I’m always wishing there was more interaction and discussion on the niche Lemmy groups. Today I got to wondering if there were some games we could focus on to help foster our small community. But what is everyone playing or interested in playing? Are we all off playing our own obscure indie favorites or are there some games we share?
Comment below and upvote the ones that you have in common!
It’s a high paced fps in general. The original mode is semi roguelite, meaning, you have to go every 10 floors in order to get a checkpoint. If you don’t, back to the previous checkpoint and get different perks for the run.
For me the whole cyberpunk esque thing about it sold me. And is also a quite unusual sort of shooter.
Only a tad short, that is my biggest complaint (but price does match the time so I can’t say much)
I’m couch surfing rn and only have my laptop, so I can really only play Stardew Valley. I’ve been slowly changing production entirely over to ancient fruit from hops.
For years I’ve been trying to get her to game with me, never pushing too hard because I didn’t want to put her off the entire thing.
Recently she got laid off and picked up a part time job, so she’s had more free time. I asked her to consider playing Stardew Valley, and she said she would, but kept putting it off.
Finally one Saturday we had some free time and she agreed to give it a shot. I made popcorn, set her up with a Switch on our TV, gave her an hour or so to get started (I was willing to answer questions about controls, but wanted her to learn the game herself because I genuinely believe that’s part of the charm), then joined her with my Steam Deck (not multiplayer, just both of us playing single player).
She enjoyed it, but after that day she didn’t touch it for a while. Then I reminded her the Switch doesn’t need to be on the TV, and suddenly she was playing it every day. She’s fallen deeply into the Stardew Valley rabbit hole and I am so happy. 😁
She broke her foot recently, and when we were at the urgent care center she had the Switch and I had my Steam Deck as we were waiting. The doctor who finally saw us said we were geniuses for being so well prepared for the packed waiting room. 🤣
Helldivers 2, have played at least a couple times a week since release with a group of friends but have been diving almost every night for the last few weeks as one of our other friends is on XBox and finally gets to join us!
Unfortunately he has only had time for one dive so far, but hopefully he has plenty of time tonight.
The tall buildings can block orbitals, line of sight for large stuff can make killing shots a lot more difficult than on most maps, and trying to cut through buildings can lead to walking right into a horde of infantry type stuff. On the other hand, watching the human support teams get a kill or two before dying can be pretty entertaining!
I love MW5. Its modding scene is so robust that the game is incredibly customizable to be basically whatever type of experience you want. That being said, my mod list is out of date so getting back into it would be a huge chore right now haha
Oooh I got started on that recently and then pulled away by other things, but I was enjoying it a great deal. The campaign is bit… ehhh. But that actual gameplay is a blast. I love the sense of scale (as long as you don’t think too hard about the actual numbers it gives you for the weights of things)
I picked that up on sale a while ago, but have only played a few quick missions. I haven’t played MW since the early 2000s, but did play and love Battletech 2019.
Does the MW5 campaign give you the info dump while you are already in the mech and moving towards the objective like the older ones?
For the overwhelming majority of missions, the info is largely contained in a text briefing when selecting missions. For the story beat missions, though, it’s voice acted stuff pre- and mid- mission.
This community is kind of in the shadow of all the other gaming communities, it doesn’t feel like it has a strong identity to separate it. There’s already plenty of weekly threads elsewhere to discuss what we’re playing and I already feel like I repeat myself between [email protected] and [email protected]. Do we need another one here? But sure.
I’ve been playing through the Ninja Gaiden series lately. Finished Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2 on normal, playing on Xemu and Xenia Canary emulators respectively. Currently playing through Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge from the master collection, though I’m not sure I will finish it.
NG3RE should have the best combat in the series. The fundamentals are better than ever, Ryu is more fluid in his movements than ever and the combo strings are more flexible than ever. It just… I dunno. It doesn’t feel as good, satisfying or just fun. NGB had extremely precise, measured and deliberate combat, albeit slower than the later games. NG2 was an unbalanced mess, but it had a visceral pleasure when it clicked that is simply unparalleled. NG3RE changes the formula a lot, and not always for the better. Trying to play for Steel On Bone counters is what the game wants you to do, but it’s more reactive and less fun than previous games. And the animations aren’t as satisfying as the executions in NG2. NG3RE also has even worse bosses, which is a damn feat considering the series has some real stinkers.
