What are you playing?

[Shihab]

Oscillating between two games (on PC):
The Long Dark, for which I have to send a very special "I hate you" to @Dr. Dro for recommending it in the sales thread. Now I'm nearly 30 hours into the damned thing, with four cabins full of animal guts, and more camp fires lit than I have in half a decade playing Runescape. -_-

The second is Binary Domain. Finally getting around to finish it. And boy! This game's script is cheesier than Swiss cheese!
Thankfully, the gameplay doesn't rely on the AI too much, otherwise I may have bought a wireless headset just so I can enable the voice control gimmick to give the morons some... compliments...

Playing this game with a gamepad sucks tho. Sure, it was a console game and they do give you a ton of ammo to compensate for the handicap, but still...

 

[Dr. Dro]

Oscillating between two games (on PC):
The Long Dark, for which I have to send a very special "I hate you" to @Dr. Dro for recommending it in the sales thread. Now I'm nearly 30 hours into the damned thing, with four cabins full of animal guts, and more camp fires lit than I have in half a decade playing Runescape. -_-

The second is Binary Domain. Finally getting around to finish it. And boy! This game's script is cheesier than Swiss cheese!
Thankfully, the gameplay doesn't rely on the AI too much, otherwise I may have bought a wireless headset just so I can enable the voice control gimmick to give the morons some... compliments...

Playing this game with a gamepad sucks tho. Sure, it was a console game and they do give you a ton of ammo to compensate for the handicap, but still...

Sorry not sorry. Now make a bear coat, and a moose coat. Bear inner, moose outer. 2 sets of leather pants and boots. Rabbit mitts and toque.

 

[Princess Garnet]

I called it survival horror but it's technically "puzzle horror" as the game's own page correctly describes it. the survival aspects are basically non-existent. there are not many enemies and inventory management isn't a high focus. good game for puzzles though. story is most vague I've ever played. still some random bugs they are ironing out like shotgun shells default to 2 when you switch to said gun, which means if you loaded it up to full capacity of 4, you just lost 2 shells due to switching weapons. game length would be 10 hours or less depending on how much puzzle clue hunting you do. I played through a couple times to get 100% achievements and spent about 15 hours doing that. I'm a rabid fan of the genre and liked it but a recently released game like The Mute House is more traditional survival horror in my opinion

Yeah, back when I played the demo, it felt distinctly more Silent Hill rather than Resident Evil. Resident Evil was always called survival horror, and while Silent Hill sort of is, it was sometimes called psychological horror, and sometimes had more of a puzzle lean. It sounds like this game goes even further in that direction then?

I never heard of The Mute House so I'll look into it. Other than the rumored Silent Hill 1 and/or 3 remakes, or the known Silent Hill f, the smaller studio survival horror games that I'm waiting on are Echoes of the Living, Tormented Souls 2, and Heartworm.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Playing the Blade of Galadriel DLC for Shadow of War.

It's more Shadow of War so that's always nice, but Eltariel is such a bland character and without a "Celebrimbor" type character to play off of there just isn't enough personality there to keep her interesting. The Orc allies you gain more than make up for Eltariel's complete void of a personality though, they're an absolute treat and each recruitment mission has a sort of fun twist surrounding it. The Nemesis system feels like its on ice in this installment since the story missions take you on a pretty linear path through the fort sieges in each area and with no ability to dominate orcs there is also no fortress infiltration meta game at play either.

Eltariel has a different but limited bank of unique "light" based abilities vs Talion's orc mind domination abilities. The light combat is sufficiently different but not necessarily better than what was in the base game, since it is very "anti-flow" requiring you to infuse enemy orcs with light through various abilities that take you out of the flow of combat in order to activate any of the special abilities. There is also a bizarre focus on "healing allies" in the ability tree despite, as far as I can tell, you only ever really work with one allied orc captain at a time and don't really bring a swarm of mooks everywhere like you would in the base game.

The narrative around the game kind of undermines the end of Talion's main storyline, but that's a minor gripe since the Shadow games are sooo way out in left field as far as Tolkien lore is concerned that they're really more like fan fiction than an officially licensed product. Could have done a better job showing more passage of time given the game takes place over the course of the shadow war 4th act of the base campaign, which technically spanned multiple years.

HLTB lists the expansion as very very short, so despite its shortcomings it won't be overstaying its welcome and is providing a brief palate cleanser between larger game offerings.

