Hey y’all, what have you been playing?
I have been playing quite a bit of lies of p, and I started cocoon as well. Both super solid games. I’m getting my PC back tomorrow so I think I’m going to finally start Alan wake 2 as well!
Picked up Palworld and started it today. It is pretty fun and, as long as they patch it and support it, it could be a fantastic time waster.
I just finished Portal Revolution. Puzzles were high quality. Story, script and voice acting was meh. Now I’m playing Outriders, which I bought during the winter sale. Super mid game, very formulaic gameplay. Story and visuals are kinda cool.
I’m playing through portal rev now. Every time I finish a section of traveling I feel like I’m a genius solving all the little 2 or 3 step puzzles. Then the path opens up into one of the huge puzzle rooms and I’m like shit where do I even start this looks impossible.
I’m getting through it all and enjoying the journey.
We bought Palworld yesterday, probably play that most of the week. It mashes up a lot of games and has some nice QoL updates from similar games (like Ark)
I’m about to play Ico and Elder Scrolls Online
Ico is such a wonderful game. I wish I could play it again for the first time.
Ico and Shadow of the Colossus are two of my favorites. I even loved The Last Guardian, in spite of its flaws.
Shadow of the colossus is in my top 10. I just beat last guardian after playing for like 2 years. Struggled getting into it but the other day i decided to power through to the end and i absolutely loved the end. I have high hopes for ico
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. It has a deeper story than Shadow of the Colossus, but the combat hook in SotC is just soooooo good.
The Last Guardian just needed another 3-6 months of tightening up, I think. But if they waited much longer they would have missed the PS4 entirely.
I’m currently playing V Rising with a friend on a private server. I like survival games but I hate PvP, raiding and griefers. So far it’s pretty good fun! Like a mix between a Diablo-like ARPG and something like Valheim. You don’t need to grind resources so much, you collect plenty just playing. The focus is more on combat. Some bosses are pretty tough and progress is gated behind them.
Dave the Diver! It looks so goofy but give it a shot. It’s got hilarious cutscenes, and a really well executed blend of roguelike, restaurant game, resource management, and story RPG.
My son and I are like 95% done the end-game content in the Super Mario RPG remake, only Culex 3D remains! It’s been a total blast. My biggest struggle is finding more games like this.
We’ve loved all the Paper Mario games we’ve been able to play (original, Super, TYD, and Origami King…. unless I’m forgetting one), but trying out miscellaneous JRPGs hasn’t had any success with him yet. He’s too young for a lot of games, but seeing things from that pre-tween point of view I also feel like we all could do with more games that aren’t fueled by adolescent angst or grim brooding. Bright, fun adventure on a foundation of silliness paired with great music is such a good recipe.
The Mario & Luigi games are similarly approachable and good RPGs, Superstar Saga (the first one) especially. They are handheld games so maybe a bit more difficult to play together with someone, though you could emulate them very easily to play on a more suitable device.
Sea of Stars also might be worth a try. Takes a lot of inspiration from Paper Mario.
Have you played Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling yet?
We tried it once, but it didn’t grab my son’s interest at the outset. I’m going to have us try again as I’ve heard nothing but praise for it.
I just finished Spider-Man Miles Morales. So I’m gonna be starting Spider-Man 2 soon.
My time I’d normally use for gaming has gone in to starting to learn FreeCAD, which I guess I could argue is an open world builder game.
I’ve been playing a ton of Pillars of Eternity still. I think I can wrap up Kana’s quest before I head into Act 3. I’ve got a lot of irons in the fire of my quest log that look like I need to advance the plot or level up more to finish them, so Act 3 is maybe when they intended for me to finish those.
Elden Ring getting ready for the DLC.
I have a lvl 1 char that I’ve beaten about 90% of the game with, gathered most of the items and spells that’s taken me about 7 months to get this far.
The plan is to beat everything but the last fight as lvl 1 so I can build to whatever is needed.
Couldn’t you also just save a respec item to burn whenever the DLC drops?
Respeccing doesn’t drop your level and I’m hoping with all the returners and new players the DLC brings that I can sunbro low level content like Stormveil and the early caves again.
