what games are you playing this week?

Hades. I'm not a fan of rogue-like games, but this one is awesome! I bought it second time on a different platform and trying to beat it on 100% again. I think for me one of the most appealing things of that game isdesign. Like, it's done amazingly well, "with love and care" one would say

For me it is Hades as well. Impulse purchase and I like so far. I'm progressing very slowly though. Still hesitant to active Godmode.
Hades is so cool, what's the highest heat you've played?
- 16 so far, just to get the Skelly's achievement. On my second playthrough I decided that I want to get that game to 100% both achievement-wise and content-wise, so I'm working on bonds with all characters at that moment
This was my answer. Started it this weekend, got to final boss Sunday and all weapons unlocked. Grinding away, good stuff.

Hollow Knight - started last week and got through initial frustration, now I'm enjoying it and expect to love it by the end!

It's an amazing game, you end up feeling quite immersed. I love it.
- Personally, I'm not a big fan of metroidvanias, but HK is the best metroidvania I've ever seen
Ahh another game I need to finish! My track record with Metroidvanias is terrible.
So jealous, I wish I could experience it for the first time again.

I remember being frustrated at first, too, but once it clicked I just couldn’t stop exploring

This weekend I managed to get in some time with Boltgun and Signals. Apparently I was in need of chunky pixels.

Botgun - Warhammer 40,000 boomer-shooter nonsense.

Signals - Dead space but Silent Hill via the inventory management from RE (6 slots are enough for anyone, right?)

I just finished signalis today. What do you think about games with abstract/obscure style of narrative? Where you have to speculate a lot, fill the gaps yourself and maybe, ultimately, getting out without any clear picture, about wtf happened there at all lol?

It's one of those types of games. I personally tend to like them. Pathologic, for example, is one of most special gaming experiences for me. But after finishing Signalis, I felt mostly frustrated with how incoplete the story was - I haven't even managed to feel any connection with the protagonist and her goal.

Anyway, yeah, it's a great game, that will definitely live in my head for some days, but it's a shame the story didn't click for me.
- Yeh, I don't know how far in I am, probably not very, I just entered the mines. I suspect much of the plot is passing me by. Though understanding German is probably a help.
  
  The plot not making much sense is very Silent Hill. You basically needed to get a secret ending to have any idea at all what was going on in SH1. Got the same vibe here.
  
  But I'm happy soaking up the atmosphere and looking at the freaky shit.
Boltgun is fucking sick, I've been alternating between that and DOOM(2016)
Signalis is a masterpiece that will not get out of my brain. And I'm not even big into survival horror.

I've read for years that Prey (2017) was a game you do no research on and just go in blind. My goodness I'm glad I did. Love the game so far at about 2 hours in

Love this one! So good. So many creative paths possible, so many fun in-jokes for gamers.
I wasn't super keen on the mimics at the start, but the game just kept getting better and better.

I've started Mooncrash but it's on hiatus at the moment, until I find more time or tick another couple of games off the list.
I'm very picky with games, so I don't play many titles, but Prey (2017) is probably my all-time favorite. I love the story with all its little details and implications.

Spiritfarer - it took me years to get around to playing it. It's quite lovely!

Lovely is definitely the right word. Been meaning to go back, there was a character added since I played last.

Replaying Hellblade. I absolutely loved it on my first play-through a couple of years back, and I'm excited to go through it again.

The sound design on that game is amazing.

FF6. Not playing the pixel remaster, but the "Ted Woosley Uncensored" patch with bug fixes. I've tried many times to play this, and I'm now the furthest I've ever been through it! Have also started Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart on PS+, and I really should be playing that before it inevitably gets removed, but I'm sticking with FF6.

I just installed the Turtle Wow private server client, with a handful of patches and addons that make it run a lot nicer. I have no interest in giving Blizzard any more money, but I've had an itch to play wow lately. And I think it's cool they are expanding on vanilla things.