Whole Shadow series is like $7.00 on Steam right now for everything. You could do a whole lot worse for the kind of entertainment these games provide.

 

[Godrilla]

I am playing Oblivion remastered. Game looks amazing and is very addicting.

 

[bailtree]

can you guess what I'm playing?

 

[skizzo]

Yeah, back when I played the demo, it felt distinctly more Silent Hill rather than Resident Evil. Resident Evil was always called survival horror, and while Silent Hill sort of is, it was sometimes called psychological horror, and sometimes had more of a puzzle lean. It sounds like this game goes even further in that direction then?

I never heard of The Mute House so I'll look into it. Other than the rumored Silent Hill 1 and/or 3 remakes, or the known Silent Hill f, the smaller studio survival horror games that I'm waiting on are Echoes of the Living, Tormented Souls 2, and Heartworm.

doesn't focus on survival as in combat. so the developer calling it puzzle horror fits best I think. story is far more psychological relative to any RE style game.

The Mute House is more like the other games you mention, traditional survival horror game play. So much more focus on combat and inventory management by comparison to Post Trauma. Story is clear stereotypical horror type, so much they even mention a trope in the game's intro "oh she's just being a teenager....ya know, kids in the woods, sitting around a campfire telling spooky stories and all that" (something like that). Said teenager goes missing and the older sister that is a Sheriff goes to investigate alone and......that's the start of the game.

 

[Princess Garnet]

The Mute House is more like the other games you mention, traditional survival horror game play. So much more focus on combat and inventory management by comparison to Post Trauma. Story is clear stereotypical horror type, so much they even mention a trope in the game's intro "oh she's just being a teenager....ya know, kids in the woods, sitting around a campfire telling spooky stories and all that" (something like that). Said teenager goes missing and the older sister that is a Sheriff goes to investigate alone and......that's the start of the game.

Haha, that literally sounds like it could be the start of a low budget PlayStation era survival horror game.

While I love that stories and circumstances have grown to be a bit more believable in later years, they were also (usually) believable enough, and sometimes I miss how bare and not-completely-realistic-but-good-enough-to-kick-off-a-story some of those old ones were. You still see that in indies though.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I was playing through the Kronos mod for OpenXComExtended and kid you not, Jack O'Neill(with two "L"s) show up in my new soldier rookie list. If I find Teal'c, Sam Carter and Daniel Jackson I am SOO putting them on a team!

Yes, that IS a chainsaw you see in his right hand. And it is excellent!

 

[harm9963]

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is next , time for a fantasy adventure , Last of us 2 is done but still processing , part one was better for me .

 

[Princess Garnet]

Clair Obscur. Not major spoilers, but potential minor ones.

Spoiler

The next time I see a Pink sheep in Minecraft I'm going to have some frustration to get out, haha. First Final Fantasy IX, and now this. What it is with abusive sheep!?

 

[Teddy Bear]

Assassin's Creed: Shadows is my new favorite. DOOM: The Dark Ages is in library waiting for release on the 13th so I'll definitely be busy all week, and Clair Obscur looks like something I should get as well since it's unnaturally stutter-free for a UE5 title

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Powered through Half-Life 2 Episode 1 in a Friday afternoon.

Its funny playing the episodes, they were so clearly structured to be a much larger game broken into smaller parts.

Episode 1 is really heavy on the Gravity Gun for the first 3/4 of the gameplay. Guns reenter the equation when you're out in city 17 for the last section of the game, almost like EP1 was supposed to be the tutorial run of the sequel.

Game is peppered with some fun physics "puzzles". They're pretty basic by puzzle standards, but they break up the combat nicely.

Whole game is really only 4-5 hours long, a fun quick bite of a game that scratches the nostalgia itch.

 

[Shadowdust]

About 100 hours in Clair Obscur. Just beat it again and finishing up some side content before starting another new game plus. I plan to master and equip every Lumina skill no matter how many times I have to play through. I absolutely love this game.

 

[Teddy Bear]

About 100 hours in Clair Obscur. Just beat it again and finishing up some side content before starting another new game plus. I plan to master and equip every Lumina skill no matter how many times I have to play through. I absolutely love this game.

How long did it take to complete a playthrough? I’m liking the idea of playing a linear game once in a while.

 

[Shadowdust]

How long did it take to complete a playthrough? I’m liking the idea of playing a linear game once in a while.

