As some of you may have noticed, I haven’t been posting weekly discussion threads the last few weeks. They weren’t getting too much traction and, more specifically, people weren’t engaging with each other, which is what I was trying to encourage. I wanted to take a break and rethink how I wanted to do it to achieve those goals.
So here is a twist on the formula:
- Tell us not only what you are playing, but also why someone else should pick it up and give it a go themselves.
- And/or comment on someone else’s reply and get a conversation going.
I’ll go first:
- I’m still playing a ton of Helldivers 2. I’ve put in over 100 hours so far. The last time I put over 100 hours in a game was probably Halo 3, and this is coming from someone who almost exclusively plays single player games. I think this game is unique in that its mechanics are very grounded and physical, the two different factions play very differently, the encouragement to play cooperatively versus competitively is a breath of fresh air, and the monetization in the game is very fair. I love the idea of playing on a giant galactic chess board with hundreds of thousands of other players, evolving the story as we go as a community. It really does feel like a community. At $40 for me, it is such a no-brainer to pick this game up for some awesome times.
I agree with everything you said about Helldivers 2. I generally avoid online multiplayer games, even co-op ones, as I don’t like playing with randos, but HD2 truly feels like a team effort every time I play, and there’s so much variety between factions, enemies, and difficulty, that I am happy to continue playing it over and over again.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 has also put its hooks into me. I really enjoyed the first one, and the second one definitely lives up IMO. There are valid criticisms about the frequent low level combat and lack of enemy variety in it, but it honestly doesn’t bother me. The more rare enemies show up just enough that I don’t feel like I’m only ever fighting low level enemies, and the harder ones are a genuine treat. It’s also fun to find a new enemy type that is particularly rare and discover the reason for it is because they will absolutely stomp you unless you’re pretty high level. Beautiful graphics, fun world to explore (I’m particularly fond of the caves), and quests that don’t hold your hand every step of the way (although, on occasion, I wish they would hold my hand a little more). I do hope they add a setting to reduce the pawn dialog to get rid of idle chatter, but I know the last patch is supposed to reduce the frequency already. I haven’t had a chance to test it out yet to see if it’s a significant improvement. I also really wish there was a way to tell what time of day it was since you will get missions that tell you you have to do it between certain hours, or worse yet, missions that don’t give you a time frame and you just have to stand there and wait. When an in-game day is 45 minutes IRL, that gets old very fast.
Edit: omg, it’s the menu background. There’s a huge radial clock graphic in the background of the pause menu…
I was very interested, so much so that I picked up 1 to play around about a month ago. Ended up dropping it but I loved the gameplay. I just didn’t have time to dive into a huge RPG when I was considering getting the sequel soon.
How do you feel about the micro transactions for things like fast travel? Are these items found easily enough in game that the blowback is overblown, or do you feel like these items are in short supply on purpose to push players to pay for items that should have been included from the start?
The microtransaction stuff was absolutely overblown. I’m level 40, and I have literally never seen the ability to purchase microtransactions in-game. I honestly don’t know how you do it in-game at all. The blowback also caused confusion for me in regards to how camping supplies actually worked. I thought they were expensive single-use items, but that’s not true. Your supplies have a chance to be destroyed if you’re attacked while sleeping, so as long as you clear the surrounding area of monsters so you don’t get attacked in the middle of the night, you’ll be just fine.
I finally picked up Cyberpunk 2077 after the free trial a few weeks ago and I’m having a great time!
I’m about 25hrs in and I love the openness of the world so far, it feels like a slightly jankier GTA, with interesting builds / RPG aspects, tons of distractions / side content and (so far) a compelling story.
It’s your typical CDPR polish, so it’s stable enough, but there are still issues and performance troubles (playing on Series X, PS5 is better from what I’ve seen).If you can find it for $15 USD (disc), I’d say it’s well worth it. The Ultimate Edition is $60 USD (what I got) and Phantom Liberty is even better story-wise from what I’ve gathered.
My brother says that Phantom Liberty makes it legit feel like a whole new game. I might have to drop back in for it. I mainlined the main story last year.
Phantom Liberty didn’t land well with me. Actually, that’s not true…. the patch that completely changed how you spec your character didn’t land well with me.
I felt lost having to start again with all those choices at once. When you start a new character you’re introduced to the choices one by one and doing it all at once was too hard. I could have started a new character but I’ve played three full runs and didn’t want to do that.
I’m semi-playing Alan Wake 2, just not a lot of time sadly.
Why you should play it;
The game is visually beautiful but the best part is the story. The story slowly unfolds and its really grabbing you. It gives you bit by bit.
You don’t need to have played Alan Awake 1, you could look up a 10 minute recap on YouTube.
I thought you needed to play both Alan Wake 1 and Control beforehand to get the full picture?
I didn’t particularly enjoy the latter and I’ve read that the former didn’t age so well, but AW2 is on my radar, given what’s been said about the gameplay/story.No that isn’t needed to. You do need to have a little knowledge about AW1 but that’s solved by watching a quick recap on YouTube.
Haven’t seen any references to Control in AW2 and I’m about 4,5 hours into the game.
You might enjoy AW2 a bit more when you’ve played AW1 because of little references but it isn’t a necessity.
Control was amazing, game of the year for me personally. Alan Wake 1 was already a bit dated/bland gameplay-wise when it came out and the remaster didn’t do it any particular favours. The story is great however, so at the very least I’d watch a comprehensive recap/analysis on the story.
Control is its own thing entirely and isn’t required to fully understand Alan Wake 2, but having played it and its DLCs beforehand it definitely adds to the lore and gives insight to the “bigger picture”.
Oh yeah, I know Control was very well liked in general!
I honestly didn’t bother with any of Control’s DLCs, since I didn’t appreciate the combat at all and found the amount of backtracking obtrusive.I played the DLCs after finishing the main game and (even as a big Wake fan) found them a bit unnecessary. They would’ve worked better if played during the same playthrough, not afterwards imho.
Was Control being part of the Alan Wake Universe supposed to be a twist or was that already advertised when it released? If it was a twist, I wish I had experienced that first hand.
Control’s second DLC “AWE” (2020) had already connected the worlds of Alan Wake and Control, but sorry if I spoiled that for you.
I see. No, you’re fine, it was spoiled for me long before today. I was just trying to express how cool that part of the story was.
I kept thinking I had to play Alan Wake 1, and it kind of put a downer on me picking this up. I might have to go the route of just watching a recap. The game looks so good and the story is something I’m really intrigued about
Guacamelee 2. Bought it on a whim and enjoyed the heck out of it. Now working on hard mode to platinum it. Get it if you like metroidvanias and quirky humor.
How hard is it and what difficulties does it have? I love metroidvanias but never beat Hollow Knight due to the difficulty.
I think the main game itself isn’t too hard. But getting all the chests and platinuming it took a while on some stages.
I got back into Monster Hunter World, haven’t played it since they released Deviljho in the base game so I have a lot to catch up on. Currently HR 87 and holding off going to the expansion since I hear any gear in Iceborne is completely OP so I’m trying to milk the base game as much as I can.
Why you should play it
- You like boss fights
- You like grinding
- You like creating multiple load outs
- You like memorizing attack animations
- You like mastering playstyles
- You like the gamer high after lots of suffering
I’m playing Shadow Tactics, currently on PS+
Also mixing in a gradual play through of Cloudpunk, once it gets to nighttime and my sleepy brain can no longer do tactics.
