What are you playing this weekend (March 2024)?

Forgot I was doing these.

Guido and Elly May are unavailable this weekend, so I'll be playing a mix of games:

Enshrouded: The best survival game in years.
Astonishing Baseball Manager: Free sports management game that I just finished downloading. Looks like it has a lot of depth. Not sure why it's free.
Disco Simulator: Design and run a nightclub(s)
House Flipper 2: You know what this is, I'm sure.
Garden Life, Simulator: It's a collect-them-all type game with genetic variants and making a garden.

And I'm going to work on my college football game a bit and do some work in Blender, but apparently everyone else is now using AI to make models, and I'm considering switching to that. A pylon is a pylon, a desk is a desk. Etc.
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Humankind

Interested to hear your comparison to Civ if you have time when done :) Negative reviews made me take HK off my wishlist.

Far Cry 5

I've been on a Far Cry 5 replay last couple of weeks. This time without buddies—apart from quick use to get perk points for their 5-10 kills, and one mission where Addie had to come along—with the main objective of capturing each outpost undetected. Minor objectives of improving my wingsuit and chute control, and also exploring places I haven't been before.

Buddies [For Hire]

Getting a lot more grief from wildlife, without my buddies to warn, engage or scare off. Same with baddies of course, no one else to take some of their fire. Both of which meant had to buff Health much sooner than in previous runs. Boars are a PITA, they travel in 4s!

I'm enjoying it tho, buddy chatter gets old after a while, and I don't miss them getting underfoot too often or changing which KB button they're assigned to when you have 2 active—latter seems to happen with every Fast Travel.

Undetected

Undetected without Boomer to send in and tag everyone has been quite different too, needs a lot more scouting before getting stuck in. I've also had to use explosives much more—almost never used 'em before, as felt OP—to protect my flanks. More luring and care with location of zapping baddies—basically out of sight of others, and hiding some bodies.

It sucks there's no Outpost Master like FC4 has, so I can't retry an outpost I captured but got detected—there were a couple early on while adapting tactics, and before I realized I should get myself killed when detected so I'd get another shot. I also missed the 'Undetected' screenshot once, dang thing only lasts 2-3 seconds!

Exploring

Found lots of spots I hadn't seen in previous plays—there are a lot of places not IDed on the map or part of a mission or quest. Even big places like the Eden's Gate Outreach Center, or a base jump on the southern edge.

As always, I minimize driving, which makes all the difference—on foot you get to enjoy the world and be part of whatever's going on locally, like the couple dancing while their buddy plays guitar and sings for them.

Jewel Match - Snowscapes

Very nice Match 3 I've also been playing for weeks—at level 90 of 100 now. I play in Limited Moves mode which is more interesting for me—no rush, can leave or Alt-Tab anytime—altho when I replay it must be on Hard, Normal is too easy as I end up with loads of moves left over even without using the powerups optimally.

There are 2-4 screens per level, and you often have to release a key on one screen to access another. Play requires a lot of constructing 'super' pieces so you can target other blocked pieces. Later levels can take 30 minutes, so it's one or two per session.

Others

Picross Touch and Pohtzee cruising along as 5-10 min fillers.

Command and Conquer Renegade

Got the C&C Ultimate [17 games] on Steam recently for <$7, since I already had 4 of them there, and decided to try the only FPS in the franchise—I played it thru twice I think back in the day, certainly a lot less than the RTS titles. It was decent back then, fun for me mostly because of its setting in the C&C universe, and got ~75% ratings.

Um… did the first couple of missions, may do another over the weekend—or may not. Just doesn't compare to either of the 2 classics which came out 2 years later, Far Cry and Half Life 2. While I found a solution to the cursor going AWOL, the controls are still too janky for me and the gameplay is very much lacking any interesting tactical or strategic elements. Basically, go there, on this path, zap that.
 
Assassins creed odyssey is taking up most of my time. With the whole of greece mapped, i can not proceed and complete the main story content. Level 68 and still going strong. I can sod travelling by foot, i can now warp anywhere i need to go.

The other games taking my time? Doom 2 evilternity 2 is keeping me entertained, love the map design and some clever programming. in one map they've built a lights out game, a sliding puzzle game and some sort of radio guided explosive barrel game. Soundtrack is awesome and i'm listening it on youtube.

