What are you playing at the moment?

Picked up a PS5 at the end of June so that’s basically all I’ve been playing recently.

- Platinumed Astro’s Playroom. Was a ton of fun but I didn’t really get those nostalgic “feelgoods” that many people talked about. Even with that caveat, still thoroughly enjoyed it.

- Platinumed FF7R InterMission. Loved the Remake and quite enjoyed this DLC, despite the short length. Can’t wait for Remake part 2, and will likely do another playthrough of FF7R later this year.

- Currently playing through Miles Morales. I’ve just crossed the point of no return so I should finish it tonight, and will likely go back for the Platinum. Story is good and combat feels better than OG Spidey as the venom powers seem to give you more options against some of the more annoying enemies.

After that I’ll probably dive into Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart, with Demon’s Souls and Bugsnax waiting in the wings.

Got back into doing runs in Enter the Gungeon and I finally got the final trophy from the DLC. Now I literally only have two items to unlock in the Ammonomicon and they involve the Resourceful Rat and the Cultist respectively. So I'm mostly just doing Rat runs as I puzzle out how best to beat him at punch out. Still an all time favorite game for me.

Just Apex until The Ascent hits Game Pass on the 29th

I kinda need a palette cleanser after playing Fallout 76 for 100 hours, but I don't know if I want to go with the Ratchet & Clank PS2 games or Sunset Overdrive.

State of Decay. Morning, noon and night

Just finished up Legend of Grimrock 2. Amazing game, felt a tad harder than the first one, and some of the puzzle solutions required to progress are too obtuse for my taste (not to speak of some of the secrets). It still gets a big recommendation from me, had lots of fun playing it.

Now I'm drifting through the usual after-game-completion void and can't decide what I wanna tackle next. Anything but another RPG - after The Witcher 2 and LoG 2, I need a palate cleanser.

Thanks to Jan the Man, I tried Pokemon Unite last night, and I am enjoying it a lot. Maybe not something to play all the time, but it's a nice little time waster.

Then catching up on the most recent Hitman trilogy. Just finished up the Story Missions for Dubai last night, but debating doing more in the level before moving on. Of course, I can just speed through the game to get to the escalations and such.

Evenicle, for science.

I just finished Ion Fury, and I'm free, I am FREE!

What a long game for some reason. It's is actually a very decent effort, built on the 3 D Realm's Engine, jacked up to 11. Ion Fury is based on a lady protagonist who rips out a few bad words, but in the main constrains herself to mild satire and observation. The enemy classes are fine and so are the weapons. The gameplay is well, pretty good. I just felt it treaded water a bit much towards the end, but not to the point I would say ef it. Having finished it, I didn't feel my time was wasted. I took a few more screen shots, left Shelley (the protagonist) with her well deserved beer at the bar (where she had started the game) and went to download Ascent.

One thing I always enjoyed was the lighting and graphics. It was a joy to play, that way. How light from a light source would look almost drawn in, and lots of other effects. That never got old.

So I was looking at my PS3 collection for games that I can only realistically get on the system. Skate. Skate is still good. It's not very goal heavy and the goals there are fairly straight-forward to accomplish.

It's holding up alright, although I really miss getting off the board. Also, the DualSense works with the PS3 which is nice.

Due to watching/listening to Xem92's runs and The Golden Bolt's video essays on the Ratchet & Clank series, I playing RaC 1 for the employee discount for RaC 2 and UYA.

RaC 1 is very much like Gen 1 Pokemon in that the gameplay alone becomes more antiquated as the years go on. But fortunately, I'm still good at both, so going though RaC 1 is still enjoyable, though I miss UYA since I haven't played it in over 10 years.

...And also Fallout 4, but the mod list hasn't changed all that much, so, eh.

I usually play on PS5

-Hades (got the ending credits so I just put in a single run per night or so).

-Guilty Gear Strive. I can get to rank/floor 10 pretty consistently but I don't have the reactions/matchup knowledge to go further, at least so far. Good game! It's basically streamlined Guilty Gear with decent net code and a dash button.

