What You've Been Playing This Week

[hudson]

Satisfactory 1.0 (Steam) - this game is very addictive. Be careful. It's a crafting , exploring, factory building puzzle game. I love it.

[Neon Ignition]

Another Fisherman's Tale
Immediately better than the first game, the story is better pitched and the game goes much quicker into mixing up tools etc.

Alone in the Dark
Heard repeatedly that this was underrated, done the first of five chapters and it's very much a just shy of AA game which isn't bad per se but I'm not yet seeing the 'underrated' claim being backed up

NASCAR Arcade Rush
That common thing of having some alright elements but the gameplay doesn't replicate the added layer of depth older arcade racers had

[Finsbury Girl]

Like a Dragon Ishin - it's as mental as the other games + samurai. So naturally I am loving it.

[QualityChimp]

Had a car trip, so borrowed my son's Switch while he doomscrolled on his phone.
Tried Lonely Mountains: Downhill, but couldn't get on with the steering. I literally couldn't turn enough on one setting.
I've played it loads already, though, so stopped once I completed a run to the bottom.

However, I fired up Slay The Spire and loved it.
I don't know if I'd missed a tutorial because I wasn't the first player, but it threw me straight in, trying to understand how the game works.
Funnily enough, I'd played a real card deckbuilder the night before (Star Realms), so picked it up pretty quickly.
Sometimes you get a really good combo of cards like massive block and then a card that does damage equal to your block, but you're always looking for the best combo of cards. I'm sure there are videoguides to help.
Died about 3 times on the final boss, but by the time I'd finished playing on the journey home (before the driver swap with the wife at the services!) I was up to the final boss on the second level (then died, obvs).

Perfect for the Switch, I suspect you can play the whole thing just using touch, without the need for controllers.

[Neon Ignition]

Lollipop Chainsaw: Repop
Not decided yet whether the gameplay has aged too much to enjoy

Mortal Kombat 1
working through the story, the devs had zero to say this time around with their overlong and overdry CG cutscenes that tell the most basic plot they could come up with. The game just feels stale at this point, barely any different than the last few.

[QualityChimp]

More Slay The Spire (Switch) as it's pretty addictive.
Had to put down my devices and have food with my stupid family, dammit!

Had a really good run and got to the third level, but some statue head with 500 health attacked with more and more damage.
I kept being given curse cards that I can't play, but also had a card that did 10 damage to all enemies every time a curse card is drawn, so it was win/win.

Great when you get a sweet card combo on the go.

[fishbowlhead]

Dragons dogma 2. Played this for like, 20 mins on my regular PS5 and it runs like a donkey even in perf mode, up to 7hrs on Pro and it runs at 60fps almost all the time, some drops in town still but its not that bad. Overall i'm having loads of fun with this and the PAWNS are hilarious in their shenanigans.

Cyberpunk 2077. Back to dog town to go through the DLC, falling in love with this game all over again.

[CMcK]

Bought Sonic x Shadow thingy the other day was down to £30 in Asda. Just tried to play it and it needs a 22GB update. That’ll take over an hour on my not very broad band!
Ah well back to Super XYX…

[hudson]

Played a bit of Stalker and MS Flight Sim 24 on GamePass. I will probably wait until these are a better state.

Risk of Rain 2 (PS5) - I picked this up when I got my Steam Deck a couple of years ago, but I wasn't sure what was going on. It didn't help that a friend was showing me the game in co-op and he was just zooming everywhere telling me to 'hurry up' and never went back after this. It was recently on sale on PS Store and so picked it up there (coz im a twerp). Anyway, I'm still not fully understanding the game and so I've just been trying runs to see if like the usual roguelite way, the game gets easier the more you play. I think it is? Enjoying it though. It's a great little 3rd person run and gun.

Vampire Survivors (PS5) - if you have never considered this game as GOTY at anytime, then I am sure you just haven't played it.

Nier Automata (PS4) - I'm slowly going through this. With the recent Stellar Blade DLC, I feel like I have to really give this the attention it deserves.

Stellar Blade (PS5 Pro)- New DLC dropped and so I have started NG+ of this absolute proud trouser sausage of a game.

