What have you been playing this week? Do you think others might like it?
Tears of the kingdom - little late to the party but it’s a fun game.
remember to not update the software and lock it to whatever version you initially have. It’s gonna be very hard to amass resources if you aren’t planning to use dup exploits or play it for a very long time. (preferably pre 1.1.2)
I don’t know about all that, I’ve put maybe about 50 hours into it with no dupes and I find that I almost always have pretty good amounts of most things. Sure, you CAN cheat yourself a gorillion zonaite and get max batteries right at the beginning of the game, or infinite of the best weapon fuse materials, but… why? They’re not really that hard to come across and you’re robbing yourself of one of the key reasons to even explore the world in the first place.
I don’t know how far you did in terms of BotW, but the way it works burn me out(upgrading gears and inventory slots) so this time around I just decide to dupe stuff. It make the work feel a lot more like a good play ground for exploration compare to really constraint weird grind fest. Let’s use your zonite example as material source.
- can you play without farming zonaite and not even upgrade your base battery? Yes, in my early hours without dupe knowledge I managed to unlock all skytower and defeat some harder area mob that defends tower without using anything duped.(I basically started looking for duping because of the reason coming up next.)
- can you finish the game wihtout zonaite gathering? I believe so, it’s not even used if you are not using auto build in the over world.
- max battery requires 4500 charges, while realistically without too complex builds that use energy draining components too much, just 4~5 batteries upgraded should cover a lot of usage. BUT, even that lowers the freedom when you are on a quest to explore “fast”. 4~5 batteries just requires about 1/3 of total amount so about 200~300ish large zonaite. And they give you 1 for quest reward or from chests.
- zonaite charges(the one that fill battery and gives you a bit of red charge even mid using your thing) and auto builds are the supposed zonaite burner. In terms of game design, they want this resource to dump into things that enable you do do something fun or interesting. charges and construct parts are the main thing to exchange capsules. And this is what breaks it for me once I realized how much work I need to do to start feeling freedom building shits and put them to work. If you play it like BotW, it just feels like a side thing that’s fun when you have it. But I don’t want to play it like BotW, I want to have the freedom to build stuff and use them as I like. Which needs a lot of capsules and a lot of zonaites for autobuilds(when the parts are from memory instead of capsules. )
- since you can’t use auto build or capsules in shrines, so getting lots of these dups doesn’t break the puzzle. Can you like ride fan-attached machines all the way to destination temples/area without exploring? I guess you can, I don’t know since I didn’t do that. For my first 2 temples, I still follow quest lines etc.
But it made my korok shipping SO MUCH FUN compare to without duping those charges/autobuild parts. Like it literally changes the boring and repetitive quests(like holding the sign in place ones) into a fun experiment platforms. Duping the parts also make fusing a lot less “punishing” as some of the better parts are required to upgrade as well. I don’t have to “conserve” just go whacking and don’t get too annoyed like BotW when weapons break. (as most of the damage comes from fusing, not the weapon states.)
Note, I haven’t even build homes etc to dup weapons/bows/shields, and it just unlocks the game so much without the gathering grind. (so the old blood moon weapon/material gather runs is no longer needed.) Like, yeah, I really don’t have that much free time to dedicate to one game, so if I have the option to by pass any grind mechanics that also doesn’t “break” the game, I am gonna just do it.
I told myself I’m not buying Final Fantasy until I’m done with Tears of the Kingdom and now I’m sweating nervously at the release date next week.
After a few years of mostly playing strategy & tactical games, I fired up Minecraft this weekend. I’d never really given it a proper try before, but it’s been refreshing and relaxing. I started on survivor mode but found the enemies kind of annoying, so I switched to peaceful survivor mode and that’s been fun so far. Just enjoying the “wander around and build stuff” atmosphere. Honestly makes me want to play more sandbox-y games after a while of mostly playing more intense stuff.
You might like Satisfactory. They added a peaceful mode recently and the game is heckin’ beautiful after the last update. Sometimes I’ll just stop playing the game and look at things now.
I am finally playing Hades. I don’t like rogue-likes, which is why I put it off for so long, but I’m deeply enjoying playing on God Mode.
I’m always poking around in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, and I’m playing Sons of the Forest with some friends every week.
I’m playing Grim Dawn because i’m not a big fan of always-on in Diablo 4. So i’ve decided to give Grim Dawn a try and damn, i’m really loving it.
It’s a great game, I’ve been recommending people spend their money on it over D4, for the same price they could get all the Grim Dawn dlcs and have a stack more content in my mind (-:
I just fired up a GD game with a friend last weekend. I forgot how to play since it’s been so long.
Necro/Occultist all day long. BoneZone and the boys causing havoc all around.
Finally getting around to Outer Wilds, and it’s fantastic. Truly one of the better single player experiences I’ve ever played.
Probably my favorite game of the last 10 years or so. Enjoy!
A factory game called shapez.
