RetroFedWeekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
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BurntWits
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My recommendtation is don’t play Factorio. I picked it up a couple months ago and basically haven’t stopped playing. It’s stolen all of my free time. Don’t do it.
i have to cheat on factorio with rim world and back again because both are like that for me.
I feel like the only game that could come close to the same level of digital crack is Football Manager. Since I’ve already plowed way too many hours into that one I’m steering clear of Factorio.
I’m really tempted to pick it up because of all the comments like this that I see but I also don’t have much free time as is, I don’t want to be completely enveloped by it.
I got it a few months ago. It’s great and fun, but once I launched the rocket and finished the game, I did not find it hard to put down. I will definitely do another play through soon though!
I had the same experience. I even decided to build my base up to 75 science/minute after the first rocket launch, but once I hit that and was finding myself just crafting modules to increase productivity/efficiency to do infinite research with no real end in sight, it was all grind and no fun for me.
I could have decided to make a real megabase, push for the highest spm my PC can handle, and optimize to the end of time, but at some point I’d have to return to the real world.
End game is all boring alien culling for more mining expansions just to get diminishing returns on infinite research you don’t really need anyways. I’m not really a fan of the colonial extractivist themes, and that’s pretty much all the game made me feel by the end.
There’s always the space dlc!
Yes. And I also want to try deathworld and ribbonworld
I’ve decided I’m finally finishing Elden Ring. Just started a new Bonker and I’m making my way through the early game now.
Man I really need to finish a playthrough sooner or later
Farthest I got was killing the fire giant. Then I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 and by the time I came back I got bad.
I have a character that’s about to meet Malenia, and I’m kinda scared
Despite all the crazy YouTube videos about beating her with wherever, she have weaknesses to certain items/strats, pretty much like all the other bosses in the game.
I had so much fun with that game and the first expansion, high str big bonk destroying open world guys then learning timings on boss fights or high int caster pew pew easily overrun in the open world but erasing bosses after just a few tries. I really dig both of those styles.
I finished all the achievements on Wayfinder. I really enjoyed it for what it is. It’s clear from some things that they ran out of budget/time to really smooth all the edges. What is there though is a fun action RPG with beautiful art, pretty satisfying progression and combat, and a decent roster of characters to play.
I haven’t been sure what to play next but I just started Clair Obscur Expedition 33. Not sure about the parry/dodge system, it seems pretty anti-fun but I’ll give it a couple more hours.
If that doesn’t work out, I think I’ll start on the Yakuza games. I have Yakuza 0 and Like a Dragon, not sure which I’ll go for first.
I’ve been holding off on wayfinder because people told me to play if with friends like a local WoW server. How does it hold up solo?
Wayfinder is very playable solo.
You’ll still probably only like it if you liked World of Warcarft, I imagine. It’s a clear (and very nice) tribute.
I played it entirely solo and had no issues with the highest difficulty dungeons or world bosses. I imagine it’d be a blast to play with other people but if you start on your own you can create another save slot to play with friends or just use a character you haven’t leveled up yet.
Cyberpunk 2077 and Palworld. I haven’t really gotten into new games since Elden Ring, but those two seem like good candidates.
Good time for Palworld with the 1.0 update. I still need to get the Dogtown DLC for Cyberpunk.
Scrap Mechanic also just had its 1.0 release. I’ve been trying to get into that as well, but I also keep installing demos and signing up for playtests on steam.
Hitman WOA: Picked up the rest of the “easy” achievements (assassination stuff). Got the three sniper mode silent assassination achievements last night. Just missing 1,000,000 points in each sniper mode level, all challenges in each sniper mode level, and level 20 mastery in each location. Easier said than done, those are all huge time sinks, but it feels good to have everything else done now. Also cool to have 5 achievements for this game under 2% completion.
Going through the ACE team catalog, this time I’m playing Clash: Artifacts of Chaos. It’s a spinoff of Zeno Clash series, but in third person. As always with the ACE team the world is beautiful and weird. Plays nice enough too, liking it so far
Man, I wish this was a proper action game with combos, juggling and stuff and it didn’t play more or less like a martial arts soulslike.
I actually like that I have to be a bit careful, as you can’t just tank a bunch of hits and you’re a bit slow. Soulslike is a close comparison, I guess. My main annoyance is that I can’t seem to get the parry timing, even though the devs said they are pretty generous - it just feels wrong no matter when I try to parry, and when it does work there’s almost no visual/audial feedback, I notice that I managed to parry only because my stamina bar is refilled.
Last week or so I picked up Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty for $45 during the Steam Summer Sale. I’ve only just started Act 2 and I’m loving it.
I had played it a tiny bit on PS5, I borrowed a friend’s copy, but it was the PS4 version so it was relatively awful. The PC version after all the bug fixes and on a more powerful computer make a huge difference.
Now if I could only find Johnny’s pistol, man… I’m having so much fun.
