough to add roms and emulators and navigate to the game you want each time you turn it on?
It runs android and comes pretty bare. You have to install your own standalone emulators, set up retroarch, and supply all your own roms. I'm a bit of a tech dork so setting it up was part of the fun for me but if you want it ready to go out of the box this is not the device for you.
I use Daijisho as a front end to browse through all the games and platforms and its been working well for me. I followed the Retro Game Corps video on setting it all up, that guy knows his stuff.
I've been thinking about grabbing a steam deck for a while and I think a lot of those little handhelds would complement it pretty nicely as they're actually pocketable, though your DS might fill that niche for you already. Steam deck for me would be just be chilling on the couch playing games but the rp3+ seems like it's a lot easier to just throw in a bag and go.
How do you like the deck so far?
Cyberpunk baby!!! Spent 100 hours before the update, time to spent 100+ more again with the new content!!
Baldurs Gate 3 was released on Friday on Mac. I played the preview and some hours on parallels and am glad now I can play natively now.
My problem is, this world is to big. I like role playing my character, even if it is not optimal. I read every dialogue and think: “what would Hsslek (my Githyanki Dragonborn Wizard) do?”
The great thing is, after around 50 hours I now have a picture of my character. A curious mind, not always fitting into Githyanki society, but counting on the Githyanki Warrior who shares his fate and is becoming his lover.
I just finished playing the System Shock Remaster yesterday night after ~22 hours. I could still do everything from memory pretty much, and it remains an amazing game to this day, especially with the slick fresh paintcoat from the remaster.
Now I'm exploring Shadow Gambit a bit. Always loved the Commandoes games, and this is the third - and sadly final - Mimimi game that copies the gameplay verbatim. And from the little I've played so far, it's fantastic. Having actual supernatural characters fits the abilities really well, and the voicework is done tremendously well, too.
I tried to play the original System Shock two/three years ago but gave up at a stage that felt very close to the end. I basically had a save at a weird spot, when I was low on ammo and anything else useful, right between two complicated rooms. I reloaded a ton of times and always died trying to go forwards or backwards before giving up.
Anyway, would you recommend System Shock Remaster for someone who likely almost completed the original one, gave up, but still liked it overall? Or is there something shockingly different about the original's ending I'll be missing?
Nah, it's a very faithful remake - after a lot of back-and-forth of them considering changing the game more they ended up making a near 1-to-1 graphics update.
So I would recommend it. There are some parts that are made more challenging. Inventory management is a big one. OTOH that makes sense, as the modern controls enable *far more accurate combat and hence saving ammo is somewhat easy and you can easily use the shotgun or the magnum as staples.
I basically saved teflon ammo whenever I found it (dumped it all near the cargo lift) then before entering level 8 retrieved my modded Scorpion from there with nearly 1500 ammo and just went to town with that + leftover shotgun shells. But the drops are also changed, so both teflon bullets and magnesium ones for the Assault Rifle still commonly drop in the final few areas.
And of course, taken from the main game, EMP grenade into berserk-stim Laser Rapier is always an option and kills even the toughest enemies in the game before they recover.
That being said, one specific thing is annoying: Beta grove now deals constant and quite significant damage even with the enviropack on. You have to rush rush rush it, luckily it is brief. Other than that, it's neatly improved, modern graphics with a cool retro-effect from the nearest-neighbor filter, modern controls and combat and some better and more convenient HUD, redone audio including new recordings from Terri Brosius (SHODAN), they also completely redid cyberspace. While I like the original, I can see why most did not, so I really don't mind this part.
I'm not the person you replied to, but I also finished the remake recently after having tried and failed to finish the original a few times over the years (I love SS2) and I would absolutely recommend it. I do think the original has a better final boss/ending but neither really has much to it. I'm pretty sure Nightdive said they're planning on reworking the ending again, maybe before the console releases.
I'm trying to figure out the riddle on Gerudo Desert in Zelda TotK.
Still not the right spoiler tag.
User manual: https://join-lemmy.org/docs/users/02-media.html
Just switched from starfield back to cyberpunk for the 2.0 update. It’s consuming my life again. When I finish the dlc I’ll switch back to starfield and let that consume my life.
