What are you playing right now?

[Lord Raziere]

Super Mario Odyssey, but I'm probably going to be playing Ultramoon in a few days. should get back around to Cat Quest though....and a few other things I downloaded from steam....

[Kato]

Factorio has been eating a lot of my time lately.. But I've been skipping from game to game a lot since Breath of the Wild this summer. Few games keep my interest for more than a few hours weirdly.

[Iruka]

On PC, I just finished Mark of the Ninja, which was utterly delightful. It does everything I like about stealth games, but with the twist of being in 2D, which is done really well. I don't know how I missed this until now, it was amazing.

Best stealth game I ever played. Good controls, clear detection feedback, differentviable play styles, upgrades that support your style without trivializing the encounters, superb atmoshpere.


I currently play jist some Team Fortress 2 and Star Craft 2 Co-op for a bit unwinding after work. Sometimes Europa Universalis III or Sunless Sea on the weekend.

[Zombimode]

Playing through Deus Ex Classic, fully understanding why it remains such a beloved game.

Oh yes. Deus Ex remains one of the glorious Moments in gaming history.
People saying that "it hasn't aged well" have no idea what they are talking about.

The "bad voice acting" thing is also overstated. Yes, there are some lines that come off weird (the infamous "a bomb"). The rest is just how these people talk.


On Topic:

Currently I'm in the final Scenario of Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.

Considering that my first save of the campaign is dated to December 2013, this game is truly a backlog item.

It's a good game, but I will be happy when I beat the final mission


After that I will try my hand at The Age of Decadence which Looks really promising

[JeenLeen]

Doki Doki Literature Club. Basically done with it, but want to do one more playthrough to see all the content. (Free on Steam. Pretty awesome, but avoid spoilers before playing it.)

I suppose I'm technically playing Cosmic Star Heroine, but I haven't picked it up in months. Mostly due to grad school and kids not leaving time for gaming. Maybe Christmas break.

[NRSASD]

After that I will try my hand at The Age of Decadence which Looks really promising

Oooo that's a good one. Highly recommend, highly enjoyed. I've played it through at least 8 times already, and I know of 2 more playthroughs I really want to try.

[Knaight]

I've been on a Hand of Fate (1 and 2) kick for a while, although Hollow Knight just got a free mini-expansion and is likely to displace them in the near future.

Best stealth game I ever played. Good controls, clear detection feedback, differentviable play styles, upgrades that support your style without trivializing the encounters, superb atmoshpere.

Have you tried Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun? It has all of this except for the upgrades, and even then it kind of has them. It also has a set of in game (not Steam) achievements that actually add to the game, setting up side goals for missions and forcing you to use more complex and unorthodox tactics, largely because almost all of them are fundamental restrictions.

[Driderman]

I've recently been binging The Curious Expedition. As in playing it until 3 am on a workday because I really get into it, it's a great little gem of a game. Hilariously, I've spent loads more time playing that game these last weeks rather then the AAA-titles like Assassin's Creed Origins and Wolfenstein II that I have waiting for me on the PS4.

[rooster707]

Dabbling in Fortnite Battle Royale because hey, it's free. Died in the first minute of my first three games, survived a while in the fourth but some lady killed me with... a spike trap? Huh?

I feel like it's a good game (mode, whatever) and I'm totally planning on playing the full game next year, but it definitely needs some kind of tutorial.

[The Glyphstone]

Finished Deus Ex, now I've started Deus Ex: Human Revolution. I feel like someone sitting down to a five-star restaurant meal after having grown up on a diet of bread crusts and water.

[Cespenar]

Have you tried Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun? It has all of this except for the upgrades, and even then it kind of has them. It also has a set of in game (not Steam) achievements that actually add to the game, setting up side goals for missions and forcing you to use more complex and unorthodox tactics, largely because almost all of them are fundamental restrictions.

Nice to see this little gem here. Shadow Tactics is a great Commandos game. I wished it was a bit longer, actually.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Right now debating whether I should make another attempt at unifying the Empire in Total War: Warhammer, or buckle down and get going on my Mass Effect series master playthrough...