I just played that a couple months ago and it was so good. I was a bit worried since i didn’t like witcher 3 enough to finish it, and cyberpunk gets compared to it all the time, but i liked cyberpunk so much more. The world is just so well done, it feels like a real city.
Just got Xemu up and running so I could replay Blinx 2 (after seeing the news and playing a bit of the first one) and decided to throw in JSRF because fucking duh.
Man, while you’re running Xemu you gotta throw in Ninja Gaiden Black!
I love Croc. I played it multiple times throughout the years and yet I never had a legit copy of the game until now. Seeing its Platinum Edition (remaster) on sale finally made me pull the trigger. It runs great, it plays great and the trove of bonus content is wonderful, even if it has a few minor issues that quickly caught my attention. These being:
I’ll be sticking with Croc64 for my Steam Deck setup as it requires less disk space and I already have it set up but I am playing the remastered version on my desktop. I’ve been going back and forth between the two to compare them and playing on Deck made me realise it’s one of the few platformers I prefer to play with a keyboard - tank controls just key binds make more sense for me this way.
Anyway, I’m glad to finally buy the game that game me so much fun. Another one off the list!
Edit: Speaking of Croc, I just found out there’s an official trailer for a Croc 2 remaster. I might prefer the first game but this is great news!
Still hanging on with The Riftbreaker. Was suckered into a fight by what i believed to be the final boss. It was just the first boss fight and they ran away.
After that, i went around map to map to unlock all the resources I was missing and now I’m on the last one, Palladium.
No idea how close i am to the end game, but I haven’t gotten bored with it yet.
I’ve been looking for some multiplayer shooty squad-based action, but the popular ones are too pricey for my wallet or are joined at the hip with unpleasant and unwelcome elements. Dunno, I’m just maybe looking for that special something which doesn’t exist…
Doesn’t help that I’ve lost my touch and can’t aim as well as i used to.
Also, I have Metro Exodus on standby, but it doesn’t really draw me in yet. Hopefully that changes because I finished the previous two in the series when they came out and i liked them back then.
I’ve been playing a little bit of Wanted: Dead. Man, this is a weird fucking game to write about. I don’t even know how best to describe it. How about this: Wanted: Dead is a 3/10 but I “see the vision”. There is an alternate universe where this game is an absolute cult classic.
(EDIT: spoiler tagged to preserve real estate as I sort of vomited out a whole ass rant).
WARNING: Wall of Text
On paper, all the pieces - or at least the ideas of the pieces - are there. Melee combat designed by developers who worked on Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden 2. Parrying and gun parrying. Third person shooting, grenades, weapon upgrades. Some sick gun-fu finishing moves combining pistol and katana. Cyberpunk storyline of privatised law enforcement using prisoners Suicide Squad style, a conspiracy, and sentient androids. Minigames. Weird and quirky cast of characters. Randomly inserted clips of a custom tie-in anime (???).
This could have been a great game. It’s just… everything is just so fucking bad. The characters are weirdly written and unlikeable (or absolute dead-horse beaten clichés like the police captain). The main cast are supposed to be terrorist war criminals but act like goofy sitcom characters. The cutscenes are actually made with some effort and care, they’re just horribly written and acted. Sometimes it’s managing to veer into B-movie “so bad it’s entertaining” territory but… most of the time it’s actually just bad.
And part of it is that the voice acting may be the absolute worst I’ve ever heard, and must have been recorded without direction too (and is poorly mixed, to boot). Like, I know I’m ranting here but it’s genuinely unbelievable that this voice acting shipped in a game that is sold for actual dollars. This isn’t just worse than AI voices, at times it’s so bad fucking Microsoft Sam would be an improvement. The protagonist is swiss for some reason, and her “actress” is constantly stumbling through the lines with all the grace of a 12-year-old reading their English exam off the page. And she’s one of the better acted characters! The other team members are even worse!
So, then, the gameplay? Well ultimately it’s kind of a worse version of Ninja Gaiden 2 but with cover based shooting injected into it like invasive plastic surgery. Was it really needed? Matter of taste, I suppose. The general flow is very similar: it’s about crowd control against hordes of enemies. Your main tool is melee and you can perform finishing blows on wounded enemies that give you generous amounts of iframes, only here you are way less mobile but instead you have guns. You don’t actually have enough ammo to dispatch all your enemies with them, though. They’re meant to be used selectively to take out key threats, while melee is the primary focus. So really, you just trade the mobility in NG2 for cover based shooting to achieve the same end result. Which is more fun? I prefer NG2 by a million country miles, but I suppose there is conceivably someone out there who just loves cover based shooting.
Another big issue is the skill tree and the difficulty curve. Way too many core abilities are gated behind unlocks, which makes the first level punishingly difficult. Especially since there is also a very old school “what is a checkpoint?” design philosophy here in terms of how rarely you get to save. Also, the bosses have been quite bad, which should come as no surprise to Ninja Gaiden fans. The first level boss especially was extremely frustrating and unpleasant to fight. Difficult yes, but not at all in a fun way.
