What are you playing nowadays? Share yo' thoughts.

[quikah]

I hit the second wall in Wo Long, Lu Bu. Tough fight. Have tried about 5 times with not much success. Will get back to it this weekend. Was trying solo, might try bringing a companion along next time. I have pretty much played all the battlegrounds with whatever companion they give you as default. This one they don't give you one, so I have been going solo. Pretty hard area in general (The Battle of Hulaoguan Pass). The games UI is not the best, took me a while to figure out there are optional battlegrounds you can go to from the map.

Update: Adjusted/upgraded some of my equipment and finally got him down after 5 tries. Very challenging fight. Finally figured out you can block and still deflect. Before I was just trying to block regular attacks, but deflecting some of them really helps to keep your spirit level up. Really enjoying this game. Wood/Earth build mostly with dual sabers. Story is pretty meh.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Just started Yakuza Like a Dragon. Pretty funny seeing Ichiban say Dragon Quest games are how he trained for combat considering Like a Dragon's combat is like Dragon Quest's.

 

[mikeymikec]

I've been re-playing a pretty old game, The Settlers - Heritage of Kings (2005 apparently). I had some fun and games trying to get it on Win10 as Ubisoft very helpfully included some DRM that isn't compatible with Win10, followed by having to use a bizarre registry tweak to get 1080p out of it; the tweak makes it throw up a window which asks the user which resolution they'd like to run it at.

After that, I found it was toasting my R9 380X graphics card, the AMD control centre clocked it doing >600fps (and it had no option to enable vsync which I normally use). I ended up using the AMD control centre to limit its frame rate manually (AMD vsync setting didn't work either) to <60fps. There's an occasional bit of screen flickering (regardless of settings that I've noticed) but it's playable.

One thing that's nice about the Settlers games (the ones I've tried anyway, 3 and 5) is slow-paced gameplay with - as Radiohead puts it - no alarms and no surprises please, easy going music, etc. The plot for Settlers 5 (HoK) is very safe for kids, its narration is almost infantile in its target audience IMO.

When I say 'slow gameplay', I've found each map taking me at least 2 hours, sometimes 4.

Apart from its technical shortcomings on modern kit, its other issue is the combat mechanics. Maybe I've been spoilt by StarCraft 2 and the sheer amount of tactics one can use, but there's very little in the way of cleverness in this game; more or less throw a deathball at the opponent and keep the reinforcements coming and you'll likely win, with a little bit of target firing. You also have to watch out for your guys auto-attacking something completely inconsequential while being pummelled by an enemy cannon, completely ignoring the real threat.

I have a feeling that with age I'm moving away from FPS and towards RTS.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Witcher 3... Still.

Triss is Bae. Yen can ride her Unicorn into the sunset. This game really does deserve the praise it gets. My biggest complaint right now is that I actually wish some of the quest chains were shorter or gave you a breather between segments. Nothing like being 5 sub-quests into a larger chain, thinking you're done, only for some plot device to kick off the 6th part of the chain and its like "OMFG can you people do anything for yourselves!"

Hogwarts Legacy... still

Taking longer than it should since I promised my wife I would make sure my character never advanced the story beyond her and the wife gets "first in line" perks if more than one of us want to play the game. Its a fantastic "crack open a beer at the end of a long week and play something comfortable and low stakes" kind of game. Bit of dissonance between your cheeky Hogwarts student persona while in class and your stone cold murderer persona while out exploring. I mean some of these spells... you can literally just make people explode without all the bloody giblets everywhere only for your character to proclaim that their blood is on the bad guys hands (?!). Still, overall tone is WAYYYY less depressing than W3 and I'm liking it.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Right now a friend and I are finishing up Sons of the Forest. Should complete it tonight. I also started playing Last Epoch which so far is pretty good.

 

[Zeze]

Still playing Elden Ring... but bit tired from playing too much.

For those that care, I played a whopping 140~ hrs painfully learning my first Souls game as level 30 Vagabond, then level 100 mage/blade hybrid. Then I got bored of that wanted a full tank build that can wear any armor with no fear of missing out.

That 1-handed tank is at level 90 as well today. And you know what? It is actually easier to than Mage.

Yes Mage can bypass the entire melee. But you are terribly mana thirsty before the next checkpoint. And you still have to dodge so much.

Melee, I can swing as much as I want once I finally started to get good.

I can comfortably kill big dragons with ease, nicely time-dodging all of their stomps, tail swings, then get on a horse to zero in again if the dragon flies to put some distance between.

I'm bit tired now because I like to thoroughly check the world and kill every enemies once. So despite sinking 180 hours, both of my restarts have not gone past Atlus Plateau.