[Lunatic Sledge]

The roommate and I are finishing up Mario Odyssey. He's absolutely determined to get every moon in the game, which I thought was crazy--but from what I can gather we've already got the absolute toughest/worst/most obnoxious moons, so the rest is just clean up.

[Martok]

Been playing an Athenian campaign in Rome II: Total War - Wrath of Sparta. Have also gone old-school and have been playing a Klingon campaign in Birth of the Federation (Ultimate Mod 5).

[Alent]

I've been playing Ori and the Blind Forest, and it's absolutely beautiful, but I'm probably going to just drop it because of how irritating and integral the Bash mechanic is. It's so inaccurate, and you randomly go the opposite direction of where you're aiming. Trying to decide what Metroidvania in my backlog to play next, although I might just fire up Stardew Valley since I haven't started it yet and got it as a gift a while back.

[Sajiri]

Ive just been put on a work exemption for the next 3 months for health reasons, so over the past week I've been trying to catch up on games I never finished.

Mostly been playing Pillars of Eternity and Fallout 4, but I also jumped back on FFXI for the free login campaign going on right now for the nostalgia. Making me want to resub to it.

[Sandsme]

Right now i'm trying 100% on Ori and The Blind Forest.
Also playing Black Desert Online and PUBg

[thirsting]

This War of Mine. (on sale in Steam right now by the way, less than 4€)

Perhaps not a good game to play if you're already gloomy, but I love how this de-glorifies war quite effectively.

[Iruka]

Dabbling in Fortnite Battle Royale because hey, it's free. Died in the first minute of my first three games, survived a while in the fourth but some lady killed me with... a spike trap? Huh?

I'd really like to play it, but seems like it could keep me up all night. Don't have time for that right now. Also annoyed that I would have to register at yet another thing for games.

Have you tried Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun? It has all of this except for the upgrades, and even then it kind of has them. It also has a set of in game (not Steam) achievements that actually add to the game, setting up side goals for missions and forcing you to use more complex and unorthodox tactics, largely because almost all of them are fundamental restrictions.

Never heard of it but it looks great! Good candidate for the christmas holidays.

[SlyGuyMcFly]

Diablo 2: LoD. Partly out of nostalgia but mostly because it's one of the very few games I can play with a buddy after we beat the various Borderlands games.

[warty goblin]

Mostly Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Wildlands, which is one of those games that I don't get the sense most people really liked all that much. I find it a hell of a lot of fun. It manages to hit some sort of sweet spot between not having any progression, and having so much progression that I have to run the leveling treadmill. So I can go unlock stuff that I want as I feel the urge. Makes it feel much more like character customization than making a build or anything. And it keeps the combat from turning into frustrating RPG nonsense where guys in this province for some reason take 15 rounds to the face because my assault rifle isn't high enough level. So I can just putter about doing the stuff that seems fun and interesting, shooting the dudes and doing the missions. Which do a pretty good job of giving me some interesting problems to solve, and a variety of tools to solve them, without turning into the sort of 'go through the vents if you're being stealthy' level design that I hate. If I want to sneak I just, you know, sneak. And because of the very light progression that doesn't lock me into any particular playstyle, if I want to go loud, I can go loud.

Plus the map is huge and gorgeous. The game has a fast travel system, but I don't let myself use it. That just ruins games like this, and since I don't need to go sell loot all the time, there's a lot less time consuming ass-hauling than, say, Skyrim. Here if I'm going a place, I want to go there to do something cool. Plus, helicopters are just about everywhere, which is handy.

Some Destiny 2. Which is good - the shooting is amazing - but there's something so bad fan fictiony about it that I find it hard to get into, and the gear churn is sort of tedious.

