Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

I started playing Stray on the weekend and it's beautiful. First time playing it. Excellent gameplay and story so far.

I loved Stray. I played it before I got cats, and now I want to replay it. I feel like I’d be able to relate to it a bit more now.
Only problem is its short and isn't as amazing on replay. My cat likes to watch me play.
I haven't finished it but I hear you should steel yourself for the ending.

They Are Billions

This game is awesome, really bring us back to the RTS era but now with pause. I wonder if the dev is working on anything else, couldn't find any news on their next project.

As a big fan of the genre I'm sad to say that there's not much else that looks like it.
Darfall is decent but lacks depth and variety. Having a hero Is nice, but the item drops can make or break your run.
I've yet to play age of darkness: final stand. But from what I gather there is not alot of variety in the endgame that can lead to a lot of wasted time if you're not doing the 1 thing that works 100% of the time.

Final Fantasy 2.

Finally got a taste of what It Takes Two was like, I understand why it was Game of the Year !

Split Fiction from the same team is also good. At least as far as I've gotten playing with my daughter.

Been playing a bit of Hollow Knight again. The world is so incredibly vast and beautiful. Got to the distant village and found one of the dreamers, Herrah.

Love that game. Can’t wait for the sequel, whenever it actually comes out.
- The great thing about being a patient gamer, (hopefully)there'll be just a short wait for me!
- Shadow Labyrinth might be a good filler in the meantime.
One of those games that I can tell is a 9.5/10 or more but will never even attempt to play. I know my limits and I know what type of gameplay frustrates me and the combination of near-impossible difficulty, lots of challenging platforming and the corpse recovery mechanic I've heard about means I don't think I'll have much fun playing it.
I wish it was for me, though. Looks fantastic. I'll watch a Let's Play of it one of these days.
- For what it's worth, I haven't found anything in it super difficult and I'm by no means "a good gamer", the "souls"* recovery mechanic is not bad; but if platforming is not for you I guess that's enough to stay away from it,... (I also haven't found it terrible, and I'm prone to mistakes , ha.)
  I'm not sure how far along I'm in it, so perhaps I haven't reached the turbo hard stuff yet? maybe it gets insane later... I went blind and know nothing apart from what I've seen. So far it's been an excellent experience, the game checks all the boxes for me.
  *there is a different mechanic in the game tied to the term soul but I'm refering to the corpse thing here

Still working my way through Crosscode.

Still in the Warframe mines, though now that I've reached the standings I wished with the new syndicates and have the frames I had been missing on, I'm feeling its grip letting go of me slowly. Though there is going to be a major update later this year, so who knows.

With the latest Momodora finished (good game, I still liked Reverie better), I've started Virgo Versus The Zodiac. Cute looking turn-based RPG starring a protagonist filled with bloodlust and with a merciless combat system. If you miss the timed hits, you will die, even to the most common enemies. I've cleared up the first Zodiac realm/introduction to the game and am now trying around an optional grinding area before heading into Taurus.

I've been playing Virgo too. Surprisingly enjoyable for a game where literally all of the enemies are more likeable than the main character, but it's also one of the few games that made me want to follow through on a second playthrough to get a different ending. Also I like the music.

im not sure if this counts because its still in early access, but this game is one of those that is perpetually in early access without plans to legit release (like project zombiid, etc).

i picked up Turing Complete and have been learning(painfully slowly) how to make cpu's : D

I haven’t played it yet, but I’ve loaded it up on my steam deck and got too the title screen… Far Cry 2 with redux mod

I really loved far cry 3, so I hoped this will be a good time. But some stuff going on with my daughter and I didn’t have time for this.

You’ll have to update us next post or the one after with how you’re liking it. I loved FC3 but it’s the only one I played. I’d like to know if FC2 is a good predecessor.

I finished Ninja Gaiden Black on Normal. All in all it wasn't as hard as I had feared. Having access to save states definitely did make it a much more tolerable experience though as some of the checkpoint placements are diabolical. I didn't really abuse it in any way, but just being able to for example instantly retry a boss instead of having to reset the console and do a runback just avoids a huge time waster that adds nothing to the difficulty.

Overall the game was absolutely brilliant - though not perfect. A couple of the bosses were outright bad, the ghost fish are not fun gameplay designs and Chapter 9 is atrocious. Whoever thought it was a good idea for the game to suddenly become Call of Duty and force you to take on tanks, helicopters and a radio tower full of bazookas armed with only a longbow and using horrific controller first person aiming hopefully got fired.

