Hello, Good morning and welcome to another fine edition of What We’re Playing; our weekly round up everything that’s kept us glued (or not) to our TV screens, desktop monitors, portable displays and whatever else you crazy kids are playing games on these days.
So, what have you been playing over the last seven days?
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I got XCOM 2 for $5 on the steam sale. Been playing that for a week straight and really enjoying it.
I enjoyed the first one in a very limited way before getting frustrated and moving on. For XCOM 2 I went in with better expectations and forethought about the strategy being crucial to understand for the harder difficulties to be beatable. So I elected to play on the “veteran” difficulty (one step above the easiest).
It’s definitely still been a bit frustrating at times, and I’ve had to resort to reloading saves more than I’d like to admit, cuz I’m going for a no deaths run. But now that I’ve almost beaten it and understand the ins and outs better, both in the field and in the larger planning room, I feel like I could bump the difficulty up a notch on a fresh playthrough.
It reminds me of playing a game like civilization where the missteps made early on can crush any hopes of survival even with tons of save reloads cheesing the odds.
I’ve been playing on my steam deck hooked up to my TV, and it runs pretty well. Had to tweak some settings but got it running 1920x1080 without any performance issues. Controller support is pretty good although it never recognizes my controller on game startup unless I manually switch input to keyboard and then back to controller.
I also noticed some crashing start occurring on a regular basis whenever loading a save, but restarting the deck resolved it.
I’ve had a week off work so I’ve played a fair bit more than I would normally. Threw a few things off of my backlog that I didn’t connect with and then spent a fair bit of time with…
Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown
Had a really good time with this one, especially in the first 10 or so hours. It did fall away towards the end, largely because it gets increasingly difficult as you go along. That’s not a criticism of the game as much as it’s an acknowledgement that I don’t love super tough platforming in games. Ultimately I used the games pretty great accessibility features to knock the difficulty right down and got to the end whilst also feeling like a total badass.
Returnal
I’ve had less time with this as I only started it yesterday whilst waiting for Demons Souls to download. And I think it’s safe to say that Demons Souls will have to wait. Returnal feels like something totally fresh and new to me. I’ve got no effing idea what’s going on, and I don’t really understand how the game works, but I’m having a total blast so far.
Funny that you mention Demon’s Souls and Returnal together. My first foray into soulsbornes was Bloodborne, and it did not work for me. Too punishing, too stressful, and I could never figure it out. My successes were owed exclusively to luck.
I took that as a sign that the hardcore, challenging game type wasn’t my style. But Returnal’s setting and style caught my attention bad, so eventually I gave in and bought it. I loved it from the start. Something clicked for me and I started naturally treating it like a puzzle game. Learned to stay calm, accept defeat and learn from it, and try again. I played the hell out of that game.
So then I wondered if I might like the Demon’s Souls remake and…hell yeah I did. Couldn’t get enough of it. And when Elden Ring came out, I was all about it too. If it wasn’t for Returnal, I don’t think I ever would have reopened that door.
I never did go back to Bloodborne though. Feel like I gave it the best shot I could already.
Been caught up in Tomb Raider I-III Remastered. I always enjoyed tank control Lara, but never really got far as a kid. Now I’m well into the first one, and plan on playing them all! The higher framerate definitely helps a lot.
Playing the new Stardew Valley 1.6 update coöp with the kiddos and replaying the excellent original Slime Rancher in my solo time before starting the sequel that just dropped.
On mobile, nothing actively playing, just the “walking companion” Pikmin Bloom, which continues to actually succeed at gamifying active transit, daily walks, and exploring public art around the city.
Pikmin bloom was fun! I got to level 41 and moved on cuz if you live in the suburbs like me there aren’t enough flowers to bloom or special mushrooms to battle, so i literally have to walk many thousands of steps or drive somewhere densely populated or spend real money. Its a shame cuz it was fun on the lower levels but plateaued pretty hard for me after level 40.
I’m curious how you’ll like slime rancher 2. I got it in EA some time ago, and it was too similar to the first one for my taste. Wonder if they’ve added more at launch to help set it apart and introduce new ideas.