Don't spoil. I'm excited to see what's next.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Playing Yakuza Like a Dragon and really enjoying it. Kind of reminds me of the battle system of Super Mario RPG where if you time hitting the block button right you'll take significantly less damage from an enemy attack, though it doesn't give you a stronger attack if you do similar on the offensive like Super Mario RPG did. Story is awesome so far and so are the minigames. One minigame you're trying to fight off sheep as you're dozing off in the movie theater so that you can improve your personality by watching various movies. The documentaries are the hardest ones, and your character Ichiban remarks one of them felt like doing schoolwork after haha.

Also the writing kills me. I was dying laughing last night while playing a substory where you're spying on a woman at a coffee shop being extorted by a guy but since the shop is completely full there is a doorman blocking the entrance and you want to sneak a phone in there to hear the conversation. So the former cop on your team says he's going to ask to use the bathroom, which a normal Japanese person would usually ask by saying トイレに行きたいんですが・・・("I'd like to go to the toilet but...") and then the other person points the direction of the bathroom to finish the sentence you left hanging with the pause at the end. But instead he blurts to the doorman クソ漏れそうだよ！which is literally "Looks like my s**t is leaking out!" or a less awkward translation would be "Looks like I'm s**tting my pants!" to get in to plant the phone on the way to the bathroom. I just can't picture a Japanese person telling that to an employee at a coffee shop.

 

[Sulaco]

Still playing Elden Ring and Flight Simulator. Having a blast with both. I don't foresee myself stopping FS anytime soon, it's just too much fun and too awe-inspiring, and seeing the world is just addicting.

Also started Resident Evil 4 (remake). I've been an RE fan since '96. I bought RE 4 on release day for GameCube (still have it), and while this is tough for me to say, I always felt like it was one of the most overrated entries, because everyone was so astonished at the "over-the-back" camera angle and departure from tank controls and fixed cameras.

IGN and Gamespot both gave the game 10/10. Literal PERFECT scores. I'm sorry, I'm only on Chapter 2 so who knows the game could really take off and show me some great new innovations, but while the game is a blast for survival horror fans, it's frankly laughable that anyone would give it a score like that. This is a 2005 game in feel and play, updated with modern graphics and better control (mostly, even the control leaves something to be desired).
I'm going to try and enjoy the game for what it is. And in that regard it is indeed very enjoyable. "A flawless, transcendent experience that revolutionizes the genre and gaming as whole" ...it is not.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Finally beat Cyberpunk and despite all the bugs and glitches - namely the damn crackling/popping audio and the more prevalent end-game CTDs - the ending made up for everything the game lacked. Though even though the ending was phenomenal and it actually has a good ending credit song, I doubt I'll ever play this game again. I had to use mods just to fix some of the abysmal aspects of the game like the weird N64-era ragdolls and how everyone around you would become scared and start screaming if you so much as opened your quickhack menu. The difficulty was pretty weird as well with the beginning being a slight challenge only by mopping up all the cyberpsychos around Night City, but after I killed the final one the game went straight down to easy mode. Every boss was a single-shot kill or didn't stand for more than thirty seconds if I had to go in with melee. That was until the final boss of the game and even though he was able to one-shot me and did so more than a few times, I didn't mind since it actually delt like a decent boss.

Overall a fairly meh game that looked pretty and had amazing music.

 

[Zeze]

Still playing Elden Ring. The tank is level 105 now and about to go inside the Volcanic Manor or whatever it's called.

I wish the game was just a wee bit more generous with smithing stones (used to grade your weapons). They give you just enough to commit to 2~ weapons at best to be staying relevant. I found 12~ colossal weapons and I can barely try them.

My heaviest armor + colossal weapon tank is having a total blast. I'm even more excited because I'm finally making a new progress further into the game (I restarted few times up to this point).

I guess I'll wreck whatever is in that volcano castle.

My Wretched level 105 is at...

Vigor 45
Endurance high 30s
Mind 10
Str high 40s
Dex 12
Int 10
Arcane 10
Faith 15

The Wretched works out so well since 10 faith you can cure the poison debuff for free. At 12 faith you get the spell that cures poison AND rot. But faith 15 is too good thanks to Flame! Give me Strength spell (+20% dmg physical, +20% fire).

I'm wielding the colossal great sword now with Fire. It does a whopping 800-1800 dmg in a single blow, one shotting many normal enemies.

Again, this is so satisfying since my prev characters felt so weak and fragile before.

 

[pauldun170]

Just started up Shader Compiler Simulator 2023.
Pretty interesting so far.
Oh, wait.
The name of this Game is called "Last of US"

Eventually I'll start the actual game when I have some time

 

[sze5003]

Just started up Shader Compiler Simulator 2023.
Pretty interesting so far.
Oh, wait.
The name of this Game is called "Last of US"

Eventually I'll start the actual game when I have some time

I'm hearing that the pc port is very buggy. I've already played the game several times, on PS4 and I will probably play it again once the PS5 version drops in price.

The same dev team that ported Arkham knight on pc also worked on the last of us. Arkham knight was also mess on release for pc from what I remember.

 

[pauldun170]

I'm hearing that the pc port is very buggy. I've already played the game several times, on PS4 and I will probably play it again once the PS5 version drops in price.

