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What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?
What have you been playing lately? Discussion about video games and board games are both welcome. Please don't just make a list of titles, give some thoughts about the game(s) as well.
Yesterday I finished the 13th level of the VR game Tethered. It's like a mini RTS game where you use creatures (called peeps) to do stuff like gather food, wood, ore and stone. You can construct buildings and at night there are monsters that come crawling and try to eat resources (and kill your peeps). The goal is to gather a given quantity of spirit energy to restore the island vitality. Each level is a different island with a different layout. It's fun enough for me to do the 13 levels again, since I gained experience I would do things a little bit differently.
I bought Cyberpunk 2077 when 1.5 released. Started playing it last week. Blow away by the story and the customization possible for the main character thus far. I'm at the start of Act 2. I know the game is controversial but I had no expectation whatsoever and man, I'm having a lot of fun right now.
Last week I also finished the exobiology expedition of No man's sky. I don't think that game needs a description anymore :)
Deep rock galactic, started playing again with my friends after a 2 weeks haitus where we played NMS.
Zelda BOTW, finished the 4 divine beast, and standing at 75 shrines. Still a long way to go.
That's about it. Good week fellow gamers !
Playing Tunic on Game Pass. It's something like a Legend of Zelda game that gives you absolutely no context to how it's played. A lot of the game text is in a cypher language that you have to work to translate and a majority of the unlocks are pages the game manual, written mostly in this cypher text, so it's part Zelda game, part puzzle box, and something of a throwback to the more esoteric games of yore.
Elden Ring: I'm falling off. I realized I need more vigor and am grinding for at least 30 vigor (I've got 23 dex, 18 str, and couldn't take hits from any bosses). I don't know how to explore, which sounds dumb as hell, but I grew up playing no open world games, and still think linearly (any tips on breaking out of this box?). I've also got a cheeky Wretch character I'm trying to get Vigor to 30 on before I do anything else with. I feel I may be overleveled for Limgrave, but I think I'm just bad enough at the game for it to balance out. I don't even want to finish the last rush to Godrick until I hit that 30 VIG level, though.
Morrowind/OpenMW: To keep the RPG mindset up I'm working on my Dunmer mage character, and it's a nice change of pace from Elden Ring. I also bought a slave, wanted to get her away from Tel-Aruhn to release her and... she died to a slaughterfish after falling off the dock, so that's 1,000 gold fed to the fishes. I'm also trying to actually get into the sandbox mindset more (see my gripe about my play style in Elden Ring), so I'm trying to not just run quest lines. I'm actually looking at doing some Alchemy grinding, because I really need to be able to make Restore Magicka potions for this character to be viable.
Astroneer: They just got their Xenobiology update out, which I found out about after starting a new save. It has you picking up "galastropods," cute space snails on all 7 different planets, each with a different power. They also shifted to sort of a No Man's Sky linear tutorial/story mode that guides you through, and even streamlines the experience a bit: I got to Desolo with a buggy last night, for example, because you get items for completing quests. I'm amazed that they're still coming up with ideas to keep the game fresh.
Stardew Valley: My Joja run is coming along nicely. I have the greenhouse, I'm slowly starting to get Ancient Fruit, and I've got a shed up for making wine (just need the barrels). The goal is to have it set up so I can go directly into Ancient Fruit wine and not have to worry about farming anymore. I'm also working on my seasonal forage seed strategy, which I'm behind on because I didn't unlock Winter seeds until Winter Year 1.
I think I can help you with Elden Ring with minimal spoilers. I'm about 90 hours in with a Lv 110 character and I haven't had much trouble this game, and most of that was with 20 VIG. I only got up to 30 recently. I'm not some kind of pro at Soulsborne games either, I'm just someone who really loved exploring this world.
Would you be willing to share a screenshot of your map so far? I think I can give you some good hints that way, this game rewards exploration to a degree unlike any other one I've played. I don't think your lack of open world game experience is causing that sentiment for you, this game really does take exploration to a whole other level. Otherwise the single most useful tip I can give blindly is: upgrade your preferred weapons. Weapon upgrades are where most of the damage increase comes from. General rule of thumb is that if you ever find yourself doing minimal damage against enemies, it means you need to upgrade your weapon for the area.
