What are you playing? (2022 Edition)

Thirith on 21/6/2022 at 07:30

I do wish it was easier to navigate between memories, mind you. Perhaps this'll be less of an issue than I imagine, because only a handful of deaths are only accessible via other deaths, but I would still prefer it if memories could also be accessed via the book, rather than the pretty useless still you get.

Aja on 21/6/2022 at 14:50

I've got around 130 hours in Gran Turismo 7 and it feels like I could keep playing it for years. They're doing sort of a bad job of drip-feeding new content in spite of the fact that it's somewhat functionally incomplete compared to the entries from the series' heyday, but I'm still kind of absurdly engrossed in it, and I've even been playing online, which I practically never do in other games. In 2 races I've won two; at my level that mainly comes down to not crashing and then avoiding other peoples' accidents, but, hey, I'll take it.

I also pulled the old N64 out of storage and my little CRT television and, after expensive snafu involving a broken expansion pack, it's up and running. Got about halfway through Goldeneye 007, and don't let anyone tell you different: that game is still so good, framerate and all. I've also been dabbling in Perfect Dark, Donkey Kong 64, and Banjo Kazooie (feels like I mostly have a collection of Rare titles) and while they're all bringing back great nostalgic feelings, they actually hold up pretty well today, which I sadly cannot say for a lot of games from that era.

EvaUnit02 on 21/6/2022 at 19:38

DAIKATANA! After you get past the awful first couple levels with robot frogs, crocodiles, dragonflies and green goo it's pretty decent. The gunplay is as solid as you would expect from a game with Id Software DNA.

N.B. I'm running v1.3 fan patch which improves the ally AI, enables save anywhere and makes it much more compatible with modern hardware (eg support for widescreen resolutions, adjustable FOV, removal of framerate cap, native AA + AF).

[video=youtube;vt1Y26BpSNQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt1Y26BpSNQ[/video]

Thirith on 23/6/2022 at 06:43

Okay, I've got all the memories in Obra Dinn, so now I can pluck at each thread separately. The final set of memories did make quite a few things easier, so I've now correctly identified about a quarter of all the people and their fates. However, I did get stuck quite a bit trying to find access to the last set of memories: That damn skull hanging on the wall...

Harvester on 25/6/2022 at 21:24

Thimbleweed Park

A point and click adventure game in retro style with verbs at the bottom like those classic LucasArts adventure games, made by Ron Gilbert, creator of Monkey Island. This is basically an adventure game that's an ode to the genre, with lots of fourth wall breaking and jokes about and references to adventure games and 80's culture, geek culture and modern culture. But it also works as a proper adventure game itself, it's not so meta that it fails at being a good game in its own right. There are five playable characters, many actions can be done by any character but some have to be done by specific characters or multiple characters working together, that reminded me of Day of the Tentacle.

I really liked the game and can recommend it to people who have played and enjoyed the classics. I played it on PS4, you move the cursor with the gamepad which can be slightly slow but there aren't any time based puzzles so it doesn't matter. It'll probably run on any potato PC too. I was never stumped for a long time, I finished it on hard mode (there's an easy mode with fewer puzzles) in about 17 hours without using the in-game hint line or a walkthrough. It's not as hard as the classic adventure games and there aren't any moon logic puzzles, and like the LucasArts games you can't die or do something wrong that forces you to restart like many Sierra adventures had. Since I only paid 5 bucks for it it's very good value for money. Even if I had paid full price (20 dollars/euros) I probably would've found it worth my money, I had a lot of fun with it.

Mr.Duck on 26/6/2022 at 20:54

FINALLY, finished my first from-start-to-finish playthrough with Teardown, spread over several sessions across several weeks. Phew...it was fun, but I am glad it's done. Thanks, henke, for gushing over this game in GenGaming, that's how I found out about it and got me curious enough to check it out when it came out from Early Access. Good times all throughout! :)

Malf on 27/6/2022 at 10:49

Having torn myself away from Vampire Survivors on my Steam Deck, I'm now back to playing Streets of Rogue on it, which is still absolutely fantastic.
I've also recently installed Heat Signature on my Deck, as I suspect that'll play really well on it.

