Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

The same game I have played every week for 15 years : Minecraft.
- Vanilla or modded?
  
  I think once you mod the game, it would be pretty hard to return to vanilla. At least that's in my experience, if there are mods, you bet I'm downloading them.
- Check out Vintage Story! It's really fun and pretty hard.

I just started Tunic and Antichamber. So far I'm enjoying them. I have a family trip coming up, so I might not get a ton of time to play, but we'll see.
I've also been playing FF7 (kids are into Magic: the Gathering and wanted to know more about the FF set) and Tears of the Kingdom for the first time with my kids watching. They often play games after watching me play through, so one is playing Breath of the Wild and the other Link's Awakening, so I'm kind of helping them with those too.
- I loved tunic
- Antichamber was so fun. Simple but creative ideas, really inspiring. If you enjoy it, take a look at NaissancE, I believe it's free now.
  
  Thanks for the recommendation!
  And yeah, I'm enjoying it, and it feels somewhat similar to Manifold Garden, which I also highly recommend.

I'm nearing the end of the first part of the FF7 remake series but having a hard time motivating myself for the annihilation that awaits me on each new level as I climb the pillar...
...so I'm just sinking another few hundred hours into Rimworld instead.

I'm deep into Mandragora Whispers of the Witch Tree this week and having a blast. Played about 19 hours and it feels like I'm about half way. The story so far has been serviceable, but I do enjoy the world quite a bit and I also think some of the characters are pretty funny and well written.
Gameplay has been excellent, combat has the right sort of depth to it without being crazy complex and the bosses have been very enjoyable. Good patterns and fun movesets. I'm just now at the second really big story boss and he's a doozy. As someone who isn't huge on platforming I am also happy to say the platforming segments aren't really a big part of the game and have been very easy.
Character customization has been another highlight and making builds is super fun between both the PoE inspired passive tree and choosing which active skills to use and choosing which active skills to upgrade. I'm doing a dual dagger build that dipped almost immediately into the adjacent Chaos Magic tree and while probably not a power gaming choice it is great how flexible the game is in what it allows you to do. Having a lot of fun so far with Chaos Echo and Shadowstep both giving teleports to the range-deficient daggers.
Heavily recommended if you like Souls-likes and/or Metroidvanias!
EDIT: Forgot to mention one thing. I really appreciate this game having difficulty sliders for both Enemy Health and Enemy Damage ranging between 40-160% (default 100). I haven't used them yet, but knowing you won't be hard stuck on a boss and worst case can just turn down the difficulty is actually quite nice. Helps my mental.

Just started warframe this month and have been playing a lot of it. The movement and combat feel really good and there is so much content.
The main story is really engaging so far with a lot of lore, but it doesn't start until the second dream quest which can take a while to get to.

I just finished South of Midnight , it's a mediocre action game with a decent story, but pretty good music specifically written for the game. It kinda feels like Alice Madness Returns meets Disney's Princess and the Frog (without the frog changing).
Just started up on Dredge and having some fun with it so far.
- Dredge is awesome!
- It's a shame, the music is great and I do love the freshness of the unusual setting. But having seen both some gameplay and some of the writing I just can't see myself playing it.
  
  Yeah, I finished the game wishing it would be a higher recommendation, but it just falls short on a lot of things. I don't mind the price I paid for it, but it's a hard sell even at $29.99 (summer sale price).
  The top things to me were setting, animation (feels like clay/stop motion in a cool way), and setting. But the fighting is only okay (never really evolves beyond button smashing and dodging), the story doesn't really build on itself, and the platforming is generic and linear.
  It also doesn't help this is an Xbox studios game, since it seems like a bit more time/money would have gone far for this game.
- I just finished Dredge (On mobile, touch controls were horrible) 4 days ago, it was a great experience overall.
  
  I didn't even know it had a mobile release (it's slow paced enough I could see that working okay)!
  I was actually able to finish it over the weekend and overall I think I'd give it a 6-7/10:
  Gameplay: Solid. The mechanics are fun, but don't really evolve beyond the first couple hours of gameplay
  Graphics: Great. The open sea is both inviting and omnionous, while the characters and fish all have a nice flair to them
  Story: Okay. The story being revealed in messages and encounters is fun, but the stakes never really seem to change, and I think if the world got pulled more into your descent it would make it more impactful.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the wild

I'm about to start the last act of Hardspace: Shipbreaker. It's a fun relaxing sim game. If you enjoy games like "Powerwash Simulator" you'll enjoy it. The setting is great, I hope it will expand into other games as well.