I've spent 6 hours going around an area, only to come back later and realize I missed so many things that add up to another 6 hours of exploration. And then, more than not, I come back and find yet more! And these are things that have been there the entire time. This game is extremely dense as far as open world games go.
Here's my map
I'm focusing on Vigor and weapons upgrades (Uchigatana + bow mostly, might put some work into Bloodhound's Fang) for now, because I saw a couple of videos explaining that those are going to be the most important improvements early on. I'm finding some nice rune grinding spots, which is pretty nice.
I think the issue is I'm used to searching for obvious entrances strewn throughout the map. There are some spots I need to find again, such as a dungeon that had so much more than I thought it did. I may also be overthinking things slightly, and should just start running along cliffs, etc, to find caves.
It's not 100% effective, but pretty much any path you can follow through the game is likely to lead you to something interesting. Cliffs (both top and bottom) are good for that, as are roads and streams.
I saw one of them and put it together, but obviously can't just jump down a cliff and expect to survive the fall, but I see a bunch of those statues, and will go for more caves.
Here are three spots to poke around in, ranked in order of probable approach if you're finding enemies or bosses in some of your currently explored areas in Caelid a bit tough. #2 also includes more of that eastern shore of Liurnia. There's quite a lot you will discover poking into the borders of your map in in these spots, and feel free to abandon one to try another at any point.
The Bloodhound Fang has been my weapon of choice the entire time, I like big damage swings and taking only a few hits. But I also have the benefit of having more heals available than you might at this point which is what allowed me to keep my VIG so low. Keep an eye out for churches in the world, they're always accessible and relatively safe and provide you either a grace spot or other key items.
It's also worth upping Endurance if it's low (get that to 15 if it's not, 20 if that's not enough) or keeping an eye out for Talismans that raise your equipment load. This will help you equip better armour that will allow you to survive some big hits. They make small differences but often it's the amount that will save you. I can't count the number of times I've come out of a boss swing combo with a sliver of health so slim, I can't even see it. But I'm still alive so I can heal up immediately and proceed.
One thing I've also found immensely useful is quantity of summons (as opposed to one good one, sometimes three okay ones is better). It splits any boss's attention allowing you to get in some big hits, and more points of attack means that the invisible stagger gauge will keep from decaying. This allows you to create distance to heal, choose your angle of attack, and swoop in with any big damage or stat-inducing attacks you may have.
Thanks for the suggestion. I want to do some material hunting. I also had to look up Glovewort, which is in dungeons and catacombs, so that's more exploration to do. I'll also up my Endurance a bit, it's at like 13, and i just put my last level up into one more VIG.
You can also find a lot of it in the overworld, look for cemeteries or where skeletons spawn. They're fairly easy to spot, they look like single bright white lilies. Those statues that point the way that @an_angry_tiger mentioned will help find catacombs as well.
Caves with smithing materials (weapon upgrades matter a lot, sometimes more than levels) show up on the map as a slightly-orange-y-brown-y blob, try to look for those on the map (there's one or two in limgrave and weeping peninsula, a few in liurnia. Good for XP and smithing materials.
Catacombs and graves don't have an easy tell on the map, but there's a few statues of finger crones strewn about that will point you towards them (and show up on your map after discovering them). Also great for XP and some ash summons (and material for levelling ash summons, have you been doing that?), along with being fun to do.
As MimicSquid said, a lot of exploration is just kind of checking different paths, wandering around, trying to figure out what that empty space is for. If there's something on the map that kinda looks like some kind of structure, it probably is, and probably has something good there.
It looks like you've explored a bit of Liurnia east (but not all of it) and some of the lake. There's also a bunch of stuff in Liurnia west (there's a few ramps up to the land in the lake) that's worth a look but may be harder for you right now.
If you've been able to beat Margit, you can probably beat Godrick, I found Margit harder than Godrick at that point. Once Godrick's done, you may be able to make your way through Raya Lucaria, and doing that will help you level along the way.
So, give Godrick a few tries, might be easier than you think, and would give a ton of souls. Otherwise for exploration, just try and find interesting features on the map, try and poke around what's there, try all different branching paths of things like roads and ramps, see what's out there, enjoy the process of riding around the environment and embracing the landscape.
I may beeline Godrick, as the fight looks pretty straightforward. I should be able to take a few more hits getting to him (those giants were killing me in one or two swings on the first stretch of bridge).
