So don’t interact with the topic everywhere if you think it is too spread out. I see enough activity here and patient gamers to warrant them being different as they have different focus.

Plus each one is on a different instance. If there was only the one on beehaw I wouldn’t see anything since I blocked that instance.

Red Dead Redemption 2.

I picked it up a yeat or two ago, played through it, and loved it. When RDR was finally released for the PC, I immediately dove into it.

RDR was ezcellent, but it made me crave RDR2 gameplay, which was far deeper. So now I’m riding around in the epilogue, completing challenges and collecting every piece of clothing, saddle, and trinket.

Huh never heard of Mullet Madjack, looks pretty nuts

Yeah I’m there with you on Nightreign, the run is really fun. There’s something about it that is making me start to think that’s actually the way Fromsoft games work the best. I still have a few issues with the game in general but crafting your build around the loot and its passives is super satisfying.

City stuff can be fun or frustrating!

The tall buildings can block orbitals, line of sight for large stuff can make killing shots a lot more difficult than on most maps, and trying to cut through buildings can lead to walking right into a horde of infantry type stuff. On the other hand, watching the human support teams get a kill or two before dying can be pretty entertaining!

Currently replaying Borderlands 3 and playing Horizon Forbidden West.

I never did get into Minecraft - is Mineclonia a better place to start if I did get into it?

Rogue Trader. I’m up to chapter 3 and its dragging a bit.

Grounded 2. Very early early access but its still a ton of fun.

Peak. Mostly when my friend is available for co-op but I do solo runs here and there.

Hades 2 but its mostly on the back burner until 1.0 for now.

I’ve got a bunch of virtual novels, Pathologic 2, The Forest, and more in my backlog but with Silksong finally releasing next week they’ll probably be saying there for a while.

Ubisoft finally engineered the fun out of that franchise too eh?

Sorry if I came off as dismissive, my first paragraph was just me musing on why this community in particular hasn’t taken off.

So here is my opinion on the series: Ninja Gaiden Black is an adventure game with great combat. You have exploration, platforming and even an almost Metroidvania-like hub area you backtrack back and forth through. It’s occasionally almost Zelda-like rather than purely an action game. Playing it on Xemu also offsets one of its flaws - stingy checkpoint placement. Just use (but don’t abuse) save states and don’t worry about it. It runs flawlessly on Xemu without any specific setup, and you can set rendering resolution to like x6 and it will look great.

Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version) feels like the crack cocaine of action games. Or I dunno, freebase Meth maybe. It feels like the best action game ever 50% of the time and the worst action game ever 50% of the time. It’s almost pure action, just one murder hallway after another. The sheer amount of enemies, the aggression of the AI and the speed of the combat gives you adrenaline rushes like nothing else. HOWEVER! The game was rushed to release as the devs chased a bonus payout, and the game is blatantly not playtested and balanced properly. It’s especially apparent in the second half of the game. I developed a sort of love-hate relationship with it: I screamed at it in frustration more often than most games but I also cannot wait to go back.

Setting it up in Xenia Canary was much more fiddly than using Xemu. The game must be hard capped at 60 FPS. You need to tweak a bunch of config settings to minimise the occurrence of an audio bug where sound might cut out until you restart (I can send you my config if you want). If you want to increase rendering resolution by x3 you need to accept some minor graphical glitches (primarily in the first couple of chapters).

Don’t play NG3RE unless you’ve already played the other two and can’t wait for NG4. Otherwise just pick your flavour - more adventure game and better balance or an unbalanced but beautiful mess? I should also note that both games are fairly short, my NGB playthrough was 14h and NG2 was 13h, so it’s not a big commitment to play one after the other.

I think I’ll do BG3 after I tire of Nightreign. I started it but it didn’t click the first time for whatever reason. I loved Divinity 2 so I’m sure BG3 will click for me at some point.

How’s the Skyrim modding scene these days? Only news I see is about Bethesda’s meddling in it.

I consider myself a Souls veteran and more toward the ‘gud’ side of the scale but Shadow of the Erdtree was a real kick in the teeth. I mean I loved it but Fromsoft didn’t hold back on the difficulty. Even with all of the new collectable powerups it’s burly as hell.

On the driving topic - maybe you can help me. I’ve got a bunch of racing games but am having trouble picking one. It’d be nice to have one that’s easy enough to get into but realistic enough that it takes a while to master.

100% agree with your assessment of Witcher 3. It’s gorgeous and well written but yeah the gameplay is so muddy and janky. I did make it through finally too and loved the Blood and Wine expansion dearly in spite of all that.

I’m going to bring Super Video Golf to my crew, that sounds like a nice distraction when we don’t have the energy for another run in Nightreign.

Putting the blackgaol knight where he is is a frankly hilarious statement of how the DLC is gonna be. I’m good enough at the games to beat everything without cheese or summons (I do think that summoning is fine, I just don’t personally enjoy it unless it’s an NPC I like), but I find that some Elden Ring bosses push the edge of what I have the reaction speed for. Morgott and Maliketh were particularly troublesome for me. I haven’t gotten to anyone in the DLC that has hit that mark of pace yet, but I assume someone will

I’m not super knowledgeable on racing games, but I’m happy to try to help! What have you got available and what do you like?

Huh that actually sounds amazing - you had me at sandbox WW2. Is it worth getting a bundle or is the base game enough to get started?

Yeah another shallow ocean. I like open world games and games that give you lots of freedom. The mechanics of that are all in the game. Gunplay is fun, vehicle driving is meh. Selection of vehicles is kind of meh. Plot is meh. The missions are 50% fetch quests 50% go here and break into 1/3 different environments with enemies and kill everyone there.

I won’t buy another Ubisoft game after this. I got this game 85% off and it feels like I overpaid.

I’m trying to 100% tropico 6 before the new one comes out.

Also been playing various games in luanti, minecloneia specifically

Huh glad I posted here, never heard of Infra before. Sounds like something I’ve been after for a while. I don’t have a problem with violence in video games but I do wish there were more great games that weren’t based around it.

The concept of Infra sounds really chill. My seldom-gaming partner might even be interested in joining me on the journey.

Valheim, I’ve been playing solo most of the time, recently joined a new server.

Insurgency: Sandstorm, for a quick shooter fix. The player base is getting smaller these days. It’s getting hard to get into a domination game.

The base game is fine if you just want to see how it plays. But if you’re big into WW2 and you actually end up liking the game, the bundles are well worth it.

The base game has several campaigns including Normandy 1944, Pacific, Italy and Tunisia. If you buy the bundles you get Stalingrad, France 1940 and the Bulge, and the Shanghai-Nanking campaigns of the Second Sino-Japanese war.

You also get a bunch of new weapons, vehicles, and additional props for map making and creating missions.