But even having said all that, when the game is good it's damn good. The combat is just perfectly satisfying, the weapons at your disposal are very well balanced and all have their uses and the ultra aggressive AI demands your full attention constantly. This game has no trash mobs; slip up once and any encounter can kill you. There is something singularly thrilling about that. It's also fast, proactive and positioning-based - there are tons of almost instant grabs that you can only avoid by correct positioning and use of your nimble movement. Posting up in front of an enemy while holding Block and hoping to dodge roll when you see the animation like you would in a Souls game won't work here.

Overall a fantastic experience and well worth playing. If I can beat it on Normal then anyone can - don't be afraid to check it out. Especially with Ninja Gaiden 4 on the horizon. Hell, I'm even considering jumping back in for a go at Hard at some point.

Your first paragraph is how I feel about the SoulsBorne games. Elden Ring introducing the Stakes of Marika was an excellent decision. Boss run-backs can be brutal in Dark Souls sometimes, and it doesn’t really make it harder, just more tedious. Most games would do well to have a checkpoint just before a big boss for that reason.
- Yeah, it's kind of just misery for the sake of misery. I suppose conceptually it's supposed to test your patience and hearken back to the olden days of gaming, but as you say it's just tedious and unfun.
  Ninja Gaiden has some absolutely wild ones where you fight a boss, then the next level starts, then there is a fight in the next level before the next save point. If you die in that fight, where do you think you respawn? That's right, before that boss you beat. There is no auto saving at the start of a level here! Team Ninja seemed to concede that this wasn't optimal though as supposedly Ninja Gaiden 2 has both more generous save points and a "retry boss" function.
  But again, playing on emulator with save states eliminates this frustration so please anyone reading this, so don't get discouraged by it!

Traded in my Series S and scooped up some discs/carts (also a couple of GOG sales). Socom 3 (PS2), Quake 2 (GOG), Nano Assault (EX & original, 2DSXL), Nano Stray 1&2 (2DSXL), and Dead Cells (GOG)... I still don't know where the line between patient and retro is.

The single player in socom was so brutally difficult. I didnt make it far in socom 3. I wonder if there's still servers up for any of that. Ive heard some people still play socom 2 on private servers of some sort.
- i started playing 3 because i heard the single player campaign has checkpoints. i don't have much interest in multiplayer but it looks like lan support is still available. i have heard on some videos that people still play it in multiplayer by bridging the lan support across the internet.
  I saw that ps rewired has a "socom 3 / combined assault" section. i do wonder if just vanilla socom 3 would be playable there because i think combined assault has different maps? at any rate, there were only two people online when i looked at that. it's possible that it picks up on nights/weekends as opposed to 0800 CDT on a thursday.
  EDIT: i also bumped into this list, so maybe there are other ways to play: https://ps2online.com/

Started Diablo 1 last week, picked Sorcerer. It was a tough but a fun ride until the very end when I discovered… that I bricked my character! Apparently you can’t be a mage and focus on magic exclusively since there are monsters in the very late-game (Blood Knights) who are fully resistant to anything you cast, and my points in non-magic talents were so low I could only equip starter weapons! Decided to re-roll a rogue (actually an amazon idk why they called her rogue). It's been a blast, almost too easy for the first 5-6 dungeon floors. But from there difficulty picked up, and stayed on consistently challenging level till the very end. Killed Diablo himself by stashing full belt of greater mana potions and simply shooting him in point blank range while drinking potions under mana shield (book luckily bought from Adria in the very last moments). The game is great fun, atmosphere is extraordinary and music is god-tier (or should I say, diablo-tier).

The rogue group is different to the amazons. That’s why in D2 you start in the rogues camp, and if you’ve picked Amazon then Kashya will say something like “I didn’t expect to see an Amazon come here”.
- To me d1 rogue looks almost the same as d2 amazon, and d2 rogues in the camp are a bit different and less wild.
  d1 rogue: [1] [2]
  d2 amazon: [1]
  In d2 rogues do seem to have either some cloth or plates on their hips. If you compare the color of their hips and hands, it's different enough to consider that's not skin and their hips ain't naked.

Grounded 2 released into early access recently so that sounded like a perfect time to play through Grounded 1. Can report, this game slaps. For people who like narrative open world survival games (like subnahtica and abiotic factor) this game is probably the best among them in my opinion. The writing is probably a very love it or hate it thing though, since the entire game is riding on 90's nostalgia there.

mmmmm sales of the original game when a sequel comes out is regularly :chefkiss:

I just started playing the original Star Fox. Having a lot more fun with it than I thought I would.

Do a barrel roll! Solid game!

<< Project Wingman? Now we're talking! >>
- Yup! Started playing about two weeks ago, became an instant favourite and now I crave more.