After my fill of that I’ll level up to whatever content the DLC is geared to.
Plus this will give me a lvl 1 backup with most gear and spells for build testing.
Started Palworld today.
I never realized how much I needed shotgun wielding sheep in my life.
About 40% through Hogwarts Legacy at the moment. It’s been great so far, very impressive especially coming from the old HP games on PC. Fixed up some performance issues with the Ascendio mod, and all works fairly well on my (ancient, circa 2014) rig.
Just finished Cyberpunk 2077 for the first time. I had it since release but it grew on me very slowly. Focused more on it after the release of 2.0 and it quickly became one of my favorite games ever made. Highly recommend.
I wanted something more linear so I finally started playing God of War (2018) with the intention to finish it. I started it back in 2018 a few months after it came out but it was hard to get into since the combat didn’t feel as free or open-ended as the games I was used to like Spider-man, the Arkham games, or Dark Souls but it’s okay imo. I’m hoping the story has better payoff than the combat does.
I had the same reaction to God of War, with reverence for the combat in those other games you listed as well. Do you typically enjoy character action games? They all kind of felt the same to me, and I couldn’t really get into the combat in them even though I ought to be into it on paper. Then Hi-Fi Rush came along and made that genre make sense to me. Now I’ve gone back through most of the Devil May Cry series and plan on giving God of War another shot when I find the time.
I’m not sure I know what a character action game is. God of War feels a little grating to me because there are enough enemies who feel like they’re programmed to be challenging and aren’t naturally challenging. I know some enemies from the Spider-man and Arkham games are technically the same, but they ride the other side of the line that defines immersion. DOOM 2016 and DOOM: Eternal are better examples of games with combat mechanics which encourage you (sometimes very strongly) to play the game a specific way, but lets you try to play it your way if you want, or can’t play the way it encourages.
A character action game is something like God of War, Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, or Hi-Fi Rush. Combo-based, juggle-based, score chasers, but different than the rhythm-based combat in Batman: Arkham or Spider-Man.
Oooh gotcha. Yeah, when I was a kid I enjoyed that sort of game, like The Force Unleashed was one of my favorites. But as I’ve gotten older they just haven’t been fun. I tried Darksiders when I was in college and it was mind-numbingly boring.
If God of War (2018) didn’t grant me the flexibility to chuck Kratos’ axe whenever I want and switch up styles between axed and hands/shield on the fly I would probably get too bored of this game to continue. But I do get a lot of enjoyment out of hucking that axe into someone’s noggin then bum-rushing them and beating the shit out of them with godlike aggression. That’s pretty cool.
I’ve been playing Red Dead Redemption (the first one) and I’m enjoying it a lot. I’ve decided to play without the on-screen map and it does wonders for immersion, recognizing areas, locations, where people are, etc. I highly recommend it!
I remember being very unimpressed with RDR, though that could be because I rushed through it the week before the sequel came out. In my experience rushing through a game like that ruins the experience completely.
What is it you enjoy most? Open cowboy world or the story or something else? Might have to go back to it (and actually finish the sequel lol)
Well I’m not a huge gamer, specially since I have a kid, but I was expecting GTA with horses, but I’m enjoying it a lot (I don’t really like GTA) anh I had not played this game, since I never had a console, but it came out for switch and I went for it. I’m not going to try to sell it to you. The no-map immersion is a big factor, I guess, which is new for me!
Well I’m glad you’re enjoying it!
I really like that in RDR2 you can disable the mini map and replace it with a plain compass. It has the added feature that you can briefly show the mini map again if you need to get your bearings, and it disappears after a short delay. Definitely helps with the immersion.
I might just try that someday. The idea is intimidating but sounds like a new level of fun. Have to try to emulate it on PC though
Emulate the Switch version. It works far better than trying to the get the PS3 version to run.
If you like the idea of playing a large open world game without a minimap, I can also highly recommend the first two Gothic games, Gothic II in particular. Maps for this game can only be bought, found or stolen and they don’t show your position. Since every location is hand-crafted and unique, you won’t actually miss having a minimap. Even two decades later, these titles still wipe the floor with most open world games in terms of world design.