Bloom has opened up now that you can friend randos, and invite friends to join mushroom battles. I have a couple dozen people from all over the world that I share mushrooms with and send postcards to. If you want to get back into it, there’s !pikminbloomapp@lemmy.world here on Lemmy for it.
(edited to include link)
SR2, my daughter is already playing it. She thinks the news slimes are cute, but yeah, it doesn’t look that different from the first one. The first one was so tight, though, I don’t feel bad about throwing some more money at the dev.
Pikmin Bloom is a 'Pokemon Go style game right? Might pick that up for the kids school run if it can scratch a similar itch.
Bloom is more about walking and passively planting flowers to help your Pikmin grow. It doesn’t matter much where you walk although there are some specific objects in the world you can interact with.
Go is more like you have to seek out a pokemon to catch it or go find a gym, and some Pokemon only show up in certain parts of the world. It’s vastly less accessible to people than Pikmin bloom is.
Pokémon Go didn’t click for me, Bloom is pretty different. Same company, though, and built on the same map. The main loop in Bloom is walk while planting flower » makes big flowers bloom » collect fruit » feed Pikmin » gather flowers petals / seeds to replant. There’s also a secondary loop where you send Pikmin to fight mushrooms, and the seasonal event loops that give you rare Pikmin. But the parts where you’re actively using the app are separate from the walking around parts, is the point.
I’ve been playing a lot of Fortnite Save the World. My biggest complaint is that the traps take backseat to the combat in multiplayer. Even when someone builds a trap setup, it’s often ineffective without studying the “proper” way to use traps, especially since some of the more effective traps have a multiple block range. Still, I’ve been having a good time with STW and Festival mode and Lego mode and Rocket Racing mode - I don’t play much of the battle royale.
I have a Factorio “Lazy Bastard” run on the back burner.
I finished Xenoblade Chronicles 3 last week. I thought it was good, not great, having enjoyed the first half of the game a lot more than the second. Really enjoyed the little Xenogears references. I wasn’t intending to move right on to the Future Redeemed DLC, but I heard something interesting things about it and decided to give it a shot. Really glad I did; nine hours in I’m already finding it dramatically more enjoyable than the base game.
Before starting that DLC, I was nibbling at Unicorn Overlord and Super Mario Bros. Wonder. I’m running hot and cold on UO, a lot of that having to do with the item management. This might be the most customizable strategy RPG I’ve ever played, depth and breadth, and the UI/UX is absolutely not up to the task. I ended up dropping Darkest Dungeon for very similar reasons a while back, and I’m hoping that’s not where I end up with UO. It’s such a pretty game and the strategy is genuinely interesting. Not much to say about Wonder; it’s a very impressive, refined product and I’m sure I’ll keep coming back to it.
Those last seven days? Mostly vivid/statis (PC) and Shattered Pixel Dungeon (mobile).
In particular, for the former, I’ve been slowly improving myself in recognizing medium-to-hard charts and beating them, mostly of the Middle difficulty, although I found the Cyclical Rebellion one quite hard to maneuver, requiring extra reflex time to get through the tricky sections. Story-wise, I held off from experiencing the second-to-last episode of Chapter 3 until I can build up the stamina and patience needed for its corresponding boss song chart (of which I’m either gunning for Opening or Middle, owing to my rather newbie-status in serious, well-polished 4k rhythm games in general), but from what much I had gleaned out of, from the game’s official Discord hub, there’s a lot going on behind the scenes, particularly on the main characters’ dimensional dilemma and the concept of “cycles”. Gameplay-wise, I still am grappling over the fact I get more early notes, and less late ones, than a stable balance, but I attribute it mostly to my proficiency and a rather minor irregular rhythm/beat following.As for my own backlog, though, I still have the unplayed demo for Until Then, as well as OMORI, and Disc Room, the last of which I haven’t touched upon since my last playthrough some three years back.
Mostly Balatro, scratches that brain itch.
