Hey everyone! Going to test out a weekly “what are you playing?” thread to encourage some discussion. As this is “True Gaming,” we would of course love to see a few sentences elaborating on your thoughts of what you are playing.
Right now I am putzing around in Baldur’s Gate 3 trying to see what whacky things I can pull off or incur in my second playthrough. I also have the Dead Space remake tee’d up for play soon and have been occasionally playing Arcade Paradise with my son, which has been a real delight - once you beat the game it’s just a fun arcade to run around working on high scores in. He just loves picking up all the trash and the little “gamified” aspects of the arcade himself!
So: what are you playing?
Just got a PS5, so started Horizon: Forbidden West. Zero Dawn was good, but the writing in Forbidden West right out of the gate just really clicks for me. The premise was always good, with a primitive, myth based culture formed around the remnants of a collapsed advanced society, but Aloy understanding the science and trying to still interact with superstitious societies who can only comprehend her as a Prophet speaking with the Goddess is just really well done to me.
I’m way more about mechanics than story in games, though, and the progression mechanically is also really good. I play on high difficulties, and enemies who will fuck you up if you make a mistake, while you’re capable of hitting just as hard if you don’t is my bread and butter. Movement is smoother, you start with tools that are more mid-game in zero dawn, and the feedback from the PS5 controller’s mechanics feels awesome. As one specific example, there are two charged power attacks controlled by how long you hold the windup. This isn’t wildly abnormal for games with this kind of melee combat, but you usually just have to memorize the length of time each takes. The PS5 uses the precision vibration it has to give very clear tactile indications of when you hit windup 1, and when you hit windup 2, and it feels very appropriate to the sci-fi aesthetic.
I’m tempted to go back and finish zero dawn first because the story has me re-hooked. It’s less punitive on death with the more reasonable load on the PS5.
I haven’t really heard such praise for the game but I LOVED ZD and am glad to hear FW get some love. Might need to bump it up the list
I did burn out on Zero Dawn eventually before finishing the story, but according to Sony it was 100-something hours in, and it was mostly because I like the difficulty to be brutal and the long load times on PS4 when you hit a rough spot really killed my momentum. It was definitely (with The Last of Us) one of my favorite Sony IPs.
Factorio space exploration, currently rushing to design and build walls while shooting biters because for some reason disabling biter expansion only affects the starting planet and my evolution factor is getting so high that half of the biters are behemoths and my outposts are being overrun.
I’m afraid to start factorio lol
I picked up The Spectral Web: Hitodama on steam a few days ago, it’s good, plays a lot like it did in ZC. You can tell it’s got its own engine though, the lighting effects are a lot nicer than anything I’ve seen there.
If you like dungeon crawlers like Zelda, I recommend it. Difficulty curve is a little high though.
Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Loving it, really hard to get over the initial difficulty curve, but all the more satisfying for it. It’s like a AA version of Skyrim, with some elements where it’s even better.
I’ve had it recommended to me a few times. What would you say makes the difficulty curve so steep?
You’re intended to feel like the random peasant you are, so you’ll get shredded in combat until you train.
It’s a combination of controls that aren’t super common, and your character being extremely slow and unskilled/unathletic to start. It’s not like most games, where you start with less damage and a limited set of tools. Your animations reflect your lack of skill as well. You really can’t just power through. You have to use other tools and minimize encounters until you get taught and practice how to fight.
I really enjoyed Mount and blade: warband, and this is kind of giving me similar vibes. Might have to give it a shot this weekend
I haven’t played it, but I think that’s the game I’ve seen the combat compared to.
It’s punishing. Some design decisions (such as having to drink a potion to save the game) make it so that it takes comparatively longer for your character to become a “superhuman” than it would in Skyrim or Fallout. Worth it if you liked those other two!
Appreciate the insight! You and the other person have me definitely intrigued. Might have to try this weekend.