And let’s not even get into the atrocious story, which manages to be maximally bad and lame but without ever crossing over into “so bad it’s good” territory. The Call of Duty or Ghost Recon-esque military special agent framing also ruins the vibe, and the boring and terrible level design makes me miss the wildly varied and interesting locations of NG2.
I really don’t know if I’ll finish it, all I want to do really is go back and play NGB and NG2 again. At least I found FiendBusa’s “Black” mod for it, that makes it a bit better.
This community is kind of in the shadow of all the other gaming communities, it doesn’t feel like it has a strong identity to separate it. There’s already plenty of weekly threads elsewhere to discuss what we’re playing and I already feel like I repeat myself between [email protected] and [email protected]. Do we need another one here? But sure.
I just don’t know that the fragmentation is super helpful at this level of users, we have what - 4 medium sized basically interchangeable gaming communities? I am not as committed to community consolidation as some other uses but it still feels like concentrating interaction would be better than spreading it out at this point in time.
So don’t interact with the topic everywhere if you think it is too spread out. I see enough activity here and patient gamers to warrant them being different as they have different focus.
Plus each one is on a different instance. If there was only the one on beehaw I wouldn’t see anything since I blocked that instance.
Yeah I don’t see many posts here so I was wondering if quizzing the community might inspire some new interactions and maybe help develop the identity here. No need to force in weekly things that other subs are doing.
I used to love Ninja Gaiden - what would be the best place to start? NG2 then? Unbalanced but satisfying sounds okay to me.
Sorry if I came off as dismissive, my first paragraph was just me musing on why this community in particular hasn’t taken off.
So here is my opinion on the series: Ninja Gaiden Black is an adventure game with great combat. You have exploration, platforming and even an almost Metroidvania-like hub area you backtrack back and forth through. It’s occasionally almost Zelda-like rather than purely an action game. Playing it on Xemu also offsets one of its flaws - stingy checkpoint placement. Just use (but don’t abuse) save states and don’t worry about it. It runs flawlessly on Xemu without any specific setup, and you can set rendering resolution to like x6 and it will look great.
Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version) feels like the crack cocaine of action games. Or I dunno, freebase Meth maybe. It feels like the best action game ever 50% of the time and the worst action game ever 50% of the time. It’s almost pure action, just one murder hallway after another. The sheer amount of enemies, the aggression of the AI and the speed of the combat gives you adrenaline rushes like nothing else. HOWEVER! The game was rushed to release as the devs chased a bonus payout, and the game is blatantly not playtested and balanced properly. It’s especially apparent in the second half of the game. I developed a sort of love-hate relationship with it: I screamed at it in frustration more often than most games but I also cannot wait to go back.
Setting it up in Xenia Canary was much more fiddly than using Xemu. The game must be hard capped at 60 FPS. You need to tweak a bunch of config settings to minimise the occurrence of an audio bug where sound might cut out until you restart (I can send you my config if you want). If you want to increase rendering resolution by x3 you need to accept some minor graphical glitches (primarily in the first couple of chapters).
Don’t play NG3RE unless you’ve already played the other two and can’t wait for NG4. Otherwise just pick your flavour - more adventure game and better balance or an unbalanced but beautiful mess? I should also note that both games are fairly short, my NGB playthrough was 14h and NG2 was 13h, so it’s not a big commitment to play one after the other.
Huh, probably Black is the one then, I’m a pretty big fan of that style you describe and have actually been hankering for one lately.
Ninja Gaiden 2 sounds like someething everyone needs to experience once too though so maybe I’ll put both on my list. I’m not super excited to fiddle with emulators but it sounds like it’d be worth it.
Yeah that seems about right. For Xemu, you need the BIOS, MCPX and HDD Image Files separately, which can be found here. No further setup or config needed. You can find the ROM at The Vault. Ninja Gaiden 2 ROM is also available there.
I can send you my config file for Xenia if you want to avoid most of the fiddling, but most of it came from YouTube videos and Reddit threads I found when googling “NG2 Xenia”. It ran really well for me in the end. I experienced the audio bug maybe five times, and restarting fixed it every time. The graphical glitch artifacts were somewhat annoying the first handful of chapters, but still worth it for the higher resolution and completely disappeared after that (apart from during loading screens, but who cares about that).