God of War on the PS4. I dropped off for about a month but I'm back and just picked up the Blades of Chaos and finishing off a couple side missions before I progress.

I have recently started watching numbers go up in Kittens Game

Fantasy Life (the original on 3DS)
I tried it last year but got lost and stuck, because I played it like an action RPG.
This time around I play it like a life sim (which it is), and I love it.

Finally playing Cyberpunk 2077.
- Me too. First time. I’m enjoying it so far
  
  Same here. One of the only games that RT is worth the performance hit

Striving for Light
It's an indie game that's about to officially release, and to me is the only real "bite-sized" arpg out there. It's essentially a roguelite-PoE endgame hybrid. A run can last minutes, hours, or an tire week if you build well.
The more I play it, the more hooked I am.

I bought Spiritfarer on Steam, a casual management game about death. The art is so beautiful! You play as Stella, the ship owner of the deceased and a ferryman of souls. Build a ship to explore the world, then help and care for the ghosts and eventually send them to the afterlife. Farm, mine, fish, harvest, cook, and use your own methods to cross the mysterious sea. Spend a leisurely and wonderful time with your ghost passengers, create everlasting memories, and finally learn how to say goodbye to your cherished friends. But in fact, I still play CS2 more often.

I know I'm gonna fucking hate this game, but I've also been in my gaming comfort zone for too long and I need to shake that off, so I picked up Death Stranding.
My main concerns are:
Too much time navigating menus.
Navigating terrain will feel boring AF.
Too much time skipping cutscenes, or worse: unskippable cutscenes.
Boring combat.
I'm gonna give the story a shot, but I'm fairly certain the totality will amount to pretentious Kojima bullshit, and I'm not gonna waste time hate watching it only to yell about it in my review.
What I'm looking forward to: Conan 😂 And I know it's a short cameo.
I feel like I'm going on a needlessly bizarre excursion given my knowledge about my gaming preferences and the gameplay in Death Stranding, but fuck it, maybe a drastic change will do me good.
- I don't remember navigating menus being particularly onerous.
  Getting around is tedious at first, but soon you get vehicles, and, even better, this zipline thing that you can put anywhere. Those are fun to build and navigate.
  The only recommended combat is tying your enemies up with ropes, or later, with a rope gun. (I wonder if Kojima is into bondage) I mean, you can kill the enemy couriers, but it's not a good idea.
  
  I played like an hour and a half, and I don't hate it so far… too many cutscenes though.

Dishonored
- Awesome game. I’ve been bouncing between a replay of Dishonored among other games lately, and no matter how many times I replay it, it never gets old or boring. Is this your first playthrough?
  
  Nah but playing hitman Absolution made me want to revisit
- Spoilers for the last sections of the game
  
  You mean the flooded district I think

Finally got Bannerlord a couple of weeks ago. After a bit of tinkering I got the GOG version running on Manjaro, so it no longer freezes randomly all the time. I'll be honest, I don't think it's a massive step up from the original, especially given the wait, but I'm still really enjoying it and will definitely look into modding it at some point.

I just finished badend theater. I am unsure if I want to recommend it or not. It wasn't hard, the story wasn't deep. You finish it pretty fast, but it was still nice, especially if you like to chase achievements and puzzle solving. It has a fun core mechanic.
Now am I playing little nightmares 2, it is outside of my comfort zone to not be able to fight back (most of the time) and just run and hide.
My goal is to play games that actually ends, I play too many games that never ends haha

Fire Emblem Engage, having more fun with it than I thought I would. After Three Houses, I'd kinda written off Fire Emblem as not for me but only a couple hours in I'm already having fun messing around with character builds.

THPS 3+4. Fun game and it hits the nostalgia. I just wonder if this game got way easier or if I was just a noob back then. THPS3 was one of my first games and I remember playing it a lot. I just finished THPS3 (remake) in two sesions.

Psychonauts. I'm upset I slept on this game for so long. It's very charming.

Dark souls. (Post Ornstein and Smough.) I want to figure out how to interact with the anor londo painting, and I'm also debating whether to go new londo ruins, or the post Queelag area next, (or maybe the catacombs.) lots of options now that I've unlocked teleportation. I still feel like I have tons of exploring to do, in the beginning I felt really underleveled for a bunch of areas but It might be time to give them another go.
- One of my all-time favourite games. Enjoy the journey. There’s nothing quite like that first experience of the original Dark Souls. It’s a truly special game.
  