-Phoenix Wright Dual Destinies (mobile). I've been waiting for this to be released on any console but 3DS but when the new prequel bundle was released I bit the bullet and bought the mobile version. It works pretty well even if there are some optimization issues. The new 3D models stack up surprisingly well compared to the classic 2D sprites and the writing is solid. It's too hand-holdy unfortunately, and will often straight up tell you answers before you even get a chance to try for yourself.

just re-bought Divinity: Original Sin 2 on Steam at discount, let's see if I have the stamina to drill through it (played 40 hours on ps4 years ago, no cross-save though..).

I thought I would be playing Humankind on Gamepass a lot right now but... meh. No more turn for me in this case.

Doing my best to finish Pathfinder Kingmaker before the sequel comes out.

Its close behind Baldurs Gate 2 as the best crpg of all time on my list.

I was playing Humankind until I hit a gamebreaking bug, so I beat Dishonored 2 instead and now I’m playing Prey again and having a grand old time. These Arkane fellas have their claws in me something fierce. Also doing semi-regular Master Chief Collection matches with some friends and an ongoing multiplayer game of Europa Universalis IV. I keep intending to go back to Ghost of Tsushima, AC: Valhalla, and crack into Last of Us 2, but those all seem rather unlikely until I can shake off this imm-sim fever.

Monster Train on Switch- amazing- played it on steam like crazy- but on Switch? Obsessive

Legend of Dragoon, those final additions are a pain!.

Also, some Persona 4 golden. Charlie Tanoku is back!

Fire Emblem: Three Houses. My Switch it at the repair shop right now (dying fan and poor right Joycon) but I'm almost through the second of the three houses stories. I like it! I've always liked the FE games. This one has done away with the rock-paper-scissors style which makes it easier than my memories of other ones I've played.

Odd comparison but I think I like Xcom level of difficulty more than the latest FE (earlier this year I played War of the Chosen) although I don't play that game correctly because I never let anyone die.

Sonic Colors Ultimate Edition, game's amazing though I notice it has a few problems but luckily Blind Squirrel Games have patched the game.

Spiderman Miles Morales, awesome game though feels like a bit short. I am at 50 percent of the game completed though don't want to rush beating it.

Halo Masterchief Collection, I never got into the Halo franchise so been playing onilne which I stuck at badly. Got a few kills online and discovered some hidden achievements. Started Halo Reach as I want to play the games in order that they are meant to be played. I played a bit of it on Xbox 360 but on Xbox Series S is looks amazing.

Getting back into Team Fortress 2 but man, Valve does not give a shit about the game...the Casual matchmaking is just unplayable, literally every server is all aimbots blaring stupid music and doing instakill headshots. It sucks because when you find a really good community server, you remember how fun it is. Rounds get really intense when everyone is trying to play it like it's meant to be played. The last match I had, we fought back and forth so hard, and the enemy team had 20 seconds left to win and they barely got it. It felt super amazing and exactly how I used to remember playing it years ago. But you'd never know that from the way the game funnels you into bot hell. I'm actually really curious about the player count hitting a new high after the "bot fix" update (which didn't fix much) because there's like...nobody playing. It's supposedly 90,000 players on average but I don't know about that...there's usually 4 humans among 8 bots on each team and then everyone just quits because of the bots. Even community servers are like, maybe a few thousand? At least among the ones I play on, there's like 24 players max and there aren't really many that are full. It sucks because the game is really fun when you can actually play it, but most of the time I have to play 32 player instant spawn 24/7 servers because that's where everyone is.

On a more positive side note, I found out there's a mod called Team Fortress 2 Classic which is sorta based on original 2007 TF2 but also not? As in there are no cosmetics and very few alternate weapons, but it also brings some of the good changes from across the years along. Usually there's only 1 server full, but it's a full 24 player server and it's actually really cool to play the game stripped down to how it used to be. Honestly, I think it looks a lot cleaner visually and a lot of the classes have completely different dynamics without all the alternate weapons. If you want to see how the game felt when it came out and you weren't around to play it like me, it's a really cool mod. Also they have fun weird shit! Like there's 4 team modes sometimes! Red, Blue, Green, and Yellow. I haven't had the misfortune of playing 4Fort but it sounds like hell! And yes that's literally two 2Fort maps crossed together into an X with all 4 teams having an identical base of their color.