You said you’ve played before so maybe you already have some fundamentals, but watching a tutorial video on YouTube that goes over basic principles can help a lot. The games sort of expect you to rely on certain mechanics that are never explained, and while you can figure it out yourself it’s probably smoother to watch a tutorial. Also just experiment with combos and weapons: NGB felt very well balanced and encounters that seemed impossible at first felt very possible once “figured out”.
Nice thanks for all that info and the links. I’m not sure if I remember how the gameplay worked anymore at all actually so maybe the tutorials are in order too.
Either way I’ll probably hit you up when I inevitably tire of Nightreign. I haven’t even played all the characters yet but I can tell my attention is starting to drift.
Far cry 6. It sucks. I love gta style open world with lots of vehicles and weapons. It’s great for that. The missions are all the same. Go here, fetch this. Kill this person. Go back to another person.
Edit: finally finished the game after 45 hours. What a terrible ending.
I like the gunplay but once you get an armor piercing shotgun everyone just immediately dies. I’m 40 hours in and the game feels like a chore. I’m speeding through the faction missions just so I can see how Giancarlo Esposito dies.
Yeah :/ another shallow ocean. I like open world games and games that give you lots of freedom. The mechanics of that are all in the game. Gunplay is fun, vehicle driving is meh. Selection of vehicles is kind of meh. Plot is meh. The missions are 50% fetch quests 50% go here and break into 1/3 different environments with enemies and kill everyone there.
I won’t buy another Ubisoft game after this. I got this game 85% off and it feels like I overpaid.
Striving for Light. It’s the only real hybrid I have found between an arpg and a roguelite. A bite-sized PoE if you will.
Otherwise, in more or less the same genre, Magicraft (my GOTY 2024) and a tiny bit of Hellclock, tho it has yet to hook me because so far it’s boringly easy - I’m still very early in the game.
Roguelites are gradually becoming my favorite genre - going to have to check Magicraft out. Sounds like it has some of the same elements that I loved in Noita?
It’s top down Noita, or BoI+Noita. I have 1k hours and am still discovering new effects and combinations every run, it’s nuts!
Pro tip: I wanted to milk it for all its got, so after reaching endgame content, I started a new toon and limited myself to 2 wands and no upgrades to life mana, starting stuff like keys or coins. Just “tentacle girl” updates and it’s been really good. I die because of mistakes, not because of balance. Otherwise, you’ll get a bit too strong and steamroll every enemy and boss at some point (100 hours in or so).
I am taking a break from working on my Skyrim mod list to try getting into Baldur’s Gate 3 for a third time.
My first attempt, I picked “tactician” difficulty, didn’t make optimal choices for character build and party composition, and then quit at the end of act 2 when the fights got too hard. Then I tried honour mode, minmaxed everything, was getting by okay but quit in the middle of act two because playing that way was boring.
So now I’m playing at the default difficulty level, just relaxing and having fun like a normal person.
I thought you could switch difficulties out besides honor mode. I did a tactician run with me as wildmage. Shadowbae as cleric, astarion as assassin and laezel as fighter. Didn’t have too tough a time (don’t think I min maxed). Did do every side quest though and also looked up tips for some bosses.
I think I’ll do BG3 after I tire of Nightreign. I started it but it didn’t click the first time for whatever reason. I loved Divinity 2 so I’m sure BG3 will click for me at some point.
How’s the Skyrim modding scene these days? Only news I see is about Bethesda’s meddling in it.
I recently finished Dragon Age Inquisition, and then started Powerslave: Exhumed.
I never played any of the original versions so it’s a completely new experience for me. Enjoyable so far - it’s an interesting historical link between classic metroidvania and 90s FPS, like a proto-Metroid Prime in some ways.
I do wish they’d added a quick save button to this modern version, though.
Infra. You play as a structural analyst sent in to document damages on infrastructure that was being neglected due to a corrupt governor.
Technically a walking sim, but plenty of puzzles to solve and “mazes” to navigate. The game offers no minimap or objective list. No HUD whatsoever. It’s just you and one action button.