I fired up Warlock: Master of the Arcane again this week. I had forgotten just how well set up that game's mechanics are, in a sort of breezy you don't even think about way. But it solves so many of the things that Civ V and VI tried, and so much more elegantly. Cities expand across the map because that's where you build all the buildings. Population matters because that's what lets you build things in a city. Location matters because of the huge number of tile-specific upgrades, most of which offer a choice between two sorts of upgrades, and some of which come with their own building trees even. Unit construction is independent of civil construction, and dependent on having specific infrastructure in specific cities. So I can't just spend a pile of gold in Snotville to assemble some high-power unit, those have to be built in major cities that have been developed specifically to produce them, It's a really clever design for getting big armies of cool stuff smashing into each other.

Damn I like this game.

[rooster707]

After digging around in my backlog for a while, I've settled on Invisible, Inc. as my "play until after Christmas, when I can buy myself something without feeling guilty" game. (I kind of ran out of steam on Thi4f... I'll come back to it eventually.) It's by Klei, the guys who did Mark of the Ninja, and like Mark of the Ninja, it is excellent. Unlike Mark of the Ninja, it is turn-based, and therefore I am terrible at it. Still having fun, though.

Also tried out the Overwatch free weekend, and now I finally see what all the fuss is about. It's definitely going on my "must play... sooner or later" list.

[Corsair14]

Stellaris, Warhammer 2 Total War, Squad Assault(? the ww2 war game).

Getting a new computer, looking forward to playing a heavily modded Skyrim and Battlefront 2: Star Wars.

Are there any games on par with Skyrim that has been released since?
Any Star Wars first person shooters with character development?

[Avilan the Grey]

Right now:
Sims 4: Vampires
Divinity: Original Sin 2
Dungeons 3

[warty goblin]

Any Star Wars first person shooters with character development?

Definitely check out Republic Commando, which has excellent characters and is a very solid shooter to boot. Maybe try out the first Battlefront 2, which has a pretty good campaign for a series of disguised bot matches. Some of the later levels are really freaking hard too.

[rooster707]

Definitely check out Republic Commando, which has excellent characters and is a very solid shooter to boot. Maybe try out the first Battlefront 2, which has a pretty good campaign for a series of disguised bot matches. Some of the later levels are really freaking hard too.

Also the Jedi Knight series, especially Outcast, although TBH the best part of that game is the lightsaber combat, not the shooting.

[Zevox]

Started up a game from my backlog - Nier: Automata.

It's like Platinum looked at Dark Souls and went "you know what would make that better? Making it more like Metal Gear Rising." Which, well, to be fair, yeah, hard to disagree with that. But at the same time, for a game that feels so much like a mix of those two, I mostly find myself wishing it was even more like MGR. I suppose getting that taste of better combat and some of the aesthetics of MGR just makes me remember how much more fun a fast-paced, exciting, pure action game like that is to me than a pseudo-open-world, slower-paced one like Dark Souls - or Nier, apparently.

Still, I finished two Dark Souls games and this seems to be a better version of that, so there's a decent chance I'll finish this one. I'll just be wishing all the RPG number-crunching elements, crafting system, and oversized maps would go away and I could get more epic boss fights set to heavy metal music while I'm doing it.

[ngilop]

Playing Age of Empires 2: HD extended edition, and am completely in love.


@winthur, Warcraft 3 frozen throne hard?

@zombimode that's a good game, lol


It took me 14, 15 years to finally beat the final mission in Total Annihilation: kingdoms I think I yelled in joy and cried at the same time. I have never played a mission that hard in my life, I was close a couple of times but ended up loosing my king/queen at losing at the very end.


Company of heroes as kinda hard too.. Commandos: Beyond the call of duty was brutal, but I'm not 100% sure whether it is just hard, or my rts playstyle is not very well supported.

[warty goblin]

I think I'm into the wrap-up phase of my game of Warlock, after my legions of crack minotaurs, lizardman spearmen (spearlizards?) and an elven archer hero who's probably the single most lethal thing in the entire world ground down another Great Mage's army and systematically laid waste to his capital. There's still two Great Mages to go, but I've got a pretty decent economy, and enough temples to start spitting out some really powerful units now. I'm rather tempted to take the core of my army on a jaunt through an other world portal, since there's some really powerful stuff you can get out of them, but we'll see. The portal's a long way from the current front line.