Same here dude haha. Starfield was fun, but man has Night City just sucked me back in. I love Cyberpunk so much. I am looking forward to going back to Starfield at some point, it is a great chill out and vibe kinda game.
I love it now more. Really enjoying it, taking small being-adult steps through it
I just finished rift apart. Definitely my fave games in the series after the original trilogy. I think it might be the best looking game I ever played and the dimension swapping is seriously impressive.
I'm currently on Hogwarts Legacy. About 7 hours in and it's not too bad. More RPG elements and a bigger world than expected. Also looks amazing but I can't make too much of an opinion on it just yet.
If you're not playing Hogwarts on hard difficulty it's about to get stupidly easy. Never actually finished it due to this.
Finally got 2077 running on Linux, now waiting for Phantom Liberty and CET update to get all my mods working ;) Need to build on those 500 hours.
Also, I started Greedfall. Lots of running around but so far it's solid.
Oh man, I had such a great time with Greedfall a couple of years ago. It has a lot of jank, but you can see the heart beneath it all and I really enjoyed the world building. The fact they consulted with linguists for their invented language and created a custom accent they made sure all the VAs for natives use was a great touch.
It's not a AAA game, but if you take it for what it is you can have a great time. I'm really looking forward to the sequel.
Playing a buncha old-but-gold games:
I was never one for Skyrim, the jank was just too much to get immersed and the graphics too low end to be impressed. 450 mods later, I‘m fully immersed and impressed (runs better (fact) and looks better (subjective) than Starfield now IMO) and playing the heck out of it.
On the go, Hollow Knight has at last pulled me in on Switch. Finally finding the dash and wall climb abilities made the game a blast. Mario 3D World helps to counterweight Hollow Knight‘s melancholy.
Any mod packs or whatever to recommend? Played it once when it came out using a sneak + bow build (didn't know it was OP when I started though). Haven't checked out rhe DLC or anything, so I want to revisit it once I upgrade my potato rig later this year
I took the „facelift“ collection as a basis a long, long time ago but added a lot of mods myself and I‘m not sure how many - if any at all - mods of this collection are left by now.
(I mean „left“ as in „still left in my own mod setup“)
About 50 hours into Starfield, wrapping up the pirate and corpo questlines, enjoying it quite a bit, but there are issues that I'd love to mod out eventually.
Finally played the Tomb Raider reboot trilogy, probably almost halfway through the first one. A pretty good Uncharted-like experience with a bit more of a serious
tone, but I have to say, it's pretty good!
Currently playing Yakuza Kiwami. Just 100% 0 and moving onto completing the entire series.
My only suggestion would be to take your time and take breaks between them to play other games. They're great, but they're all very similar. An easy recipe for burnout.
Second this. They have so many activities, but kinda repetitive if play each entry back to back. With a somewhat Grundy nature, it burnt out fast, if not rush.
I just finished Chants of Sennaar. It's a puzzle game that has you deducing out glyphic languages from context to find solutions, and it's super satisfying.
Try heavens vault if you haven't already! I tried chants of sennaar, but I found it to be much less elegant and less gripping than heavens vault's language deduction system
I'll take a look! Thanks for the rec!
Wow classic hardcore, I just can't stop playing it. I'm even leveling as one of the worst spec in the game just because.
What spec? I leveled as a holy priest in vanilla, and in retrospect I think that might be the worst way to level haha. Maybe resto Druid would be worse?
I'm playing balance druid!
Spread thing due to work, but the wife and I are still doing the weekly tower for Minecraft Dungeons, and then playing Minecraft Java with the family. I need to find a better way to maintain 4 different computers with different OS's with our mods though.
Also finally going at a snail's pace at Baldur's Gate 3 due to time constraints.
Also got party animals, it's pretty fun with 4 player local matches. Kind of a pain to set up currently but in small sprints it is fine.
Started Plague Tale Requiem after finishing the first game. Story, atmosphere, and everything related is a lot of fun.