Each area is exquisitely detailed for being a 9-year-old game and visually holds up better than I expected. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to explore abandoned infrastructure, this one’s for you.
Huh glad I posted here, never heard of Infra before. Sounds like something I’ve been after for a while. I don’t have a problem with violence in video games but I do wish there were more great games that weren’t based around it.
The concept of Infra sounds really chill. My seldom-gaming partner might even be interested in joining me on the journey.
It’s a great game. The story starts out relatively chill, but as you explore and start to uncover things it gets really intriguing.
The devs are working on another game that takes place in the same universe called Obenseuer. It’s sincerely one of my favorite games. I get absorbed by it while playing because it’s one of the most unique vibes in any game I’ve played. For me, it’s got this melancholic, depressing atmosphere, but is simultaneously funny, quirky, and, somehow, cozy.
I tried it a while back and struggled to get into it. I wondered since if it was just not the right time though bc it looks so much like my kind of game. Might be worth dusting it off again to give it another go.
The biggest struggle I had at first was getting out of video game mode. With no objective trackers and maps being static on walls, it forced me to approach it differently. You have to rely far more on intuition than any other game I’ve played. You also have to pay attention to notes and general signage as it’s your only guide through a large portion of the game. Hopefully it clicks on your second go around. I wish there were more games like it.
DOOM using prboom I started it in Hurt me plenty but quickly had to change to Ultra-Violence because I was thinking “Where’s all the monsters?”, it’s nice to re-play the levels and listen to the good music.
TurtleWoW when I need to relax and do some questing.
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Recently finished mullet madjack, decided to replay quake 2
Huh never heard of Mullet Madjack, looks pretty nuts
It’s a high paced fps in general. The original mode is semi roguelite, meaning, you have to go every 10 floors in order to get a checkpoint. If you don’t, back to the previous checkpoint and get different perks for the run.
For me the whole cyberpunk esque thing about it sold me. And is also a quite unusual sort of shooter.
Only a tad short, that is my biggest complaint (but price does match the time so I can’t say much)
Grim dawn for nostalgia. Enjoying the new classes and dealing lightning, fire and ice damage.
I’m couch surfing rn and only have my laptop, so I can really only play Stardew Valley. I’ve been slowly changing production entirely over to ancient fruit from hops.
I wish could play Satisfactory tho. :{
I finally got my wife hooked on Stardew Valley.
For years I’ve been trying to get her to game with me, never pushing too hard because I didn’t want to put her off the entire thing.
Recently she got laid off and picked up a part time job, so she’s had more free time. I asked her to consider playing Stardew Valley, and she said she would, but kept putting it off.
Finally one Saturday we had some free time and she agreed to give it a shot. I made popcorn, set her up with a Switch on our TV, gave her an hour or so to get started (I was willing to answer questions about controls, but wanted her to learn the game herself because I genuinely believe that’s part of the charm), then joined her with my Steam Deck (not multiplayer, just both of us playing single player).
She enjoyed it, but after that day she didn’t touch it for a while. Then I reminded her the Switch doesn’t need to be on the TV, and suddenly she was playing it every day. She’s fallen deeply into the Stardew Valley rabbit hole and I am so happy. 😁
She broke her foot recently, and when we were at the urgent care center she had the Switch and I had my Steam Deck as we were waiting. The doctor who finally saw us said we were geniuses for being so well prepared for the packed waiting room. 🤣
I’ll start - was super into Cult of the Lamb until Nightreign came out and as a Fromsoft addict I haven’t really played anything else since.
Helldivers 2, have played at least a couple times a week since release with a group of friends but have been diving almost every night for the last few weeks as one of our other friends is on XBox and finally gets to join us!
Unfortunately he has only had time for one dive so far, but hopefully he has plenty of time tonight.
Oh I was doing a bunch of Helldivers 2 as well until Nightreign. Such a chaotic blast. The new city stuff on the maps looks like crazy fun.
City stuff can be fun or frustrating!
The tall buildings can block orbitals, line of sight for large stuff can make killing shots a lot more difficult than on most maps, and trying to cut through buildings can lead to walking right into a horde of infantry type stuff. On the other hand, watching the human support teams get a kill or two before dying can be pretty entertaining!
I’m on an everything Battletech-related kick, so Mechwarrior 5: Mercenaries is what I’m playing currently.