Anyways, that's my wall of text/rant towards Valve about TF2! Try TF2 Classic!

Far Cry New Dawn before I add another Far Cry game to my backlog.

Hey - there's game called Breath of the Wild on the Switch. Turns out it's pretty good.

In seriousness, this is my second stab at starting the game and I think I 'get it' now. I play it in bed, before going to sleep, and I'm happy to wander around aimlessly a lot more now. I'm much more at peace to spend 30 mins on the game and do nothing more than get to a new temple.

Anyway - I'm really digging it this time round. Weird how some games don't click the first time you try them, no?

Been playing Mega Man Collections 1 and 2.

Perhaps this is when I finally beat Dr. Wily?

Dark Souls 1 because of the Woolie and Reggie LP. I'm not trying to stream snipe since Reggie seems to mainly play hollowed, I'm sure that I leveled past him, I don't know if using ReShade online would get me banned, and who would really want to watch Reggie getting parried to death?

That aside, I'm feeling pretty good about my faith build, and I feel pretty dumb for not not using one until now since I really would have loved to have extra heals when I was new to these games ten years ago. And though I'm sure that getting all three Lightning Spears is going to be a pain in the ass offline, but I am still very intrigued by them for the sake of power fantasy.

Edit 11/22/21: Another first try win on Ornstein and Smough. Apparently Quelaag is more of an issue for me these days.

Like a Dragon. I have beaten all the numbered Yakuza so it was only a matter of time.

So I thought to myself: Man, I don't remember how far I got in 3D Lemmings.

So I'm playing that. So far it's very 2D Lemmings.

All I do nowadays is mess around on Left 4 Dead 2, might play Parasite Eve for Christmas.

I've been playing SMT V, which is great but I think they stick you in the beginning desert area for far too long. Also there should be a better way of getting someone strong against Agi/Mudo before the first boss, if you didn't side with Leannan Sidhe in a specific sidequest you're going to have a more difficult fight on your hands.

But also, SMT V is great if you're looking for a mechanics-focused ball-bustingly difficult dungeon-crawly "gather all the monsters" type JRPG. I also think that every copy of the game should come with a sticker on the box that says "WARNING: NOT PERSONA" so that people who are looking for something in the same vein as everyone's favorite high school hijinks simulator will look elsewhere.

Well, I went kind of ham on PSN's Black Friday sale so I'm juggling a bunch of stuff at the moment. Maybe the most games I've played at one time ever in my life? It's a little exhausting, LOL.

Returnal: At $70 I stayed worried it might either be too repetitive, too hard or too something too much to pull the trigger, but about $30 off felt right and I'm glad I'm getting to this before Game of the Year. Right now the charms are all there, I'm actually currently typing off a huge adrenaline rush after barely losing to Phrike, the first boss, on our second encounter. I can see how once you've encountered all the mechanics and variables the repetition could become a slog, but I think the trick is just not trying to bullrush your way to the end and enjoying the journey as much as the destination - I was able to do that with Hades, which I didn't beat until damn near my 50th run, and this game plays pretty damn great as well.

Last Stop: I hated Virginia, the last game from this studio, but for some reason I wanted a narrative game and this was the one I grabbed. So far I'm, well, predictably unimpressed. The voice acting is fine, the writing is OK and it's mysterious without the obtuseness that ruined Virginia, but the game looks and animates like a botched Telltale Games project in a way that's both unsettling and frankly gross to look at. The dialogue choices are also pretty woeful - there's a moment early on the Depressed Dad storyline where you have three options to respond, one of which is a simple "Yeah", but I chose one that sounded a little more complicated and what came out of his mouth? "Yeah." Yikes, more like it. We'll see.

