Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of November 24th

I’m getting my ass repeatedly handed to me in Stalker 2 but enjoying it. Also continuing to dump hours into Vampire Survivors. Started replaying Road Redemption also so I can get my modern day Road Rash fix.

Currently I'm back on Neverwinter. I stopped playing some time ago and this weekend I was lost in all the quests the younger version of me accepted. It's still quite fun, though.

Currently Last epoch. They improved a lot since last time I played

For the first time ever, I am at the very end of Fallout New Vegas, Mr. House run. It's been a couple years with long breaks, but I cannot wait to be able to say I've finally completed the main story of a fallout game.

Also been enjoying Anomaly Collapse on my laptop. Fun enough rougelite (rougelike?) with metaprogression. Though I'd recom skipping the small amount of dialogue present in runs after the first few times because it's the same dialogue regardless of what characters you play as.

I finished the main game for Control, and the DLCs and the side quests, and got all the outfits, but I'm still not ready to put it away, so now I'm just working on finding all the collectables and filling out the ability tree.

Last week I handed over too much money for a game that I'm now determined to grind until there is nothing left to grind.

Raiden NOVA

I might even write a review for it.

It's essentially Geometry Wars set in the Raiden universe with a roguelite aspect (other users say it is like Vampire Survivors, but I haven't played that game). Graphics are (very) dated, but gameplay is satisfying. Main arcade can be beat in about 1.5 hours but if you want all the ships and buffs and achievements you need to commit yourself to grinding over 80 hours.

Either way, it is one of the few physical Switch games (other than all the flagship Mario games my son loves) that I own and plus it is an import which is neat.

I've been mostly playing Etrian Odyssey, I'm at the 4th stratum.

I've also played a bit of Balatro which is really fun, but I've played too little to tell if it suffers from the usual issues I have with roguelikes (mainly the difficulty curve in a run).

A bit more Baldurs Gate 3 coop. We just made it to the Githyanki Creche and next time everyone will die.

Then I got back to Vampire Survivors. Played a bunch of different "Survivors-likes", but nothing really is as good as this. There's so much stuff I have to catch up on, tons of unlocks and characters.

Finally, I started the Solasta: Crown of the Magister - Palace of Ice DLC. I really liked the more intimate setting of the previous one, Lost Valley, but this one is a straight-up sequel campaign to the base game. So far it's not as good as Lost Valley, but it's a higher level campaign up to level 16 (base game is up to 12), you get to play around with the higher level spells (also my ranger can attack one more time now). However, performance in some areas is horrible, with huge frame drops. Also ran into a potentially game breaking but, but luckily a full game restart helped.

A friend of mine got me Gears of War 5, so I think that'll be a good chunk of my game time this week. I haven't really played Gears since the 360 days (I believe I may have played an hour or two of Gears 5 on my XB1 long ago before I moved to PC), so it's great to get back into it!

As a plus, so far it seems to also run very well on my Steam Deck too.

Trying to wrap up Trails of Cold Steel 1. I'm about 75 hours into the game and am on the last chapter.

Dividing my time between playing STALKER 2 and modding it. There is a really great game underneath the surface - at least the potential of one - but it's a shame it released in the state it did. The A-life offline simulation being turned off smells of console constraints and/or a forced release after they ran out of possibilities to delay further. I really hope they'll be able to keep working on the game through patches because it has the potential to be truly fantastic.

Also still playing Deadlock, a game or two a day or so. It's an often frustrating experience - as MOBAs tend to be - where matchmaking still has a huge impact on your fun, but the core gameplay is just so damn good. I just wish I was in a skill bracket where people are actually using mics and coordinating and communicating. Partly an EU problem though I'm sure.

Been playing a bit of Rocket League in the little time I have off work, I have a good game of Dropshot Rumble that I recorded recenty here, though I'm not sure the new Steam gameplay recording feature did such a good job:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWNAe_QTTXQ

Working my way through Baldurs Gate 2 ee. Never finished it back in the early 00s. Maybe this time I’ll rescue Imoen and figure out Jon Irenicus’ deal. Currently still side questing.