This is also giving an urge to try Civ 6 again. Which is probably a mistake.

[oxybe]

Currently? Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Absolutely up there as one of the best games I've played in a long, long time.

Spoiler: review ish thing

Show

Controls are just as tight & responsive as you'd expect from an action oriented game like this. Z-targeting for blocking and dodging allows you to lessen or avoid most any attack (barring some explosions, I'm looking at you Lynels and your "I'm in close range, time for high damage AoE!"). A well-timed parry or dodge helps you get a good leg up on the enemies, often leaving them vulnerable for a flurry of blows. You do have a stamina meter that drops when you charge up an attack, run, swim, climb or glide but the default is more then serviceable and has plenty of room to grow. As for the movement itself, Link runs, swims, climbs and glides at a nice pace and even has a jump button. It's not a big jump, but it's there and it's occasionally used and nice to have around.

Visually, it's very pretty. it's a very pastel world and tranquil to look at at times, which clashes a bit with post-apocalyptic setting of the game. Yes, this is basically Fallout: Hyrule. The GBomb fell hard on Hyrule and the Hylians are scattered here and there. The Zora, Gorons, Gerudo & Rito came out of it much better then the Hylians, who were at the epicenter of it all. But with the looming threat of Ganon thrashing above the corpse of Hyrule castle, it creates a nice clash when compared to the lush greenery of the plains that's overtaken the land. Now roving bands of moblins, bokoblins and lizalfos control the land and at night horrible undead rise from the grave to assault you. Sneaking up to these monsters allows you to actually observe them go about their tasks (or lack thereof) as they huddle around a fire roasting fresh fish or meat or sleep, as a few keep a lookout for danger, or they're just being silly gooses and dance around or decide to chase a boar or something. It's a nice touch to have them do these things and make the world feel vibrant. Also it gives you time to sneak up and shank them with a greatsword for not paying attention. Yes it has stealth kills.

Sometimes things do look a bit flat or make you go "yeah, that's a low quality texture" (see: trees) but I feel it's splitting hairs: the game looks fantastic and outside of any blantantly egregious examples, complaining about visuals in modern game sounds like sour grapes to me. Then again, I was born in the Atari/NES era, so this whole 3D thing is all a bit fancy to me.

Soundwise, it has all the grunts and squeals you'd hope to hear from Link and the monsters. Weapons have a satisfying sound when they collide with enemy flesh and adds impact to Link's powerful motions. The music is something I could listen to all day long. Kakariko village's theme is such a good calming japanese-themed "background music" with it's woodwinds and shamisen creating a very "spring day" feel for the song & and many of the orchestral remixes of classic songs will punch you in the nostalgia with how well made they are.

The voice acting is... Ok. I've heard better, but the voices do fit the characters as presented and while I did feel that some of the delivery felt a bit off, I think it might be just because it's being bounced off of Link, who is still staunchly a silent protagonist, but people react as though he said something instead of just silently gazing into their soul. It's a bit weird.

Going back to gameplay, out of the tutorial area, you're given all the tools you'll be using, barring the 4 boons found by completing the 4 main "dungeons", if you will. And every Shrine you come across is basically like a pop-quiz on using these tools, helping you get accustomed to them so you'll do better in the combat portions as you become more aware of them and their use. Even the more combat oriented ones help teach you how to deal with various weapon types or how to deal with the stupid death lasers of the Guardians littered about the landscape.

One thing I wish they would have actually mentioned, is how you can actually drop and trigger the remote bombs while gliding. Seeing a gaggle of bokoblins below you and doing a bombing run and watch as they try to figure out what exactly happened is fun.

Either way the abilities are all pretty helpful, both in combat and when exploring.