The main story with a few side quests will run about 40 hours or so. I finished my first game at level 63 or so. With all of the content, I could see this being 60 hours for a completionist. I really liked how they approached New Game+ too. You're less focused on levels of your characters and more focused on accessory and weapon levels.

 

[wNotyarD]

As I finished my first SMTV run, now I need something lighter. Started playing Mario & Luigi Brothership, and by heck, the colors are saturated. Looks absolutely gorgeous on my LG C1.

 

[Teddy Bear]

The main story with a few side quests will run about 40 hours or so. I finished my first game at level 63 or so. With all of the content, I could see this being 60 hours for a completionist. I really liked how they approached New Game+ too. You're less focused on levels of your characters and more focused on accessory and weapon levels.

That's awesome, definitely going to spend the next weekend on this game. The themes and atmosphere look so good. Haven't played something similarly paced in many years.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Completed the Blade of Galadriel DLC for Shadow of War

It was more Shadow of War which is nice, but it also took out a lot of what made Shadow of War so much fun. The game and main character's abilities are structured in such a way that there isn't much interaction with the nemesis system.

No orc domination, no orc recruitment outside of the story missions, most captains are already immune to basically everything except for one or two attack types so the flair of figuring out the best strategy to take out a captain is gone as well.

Eltariel's new light abilities are, to their credit, unique and have you engaging in combat a little differently than Talion did. The combat revolves around infusing enemies with "Galadriel's Light" either through area of effect attacks or more focused beams of light and once they are fully infused with light either vaporizing them or use them to trigger secondary abilities. While it is a different take on combat, it does feel like it can slow the flow of combat down unless you specifically do an AOE build.

Weapons and armor customization are mostly recolors of the base armor, except for the final hidden set of armor. Each weapon set was tied to a unique elemental/environmental ability that interacted with light infused enemies (so your poison daggers would cause a light infused enemy to explode in a shower of gore and poison while your fire daggers would cause that enemy to explode in a fireball, and your ice daggers would freeze the enemy solid). It was clever and had me switching my weapons a lot more than the base game did to match the weaknesses of the captains I was facing.

Allied orc captains are all acquired through story missions, and are all fun with quirky personalities and recruitment missions. No complaints there.

Overall, it's a fun DLC and was clearly intended to be a bridge to the third Shadow game it seems we'll never get now. You can generally pick up both shadow games and all DLCs for direct cheap, like $7 during Steam sales. If you like power fantasy open world hack n slash combat with a fun twist in the LOTR universe, the Shadow games are where you need to be.

Total playtime for 100% completion was about 4-5 hours for the DLC.

 

[nomdeplume]

I broke Angler COTW and found a hidden feature they never released. Was amazingly happy for about two minutes of freely walking* around on the boat until I caught a fish. Outcome speaks for itself what bug that resulted in.

*Picture being locked into a weird unusable camera angle and expect things got much worse than that quite often.

 

[Ruru]

Just beat Trema on FF X-2 HD, I SHOULD have done everything I need for 100% completion now.

edit: 99% after finishing the game. Wonder what I missed, need to pull a NG+ soon.

 

[Princess Garnet]

The main story with a few side quests will run about 40 hours or so. I finished my first game at level 63 or so. With all of the content, I could see this being 60 hours for a completionist. I really liked how they approached New Game+ too. You're less focused on levels of your characters and more focused on accessory and weapon levels.

Meanwhile, I'm somewhere around 52 or 53 hours in and still not finished with the second act (but I'm pretty sure I'm nearing it with everything that's occurring). That doesn't surprise me since I tend to soak in games I'm enjoying on my first playthrough. I'll definitely be getting triple digit hours out of this one, and I probably won't even 100% it either (I imagine many of the achievements are tied to the expert difficulty and I'm not doing that). The last RPG I got those sorts of hours out of was Dragon Quest XI, which I did 100% and got over 200 hours from.

 

[Bloste]

After an unhealthy dose of Darktide, I needed something more paused, more old school. So I rescued Vaporum from my backlog and I'm having a blast with it. Damn, I'm tempted to re-play EotB bilogy again. (yes, Bilogy. No, there's no 3 in it, I refuse it!)

 

[Teddy Bear]

20 hours into Assassin's Creed: Shadows. The sound design is impeccable. The hair rendering reminds me of what was being pushed in franchises like Tomb Raider and The Witcher

 

[blinnbanir]

Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora is next , time for a fantasy adventure , Last of us 2 is done but still processing , part one was better for me .

I guarantee you are going to get lost admiring the World.