  I have been loving it so far <3 the world design and exploration is so so satisfying. I get why it's such a revered title. I just wish I didn't fall off to my death so often, but, alas, that's a skill issue. XD

Man, just got unravel one and two on steam both for $10 and I've been having a blast

I actually just started playing Fallout 4 for the first time and only put an hour into it so far because I get eye strain. But a friend of mine is interested in the tabletop RPG so I thought I’d look at the game’s vibe as well.
I installed a bunch of QOL mods and whatnot using Wabbajack.

TL;DR I'm playing Assassin's Creed Unity this week.
I've been playing the entire Assassin's Creed franchise in release order and this week I'm at Unity. It was actually the first Assassin's Creed game I've ever owned, bought the collector's edition when it came out.
I first heard of and saw Assassin's Creed when Black Flag released a free demo on the Xbox One. I absolutely loved it, so the first game in the series to come out after that I just bought right away (and it was Unity). I played it a bunch, finished it and got most achievements, but it didn't really stay with me that much.
The next game in the series that drew my attention was Valhalla and when I saw it on sale for a ridiculously low price I just snatched it up. Absolutely loved that game, played it to 100% completion of everything, got the game pass and exhausted all content possible out of it.
I wanted more AC and grabbed Origins on sale. Loved that one too, played everything out of it. Still needed more.
But there was a lot of present-day back-story in Valhalla and Origins that I didn't know about, which is why I decided to go back to the beginning of the series and play every game in order. It has been a great journey, I love seeing how the series progressed, and I also now understand why Unity has such low reviews (every game so far has been a visible improvement over the previous one, except Unity which looks and plays worse than Black Flag). I'm still going to 100% it before moving on though (looks like back in 2014 I didn't go for 100% on the main sequence, so I scrapped my save file and started over, since I didn't remember the story anyway).
- I started Assassins Creed with Black Flag, and continued with the series from that point on. When I played Valhalla, I really didn’t enjoy it, to point that I dropped the game and instead went through the games I hadn’t played (1-3) and finished with a replay of Black Flag. I haven’t gone back to the series since but I’ve been meaning to try out Mirage. I’ve heard it’s decent.
  Since you’re currently playing Unity, I will say I enjoyed that one way more than the general consensus would suggest. The English accents in France was a little weird and I know the game was super buggy for some people but I had a great time with it. It might’ve helped that my friend was super into that game at the same time I was so we would talk about it together. I’d like to replay it one of these days but I owned it on Xbox One and don’t have that anymore.
  
  I think Unity is super underrated to be honest. Revolutionary Paris is the best AC city they've ever done, and they had such a good idea going with the free run up/down system. It has some of the most stylish parkour in any game of the series and some phenomenal animations. Some of the missions are absolutely amazing too.
  On PC it's apparently even better with the ACUfixes mod, but I haven't played it personally.
  
  As a fan if open world RPGs, Valhalla was a great game for me, and I didn't have any past expectations of an AC game to go by (it was many years since I played Unity when I got into Valhalla).
  I definitely enjoyed Unity and didn't know about its bad reputation until after I finished Valhalla and started looking into which one I should play next. But coming to it again after playing all the previous ones, there was a definite "wtf, why is this not as polished as Black Flag" moment when I started. There are also some big changes from previous games that I had to get used to (no more whistling, no human shield), but I'm still enjoying it and I remember how much I loved exploring Paris the first time I played it (now I'm playing it more in completionist mode than stopping to take in the view).

Industria. It was free on Epic, I think. Took me a while to figure out the boxes said "supplies" and were meant to be broken open to get ammo. Till then it was kind of frustrating running out of ammo over and over. Gameplay and environments kind of remind me of the half life franchise in a way.

I picked up kindergarten 1 and 2 from the steam sale after hearing nothing about them really, but it was pretty ridiculous. I just completely finished 1 tonight, I did have to look up a guide to eventually find 1 of the cards, but other than that I figured out everything myself. Excited to play 2, but will probably hold off for a deep discount on 3. I spent maybe 6 hours on 1, and I'm not going to pay 20 dollars for 3. Also heard they got rid of the monstermon cards, so that kinda sucks