I’ve been playing No Man’s Sky lately. They just put out an update that let’s you build a spaceship that also functions as a base. I’m only just now getting into the game and it came at a perfect time for me because I’m just now getting the point that I need a house to store stuff and I haven’t found a planet that I love. Now I don’t have to because I can live in a ship built just for me!

Just me and my antlered ewok exploring the black.

currently going trough my personal backlog of games I’ve always wanted to play but never could. Never had my own console or a good enough PC. bought myself a steam deck and I’ve been an absolute degenerate doing nothing but playing video games. Just finished all 3 watch dogs (+ DLCs), currently working my way trough horizon zero dawn then will play forbidden west. Also simultaneously playing expedition 33, fallout 4, sleeping dogs and the witcher 3. I know its not high art but watch dogs is my favourite game and franchise I wish ubisoft would do something more with it.

I finally got my wife hooked on Stardew Valley.

For years I’ve been trying to get her to game with me, never pushing too hard because I didn’t want to put her off the entire thing.

Recently she got laid off and picked up a part time job, so she’s had more free time. I asked her to consider playing Stardew Valley, and she said she would, but kept putting it off.

Finally one Saturday we had some free time and she agreed to give it a shot. I made popcorn, set her up with a Switch on our TV, gave her an hour or so to get started (I was willing to answer questions about controls, but wanted her to learn the game herself because I genuinely believe that’s part of the charm), then joined her with my Steam Deck (not multiplayer, just both of us playing single player).

She enjoyed it, but after that day she didn’t touch it for a while. Then I reminded her the Switch doesn’t need to be on the TV, and suddenly she was playing it every day. She’s fallen deeply into the Stardew Valley rabbit hole and I am so happy.

She broke her foot recently, and when we were at the urgent care center she had the Switch and I had my Steam Deck as we were waiting. The doctor who finally saw us said we were geniuses for being so well prepared for the packed waiting room.

I really loved Death Stranding, need to get back into it. I had the same experience but then I think I was out of town for a week and for some reason never picked it back up. It’s just so melancholic and meditative sometimes and almost always has that cinematic beauty.

Cyberpunk 2077

Stardew Valley

Hades 2

Diablo 4

These are the ones I’m rotating between most right now. I’ve also got Doom (2016) and BG3 on rotation, but haven’t hit them in a while.

The Steam Deck has been such a great addition. Especially being able to stream titles like CP2077 from the PC for better graphical fidelity and battery life.

Edit: Oh! And Geometry Wars 3! It’s so good on the Steam Deck! It says “Playable” but I genuinely don’t know why, it seems completely supported as far as I can tell.

Huh I never heard of Powerslave but your description “classic metroidvania and 90s FPS” makes me think it might need to go on my list

Clair Obscura, because I enjoy depression.

Oh I was doing a bunch of Helldivers 2 as well until Nightreign. Such a chaotic blast. The new city stuff on the maps looks like crazy fun.

I’ve been on a Lethal Company kick for a few months. I’ve been getting super involved in the “high quota” scene, where people try to get the highest quota possible. It involves a lot of crazy tech and good team work, and I’m really enjoying it.

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.