The same dev team that ported Arkham knight on pc also worked on the last of us. Arkham knight was also mess on release for pc from what I remember.

Game looks fantastic.
It likes to pause every once in awhile to let you take in the scenery .

Waited for shader cache process to finish before playing.
Prologue - Every scene with fire seemed to stutter. Once the main game got going it was occasional microstutter.
No crashes yet.
3900x, 7900xt on 23.3.2 drivers. 32gb ram. Game running off a independent game drive - WD Blue SN570 2tb.
Ultra settings @1440p

Perhaps I'll stick RE-4 remake for now

 

[hardhat]

I got Last of Us with my 7900xt purchase, so I am giving it a shot. Once I turned off chromatic aberration, motion blur, and another setting it seems to perform much better now. Much less of the stuttering pauldun was getting, but still occasional crashes. I hope they get it fixed soon. It seems fun.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

The Last of Us port is absolute trash. I was getting mad I was getting mid 50s and dropping into the 40s on 1440p high on an i5-12400F and RX 6700 XT so went and put the resolution at 1080p and then started getting mid 40s with drops into the 30s and now my cpu is at 85% usage WTF? After spending an hour finishing the shader compilation. This game is so broken what a worthless piece of crap. Only game my 6700 XT isn't living up to benchmarks.

 

[igor_kavinski]

i5-12400F

I guess it needs more than 12 threads? Try turning off HT (sometimes HT can result in massive performance degrade).

It's also pretty CPU/cache limited since the Raptors make it fly.

 

[sze5003]

I'd like to check out last of us on pc but I can get it later on discount anyway. Would have bought it for PS5 but it's still $70 there and that doesn't make sense since I've already played it years ago.

I'm currently playing the RE 4 remake right now and really enjoying it. I'll probably go back and play the RE3 Remake after too if I still feel like it.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I'd like to check out last of us on pc but I can get it later on discount anyway. Would have bought it for PS5 but it's still $70 there and that doesn't make sense since I've already played it years ago.

I'm currently playing the RE 4 remake right now and really enjoying it. I'll probably go back and play the RE3 Remake after too if I still feel like it.

It's $50 for PS5 on PSN right now.

 

[sze5003]

Hmm yea that's tempting but I think I could get the PC version for cheaper on steam game swap reddit. Not in any rush either as I've already played the game 3 times in the past.

 

[Fanatical Meat]

Been screwing around with Star Citizen. There definitely is a game there. You have to be forgiving of a semi clunky UI and low frame rates and simply weird things like how your inventory gets stored locally however on this topic it leads to unexpected things that can be fun. Same with NPCs they can be buggy but it’s also fun to see a group of them all boxed up somewhere or my experience was immediately outside and elevator door that swung open.
This is not a hand holding game, you have to travel to get to your ship in some spaceports.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Hmm yea that's tempting but I think I could get the PC version for cheaper on steam game swap reddit. Not in any rush either as I've already played the game 3 times in the past.

Unless Naughty Dog takes over the game is going to stay in a terrible state on PC, as Iron Galaxy who ported it is an absolute F-tier developer. Yeah I might wait for the PS5 game to hit $20 myself.

 

[pauldun170]

I got Last of Us with my 7900xt purchase, so I am giving it a shot. Once I turned off chromatic aberration, motion blur, and another setting it seems to perform much better now. Much less of the stuttering pauldun was getting, but still occasional crashes. I hope they get it fixed soon. It seems fun.

With the patch, I'm not seeing any stutters.
...after waiting minutes for the game to load.

 

[hardhat]

Yeah, the patch seems to have helped me a lot as well. I just played for about an hour without any crashes or stuttering.

The characters randomly became drenched during a cut scene for some reason, but otherwise it is looking much better now.

 

[Stg-Flame]

Finally got around to starting Iron Harvest and I have mixed feelings. It's basically Company of Heroes but with their own unique twist of piloting giant mechs instead of WW2 trucks and tanks. Same style of capture resource points to gain resources, upgrade unit production buildings to build higher-tier units, units can gain experience through combat/actions which unlocks new abilities or more powerful bunkers for Engineers, etc. It has a normal campaign that takes you through the story and an open world campaign which is similar to Dawn of War Dark Crusade but with a lot of extra game modes to choose from. It's a lot of fun for any fans of that genre. There are some minor bugs like secondary objectives not completing but that doesn't really affect anything and the story has unusually long load times after you win - long enough that I thought my game crashed more than a few times. I guess my only gripe would be that infantry feel pretty useless in skirmish and many of the maps that don't force you to use them. There's literally a mech for every scenario and unless the map is just incredibly low on oil resources, there's no reason to ever use infantry when you can just use mechs instead.

 

[biostud]

I've started playing Grim Dawn. It's a Diablo/Titan Quest Clone but seems like lots of fun, so if you haven't tried it, I would guess it is a good cheap alternative to Diablo IV if you can get it on sale.