Jett: The Far Shore: It's dedication to making you feel the bigness of this journey is pretty impressive. I admit I've wanted to play this game for a while until the all over the place review scores started coming in, but then Vinny did an interview with one of the devs on Nextlander's podcast and you could tell Vinny was gonna want to talk about this one a bunch for GotY so I'm giving it a go and...I think the music and the world building so far is incredible, as well as the sound design on the cockpit communication. I'm really curious what this game has up its sleeve the rest of the way on that front. Unfortunately, if I remember right most of the lukewarm reactions to this game were related to the gameplay mechanics and I'm not sure I'll fully get into the ship stuff. There's a lot to do, sometimes while on timers, and it's hard to know what's important or useful which just doesn't lead to a very fun or productive experience. Maybe that will ultimately wrap back around with the narrative itself though!

Red Dead Redemption II: I've written about this elsewhere on the forums so I won't rehash it here, other than to say when you play RDR2 at its pace I absolutely think you're met with the most technically, creatively awesome video game ever created and it will remain that way for quite some time.

Disco Elysium: The Final Cut: I've started this game three times and this is the first time I've made it to Day 5. When I'm in love with this game and it's moving it's really moving and it is crazy how different the first couple days can play out (in sequencing if not outcomes) but I'm in a kind of weird spot where it seems like I can't accomplish anything and there's nothing new to be tasked with? I feel like I'm at a lull point in a Yakuza game where I'm supposed to just go hang at an arcade for 10 minutes or something but there's no equivalent activity and I've already read all my books. Frustrating!

Control: Wow. PS5. Raytracing, hello.

Hades: It's nice to play this on a big screen and not have it look a little like dog shit while using a controller I love instead of merely tolerate. Now that this is on PS5 my Switch may never get turned on again.

Deathloop: I can see why people complain about this being a little too guided and perhaps the boss encounters not even being that interesting or difficult. The three people I've killed so far I would definitely file away under "anti-climactic". But you know what? I'm mostly really enjoying the world building and acting, and like my time earlier this year with Dishonored I may not be playing Deathloop in a way that appreciates the variety of angles you can approach it from but boy is it fun to just blink around and knife folks in the back until you make a wrong move and have to scramble around toying with some of the dumbest combat A.I. in the world.

Ghost of Tsushima: Some day I'll see the DLC. RDR2 and Control are better TV/console showcases IMO and it's a little hard to play this one in more than teeny tiny chunks when A) *gestures at the rest of this post* and B) I'm stubbornly insisting on doing it all on NG+ Lethal+ which is damn near impossible sometimes unless you're giving yourself fully to this game with no distractions. I do love Lethal+, though, and I'm not a hard mode guy in the slightest, let alone one of the most difficult difficulty levels of the past generation.

I also installed Demon's Souls and Va-ll Ha11-a from the sales (while keeping Mass Effect: Legendary Edition and Personal 5: Royal in the chamber...) but don't think I can play three brutal games about dying over and over at the same time so this list is probably the list for quite some time now.

@justin258: SMT V sounds great, I've been considering getting a Switch just for it. I've played a few of the other games in the series Mainline and Spin-Off.

2011’s best game Saints Row The Third.

Playing GTA Online solo seems more feasible these days, so I might check that out.

Mario Odyssey, having a blast playing it as I heard how great it was. Near the end of the game on Bowser's Fortress.

Close to finishing Judgment, which is kind of the chaser to my year-long playthrough of the mainline Yakuza games. Considering how much time I've spent running around the streets of Kamurocho, it's pretty impressive seeing that the team can still find new and interesting things to do in that setting, and the ways in which it feels like a refinement of things that the other games did (the chase sequence, while still not great or much of a challenge, are way better than the equivalents in Yakuza 5).

The tailing missions are a pretty notable weakness of the game, since they're not much of a challenge and they take a decent amount of time, but that's pretty much my only complaint with the game.

Far Cry 6-Playing this co-op with a friend. The action is fun, and the thin story is just enough to string all of it together.

Forza Horizon 5: I'll play this for an hour or two in a session. Still very fun.

Halo Infinite: Little by little, getting through the campaign. Similar to Far Cry, the story is only moderately interesting. The action, though, is sublime.

BF2042: Having fun, in that Battlefield chaotic way, however this game still needs work. Still getting random hitching on Series X.

I've been in somewhat of a rut, trying to find a game for the winter break.

