What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

I've been playing Horizon Zero Dawn and I absolutely love the immersion into this primitive post apocalyptic world. and you get to be a badass huntress archer. it's brilliant.

I'm deeeep into a Factorio playthrough. This time using the Krastorio2 mod to rebalance some things and add some extra flavor/steps to some items. So far I'm at 117hr for this playthrough (650hr in game total), and I haven't even launched a rocket yet. I've been very much enjoying expanding my base using this rail-grid strategy, and have been revising a lot more than I have in previous attempts. In previous playthroughs I eventually get frustrated with trying to coordinate the logistics once the system reaches a certain point, and I just give up and start slamming things down to get the rocket launched. This time I've built things in this grid, with each square dedicated to a purpose (iron smelting, glass making, munitions, rail parts, etc). And I go back to each square periodically and try to optimize it further based on how things have progressed.

I've learned a lot more about circuits this time around. At the start I had a trains running in a continous loop to pickup at each resource square then drop at a production square, then repeat. After awhile there were way too many trains all trying to que up to the same pickups and it deadlocks the rail signals a lot. So I used some logic circuits to set the train to only leave to pickup resources if one of the resources dropped below X. Which for a lot of the production squares, once their output is saturated, the train will sit idle the majority of the time and not take up space on the connection lines.

The squares are very helpful for breaking up the system into manageable chunks I can problem solve in individually. I'm starting to build a main-bus style system which will be much less logistics driven for a lot of it, but I'm still using the rail squares to divide up areas of specialization. It's been working pretty well so far.

And once I got the Kovarax refinery up and running, nuclear artillery shells have done a fine job keeping the biters away! I hardly even notice them ...

When you lose in chess, you really can't blame anyone but yourself. That is a blessing and a curse, and probably one of the reasons I spent many years away from the game. Blundering a queen away evokes such a primal rage in me, in a way that no game can.

This week reminded me that there's a reason we play chess for more than 1000 years. It's depth is incomparable, I can't expect to pick it up like a regular game. My progress plateaued and I'm not sure where to go from here. I played countless online matches but seem to be repeating similar patterns over and over. My psychological makeup seems to have much greater influence than studying.

I'm still enjoying it, but the idea that I'll ever become an actually strong player seems ludicrous right now. First I thought I could become a 2000 ELO player in ten years. Than, 1500. Now, I have newfound respect for 1000 ELO players. I'd be proud to be one of them one day.

I got really into Stardew Valley again this weekend. I've got half a dozen saves across various in-game years across various devices (I like supporting Concerned Ape, what can I say?) and starting fresh never really gets old. This time my #1 goal was to figure out fishing (notoriously frustrating), try out the challenging beach farm (you can't use sprinklers outside of a very small area), and focus on befriending Linus.

I feel like I've gotten decent at fishing, so mission accomplished there. No sprinklers isn't too bad if you rush upgrading up your watering can. But I still find farming to be the least interesting aspect of the game, so once I'd upgraded my axe/hammer enough to clear out the sprinkler-allowing area, I made that transition. You won't really get rich off of that small area (because sprinklers, lightning rods, and scarecrows take up precious tillable space), so I'm supplementing with selling my fish and mining. Between the rapid tool upgrades and this limited income, I'm pretty broke right now. Once I remember (or give up and google) how to unlock wine-making though I should be rolling in the money.

But for now I'm enjoying the broke bejeweled fishing farmer with a mountain man BFF thing I got going on.

Celeste

I'm collecting all the strawberries and doing the C-sides. I was going to finish chapter 9 before I started on C-sides, but I got stuck on a section that calls for three consecutive wavedashes. I can't actually do wavedashes, so I'd gotten through previous areas using the extended hyperdash, but I can't hit that one consecutively either, with a success rate of about 1 in every 10 attempts.

I've also finished Yakuza 0. I don't have much to say about the game, I enjoyed it, but wasn't really prepared for the literal softcore pornography section of the game that I accidentally stumbled into when doing the cabaret club minigame. I've picked up Yakuza 1 and 2, and will probably play them at some point.

Update: Mr. Oshiro is a prick

I’m through 3/5 of the main campaigns in Wildermyth, and I’ve very much enjoyed it so far. Last run thru was my first on Tragic Hero, and boy the default difficulty lets you get away with a lot 😂.

At some point I started getting absolutely destroyed by Horn Children which are typically this little one hit nothing enemy. Realized they had gotten enough calamity cards to make their dodge like 70% or something, and had to invest in some poison just to be able to take them out before they mobbed my party. Now I have a lot more urgency on the overworld map :).

The game itself is a lot of fun. The tactical battles have just enough depth to keep them fresh, and the procedural world & events are really well done. I had been thinking my next play through would have some mods just to get a few new events in there, but the current campaign (Moth) has been very different from the first three thus far, so we’ll see!

I just downloaded Splitgate this weekend. It's super duper fun. Basically a clone of Halo but with portals. They've got all of the classic wacky game modes (zombies, gun game, etc.). Would definitely recommend it to anyone that like fast-paced FPS action.