Only gripe for me is that the combat/stealth encounters are heavily trial and error if you try to not to kill. Maybe I'm too dumb but NPCs cover each others blind spots so good that sneaking past everyone is almost impossible, as they still detect you from roughly 30 m away. Most gadgets are either for killing or alert the whole map. Still a very good game, I'm just a little frustrated that going completely undetected doesn't work out for me.
I'm playing Valkyria Chronicles. I think I'm about to finish the main story, though I have to tackle most of the extra content still (skirmishes and DLC maps).
It's a bit strange, but once you stop looking at it as a strategy game, it becomes apparent that it's actually a puzzle game in disguise, asking you to clear all scenarios in the most time efficient way, which usually translates to very precise troop placement and attacking enemies in a specific order.
I already played VC4 last year and it was a blast. VC1 has a bit less content and the QoL features from the sequel are sorely missing, but it's still a lot of fun.
Nice. Personally only played VC1 and currently on VC2 (on a break though). All I can say so far is that the game series is a rough gem, fun but a bit unbalanced. VC2 is better in that aspect though, and I would assume the later games are as well.
I can't speak about VC2 and 3, but 4 is pretty much the same as 1. The unbalanced nature of the game is part of the fun, for me. And if you're willing to play the missions "as intended" instead of cheesing them with the attack-boosting orders, imo they provide quite the challenge (especially late-game VC4).
Armored Core 6 and Minecraft.
Both on Linux, Armored Core 6 works flawlessly with proton. But Minecraft needed some more work.
I just finished modding Minecraft java edition on Linux with fabric to use my Nvidia card appropriately and it is running the smoothest it ever has at 60 fps, 128 bit resource packs and very high settings on my shader. Fabric is so much better than optifine in terms of performance, just wish it was a bit easier to install.
What shader pack you got? Im on Linux as well but havent found the right one yet.
And here is my exported settings for r5.0.
If using the same version, save as a file named ComplementaryUnbound_r5.0.zip.txt
And paste in the following to import but I would suggest you play around with it.
undefined
shadowDistance=224.0 CLOUD_STYLE_DEFINE=3 AURORA_CONDITION=4 ATM_NOON_R=0.85 WATER_STYLE_DEFINE=3 ATM_COLOR_MULTS=true ATM_END_R=0.85 BORDER_FOG=false ATM_FOG_MULT=0.65 UNDERWATERCOLOR_R=85 ATM_NIGHT_R=0.85 LIGHTSHAFT_QUALI_DEFINE=3 WATER_QUALITY=3 UNDERWATER_DISTORTION=false ATM_MORNING_R=0.85 LIGHT_COLOR_MULTS=true CLOUD_QUALITY=3 ATM_RAIN_R=0.85 WAVING_I=0.75 NIGHT_NEBULA=true GENERATED_NORMALS=true SELECT_OUTLINE=4 SHADOW_QUALITY=3 DETAIL_QUALITY=3 WAVING_SPEED=0.70 BLOOM_STRENGTH=0.045 WATERCOLOR_R=85
I've put a few hours into Payday 3 so far, a shame it's servers got the hug of death. It has one of the most developed stealth systems I've seen in any game. Core mechanics wise it's definitely a worthy sequel to Payday 2.
For me, it's been Last Epoch which is an ARPG. It's been doing a fantastic job of scratching the itch that Diablo 4 just failed to do.
I finally made it past the campaign and am in the endgame (as far as I understand), and I've had a good time trying to come up and play with various builds on my Runemaster character!
Also, American Truck Simulator for when I just want to turn my brain off and relax.
still going on with Path of Exile
Almost done with Metro Exodus, love the series though Exodus is dragging on a bit in the last acts or missions IMO. Next up is Gears 5 since it was on sale and I'm a sucker for GoW and Cyberpunk 2077, finally picked it up on sale last week.
I recently played Metro Exodus and I felt like it was a drag at the beginning of the game instead. It was one of the few times in my life in which 1 hour into the game I was so bored I was googling whether the game would eventually get going and become fun. The story "twist" at the beginning felt extremely rushed and out of nowhere and it sort of put me off. But as the game got going I got very into it and I was the one "dragging" it by doing every secondary objective.