Away from the pc i'm playing shin megami tensei iv - slow going as i grind for levels and fusing some super demons where possible.
 
I found the base Humankind game for under £10 so playing that and Last Epoch
Damn curious to hear your impressions. I've been wanting to pick it up for ages now, as I lived Endless Legend, but just keep seeing bad things about Humankind. Though, I suppose I'm really not ready for another 4x right now.

I've finally given up and just started properly playing Advance Wars: Dual Strike. Been kind of putting it off for a week or so now, after finishing the last game, thinking I shouldn't just keep playing the same series, but I've now acquiesced. I realized it's what I want to play right now, so, I'm jumping in.

Been also playing a good amount of Lies of P, I'm now almost 16 hours in. It took about 6-7 hours for the game to click for me, but now I'm really enjoying it, possibly more so than Elden Ring, which I had been playing previously. What's kind of funny is that it's kind of become the "family game", my 6 and 4 year old, as well as my wife, love watching it and keep asking me to play more. I'd think the game would freak the kids out, but they're having fun and get excited whenever I defeat a hard enemy. The only real problem with this is that I now can't play the game on my own, because they'll know if I've progressed beyond our last session.

This weekend I also started Dragons Dogma, having owned it since like 2017 or so. I've only played about an hour, but it seems pretty neat so far, though I'm questioning my character choice as the bow guy. Bows don't seem to do as much damage as my melee weapons and I usually prefer to be a Mage in these types of games, so I'm wondering if I should restart.
 
I’m currently lacking the time to try out new games that may capture me for too long… So my focus lies on replaying some of the shorter yet enjoyable games from my library.

This weekend, I‘ve replayed Orwell: Ignorance is Strength. It is a game based on a lot of reading. You are an „investigator“ working for the gorvernmental surveillance agency of „The Nation“ called Orwell.
Like in the first game of Orwell, you are confronted with a threat to The Nation and to avert it, you have to find all necessary information from webpages and hack into peoples profiles (even medical records) and also their phones and computers to find proof of their guilt.
It is scary, how fast one gets used to the power of this Orwell tool and how it soon gets normal, to deliver the people‘s most intime secrets on a silver tablet to your boss.

Even though the game is now rather „old“ for its kind, I have to say it aged rather well. The topic and message of the game are (unfortunately) still relevant nowadays and I like that you get forced to question your own decisions and your moral throughout the game.
 
Balatro and Armored Core 6 still. Working through a lot of the mid tier and above difficulties on Balatro, still have 2 decks left to unlock. The RNG aspect seems to be getting more obvious as the difficulty goes up, or Im just making bad decisions. On the last stretch of AC I think and the games picking up again, couple of great boss battles and a different type of level design as you head underground into the depths, fun game.
 
Humankind

I picked this up as it was cheap and I'm off work with a broken arm. So 4x games that can be played with just a mouse are good.

Cities
These are different from Civ 6 as you form Outposts which you transform into Cities or if adjacent can be added to an existing city. This is good if an area has Resources you want but wouldn't be a natural spot for a city.

Later on you can also attach a city to another.

Everything costs Influence and the more cities and outposts you have the larger the cost. Also you have a city limit and going over it gives you certain penalties.

Eras
The main interesting thing about Humankind is Era's. You advance through these by earning stars for different achievement's.

Every time you do this you can either keep your existing Civ or change to another one.
Each has a special unit, building and various other benefits.

Setup
As most other 4x games you can jump straight in or have a lot of control over the game. Map options including New World, temperature, number of continents are all there.
You can also set the speed of game (average number of turns), winning conditions as most other 4x.

Graphics
Ona 1440p monitor with a 6700XT the game actually looks very pretty.

Overall
I'm enjoying it.
70% (base game only)
 
Happy Easter everyone!

Since it is a long weekend, I decided to have a look into a game which is sitting in my library unplayed for quite some time now: The Stanley Parable Ultra Deluxe
I already knew what would await me because I have seen some streams about the game before… but it still got me curious about all those hidden paths and treats that the streamers haven‘t explored.
I still can‘t believe how many decisions can be made throughout the game that give you so many different contents and gameplay. Even after trying to go systematically through the game’s possibilities, I‘m convinced that theres still at least one or two „endings“ which I haven‘t found. And thats what I love about this game. :D It manages to surprise you even when you prepared yourself not to be surprised.