Dynasty Warriors Origins demo (PS5 Pro) - Finally, KOEI Tecmo have successfully created a great next-gen foundation for their baby. I am excited to see the series grow again from here.

Balatro (all formats) - I'm always playing this. So much so that if you look behind you, there I am playing it on my phone. Say... who is that on that park bench with dog sniffing his crotch... oh that's just me playing on Switch too.

Dungeon Clawler (Steam) - Another roguelite game. Very similar to Slay the Spire except your weaponry and armour are all set after taking 2 goes of a claw machine per turn. No no, come back. Honestly, try it. It's great. Music is so good also.

[importaku]

Put crazy amounts of time into core keeper, sort of a top down mix of the cave segments of stardew valley mixed with the crafing complexity of minecraft. The cave system is like a 2D open world game the map is obscenely large and you can carve it all out as you find each new biome, it has so many items & materials to find as well as ways to kit out your characters it's a really fun time sink. So far just been trying to discover all the boimes as i'm missing some types of ore to upgrade the crafing bench to the best one however the biome the ore is in is one where im getting my ass kicked as the enemies are really strong and my armour isn't offering much protection hence me needing to upgrade the crafing facilities to better ones.

[QualityChimp]

Lil' bit o' Vampire Survivors, Slay The Spire and even a smidge of Power Washer Simulator.

Main issue is that I'm caning films for Woovember and I'm supposed to be studying for an exam.
With that looming over me, I can't really get involved in any games and I'd love to be playing Arkham City, Days Gone, GTAV and Skyrim.
Maybe over Christmas?

[Neon Ignition]

Mortal Kombat 1
Still working my way through it, it's okay I guess but hard to see what fans were to get excited about with it

Under the Waves
A nice alternative, very walking sim in a way but fun enough so far

Alan Wake Remastered
Begun working through the Alanverse again with this, around a third of the way through and the sequel is the better game but this is still fun

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2
Not booted it up yet but it's next in line

[wakka]

I have been playing through Snatcher again on the Mega CD. I play it on an emulator on my laptop in bed, with a Switch Pro controller.

Love this game. So atmospheric and cool.

[Tobal]

a month or 2 ago steam has RPG sale and i ended up getting

Gloomhaven + dlc - i've been on/off playing the Jaws expansion on the tabletop the last year and half but it a alot of faff to setup every encounter, and we usually end up playing different game instead (this also let me know there is a BD tabletop thread on searching gloomhaven so got plenty to talk about there). Definitely want to do proper first play thread on it, but it's really good, and i managed to get bunch of friends in on it to to where am now 80 hours in with 4 game states on the go (my own solo, 2x duos and 3 player).

Our Adventure Guild - released april this year, has the look of newgrounds circa 2001 and how to draw manga. Fantasy tactics (like a Final Fantasy Tactics/Vandal Hearts), hire, grow, equip and keep happy adventurers while doing set and generated quests, with alot of the set quests having different outcomes depending on who you bring and what you do before meeting a boss. Death means death, managed to lose the Tank of the 2nd party in a regular generated dungeon... gutted, he had good growth stats and good relationships with the rest of his team, RIP Dwayne.

Dungeons of Dredmor - another newgrounds look which has been around since 2011, so it has a cult following modding all sort of new perks in (bowiemancy anyone?). Roguelite dungeon crawler, pick 7 perks from a large list and then go to about levelling up them up and upgrading your gear through loot and crafting.

[Tobal]

Tried some Marvel Rivals (pc ver) now it's out on everything for free. It's not for me, i just can't get into Hero shooters anymore. This is just really unbalanced game and like all Hero shooters you are at the mercy of your teammates working together. Looks really nice and runs really well, but i really don't like how you can't tell if you getting hit and it never feels good to get stomped by ultimate after ultimate coming your way followed by a long run back (no sprint button) and it the way parts of the level crumble it makes defensive characters useless (punisher has a gun emplacement, shoot out the ground and it deactivates).

Can say much about the gacha element/season passes and the like, didn't look in to it deeply, seemed like alot of locked characters for real money (like spiderman).