Just unlocked that feature, but haven't done any levelling. I'll also be considering @MimicSquid's advice.
Update: I've got my Uchi at +5, which actually did alright on my "good" Godrick run (1/4 health with un-upgraded wolves, but got stun-locked on phase 2). I'm a little too caffeinated to try right now (I need to be completely level-headed to play), but I feel pretty good about my odds.
I started playing Hob Definitive Edition on my switch. I've had it for a while--must have got it on sale at some point, but never even loaded it up until last week. I'm having a lot of fun. It's very impressive and satisfying to finally unlock a trigger that causes the entire map to shift, break apart, and recombine into new areas to explore, and the combat is challenging enough that I still sometimes die when I encounter a new kind of enemy, but it doesn't feel punishing in any way since you always respawn fairly close by and it seems like the tougher enemies never respawn once you get'em. Perfect balance of puzzles, exploration, and difficulty for a casual gamer like me.
I started playing Hyperbolica with a VR headset (VR is not required to play). It is mindbending, and I mean that absolutely literally. There are two main points about VR that can be nausea inducing about this game. The first is just that when you move smoothly in VR, but don't move your feet, that can evoke weird feelings. Also, the game does not feature (so far anyways) any Euclidean maps that you move across, so when you become acclimatized to moving in VR, there's a secondary lightheadedness caused by the fact that moving in hyperbolic (or spherical) space is super weird. Here's a bit about hyperbolic space from Numberphile.
To be clear, when I talk about how the game induces some of these feelings, I see that as an absolute plus, because it is introducing you, visually, to hyperbolic space and our senses just aren't prepared for that.
Near the beginning there is a "short" path on a map that goes in a circle, and it has waaaaaay more than 360 degrees in it - you walk for a bit, then turn 90 degrees to the right, then you walk and then turn 90 degrees, then walk + 90, walk + 90, then you go for a bit and walk + 90 degree turn... and you're still only a small part of the way around the path, still mostly going straight.
If you are interested in maths, I definitely recommend picking this up. It's delightfully weird. Thus far it has been a lot of fun from a maths point of view, though the gameplay is a bit basic, and I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing. I have explored what is likely a very small section of a hyperbolic map, and transitioned to a spherical map that has some of the opposite mathematical properties of the hyperbolic one. Jumping is smooth, turning is a bit chopping. Overall, I will play this quite a bit, but not for longer than about 30 minutes at a time I think, because of dizziness.
Edit: @archevel you may be interested in this. It's not an in-depth review, just impressions.
I'm a few weeks into my first playthrough of Baldur's Gate EE. It's fun, but it's overwhelming... in a fun kind of way.
My Eve Online activity had largely fallen off after the end of the last major war. With all the various changes to everything, like developer-induced economic scarcity and massive changes to mining mechanics, I haven't found the energy to relearn things. I can't even mine anymore because most of my fittings (equips on my ships) probably don't even make sense anymore. But for some reason, I've been back in it. Helps that an IRL friend also got back in. We've been participating in the latest 2v2 basic frigate proving grounds. We usually do large fleets, so doing super small scale PVP is very different. But our W/L is like 3:4. Better than we expected.
For anyone who's ever been interested in Eve, the usual question is, "It's such an established game and community; is it even worth joining this late?" And the answer is always a resounding YES. I promise it's more than a spreadsheet simulator. Though you will eventually make some spreadsheets.
But make sure to join a solid group right off the bat. Pandemic Horde, TEST, BRAVE, Goonswarm, Eve University (if they're still around), etc. There is nothing worse than starting the game and being so alone with no clue what to do. Even a small high-sec group that's active, friendly, and willing to teach you is better than nothing (and in sometimes even better than the big groups like those I listed).
Got back into Triangle Strategy after taking a like a week off. I think I'm nearing the end of my first playthrough. I'm debating if I want to do second so I can see other storylines/endings.
Picked-up Core Keeper. Really haven't played much of it. It's kinda like Terraria, Starbound, and Minecraft. Any of those kinda survival games. Plus maybe even a bit of Stardew Valley. It seems fun, but having played a couple hours, it doesn't seem vastly different from any of those. Idk. I kinda went in "blind," really only buying it because it looked nice. I'll try to play more and report back next week.