My favourite surprise was this whole conversation you can get with the „person“ who adjusts the game settings before starting a game. If you restart your game several times, this person becomes slowly like a new narrator and in the end, it treats you with a stylish new menu screen and your very own Stanley Parable title!


I thought about this just now, but the game is in its own way a giant Easter Egg Hunt. So it was actually a very fitting time to try the game out. :p
 
I'm out of town, but if I make it home today, I'm going to play some more Disco Simulator. It's pretty standard tycoon fare. It has one really annoying feature, though. Each day after you close, you get a reputation score based on how well you did that day. If your reputation improves, then more people come to your Disco. This happens every day until there are so many people coming to your clib that you cant take care of them and then your reputation starts to fall and your number of guests start to drop. Basically you yo-yo up and down forever.
 
Mar 28, 2024
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I currently find myself in one of those gamer moments where one is just bouncing around different games for either awaiting a game's release or for no arbitrary reason. I guess I'm somewhere in the middle of that scale.

The Sinking City - Just beat it yesterday with 100% achievement completion. It was one of those many games that's been sitting in my library without getting played for a while. I'd only recommend it to a Lovecraftian fan, honestly. From a horror detective game standpoint, there's better ones out there. Well, there's also better Lovecraftian ones, too, but it wasn't bad.

Subnautica - Also one that's been collecting cyber dust, but at least I got around to it... six years later. This genre is one of my favorites. Some out there can often feel like "just another survival/craft", but I find Subnautica's way refreshing. Underwater bases. Who the would say no to that? I guess if someone's the complete opposite of a thalassophile.

Transistor - Almost ten years later since I acquired it but it finally has its moment. OST is fantastic, a good soundtrack is something I genuinely look for in most video games. The unique combat is what really makes this game vastly different from most. It's one of those, sounds weird and unapplicable on paper but 100% works when applied. Action combat meets turn based? Sign me up.

Age of Empires 2 HD - This game. This game is not one of those seated on the beach of the Steam library field. This is one that I always circle back to. Whether I'm in between games, waiting on a game's release, don't know what I feel like playing but must satisfy my passion for gaming, or if I'm just feeling low and want to distract myself. AoE II. Sitting at 738 hours, which really isn't a lot, but it's just one of the best RTS games out there. The game has 294 achievements to be had and I'm only at 148. I'll get them all eventually. סּ_סּ

I've amassed a substantial amount of games, and some are untouched... but they're there. I'll get to them. I enjoy almost every genre and I like options.

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Reminds me of Inscryption, pretty dark, I like it!
It's hard to tell anything from the trailer. Looks kind of like a Saw (horror movie) sort of situation. What I really want to know is how you play Russian roulette with that shotgun. It's either loaded or it isn't. If it's loaded, you're dead. I'm wishlisting it just to go back and see what people say about it after release. It's in the section with the most wishlisted games, so there has to be something interesting to it.

It might be free since the store page says it takes about 20 minutes.

Never mind. I just read the FAQ and it isn't going to be free.
 
It's hard to tell anything from the trailer. Looks kind of like a Saw (horror movie) sort of situation. What I really want to know is how you play Russian roulette with that shotgun. It's either loaded or it isn't. If it's loaded, you're dead. I'm wishlisting it just to go back and see what people say about it after release. It's in the section with the most wishlisted games, so there has to be something interesting to it.

It might be free since the store page says it takes about 20 minutes.

Never mind. I just read the FAQ and it isn't going to be free.
Either the cartridges have got shot in them or theyre empty maybe?

No idea. Kind of like the style but wont be expecting goty or anything.
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Buckshot Roulette

"Mindblowing Gameplay"
Thanks dev, saved me some typing :rolleyes:

UARD0l2.png


Dating Sim… why didn't you lead with that, I'd have been on board straight away!

Thank goodness for Steam tags, eh?

wont be expecting goty

GOT5min maybe?

ETA: maybe you pick from 1 of 6 shotguns, of which 1 is loaded; next person picks from remaining 5, etc.
 
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