What have you been playing this week? Do you think others might like it?
After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I’d never really given it a proper try before, but it’s been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that’s been fun so far. Just enjoying the “wander around and build stuff” atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.
You might like Satisfactory. They added a peaceful mode recently and the game is heckin’ beautiful after the last update. Sometimes I’ll just stop playing the game and look at things now.
I’m playing Grim Dawn because i’m not a big fan of always-on in Diablo 4. So i’ve decided to give Grim Dawn a try and damn, i’m really loving it.
It’s a great game, I’ve been recommending people spend their money on it over D4, for the same price they could get all the Grim Dawn dlcs and have a stack more content in my mind (-:
I just fired up a GD game with a friend last weekend. I forgot how to play since it’s been so long.
Necro/Occultist all day long. BoneZone and the boys causing havoc all around.
I’ve been playing Prey. It runs great on Steam Deck and is a lot of fun overall. That and No Man’s Sky are my games of the summer so far
Finally getting into Outer Wilds, and it’s fantastic. Truly one of the better single player experiences I’ve ever played.
Probably my favorite game of the last 10 years or so. Enjoy!
Factorio. The simplistic art style and easy to grasp gameplay lures you in. But then after a while you get sucked in and end up learning way more about conveyor belts and liquid fuel processing than you ever wanted to learn.
If you are interested in similar games you should check out Satisfactory, I’ve heard it’s similar but 3D with bounce pads and trains. Also a little lizard doggy.
Can confirm. It is very similar, but with some differences apart from just 3D graphics:
- More focus on immersion - gorgeous maps, emotes, tons of style, cool animations
- Enjoyable movement - bounce bads, sliding, jumping, paragliding, jetpack, vacuum tube rides, cars
- Verticality - hills, cliffs, and mountains to take into account when building, as well as able to organize production lines on top of each other
- Smaller scope of production - the amount of machines and produced items in a Factorio Megafactory are unattainable. Some due to it being infeasible to optimize the way a 2D game can, and some because the immersive 3D view constrains what you can see and build at one time.
- Hand-crafted world that encourages and rewards exploration - as opposed to Factorio’s procedurally generated world
- Slower pace - no enemy waves, and infinite resource nodes means you can expand at your own pace without being pushed by a need to get more coal, or suppress enemy bases
- Smaller mods - Factorio has some insane total conversion mods that are not feasible to make without the excellent mod portal and the fact that 2D graphics lessen the work needed for modders.
I think both games are amazingly fun masterpieces, though Factorio is the game I’ve spent the most time in by far.
I am finally playing Hades. I don’t like rogue-likes, which is why I put it off for so long, but I’m deeply enjoying playing on God Mode.
I’m always poking around in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I’m playing Sons of the Forest with some friends every week.
Final Fantasy XIV. As a decade+ WoW player, its really nice to find such a nice player base. I’m just hitting level 54 ( so between the base game A Realm Reborn and on my way into the first expansion ) and I’ve experience absolutely 0 toxicity.
A factory game called shapez.
Shapez is great! I love the minimalistic approach to a factory game. I finished the main levels a while ago, but I still want to get around to
minor late game spoiler
using all the circuits to build a factory to automatically make just about anything for the later levels
Shapez rocks! Excited for the sequel too, dev updates have been looking great.
I’ve started playing Deep Rock Galactic, and I’ve been loving it, even just playing a few solo missions to get a feel for it. I’m going to try to get my wife into it, since we’ve been looking for some more games to play together.
Outside of that, I’ve been playing Tears of The Kingdom and that’s been fantastic. Great follow up to one of my favorite games. And then mixing in some Overwatch as well which, despite its problems, is still pretty fun to play with some friends.
Deep Rock Galactic is such a gem that I can always come back to! I hope you two have a lotta fun with it. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on right now, with the lithophage outbreak, and a couple really tough enemies.
Tears of the kingdom - little late to the party but it’s a fun game.
remember to not update the software and lock it to whatever version you initially have. It’s gonna be very hard to amass resources if you aren’t planning to use dup exploits or play it for a very long time. (preferably pre 1.1.2)
I don’t know about all that, I’ve put maybe about 50 hours into it with no dupes and I find that I almost always have pretty good amounts of most things. Sure, you CAN cheat yourself a gorillion zonaite and get max batteries right at the beginning of the game, or infinite of the best weapon fuse materials, but… why? They’re not really that hard to come across and you’re robbing yourself of one of the key reasons to even explore the world in the first place.