The variety of weapons is pretty cool too: one-handed swords/clubs/boomerangs, two-handed swords/clubs/boomerangs, spears, bows and elemental arrows all have their uses. one-handers allow for parrying, two handers are high damage, but a whiff leaves you open, while spears/polearms give you a longer reach and ability to more safely manage and enemy's movement. Then you have your bow for ranged attacks.

Arrows, and indeed all weapon types, also come in Ice, Fire, Lighting and generally do what it says on the package, Ice freezes, Fire does damage over time and Lighting will shock (and disarm) enemies.

Ancient weapons, arrows & shields are generally best used against the Guardians, as they have better damage VS their high armour. The arrows are a standout since it can one-shot any enemy (barring guardians, which require 3-5 shots) to my knowledge, but will also destroy any loot dropped (again, barring guardian loot).

Then you have bomb arrows. These are, quite honestly, kinda broken. I say kinda as early game, you'll probably be broke and not afford them, but later when rupees get more plentiful, these are highly effective, especially when you get the bows that spit two, three or even five copies of any arrow loaded. Buy a bunch and save them for bosses.

One thing of note is that the weapons do break and many do break pretty fast, but to be honest, bombs are a good replacement for weapons in the early game VS the weaker monsters and weapons found lying around the world will respawn. The silver 2-hander you find in the Zora's Domain or the Royal Guard gear in the Castle Hyrule, for example can be farmed, to some extent. But even then, you do get some winners from the mobs: The Dragonbone Moblin Club is relatively easy to find and is a solid weapon that can help you get better ones.

But in the end, you'll never really find yourself lacking a weapon to beat a moblin over the head with, even if some break rather quickly. I was surprised to see how much I didn't actually mind this.

The various upgradeable armours are a nice surprise. I do like me some upgrade quest and outside of a few specific instances of having to need to farm, often for the fourth and final upgrades, I had most of the material on me, or very close to it. The extra boons you get on the "travel gears" make exploring Hyrule a joy. The climbing, sneaking & swimming focused ones are probably my most used armours, quickly followed by the Barbarian and Ancient armours for their damage boosting & high defense. Seeing how some NPCs react to how Link looks in some of the armours is pretty funny too.

Currently sitting at 41.27% map completion and finishing up some of the errant side quests, hunting down the Hinox & Taluses I've missed and topping off the few armour upgrades i've got left (freakin' Star Fragments... the completionist in me dislikes hunting for them due to how boring the task is nearly as much as the idea of having to find last 780 of the 900 korok seeds is daunting). Looking at my map, littered with shrine locations, monster locations, weapon locations, "stuff I want to look at later" locations... there is still so much to do.

Early game is pretty brutal too. Three hearts is not a lot of leeway when you're still learning the game mechanics, so you have to git gud (or at least adequate/scumbaggy) to progress until you get your first few heart containers and can finally breath a bit.

My only real complaint is the final boss. I don't know if I was over-geared when I accidentally blundered and stumbled my way to him by kicking down the front door and taking what looked like a side path, but boy was the fight easy. Post-fight is largely a nice cinematic sequence. It's very pretty to look at, but the difficulty is... really not there. You'll have to actively try to fail that part to actually fail. I'll blame this on a mix of a well-stocked up Bomb arrow store, a bow that threw out 3 arrows for every 1 I used and nothing to dissuade to not explode Gannon's face off with heavy ordnance.

But it didn't harm my view the game though, it's still a joy to play. The freedom to go where you want and do the dungeons in whatever order you want, or just ignore all that and go headlong into the last area of the game armed with a stick and some gumption is up to you. Hyrule is extremely pretty and it's landscapes are a joy to trot through on your horsey. I named my first one Greenbean.

Definitely a must play if you're a switch owner.

Zelda gushing aside, hopefully I'll be able to grab a copy of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 when the Elgado (hooray for black friday sales!) I ordered comes into the Best Buy the next few days for pickup, I'll probably be streaming my gameplay and use youtube as a backup/archive.

Also looking to pickup Monster Hunter World when it releases on PC and eventually Dragon Warrior Builders whenever that release is (Spring 2018 per nintendo's site).