I love MW5. Its modding scene is so robust that the game is incredibly customizable to be basically whatever type of experience you want. That being said, my mod list is out of date so getting back into it would be a huge chore right now haha
Oooh I got started on that recently and then pulled away by other things, but I was enjoying it a great deal. The campaign is bit… ehhh. But that actual gameplay is a blast. I love the sense of scale (as long as you don’t think too hard about the actual numbers it gives you for the weights of things)
Units of measurement are redefined a thousand years in the future :)
Or not, I dunno. Head Canon. :)
I picked that up on sale a while ago, but have only played a few quick missions. I haven’t played MW since the early 2000s, but did play and love Battletech 2019.
Does the MW5 campaign give you the info dump while you are already in the mech and moving towards the objective like the older ones?
For the overwhelming majority of missions, the info is largely contained in a text briefing when selecting missions. For the story beat missions, though, it’s voice acted stuff pre- and mid- mission.
This community is kind of in the shadow of all the other gaming communities, it doesn’t feel like it has a strong identity to separate it. There’s already plenty of weekly threads elsewhere to discuss what we’re playing and I already feel like I repeat myself between [email protected] and [email protected]. Do we need another one here? But sure.
I’ve been playing through the Ninja Gaiden series lately. Finished Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2 on normal, playing on Xemu and Xenia Canary emulators respectively. Currently playing through Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge from the master collection, though I’m not sure I will finish it.
NG3RE should have the best combat in the series. The fundamentals are better than ever, Ryu is more fluid in his movements than ever and the combo strings are more flexible than ever. It just… I dunno. It doesn’t feel as good, satisfying or just fun. NGB had extremely precise, measured and deliberate combat, albeit slower than the later games. NG2 was an unbalanced mess, but it had a visceral pleasure when it clicked that is simply unparalleled. NG3RE changes the formula a lot, and not always for the better. Trying to play for Steel On Bone counters is what the game wants you to do, but it’s more reactive and less fun than previous games. And the animations aren’t as satisfying as the executions in NG2. NG3RE also has even worse bosses, which is a damn feat considering the series has some real stinkers.
And let’s not even get into the atrocious story, which manages to be maximally bad and lame but without ever crossing over into “so bad it’s good” territory. The Call of Duty or Ghost Recon-esque military special agent framing also ruins the vibe, and the boring and terrible level design makes me miss the wildly varied and interesting locations of NG2.
I really don’t know if I’ll finish it, all I want to do really is go back and play NGB and NG2 again. At least I found FiendBusa’s “Black” mod for it, that makes it a bit better.
What a helpful addition to the discourse!
I just don’t know that the fragmentation is super helpful at this level of users, we have what - 4 medium sized basically interchangeable gaming communities? I am not as committed to community consolidation as some other uses but it still feels like concentrating interaction would be better than spreading it out at this point in time.
So don’t interact with the topic everywhere if you think it is too spread out. I see enough activity here and patient gamers to warrant them being different as they have different focus.
Plus each one is on a different instance. If there was only the one on beehaw I wouldn’t see anything since I blocked that instance.
Yeah I don’t see many posts here so I was wondering if quizzing the community might inspire some new interactions and maybe help develop the identity here. No need to force in weekly things that other subs are doing.
I used to love Ninja Gaiden - what would be the best place to start? NG2 then? Unbalanced but satisfying sounds okay to me.
Sorry if I came off as dismissive, my first paragraph was just me musing on why this community in particular hasn’t taken off.
So here is my opinion on the series: Ninja Gaiden Black is an adventure game with great combat. You have exploration, platforming and even an almost Metroidvania-like hub area you backtrack back and forth through. It’s occasionally almost Zelda-like rather than purely an action game. Playing it on Xemu also offsets one of its flaws - stingy checkpoint placement. Just use (but don’t abuse) save states and don’t worry about it. It runs flawlessly on Xemu without any specific setup, and you can set rendering resolution to like x6 and it will look great.
Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version) feels like the crack cocaine of action games. Or I dunno, freebase Meth maybe. It feels like the best action game ever 50% of the time and the worst action game ever 50% of the time. It’s almost pure action, just one murder hallway after another. The sheer amount of enemies, the aggression of the AI and the speed of the combat gives you adrenaline rushes like nothing else. HOWEVER! The game was rushed to release as the devs chased a bonus payout, and the game is blatantly not playtested and balanced properly. It’s especially apparent in the second half of the game. I developed a sort of love-hate relationship with it: I screamed at it in frustration more often than most games but I also cannot wait to go back.
Setting it up in Xenia Canary was much more fiddly than using Xemu. The game must be hard capped at 60 FPS. You need to tweak a bunch of config settings to minimise the occurrence of an audio bug where sound might cut out until you restart (I can send you my config if you want). If you want to increase rendering resolution by x3 you need to accept some minor graphical glitches (primarily in the first couple of chapters).
Don’t play NG3RE unless you’ve already played the other two and can’t wait for NG4. Otherwise just pick your flavour - more adventure game and better balance or an unbalanced but beautiful mess? I should also note that both games are fairly short, my NGB playthrough was 14h and NG2 was 13h, so it’s not a big commitment to play one after the other.
Huh, probably Black is the one then, I’m a pretty big fan of that style you describe and have actually been hankering for one lately.
Ninja Gaiden 2 sounds like someething everyone needs to experience once too though so maybe I’ll put both on my list. I’m not super excited to fiddle with emulators but it sounds like it’d be worth it.
Yeah that seems about right. For Xemu, you need the BIOS, MCPX and HDD Image Files separately, which can be found here. No further setup or config needed. You can find the ROM at The Vault. Ninja Gaiden 2 ROM is also available there.
I can send you my config file for Xenia if you want to avoid most of the fiddling, but most of it came from YouTube videos and Reddit threads I found when googling “NG2 Xenia”. It ran really well for me in the end. I experienced the audio bug maybe five times, and restarting fixed it every time. The graphical glitch artifacts were somewhat annoying the first handful of chapters, but still worth it for the higher resolution and completely disappeared after that (apart from during loading screens, but who cares about that).
You said you’ve played before so maybe you already have some fundamentals, but watching a tutorial video on YouTube that goes over basic principles can help a lot. The games sort of expect you to rely on certain mechanics that are never explained, and while you can figure it out yourself it’s probably smoother to watch a tutorial. Also just experiment with combos and weapons: NGB felt very well balanced and encounters that seemed impossible at first felt very possible once “figured out”.
Nice thanks for all that info and the links. I’m not sure if I remember how the gameplay worked anymore at all actually so maybe the tutorials are in order too.
Either way I’ll probably hit you up when I inevitably tire of Nightreign. I haven’t even played all the characters yet but I can tell my attention is starting to drift.
Anytime! I love these games and love both talking about them and helping out so just @ me or DM me or whatever works best for you when the time comes.
Far cry 6. It sucks. I love gta style open world with lots of vehicles and weapons. It’s great for that. The missions are all the same. Go here, fetch this. Kill this person. Go back to another person.
Edit: finally finished the game after 45 hours. What a terrible ending.
I enjoyed every Far Cry game up until 6. 6 is just a steaming pile of shit.
I like the gunplay but once you get an armor piercing shotgun everyone just immediately dies. I’m 40 hours in and the game feels like a chore. I’m speeding through the faction missions just so I can see how Giancarlo Esposito dies.
Ubisoft finally engineered the fun out of that franchise too eh?
Yeah :/ another shallow ocean. I like open world games and games that give you lots of freedom. The mechanics of that are all in the game. Gunplay is fun, vehicle driving is meh. Selection of vehicles is kind of meh. Plot is meh. The missions are 50% fetch quests 50% go here and break into 1/3 different environments with enemies and kill everyone there.
I won’t buy another Ubisoft game after this. I got this game 85% off and it feels like I overpaid.
Railroader. Lots of heavily-modded Railroader.
What’s heavily-modded Railroader like? From my experience with other modded games, lots of furries, I’d presume.
Nah, lots of train nerds doing train nerd stuff.
Surprisingly little Thomas fan-mods tho.
Striving for Light. It’s the only real hybrid I have found between an arpg and a roguelite. A bite-sized PoE if you will.
Otherwise, in more or less the same genre, Magicraft (my GOTY 2024) and a tiny bit of Hellclock, tho it has yet to hook me because so far it’s boringly easy - I’m still very early in the game.