I‘ve finished New Super Lucky‘s Tale and while it might be good for like 8y/os, it‘s painfully mid even if I ignore the glacing cringe. I‘ll give it that the DLC challenge levels were fun, but yeah, those are like 15% of the game.

Otherwise I‘m slowly crawling through DiRT Rally 2.0, I‘m not a big fan of RX but I‘ve grown to like the rallies a lot. And fuck cars with rear drive (is that what it‘s called?), these are a guaranteed eight spinouts for me.

I‘m gonna try to pick another one of my started games (64 left) back up tonight, dunno which yet. It‘s my big goal to eventually(tm) cut that pile in half, simply because I‘ve realized that I kept buying and starting new games while slowly losing the plot on games I‘ve started and liked which lead to me never touching them again cause I was midway through them with no idea as to who, why, where, what, and how (Yakuza Like A Dragon etc.). The ones I have no fond memories of will stay in that pile though (Darkest Dungeon, not my thing and Idk why I thought it‘d be).

Devil May Cry 3 (2005)

About six months ago decided to start Devil May Cry V on my Steam Deck after keeping it in my backlog for a year. After watching the intro cutscene, I decided that I definitely have to play all the previous games before it.

I have been playing the first trilogy (HD collection) a few hours every week or two (full-time jobs suck) since then. I think I am mid-day through the third game - just beat the nude lady.

This week, I'm trying Dune: Imperium.

I have too many games on the go (Blue Prince, Sea of Stars, Guild Wars 2, Grounded, way more, cause I get sidetracked) So, I decided to add Lies of P in there, since it was on PS+.

I'm not usually one for Souls-likes, but dang, the setting, style, and story in this one grabbed me. Playing on their medium setting is just the right amount of difficulty for me. I like some challenge, so I tried the hardest one, but am terrible at pattern recognition on bosses, so I'll just live with it. I don't have much time to enjoy the story, before I have classes in the autumn, anyway.

I really need to play that game. I love Souls games and have heard nothing but good things about it. It looks awesome. Maybe this is my sign to finally check it out.
- I've been holding off on Lies of P for like a year but this is it! I'll have to clear my schedule a bit to dive in properly, so juuust a little longer...
- It's really fun, I have barely touched anything else, and really could go for multiple hours, if I let myself. A couple times, I've gotten my butt kicked really bad multiple times in a row, that's usually when I stop for the day haha Either I do better when I get some sleep (or food or whatever), or I can stand the grind to make sure I'm levelled enough.
  I think my only complaint is the voice acting. It has an odd feeling to it, everyone in the game has this cadence to their lines that sound somewhat awkward. Kind of curious as to what they were going for, it's not the worst I've ever heard, more just makes me start thinking about the work behind it more haha

World of Warcraft ascension. Free to play private server with lots of boosts and custom content based on the first two expansions and soon to be wrath of the lich king

AzerothCore has the files and guide for creating a private World of Warcraft server (2nd expansion) so been playing that with my wife. There's some nice quality of life modifications you can do so you can focus on the fun stuff (Instant flight paths, all professions on 1 character, faster skill ups, etc.)
My wife will only play Horde but I enabled cross faction groups and guilds so I've been able to play through Alliance zones for the first time while still being able to group up and share resources.

Running with Rifles, Army Men II (comparing the game mechanics) and on my first playthrough of Mass Effect 2

Enjoy Mass Effect! That trilogy is one of the best sci-fi series ever imo.
- I think everyone saying this has blown my expectations to the moon, I dont know mass effect will ever live up to it now. I even own the trilogy on steam. Is the remastered or whatever the right version if I do play it?

Derail Valley Simulator, and Vintage Story

Dead Space 3 multiplayer

Finally got into Deathloop, it is not super long, but pretty cool concept with enough storytelling to not overwhelm but satisfying enough.

Wuchang Fallen Feathers. 46 year old man who uninstalled/refunded it. Way tooooo difficult for my reflexes. Plus no difficulty settings is a deal breaker.

Other devs taking on the FromSoft "deal with it" attitude to difficulty/accessibility options is such a shame. I think as there are more and more older gamers out there hopefully things will slowly start to change.
Were you playing on PC? One saving grace there is usually there are plenty of mod options available for toning down difficulty.
- Ya, I was on the PC. My stance is that if they don't care about my experience, I must not be their target demographics. No need to give them money so they think I was a satisfied customer.
  I might pirate it tho and try modding.

Been really enjoying Titan Quest 2, Grim Dawn and Albion Online

Just got to the Lower Ward on my planscape: torment replay. The soundtrack is great, found a couple different paths to take by dying I didn't even think about when I played it last time. Updated my journal.