So, is anything actually somewhat good? Well, the core combat - despite everything - is kind of alright once you unlock some skills. The gun-and-katana finishing moves themselves do look cool and are actually extremely varied - it’s just a shame that they’re really shoddily integrated into the movement and you “snap/slide” into them in a very jarring fashion. And you feel laggy and unresponsive coming out of them afterwards. Some of them also take way too long, which further adds to the weird feel of losing control of your character for several seconds. Meanwhile, NG2 finishing moves feel absolutely seamless. Overall that’s the case for all of the combat in Wanted: Dead - it’s clunky, it’s rigid, it’s not fluid. The moveset is also way less varied here, so you’ll be using the same combos over and over.
Then there are the minigames which… I don’t know man. There is a claw game you have to grind for skill points and there are two versions of the same rhythm game - one for karaoke and one for eating ramen (???). Maybe there will be more down the line. They’re okay if you love rhythm games, I suppose. I will tell you it’s fucking weird when your terrorist war criminals sing 99 Luftballons on karaoke as part of the main story, though. And not abbreviated either - the whole fucking thing.
So yeah… It’s been an interesting experience so far. It’s been something to do when I’ve felt too mentally exhausted to play The Drifter, but it’s not exactly going to enter my permanent rotation after (if) I finish it.
It’s kinda like Vanquish in that: it has covers, and you can play it like a cover shooter, but it’s more fun as an action game.
Even bullets do more damage point blank.
In terms of movement, it’s odd out of the box, but once you start incorporating guard canceling (and you can guard cancel about any free movement in this game—slashing, shooting, dashing… etc.) the system really opens up.
I’m moving on 🎶 Moving so far away 🎶
Everquest Legends: going to try out a Rogue / Enchanter / Bard combo, and solo a bit.
Shaman/mage/rogue was my pick but I might swap in wiz for ports once I get around 20 on the main trio
Blades of Time. So many mechanics for a short action game. I thought I was in for another mid budget OG God of War clone a la Marlow Briggs, but so far it’s a lot more fun and exciting to play.
Super Mario 64
Hexen.
I’m playing the new extension Vestiges Of Grandeur from the remastered Heretic + Hexen pack, on Steam.
Just beat MotorStorm: Apocalypse this morning.
I played through the first 2 and the PSP/PS2 spinoff last year but Apocalypse wasn’t in a playable state on RPCS3 so I stopped there. Tried it again this week and it runs great after you tweak the settings and apply the community patches to disable resolution scaling.
I’m still playing Alan Wake 2:
spoiler
I finished the Oceanview Hotel part with Wake, the atmosphere was so thick you could chew it, but it surprised me less than previous chapters in terms of inventive.
I finished the retirement home and Sheriff Station with Saga and it’s getting better, the story picks up but I still find her parts less interesting.
I started the Lake House DLC and it’s nice to play some new FBC-related content, I have high expectations for this one.
The DLC seems to run better than the base game, they probably optimized it better, I don’t know. Overall Saga’s parts are the worst offenders in terms of performance for whatever reason.
When in doubt, comfort food, take 2:
I have nearly 80 hours clocked in Heaven’s Vault, but all those hours have been spent playing it on handhelds (first Steam Deck and then Legion Go). Now I don’t have a handheld to play it on and I can’t get into it that much, so I changed games.
I am reading The Invincible, a book I got after playing the game based on it, so I thought a second playthrough would be a good idea. And it was, I love this game. It’s a short walking simulator with great atmosphere and story, and the graphics are quite good for what it is, they are not too complicated but everything is solid. The art style deserves a mention here, the 60s high tech sci-fi aesthetic is gorgeous, I think they nailed it. It looks gorgeous on my CRT.
I almost forgot, the voice acting is pretty good too IMO.
I’ve played Tainted Grail a bit longer, the game is fine and runs fine, still not sure if I’ll finish it but I think I’m going to keep playing it.
The Lake House DLC is great, nice tight survival horror and a great commentary on Gen AI to boot.
I’m glad you’re having some more fun with Saga at least. I found the retirement home to be an awesome horror level, some of the best scares in the game there and some nice creepy atmosphere. Dilapidated hospitals are clichés maybe, but they are so for a reason. And I don’t know, I still found it effective.
I am playing Jedi survivor right now. I just finished fallen order and it was amazing. Now I’m on the sequel, maybe 8 hours or so into it. It’s cool, but it feels like they went overboard adding things to the first game to try to make the sequel better.
Grim Dawn: Fangs of Askeram
The latest and last DLC for one of the top ARPGs out there, apart from a new end-campaign quest line there is also a new class and hundreds of new uniques
Stellaris.
(I started watching star trek after seeing lemmy talk about “fully automated luxury gay space communism.")
still doing sto and no mans sky. not sure I will return to something single player im trying to get all the way through.