I've kinda given up on Elden Ring for the time being, finally being worn down by losing a level's worth of runes one too many times. I'm at the gargoyles, and there's no player summons around to help me with, and I just... can't be arsed anymore.
There's a lot to like about the game, but it is still very noticeably just another iteration on Demon's Souls. Hell, I even ran across basilisks from Dark Souls.

I have bought Hand of Merlin and Amazing Cultivation Simulator recently, but both have bugs that prevent me from playing them.

Hand of Merlin insists on starting up on my second monitor, and doesn't let me change which monitor I'm using once launched.

Amazing Cultivation Simulator, as with all these Dwarf Fortress / Rimworld clones, seems to be very dependent on keyboard controls and the mousewheel, so it's a shame they don't actually work.

I mean, I can't rule out it being down to me running the games through Proton on Linux, but almost everything else works fine. The Hand of Merlin dev at the very least acknowledged my report on the Steam forums, so there's hope yet :)

Seeing Thirith's just played Arkham Knight, I might install that. Origins put me off of the Batman games a bit, but that wasn't Rocksteady.

I've also recently reinstalled Mad Max, which surprisingly, has a native Linux version, but I haven't fired it up yet.

henke on 27/6/2022 at 11:44

Glad you liked Teardown, Ducky! I still haven't played the full release. Malf, that's a lot of games!

I've been playing How I Learned To Skate that came out last Friday:
[video=youtube;Eq0f8xOmyX4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eq0f8xOmyX4[/video]

The controls are really unique and fun and the sensation of gliding on the ice is wonderful. A really one-of-a-kind game. Sadly it's also just too damn hard. I made it about 1,5h in before getting stuck on a section where you gotta control 2 characters at a time AND the controls are inverted for one of the characters AND there is intermittent scenery getting in the way of one character so you can't see what they're doing AND if you fail you get set back to the previous checkpoint. Yeah, not the current checkpoint, the PREVIOUS ONE! Needless to say once you start messing up it's easy for it to just snowball and pretty soon you're back at square one.

Also been playing Hidden Deep, sidescrolling physics-heavy underground exploration thingy with strong Aliens vibes. It's a lot of fun but also kinda janky in it's current EA form and the objectives and systems are obtuse enough that I've needed a walkthrough on several occasions.

Malf on 27/6/2022 at 11:59

Quote Posted by henke

Malf, that's a lot of games!

Ish.
There's a lot in there that are games I've played before, but am currently using as filler.
There's nothing on the horizon apart from the Steam release of Dwarf Fortress that's really got me excited, so I'm flailing around a bit playing things I've either played before, or that have been sat in my library for a while guilt-tripping me.

I did actually start another colony in RImworld last night, as I'm hungering for something management-sim shaped, and Oxygen Not Included, while great, is too clever for me.
There's been a lot of stuff added to ONI recently, but I'm never likely to see it as I struggle to keep all my plates spinning even at early-to-mid game.

And the one constant I neglected to mention is Guild Wars 2, although that's taking a back-seat to other things recently. It's still got it's claws deep enough in to me that I log in every day to do my "dailies".
The latest expansion, End of Dragons, left me cold and was noticeably developed by a team that had been downsized, with the only ones remaining being those who aren't as familiar with the franchise.
Still, of all the MMOs out there, this is the one I come back to, as the combat is still really fun compared to others.

demagogue on 28/6/2022 at 03:14

I think Rimworld is one of the best for that genre in terms of having fun with it. Good pacing. You get invested in your colony. Good for telling a story. It's a tricky balance because if one of these games gets too micromanage-y or the stakes get too high like in Dwarf Fortress, that can be a rush, but it's almost too much and I won't want to go back to it. But I usually always feel good starting a new colony in Rimworld.

The deep sim I got the deepest into was Caves of Qud, but that's really just a single player cRPG / Roguelike at heart with an open world to explore, not a colony game. But the depth and breadth of all these different systems running on top of each other is really interesting, and intense in bite sizes in the right way for a roguelike (where each move is life or death until you get yourself out, but you pick it up over time).