What game are you currently playing?

[JanJansen]

Just to clarify, I'm not looking down on casual players. There are a number of games that I just play casually and don't go hardcore with it (Baldur's Gate is actually one of them). I do kinda look down on new school gamers who crap on old school games because they lack quest markers and other hand holding under the guise of "QoL". It's like in that video I posted. Fallout is actually not that hard or opaque if you just look around a little and put some effort in. I don't think that someone who curb stomps Fallout 4 (an absurdly easy game even with difficulty mods) is a more skilled gamer than someone who stumbles through classic Fallout. However, I've often seen an attitude from the former where they think they have crazy skills for their munchkin build that rolls the game but write off the classic games as "unplayable" trash.

I think that is the problem with people who always need to compare. Am I better than this one, is that one better than me? There are plenty of competitive games, with ranks and all. There is really no need to apply that to single player games. Unless people agree on a competition.

Also, some people don't understand the difference between a personal challenge and a competition.
Or the difference between "I personally don't like this game/mode/difficulty/UI" and "This is complete shit".

 

[Nimran]

I usually don’t go any higher than normal difficulty on any game. As far as I’m concerned, normal is as balanced as the game is going to get. I don’t think lower or higher difficulties are bad, though, as long as the player is having fun.

 

[WiseGrimwald]

Those of you who are following the thread that I started will know that I am currently playing a heavily modded Baldur's Gate 1. I am enjoying it very much as the mods have made it a very unfamiliar game.

 

[Skatan]

I am currently playing BG3 and enjoying it so far. Still have a lot to learn but slowly understanding more and more. I find myself having to alt-tab and google "how to.. " quite often though, hah. Last time was how to use the medallion that lets you talk to dead people since I find the UI a bit confusing. But the game is fun so far, I like it. It is quite different at its core, the mechanics being so open for the player to try and "break" it by setting up the situations before the start with spells, skills etc. I tend to find TB battles becoming either just skill juggling or basically puzzle games, but this is very different. And I mean different in a good way. Steam is telling me I have 15 hours in the game so far, but some of it is idling and replaying the nautilus once so maybe around 12 hours or so proper game time and I feel I have hardly even started.

 

[m7600]

I'm currently playing Prince of Qin, from 2002. It's one of the few cRPGs from that era that I never played, so I thought I'd give it a go. I'm still in the early stages, but I like the engine so far. It's a mix between Baldur's Gate and Diablo 2. I'd say it's closer to the former than to the latter. It's party-based, and combat is real time with pause. Your party attacks the enemy automatically. And there's quite a lot of dialogue as well. I'm not sure why it usually gets classified as an ARPG, since it's closer to a classical party-based CRPG instead. Anyways, here are some screenshots. The graphics are undoubtedly dated by today's standards, but I think they look charming in a late 90's / early 2000's retro kind of way. The only major problem with this game is the translation to English. The phrases tend to be odd. For example, when you want to save your game over an already existing save, it awkwardly and hilariously says "To overlap the game saved, are you sure?" I'm assuming it's asking "Are you sure you want to overwrite your current save data?" or something like that.

Spoiler

 

[Antimatter]

I'm playing Alan Wake Remastered. I've wanted to do that for a long, long time. The original game was released in 2010, so it's an old game, but I haven't regretted giving it a go. I usually don't play horror/thriller games, but this is a big exception. I got hooked by Remedy (the developer) when I played Control, and I see so many signs of how they grew to the developer they are now in terms of storytelling and worldbuilding.

What do I like the most about it? Probably how natural dialogues are, and how atmospheric the game is.

And no Remedy game would be cool without a music scene. Just look how badass this is. In-game, it felt even more badass:

 

[Antimatter]

I finished Alan Wake 1 with all its DLC and now am playing Alan Wake 2.

The game is marvelous and gorgeous because of how it looks and sounds. It's very intriguing right from the beginning, and I don't think I'd have the same experience without knowing the story of Alan Wake from the first game.

The best feature for me is its Mind Place - where the protagonist Saga Anderson goes into in her mind when she wants to make various deductions and look back on previous objects she's collected throughout her story. Similar to boards found in detective dramas, Saga has a case board that allows her to place documents she has found and try to pin them together to solve her investigations.

You can go there (and should go!) as soon as you find a new clue or piece of evidence. How it's all created and functioning is very fresh.

I mentioned that the game looks great. But it comes with a price. I have an NVIDIA RTX 3080 16GB laptop, and yet the game gives very low FPS even on the lowest of its settings. Actually, tuning the settings took me probably 2+ hours, and I'm still not quite happy. It's the first game for me where I needed to figure out what DLDSR, and DLSS meant and how they all function.

I read that AW2 on consoles runs at 800p (render resolution--yes, we have render resolution now, on top of your display resolution) and lower than low settings and can't hold a solid 60fps. Well, that's the case for my 3k USD laptop from 2021 as well...

But I learned to look past its performance. The game is cool. Probably another aspect that I find questionable is combat in AW2, it's too different compared to AW1 and--honestly--quite difficult. I had 2 minor encounters after around 2 hours of playing time (yes, that time was all about exploration and building connections between clues in that Mind Place), and then suddenly got into a boss fight that couldn't win for 20 times+ in a row.

 

[WarChiefZeke]

Marvel: Midnight Suns. I have never been a fan of the movies but I was an old school comic fan. You definitely don't need to be any fan of the Marvel universe to like this game, since the storyline is its own original creation and has to do with history and magic more than mutants and colorful heroes.

Many reviews compare it to X-COM, which is fair, but it is certainly easier. Still, the level of character customization and interaction is high, which appeals to me, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in it so far.

I really went for "Mortal Kombat Ninja" vibes, and I feel I succeeded. The knight armor is tempting too.