Edit: I've given the hardcore mode a try, currently only level 6 :)

Been playing through Cult of the Lamb mostly. It's pretty good aside from some repetitiveness involving your cult management and dungeons, but it's still got a nice amount of variety to it. Quests are super easy to just ignore if you don't feeling like completing them too. Looking forward to finishing it soon.

No one said running a cult was going to be easy.
- Boy it sure is fun though!

I've been playing Shapez that I picked up for $3 the other week. It's like a chill factorio, so it scratches that itch for me. Apparently they're working on a sequel, so maybe I'll play that next decade when it's on sale.

Interesting. It seems there is a Shapez 2 coming.

Forgotten City. Wasn't sure I'd like it, but got really sucked in. Very dialogue/decision/story based. There is minimal action. Then, after getting 2 of the 4 endings, I'm stuck on the "Cannon" ending (Ending 4), because there is a line missing from the dialogue tree in the final conversation. I can find instances of this mentioned out there on the web, but nobody has a consistent solution. So now I've gone from being ready to gift this game to a friend who loves story-rich, puzzle-solving games to simply feeling annoyed.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance. I had it on PC before but never finished it so I got in on the XBOX sale as I find it more comfortable to play on the sofa.

It's pretty good so far although the save system is irritating.

I hope we get a sequel announced soon.

Horizon Zero Dawn on steam. Loving it so far

Morrowind (OpenMW with expanded vanilla mods)

Sure it's no RDR2 but it doesn't look bad at all . Gameplay is crude to say the least but mods helps a lot. Story is great but that goes without saying.

I've been back into Mario Kart since finally getting the extra DLC tracks. Just started Dishonored 2 and Mass Effect 2, though I've been a bit anxious lately, so I'm finding TOTK to be good therapy ☺️

The Legend of Zelda: Links Awakening which I got for my daughter as a used game for the switch. The original was one of my first games on the OG Game Boy when I was her age.

Dead Space for the first time (2008, not the remake)

Played this most of the way though recently. It's the only game I've ever played though that gives me motion sickness.
I played through the original a month or so ago for the first time. Don't know why I slept on playing it as long as I did. Love horror games.
I wish I could experience this one for the first time again. I absolutely love this game. I hope you enjoy it!

Been playing PlateUp! With my gf, brother, and friends depending on the day. It's been a blast, I'd highly recommend it if roguelite overcooked sounds like a fun time to anybody!

I've also been playing Sid Meier's Pirates! It's been really fun, even if in some ways it's kinda simple. Despite it being fairly old, it's still engaging enough to keep my adhd attention affixed on it. Would highly recommend, especially since it's so cheap nowadays!

Sniper Elite 4, lots of stealthy snipey fun.

X4 Foundations with Star Wars mod, inspired by finishing Star Wars Rebels.

Dying Light The Following DLC, playing co-op with a friend. Fun game, nice game world, difficulty is sorta unpredictable. Sometimes we get one-shotted other times we are parkour battle gods.

Wreckfest, always fun to go smash up some cars and win some races.

Star Wars KOTOR2, learned recently of the more or less essential community patch that will not be making it to the Switch, that reminded me I never finished the game. Pretty sure I finished KOTOR a long time ago.

I had a lot of fun playing the Sniper Elite 4 campaign with a buddy. Looks like it could be solid flying solo too. How are you playing it?
- Playing it solo but I've had a lot of fun coop with other versions. Solo is good because you can take as much time as you want.
Ah I should get back to SE4. I started it, then turned back to play SE3 to go to 4 then maybe buy 5 but I stalled halfway. The game is very fun!

Wreckfest is the best simcade racing game of recent years. I had more fun racing online with it than even Forza Horizon 5.

Horizon Forbidden West. Finally finished my second replay of HZD, chasing for platinum, and Frozen Wilds afterwards. Jumped on HFW just yesterday - a bit let down by the dragging slow start...