Been using Aim Lab to improve my performance in FPSes. I think I can say that it has indeed helped me improve, but, admittedly, not by leaps and bounds. Just by a modest amount. My metrics are steadily improving, though, so let's see how things are in another week or two.

Also, I've been having fun chatting in the Discord server for my favourite game, Kingdom Come: Deliverance . Nice to talk with other enthusiasts.

I have been playing through a seemingly annual GTA run. This year I have gotten sucked into GTA: San Andreas on a fully modded run. The game now runs at 60 FPS and has a bunch of content from other versions restored onto the PC version. I'm still in the first 10 hours of the game and it is still opening up to me. I did complete the paramedic missions ASAP so I could have max health throughout the game. Combine that with buying armor and taking over gang territory has been a piece of cake. I'm trying to go guide-less as much as possible, and now trying to scheme ways to make income in the early game.

I haven't played a lot after my first week with my first ever console due to personal reasons, but I did finish up Ori and the Blind Forest. As I mentioned in last week's thread, I'm not a gamer by any means, so this must have been like the 5th or 6th game I've ever finished. From an overall inexperienced perspective, I really loved the game.

The story was a bit plain, but I find some aspects of it moving. The game literally crashed on me for the first time right at the beginning of the final scene, which was unfortunate but shit happens. Combat was a bit repetitive, but having played the sequel for about an hour, it looks like that has been remedied. Those are the only negatives (if you can even call them that) I can point out. The movement was silky smooth and dynamic, the graphics were amazing despite being a relatively old game now, and the game design didn't dumb things down yet nudged me the right way when it mattered.

I'm looking forward to play and likely finish the sequel this week and then start playing Psychonauts. I also have Hollow Knight in my queue.

I started playing Kena - Bridge of Spirits (PC version). It is the first game from the studio Emberlab and I absolutely love the visuals and story of the game. Just by playing the intro I was in awe of how beautiful everything looks and feels. The diversity in surroundings plus the gameplay is a perfect fit for me. Still have to figure out a lot but my first impression was great and I am excited to dive even further in this new universe.

I started playing through S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat because it was the only one in the series I hadn't played yet. I'm really enjoying it; these games do atmosphere so well, it's no wonder people still talk about them 15 years after release. It's supposedly the most polished of the S.T.AL.K.E.R. games, which is saying almost nothing, but the last game I played through was the original System Shock so CoP has been a breeze so far other than the inconsistent performance and occasional crashes. I don't like its map as much as the one in the previous two games, and I'm particularly irked by the way you need a guide to take you between the major areas of the map instead of just going there yourself, but it gets the job done. I'm at the point where I'm making a group of people to go to Pripyat, which for me that means kind of grinding quests to make strong enough relationships with people for them to agree to go, but I enjoy learning this game's world, so I'm not too bothered by that.

I finally finished the Morrowind main story. I'm setting up an OpenMW profile for Tamriel Rebuilt and Skyrim: Home of the Nords on a new character (Dunmer mage build, I think, but I may scratch it for a Breton, they seem to build better for how I like playing), for more laid back RP/side quest doing. The main story is phenomenal. I like how it ends, and that you have a huge impact on the world (same as Oblivion, honestly). Surprisingly, I only met one of the Tribunal, but it was fun. My first build was a Redguard, which don't work at all for how I play (all warrior skills, no magic), but my Dunmer mage build is fun so far, except for a misunderstanding about hand-to-hand (drains stamina and does damage after stamina=0, so I need to get some spells to help with that).

Oblivion: I'm working on the Dark Brotherhood quest line, and building OP armor sets (did a 100 chameleon chainmail, have a two rings and a necklace for a total of 29 hand to hand). This game has no real system of scarcity, so you can always get more Grand Soul Gems and convert them into Black Soul Gems, and then soul trap bandits, and it's interesting what you can do without glitches or exploits.

The Outer Worlds: Still digging it, I like the RP aspects, and know now to back down from a situation I shouldn't be running into (thanks, FNV).

Antichamber: I've had this game for years, restarted it a few times, and have never beaten it. I don't know how or why, and it's frustrated me for slightly shorter than I've owned it. I'm still determined to do it.

Grinding through XCOM2: Long War on commander difficulty, but save-scumming all the way. I'm probably mid-game by now, with magnetic weapons on most of my guys and girls. It's fun, but the dark events are piling up against me though. Got stuck on a mission with 4 kids just out of recruitment school and very light enemy resistance, and they're having a tough time of it. I just keep reloading and attacking from different angles. I kinda like that about save scumming. I'll get there eventually.

Pre-purchased Diablo II back in April, and now I am playing it! It has been a blast. I especially like their implementation of switching back and forth between the new graphics and old. It is fun to fight a boss/whatever and swap back to old graphics just for a nostalgic moment. Then switch back to the new higher res graphics. Also realized I never finished all five acts, and have been having a blast going through it.

I got nostalgic for the way playing Skyrim for the first time felt, so I picked up The Outer Worlds. So far, so Fallout, but I'm definitely having a good time! Parvati has to be some of the best ace lesbian representation I've ever run across and the dialogue is surprisingly good.