I don’t know how far you did in terms of BotW, but the way it works burn me out(upgrading gears and inventory slots) so this time around I just decide to dupe stuff. It make the work feel a lot more like a good play ground for exploration compare to really constraint weird grind fest. Let’s use your zonite example as material source.
- can you play without farming zonaite and not even upgrade your base battery? Yes, in my early hours without dupe knowledge I managed to unlock all skytower and defeat some harder area mob that defends tower without using anything duped.(I basically started looking for duping because of the reason coming up next.)
- can you finish the game wihtout zonaite gathering? I believe so, it’s not even used if you are not using auto build in the over world.
- max battery requires 4500 charges, while realistically without too complex builds that use energy draining components too much, just 4~5 batteries upgraded should cover a lot of usage. BUT, even that lowers the freedom when you are on a quest to explore “fast”. 4~5 batteries just requires about 1/3 of total amount so about 200~300ish large zonaite. And they give you 1 for quest reward or from chests.
- zonaite charges(the one that fill battery and gives you a bit of red charge even mid using your thing) and auto builds are the supposed zonaite burner. In terms of game design, they want this resource to dump into things that enable you do do something fun or interesting. charges and construct parts are the main thing to exchange capsules. And this is what breaks it for me once I realized how much work I need to do to start feeling freedom building shits and put them to work. If you play it like BotW, it just feels like a side thing that’s fun when you have it. But I don’t want to play it like BotW, I want to have the freedom to build stuff and use them as I like. Which needs a lot of capsules and a lot of zonaites for autobuilds(when the parts are from memory instead of capsules. )
- since you can’t use auto build or capsules in shrines, so getting lots of these dups doesn’t break the puzzle. Can you like ride fan-attached machines all the way to destination temples/area without exploring? I guess you can, I don’t know since I didn’t do that. For my first 2 temples, I still follow quest lines etc.
But it made my korok shipping SO MUCH FUN compare to without duping those charges/autobuild parts. Like it literally changes the boring and repetitive quests(like holding the sign in place ones) into a fun experiment platforms. Duping the parts also make fusing a lot less “punishing” as some of the better parts are required to upgrade as well. I don’t have to “conserve” just go whacking and don’t get too annoyed like BotW when weapons break. (as most of the damage comes from fusing, not the weapon states.)
Note, I haven’t even build homes etc to dup weapons/bows/shields, and it just unlocks the game so much without the gathering grind. (so the old blood moon weapon/material gather runs is no longer needed.) Like, yeah, I really don’t have that much free time to dedicate to one game, so if I have the option to by pass any grind mechanics that also doesn’t “break” the game, I am gonna just do it.
I have been really into Stellaris lately, The new patch did breathe some fresh air into the game for me.
I’m right there with you, to a borderline unhealthy degree. I heard the advisor for my current empire in a dream the other day.
I don’t think that’s borderline anymore…
I’m loving Diablo 4 so I’ve been grinding that out, currently on World Tier 3 with my sorcerer and having a blast. Also playing Destiny 2 at the weekly reset for the new story updates.
This guy grinds
Nice! I was going to do something else tonight, but you reminded me I need to give Diablo 4 a try.
The new Season of Deep Rock Galactic. I don’t really like this seasons weapon frameworks, but there’s still some cool cosmetics to unlock. Like a plague doctor mask with a fancy hat. :3
_*shpelling_
Rock and stone!
I’ll be continuing to grind a little bit in Diablo 4 (and maybe hitting up D3 to finish some season challenges). The Division 2 also looks to have a new update, so I’ll give that a go as well.
Then finally maybe just some relaxing time in American Truck Simulator as a way to wind down!
- Diablo 4 until I finish the campaign
- Coffeetalk 2 when I’m too tired to concentrate on fighting.
Currently have Cult of the Lamb on hold, and I also need to get back into No Man’s Sky and check out the new content.
Also salivating over Starfield videos 😁
I’m trying really hard not to get too hyped for Starfield, what with the way games seem to release these days…but damn it looks like the SciFi game I’ve always wished I could play!
Cult of the Lamb is great too.
Same. Normally I go into huge games with lots of player agency with a walkthrough sitting next to me because I want the ‘perfect ending’. I think with this one I’m just going to get lost in it and whatever happens happens. It looks so good.
I played Cult of the Lamb when it first came out, but found the cult system itself to be a bit too easy to be satisfying. The combat roguelike bit was alright tho. I also need to hit that NMS expedition before it vanishes.
I’ve been surprisingly happy with the diablo 4 campaign. The amount of food voice acting, grittiness, solid side quests, it’s been nice. Though I am missing that bit of d2 and d3 where you can just plow through hordes of enemies