 

[mlnevese]

Marvel: Midnight Suns. I have never been a fan of the movies but I was an old school comic fan. You definitely don't need to be any fan of the Marvel universe to like this game, since the storyline is its own original creation and has to do with history and magic more than mutants and colorful heroes.

Many reviews compare it to X-COM, which is fair, but it is certainly easier. Still, the level of character customization and interaction is high, which appeals to me, and I have thoroughly enjoyed my time in it so far.

I really went for "Mortal Kombat Ninja" vibes, and I feel I succeeded. The knight armor is tempting too.

View attachment 10773

 

[JustKneller]

Flawless victory, @mlnevese wins!!!

 

[Antimatter]

25 hours in Alan Wake 2 and... yeah, this game directly goes to a list of games that should be played at least once. I can't spoil it (not even by sharing a small video like I did for Alan Wake 1), things like that should be discovered by each player.

Make no mistake: I still consider some of its gameplay boring and slow. I still think the game is too demanding hardware-wise. Playing AW2 without AW1 is also something that would make the experience a bit worse, the story and characters connect with the player much more smoothly if you know the events of AW1. The game has a lot of backtracking and Metroidvania elements that I am not a fan of, but Remedy games are always like that. Btw, what do people here think of Metroidvanias?

However, under the layers of gameplay that I think could be better, there is a work of art there. A game like no other.

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

BG3 as of last night - if you count an hour of muddling about in character creation. Too many possibilities. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pick a class. Plus, I don’t know how to play D&D anymore. What is this fangled 5E technology???

 

[Skatan]

BG3 as of last night - if you count an hour of muddling about in character creation. Too many possibilities. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to pick a class. Plus, I don’t know how to play D&D anymore. What is this fangled 5E technology???

Hah, you and me both brother. I had no idea what in the nine hells I was doing during character creation. The skill point system in particular made me scratch my head a bit.

 

[Skatan]

25 hours in Alan Wake 2 and... yeah, this game directly goes to a list of games that should be played at least once. I can't spoil it (not even by sharing a small video like I did for Alan Wake 1), things like that should be discovered by each player.

Make no mistake: I still consider some of its gameplay boring and slow. I still think the game is too demanding hardware-wise. Playing AW2 without AW1 is also something that would make the experience a bit worse, the story and characters connect with the player much more smoothly if you know the events of AW1. The game has a lot of backtracking and Metroidvania elements that I am not a fan of, but Remedy games are always like that. Btw, what do people here think of Metroidvanias?

However, under the layers of gameplay that I think could be better, there is a work of art there. A game like no other.

Those games have mostly flew under the radar for me but your post intrigues me.. though the less great aspects you bring up are things that could be a major turn-off for me.

 

[mlnevese]

Currently playing Warhamme Chaosgate. An XCom style game without all the bugs and some interesting mechanics. Also from the little I saw, it has a huge technology tree to develop

 

[BelgarathMTH]

I'm back to playing an old favorite for a few weeks - Titan Quest.

I spent the last couple of weeks of summer break building a selection of new characters, and now that break is over and I'm back on a full teaching schedule, Titan Quest is great for after work when I want to just turn my brain off for a couple of hours before dinner and bedtime and beat up some monsters for a while.

I'm also on a superheroes movies phase, rewatching all the entries in both Marvel and DC universes, so I've built two or three versions of Thor and a version of Superman. Just this week, I started a second alternate idea for Superman, and I've got an idea to try a Captain America build soon.

 

[Nimran]

I’ve gone on a bit of a Might and Magic binge recently, playing M&M 6-8. I love old games, man…

My sister has also convinced me to play FFXIV with her and some of her friends. I try to spend at least a couple of hours in that game a day, but man, MMOs really aren’t my thing.

I also just finished a Lords of Magic binge last week, ending a campaign as the Fire faction.

 

[Skatan]

Black geyser, a smaller RPG in the style of BG1. Here's my Swindler (charismatic thief) after some hours of game play, around the Chapter 2 on his way to Chapter 3 but decided to do some more sidequests first. Going in blind, have no idea what I'm doing, what stats are good or not and just playing very casually. The game is "light" compared to the average RPG nowadays which fits me perfectly since I can play without feeling stress or with full focus. Most quests are very easy, just go to A, get a quest, got to B and kill/pick up item, then go back to A and that's it. But despite being superficial in a sense, the world-building is cool and interesting and there's some novel concepts around party building where the party as a whole get's some perks based on if you switch around members a lot or keep mostly the same ones. Playing on Normal and so far it's been very easy, but I assume it will get harder later. Haven't even used a single potion yet. The game features a rather extensive (I think?) crafting system but haven't even tried it yet outside the tutorial.

 

[m7600]

I got back to playing Prince of Qin. I love the quirky English translation, lol. Instead of "You must gather your party before venturing forth", there's "Your friends have not arrived, so you can't leave for the moment."

 

[JustKneller]

I've been playing:



I sorta flaked out a little on my Classic Fallout to New Vegas run. Partly this is because that I want to start spending gaming time on games I haven't played instead of just replaying the same games over and over. This came on my radar recently. It's sort of a 3d voxel zombie shooter with rpg character building elements. It's free. There's microtrans, but it's not too much in your face and you can play through the game without any of it. I would say it's reasonably decent for a f2p game. There's a story, but the writing is pretty basic. The levels are location based, so you're frequently going back to the same areas. It's a little repetitive, but not terrible. The weapon design is decent. The iron sights works well. It's not terribly challenging, but I'm mostly playing this game to gear up for another survival game that's going to be a bigger challenge. All in all, I'd say it's worth at least checking out if you like shooters that are a little tongue-in-cheek.