Weekly "What are you playing" Thread || Week of July 9th
Hey all!
Figured we’d try something like this. Let me know what you all think, and if you have any feedback on what you would like a weekly thread like this to look like. Thanks
What are you all playing? Anything you got from the steam sale you’re enjoying?
I recently joined a Survival multiplayer server on Minecraft for the first time and I am having so much fun. The community around it is so positive I really look forward to hopping on every day haha
Pokemon Violet. I’m trying to complete the Pokedex as much as I can, as I try to ignore the blatant perfomance problems of the game 😅 But I really like the game and its open world nature.
It’s so irritating that S/V could have been the definitive Pokemon experience but it ended up being what it was. I guess I can’t really blame them for not putting the effort. I mean why should they when everyone bought it anyway (I did too, I’m part of the problem)
I guess for me there was so much fun to be had grinding out an optimized team by breeding and training them up, and the new games sort of trivialized all of that. Totally understand why, but it took a lot out of it for me.
The open world in them is nice initially, but imo they failed to make exploration rewarding enough, so really it’s like… What’s the point.
I still like catching 'em all but it even seems like they’ve de-emphasized that.
Sorry to rant just an old Pokemon fan who can’t really move on.
I’m paying through Skyrim for the first time. I had tried it once before as a teen but didn’t really know what I was doing and gave up… Now I’ve got it loaded up with mods and am thoroughly enjoying myself!
I’ve been working my way through Cross Code in the evenings after I get back home, and it’s as excellent as everyone says it is! I keep trying to decide what other games it reminds me of the most, and surprisingly I think I’m starting to settle on Legend of Zelda (the older ones, not BotW/TotK).
The way it gates progress, the level & dungeon design, etc just really seems to be a part of that tradition. The moment to moment gameplay is pretty different though, and pretty unique at that!
Really though it’s just been a nice escape in the evenings. It’s challenging enough that sometimes I decide to leave a tough fight or puzzle to pick up the next night, but it’s not punishingly hard and I feel like it respects my time.
Crosscode is great, the animations are so buttery smooth, and the character portraits are super expressive. It’s one of those games that feels really fun and rewarding to explore and secret hunt.
Only thing that put me off was trying to suss out the jumps and platform height in some areas, because it is shockingly vertical for a top-down game.
Yeah that certainly took a little getting used to! I think can pretty much read the heights of everything now, but there was definitely a little while when I was accidentally jumping into the sides of ledges that were actually higher up than me!
It takes awhile for Path of Exile to truly click. I think it’s the best ARPG ever made, but the initial learning curve is pretty steep. Things really open up in the endgame. And we have Path of Exile 2 right around the corner which is awesome.
So once you complete the campaign you will begin maps. There are 3 tiers of maps, you have white, then yellow, then red. I consider mapping to be the endgame.
If this is your first build, the endgame will be rather punishing and you might not make it very far. It took me until my third character roughly before I was able to successfully push into red maps and beyond. There are special bosses to hunt down, and all the side content like Heist and Delve are very rewarding and fun.
Additionally you get another passive tree that allows you to customize your mapping experience however you want. Zizaran has a really nice video going over the endgame. It’s quite long, but very helpful. youtu.be/uf4wnvkS-mI
That’s exactly why I stopped playing that. I realized it was addictive rather than fun, and I could no longer stomach the business model based on annoying the player into paying (by deliberately making inventory management a living hell and then selling stash tabs to alleviate the problem).
I’ve been playing through Powerwash Simulator on Gamepass recently, among other things. The game has just enough going on to keep you engaged while also being super zen (until you’re trying to find those last 6 things that are only 99% clean agggghhhhhhh). Progress goes at what seems like the perfect rate, you’re never spending long cleaning an individual item, yet there’s so much to clean that you get a pretty good sense of accomplishment from finally finishing a map.
It’s pretty good for playing in the background too during useless wfh meetings while being able to stay fairly attentive
Honestly it’s ADHD heroin. Every little ‘ding’ you get when you finish an item is a dopamine hit, and some jobs feel overwhelming at first but as you get started and work your way up structures, you start making a plan to hash out certain parts and go from bit to bit until suddenly, it’s all clean.
Just make sure to turn down the water noise, because it’s definitely hard to hear anything over PSHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
I liked it, it’s certainly an improvement on the first game, but I do kind of miss the snark the first game had that set it apart from other adventure platformers. The characters, especially Raz, seem a lot less, I don’t know, jaded, cynical? I get that they probably had to tone it down a little bit because there was certainly some crap they got past the radar in the first game that probably wouldn’t fly today and they wanted to appeal to a wider (and younger) audience, but it almost makes the returning characters feel less well-rounded than they were. It’s a weird juxtaposition, but I guess some tonal shift is to be expected over 14 years.
Getting pretty deep into FF16, really enjoying it still, the combat seems to be opening up which is making it more fun, will try and do all the side quests before the end, but will see how it goes.
If On A Winter’s Night, Four Travelers was a beautiful masterpiece which I just finished. If you enjoy pixel art and pensive point and click narratives then you should check it out!
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