Same. I'm struggling with the key combinations of the new moves.

Playing through Personal 5 Royal, and I can't help but draw some similarities between the game and what is happening with Reddit now.

Megaglest! Fantastic game! :)

I might start Crysis 1

That is mighty patient. 👍

That Persona 3 Reload trailer has got me thinking about Atlus games again, so I'm gonna finally check out Catherine.

It really seems like the right level of weird so far.

WAIT PERSONA 3 RELOAD TRAILER? WHAT??

Please do not be messing with me right now...
- FYI, it's a remake of base P3, so no FES or Portable content. Knowing Atlus, that will come in P3RR a year later and be exclusive to iOS.
- It's been announced yesterday, but most of the fanbase already saw the leaks since Friday
Catherine is great, though I only played Classic and not Full Body. It takes itself more seriously than you'd except from the marketing (edit: the romantic stuff I mean; the rest of the game is funny AF), and the animation is great.

Though of all things, I remember it because it remixes classical music, which made the endgame ridiculous in a good way.

Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. Timeless game, remastered on Steam. It's great.

Assassin's Creed syndicate. One of the only ones I hadn't played before, love the setting and time period. More modern than most ac games

Not super patient, but it went on sale recently. Hi-Fi Rush has been fun. I don't think it's going to be a very long game, but it also doesn't seem like the kind of game that I want to play for a long time either.

Anyway, the animation, rhythm, and combat are all on point. The only thing that bugs me about the game is that switch between gameplay and cutscenes is a bit visually jarring. It's a cel-shaded game, so the cutscenes should have been made in-enging, IMO.

Just reinstalled Guild Wars 2; recalled enjoying my time there long while back and was glad to see Steam installs it just fine for playing on Linux.

I'm working my way through the Stormblood expansion of Final Fantasy XIV. It's still way too early to tell if I like the story more or less than Heavensward, but I know anecdotally people find this one to be kinda weak.

I really enjoyed post-Stormblood. Was fairly lukewarm on the main story though.

I started playing through the old MG/MGS games! MGSV is one of my favorite games of all time so I decided to go back and play through all of them that I can on my Vita. Been messing around in armored core 3 there as well.

Project Zomboid. It's been a few years since I last played so it's taking a while to get used to the mechanics again, but it's been a blast. So many tense moments trying to survive. So many great mods. I'm looking forward to playing it for a while with challenges and goals of increasing difficulty.

Also finishing off Fallout New Vegas with the Lonesome Road DLC.

I've been playing Divinity Original Sin II with a buddy. I was pretty hesitant to try it out cuz I haven't played turn based games before, but I'm really enjoying this one!

I've also been not so patient playing Tears of the Kingdom. I'm admittedly a Zelda fanboy and I don't buy many games on launch so I let myself cheat this one time. I'm enjoying it so far, but there's just so much to do that it's overwhelming sometimes.

ToTK looks epic. It's out me though, or is it 100% Eden Ring but Zelda?

DOS2 is on my backlog of shame. Maybe one day.
- To be veeeery honest, Elden Ring is actually Dark Souls but Zelda. One game learned a lot from the other, and they're both great. The way I understand it, TOTK is expanded from BOTW and makes it even more of a physics engine game, with people engineering their contraptions (usually to torture the poor Koroks lol)
- I haven't played Elden Ring so I can't speak much to that comparison. The world is huge though, and the enemies are a bit more clever and complex compared to BotW. Certainly not as punishing as Elden Ring, but definitely more challenging than BotW.
  
  You should definitely give DOS2 a go! The story is pretty cool, there are lots of mods you can add if you play on PC, and the combat feels very well balanced.

I've been playing BOTW since around the release of TOTK and I'm really enjoying it. A lot more than I thought I would. It's so much fun to explore this world, and I've had this game for years!

Other than that, I keep firing up the good old Dawn of War Soulstorm and Men of War Assault Squad 2. Love me some matches against the AI to relax