I had a hard time with the first hour or two initially I think I had to start it 3 times, then really enjoying things but now that it's about to get to the 3rd/4th area where they arrive and are like go get this for is Artyom we'll all be waiting I'm kind of over it even though the new areas do have a lot of diversity.
I've been putting some serious hours into No Man's Sky the last few weeks. Lately I've been getting pretty hardcore about F-Zero 99 as well
currently playing Anima : The Reign Of Darkness on my laptop via Bluestacks. it's an ARPG game and i like it.
Counterstrike 2 is going to be released on Wednesday. Cs2 will be the new benchmark in skill based fps games and you can get from day one.
I’m in the beta so I’ve already been enjoying the premier matchmaking system and the glorious new smoke grenades.
Space Engineer with "Ares at War" mod. Just starting out so it's a grind but a relaxing grind.
I loaded up a cyperpunk save to mess with the new perks. Liking air dash and autocamo.
Work has been busy, so i played Call of Duty DMZ after work for some short relaxation. Been doing for months, kinda getting good at it. 6 days ago i was shadowbanned for killing to many players who probably reported me. Now i'm getting matched in high ping >200ms lobby. I swear I've never use hack or hardware cheating things. So i uninstall and start getting into Titanfall2
Crusader Kings 2 with Elder Kings mod.
I've been hooked on "God of weapons", recently. Pretty good rng auto combat meets slim downed "Hades", worth a look and the dev seems to be looking for feedback.
Just starting to properly explore the depths in Zelda TOTK after already spending about 65 hours so far. Have upgraded armour enough at this point that battles are feeling pretty easy with bosses not even doing much damage (eg the
!shadow ganondorf !< fight was only taking quarter hearts of damage)
Still feeling like there is a lot of life and exploring to do before I try finish the main quest.
Mortal Kombat 1. The kameo fighters make labbing the characters quite interesting, so many possibilities!
Bomb Rush rush Cyberfunk, got almost all of the tags, now I'm trying for the ~15 mill score achievements, which I somehow always fail at like 13 mill. pain
Warframe, after seemingly finally shaking a crippling Lost Ark addiction.
There is nothing else out there quite like Warframe.
That's the space ninja one, right? Loved that one.
That's the one!
Playing Last of us 2 while I'm in the middle game of covid.
I'm playing Lies of P. It's a good soul like game, but felt like the dev took some wrong lessons from FS.
I'm really frustrated that the distance that I have to travel to retry each boss is so far. It's like playing DS1 with some flaws that FS grew out of.
CP2077, no man's sky, Dredge and Dave the Diver. In this order.
I beat Kingdom Hearts 2 last week, so I'm just starting Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 Days. Taking a bit of a break though, so might not end up getting to it until next week.
Recently played Titanfall 2 and bought the Muse Dash DLC, and man this has been the most fun ride I've been in a while.
First off, Muse Dash. I've bought the base game a long while ago and pretty much cleared all of the hard content it had to offer. Due to the recent controversy, I jumped the gun and bought the DLC earlier than I would have liked, but I did plan on getting it at some point so its not a complete bummer. The main draw of the DLC for me was mainly more content since base game is reeeally small - specially if you are experienced at the game or genre as a whole, and the mods. The mods along with custom charts made the game way more compelling than before. Bless the good people who do game mods, they are actual gods.
Then we arrive at Titanfall 2. To be honest, I did not expect it to run on my i3 potato laptop, but it did... and I got addicted, clocking in 30 hours in like a week and a bit. The campaign is good, the multiplayer is amazing once it clicks, and now I'm replaying the campaign again for the collectibles. It is a genuine breath of fresh air as the majority of multiplayer/online games that I play involve live service stuff, gacha and tedious grind, and I'm not interested in mainstream competitive stuff either with ELO ranking and keeping up with metas. Here I can enjoy fragging to my heart's content and casual competition without the baggage modern gaming entails (battlepass progression, ranked, FOMO, etc.). And even if I get beat by someone better, I view it as a challenge and not pure BS (I'm looking at you War Thunder).
Just played the Lamplighters League demo and liked it quite a bit. Only bummer is that it does not play well on steam deck, so I will hold off for a while.