Roguelites are gradually becoming my favorite genre - going to have to check Magicraft out. Sounds like it has some of the same elements that I loved in Noita?
It’s top down Noita, or BoI+Noita. I have 1k hours and am still discovering new effects and combinations every run, it’s nuts!
Pro tip: I wanted to milk it for all its got, so after reaching endgame content, I started a new toon and limited myself to 2 wands and no upgrades to life mana, starting stuff like keys or coins. Just “tentacle girl” updates and it’s been really good. I die because of mistakes, not because of balance. Otherwise, you’ll get a bit too strong and steamroll every enemy and boss at some point (100 hours in or so).
I am taking a break from working on my Skyrim mod list to try getting into Baldur’s Gate 3 for a third time.
My first attempt, I picked “tactician” difficulty, didn’t make optimal choices for character build and party composition, and then quit at the end of act 2 when the fights got too hard. Then I tried honour mode, minmaxed everything, was getting by okay but quit in the middle of act two because playing that way was boring.
So now I’m playing at the default difficulty level, just relaxing and having fun like a normal person.
I thought you could switch difficulties out besides honor mode. I did a tactician run with me as wildmage. Shadowbae as cleric, astarion as assassin and laezel as fighter. Didn’t have too tough a time (don’t think I min maxed). Did do every side quest though and also looked up tips for some bosses.
I think I’ll do BG3 after I tire of Nightreign. I started it but it didn’t click the first time for whatever reason. I loved Divinity 2 so I’m sure BG3 will click for me at some point.
How’s the Skyrim modding scene these days? Only news I see is about Bethesda’s meddling in it.
everything in the modding scene seems to be in order
1,759 mods published in the last 28 days on nexus.
Hahah yeah checks out
I recently finished Dragon Age Inquisition, and then started Powerslave: Exhumed.
I never played any of the original versions so it’s a completely new experience for me. Enjoyable so far - it’s an interesting historical link between classic metroidvania and 90s FPS, like a proto-Metroid Prime in some ways.
I do wish they’d added a quick save button to this modern version, though.
Huh I never heard of Powerslave but your description “classic metroidvania and 90s FPS” makes me think it might need to go on my list
Infra. You play as a structural analyst sent in to document damages on infrastructure that was being neglected due to a corrupt governor.
Technically a walking sim, but plenty of puzzles to solve and “mazes” to navigate. The game offers no minimap or objective list. No HUD whatsoever. It’s just you and one action button.
Each area is exquisitely detailed for being a 9-year-old game and visually holds up better than I expected. If you ever wanted to know what it was like to explore abandoned infrastructure, this one’s for you.
INFRA is fantastic!!
Once you’re done, check out the dev’s next game that takes place in the same universe, Obenseuer: https://store.steampowered.com/app/951240/Obenseuer/
It’s one of my favorite games ever.
Huh glad I posted here, never heard of Infra before. Sounds like something I’ve been after for a while. I don’t have a problem with violence in video games but I do wish there were more great games that weren’t based around it.
The concept of Infra sounds really chill. My seldom-gaming partner might even be interested in joining me on the journey.
It’s a great game. The story starts out relatively chill, but as you explore and start to uncover things it gets really intriguing.
The devs are working on another game that takes place in the same universe called Obenseuer. It’s sincerely one of my favorite games. I get absorbed by it while playing because it’s one of the most unique vibes in any game I’ve played. For me, it’s got this melancholic, depressing atmosphere, but is simultaneously funny, quirky, and, somehow, cozy.
I tried it a while back and struggled to get into it. I wondered since if it was just not the right time though bc it looks so much like my kind of game. Might be worth dusting it off again to give it another go.
The biggest struggle I had at first was getting out of video game mode. With no objective trackers and maps being static on walls, it forced me to approach it differently. You have to rely far more on intuition than any other game I’ve played. You also have to pay attention to notes and general signage as it’s your only guide through a large portion of the game. Hopefully it clicks on your second go around. I wish there were more games like it.
DOOM using prboom I started it in Hurt me plenty but quickly had to change to Ultra-Violence because I was thinking “Where’s all the monsters?”, it’s nice to re-play the levels and listen to the good music.
TurtleWoW when I need to relax and do some questing.