I'm a Call of Duty fan, and I think Vanguard is good but at the moment there are a lot of little bugs that are adding up and making it annoying to play.

So I bounced off that and started to play Halo Infinite. I really don't like the campaign and the multiplayer is fun for a few matches but gets boring pretty quickly. I need a carrot on a stick in multiplayer games, and Infinite's gated progression isn't for me.

So I looked to Gamepass . First up Moonglow Bay, which I played all of 20 minutes of before bouncing off.

Then Wasteland 3, which I lasted about 3 hours into and again dropped.

Next, Outriders. My friend has been telling me this game is fun all year, and the update it recently received was supposed to make it even better. But again, I bounced off after picking my class and doing a few missions. It just feels cheap to me and not worth sticking with.

I then downloaded Scarlet Nexus, but haven't tried it yet.

Dejected, I just went back to my old shit; my 50 hour SD Gundam G Generation Genesis save. I've been working my way though the game in Universal Century Chronological order and I'm a few missions away from Gundam Zeta. It's not a particularly good game, but it's comfort food. This year burned me out, so I needed something simple that I can sit and play without thinking too much.

I’m in a back and forth paralysis right now. I’m about a third of the way through replaying Dragon Age Inquisition and am sort of growing tired of it, so I took a break and started playing MK 11 because it hit game pass, the first fighting game I’ve touched in years and years. Really liked it until I realized it was more profitable to let the AI battle for you, and I’m shit to the point of not enjoying online play even with the skill matchmaking. Great single player components, though.

In addition to this, I have a half-finished Wasteland 3 game installed, and I’ve had the hankering to replay Pillars of Eternity 2. But nothing is really grabbing me because after a years up backlog and replays, I’m actually just craving new games that last a while, which in a nutshell means Elden Ring. Just about 2 more months.

Doing a run or two of Spelunky 2 most days. I'm not progressing through it as quickly as I did with the first game, but I'm still having fun. I went back to Spelunky the other day after hitting about 50 hours in 2. It feels dramatically slower, almost painfully so. I didn't really notice that difference until playing them back to back. That could be where a lot of the difficulty arises for many people. The second game just moves at a faster pace.

When I'm not Spelunking, I've started going through Gears Tactics. As an XCOM fan, I'm definitely missing the base-building layer, but Gears has enough differences in the tactic mechanics that it's kept me interested so far. It's a much more action-y game, which I sort of expected. I've just made it to the Brumak boss fight which is another intriguing departure that I appreciate. I'm too early to know if it's going to stick with me like XCOM, but it's nice to have them both exist and be different enough to stand on their own.

I got the platinum in A Short Hike on the weekend. Really liked it for what it was. Cute, short, fun, relaxing. Except for the boat part, because I didn't properly understand the controls at first.

Also I'm in the middle of Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I've been playing since Nov 19 and somehow the in-game timer is at 95 hours. Of course, nowhere near done the game. At least it has a very high hours-per-dollar ratio. I'm still having a great time as overly-tattooed Viking lady. (I hid her chest armour because what's the point of having tattoos if you're not showing them off at every moment.) My weapons of choice are double daggers because it's just faster. I find every other weapon to be too slow.

I'm currently trying to finish all the side quests in One Piece: World Seekers. I dunno why.

1. Star Citizen

2. Crusader Kings 3

3. X4: Foundations

4. Starbase

5. UnReal World

6. Sindome

7. Crusader Kings 3

8. Out of the Park Baseball

I guess these are the games I'm mostly going to play in 2022. Total War: Warhamer 3 is probably the biggest new game announced game I'm going give a try in 2022 so far.

Going back to Dark Souls 3 to finally beat it (with DLC).

@ghost_cat: Best of luck. I have a save that was trying to do this but I've decided it's not worth busting a gut to do. I've platinumed the base game but the DLC just infuriates me.

Doom 64 is a really good game so far. The new monster sprites are kind of neat in a claymation kinda way and the cadence of that game is indisputably Doom. Hopefully it holds up. I enjoyed the Dead Simple clone.

Currently playing Noita - damn this game is so good. Also grinding the 100% Stardew Valley.