Shapez rocks! Excited for the sequel too, dev updates have been looking great.
Shapez is great! I love the minimalistic approach to a factory game. I finished the main levels a while ago, but I still want to get around to
minor late game spoiler
using all the circuits to build a factory to automatically make just about anything for the later levels
I’m playing the critically acclaimed MMORPG Final Fantasy XIV. Have you heard of it? With an expanded free trial which you can play through the entirety of A Realm Reborn and the award-winning Heavensward expansion up to level 60 for free with no restrictions on playtime.
I played it about two years ago, and I think I made it almost to the very end of ARR, before I stopped. I’ve been thinking about going back to it recently, since I’m in the mood for a MMO again.
I’m biased, because I love FF14! If you are in the mood, go play it :) ARR got reworked a lot, and the story gets so much better starting in Heavensward! (I really liked ARR, but many people say they felt it was slow.)
ARR’s story really is a slog for the most part, it has its moments but they are far and between. You probably already heard this, but the story does pick up a lot from the start of Heavensward. The end of Shadowbringer remains one of my most cherished RPG memories to this day.
I didn’t mind the story, I mainly stopped because I thought the different classes all just have too many different buttons, for seemingly no reason. This is from someone whose only other MMO is WoW which has a lot less buttons for all the classes (that I played).
Also, I had to do those bigger raids, where you couldn’t use the automatic group finder, and I just get a bit too anxious in those situations, especially when I play without friends and have no prior experience with the content.
However, I want to give the game another shot, because I generally liked it.
Final Fantasy XIV. As a decade+ WoW player, its really nice to find such a nice player base. I’m just hitting level 54 ( so between the base game A Realm Reborn and on my way into the first expansion ) and I’ve experience absolutely 0 toxicity.
Factorio. The simplistic art style and easy to grasp gameplay lures you in. But then after a while you get sucked in and end up learning way more about conveyor belts and liquid fuel processing than you ever wanted to learn.
If you are interested in similar games you should check out Satisfactory, I’ve heard it’s similar but 3D with bounce pads and trains. Also a little lizard doggy.
Can confirm. It is very similar, but with some differences apart from just 3D graphics:
- More focus on immersion - gorgeous maps, emotes, tons of style, cool animations
- Enjoyable movement - bounce bads, sliding, jumping, paragliding, jetpack, vacuum tube rides, cars
- Verticality - hills, cliffs, and mountains to take into account when building, as well as able to organize production lines on top of each other
- Smaller scope of production - the amount of machines and produced items in a Factorio Megafactory are unattainable. Some due to it being infeasible to optimize the way a 2D game can, and some because the immersive 3D view constrains what you can see and build at one time.
- Hand-crafted world that encourages and rewards exploration - as opposed to Factorio’s procedurally generated world
- Slower pace - no enemy waves, and infinite resource nodes means you can expand at your own pace without being pushed by a need to get more coal, or suppress enemy bases
- Smaller mods - Factorio has some insane total conversion mods that are not feasible to make without the excellent mod portal and the fact that 2D graphics lessen the work needed for modders.
I think both games are amazingly fun masterpieces, though Factorio is the game I’ve spent the most time in by far.
Deep Rock Galactic, solid game for a solid time;
X3:FL, I regret it and I’m going to continue (Halo 2 on legendary difficulty is less frustrating than X3:FL with exploits).
I love DRG. It’s such a simple premise, and it’s just so much fun. Doesn’t take itself too seriously and the devs seem like a cracking bunch of lads.
It’s the only game where I feel that playing with randos is better than playing with friends I can talk to, for some reason.
I mostly use CTRL, V and X to communicate at all times, but recently I admitted to someone in-game that I always throw a C4 and immediately detonate it if someone pings me and uses the “Easy on the C4, eh?” line - they kept pinging me at all times and I’ve even had to preemptively apologize to an unaware scout.
Besides, there’s just something special about hearing 8 engineers with Fat Boys yelling “I CAN’T FEEL MY BEARD, HEEEELP” at the same time
Just finished up the System Shock remake. Been struggling to find a game to captivate me, but this one surely did the trick. Pretty week ending though… just like the original, hah.
Would love to see Ultima Underworld 1/2 get the same treatment.
I’ll be continuing to grind a little bit in Diablo 4 (and maybe hitting up D3 to finish some season challenges). The Division 2 also looks to have a new update, so I’ll give that a go as well.
Then finally maybe just some relaxing time in American Truck Simulator as a way to wind down!
Finally started Dead Cells.
Tears of the Kingdom, No Man’s Sky, Dredge, and God of War Ragnarok
I’ve started playing Deep Rock Galactic, and I’ve been loving it, even just playing a few solo missions to get a feel for it. I’m going to try to get my wife into it, since we’ve been looking for some more games to play together.
Outside of that, I’ve been playing Tears of The Kingdom and that’s been fantastic. Great follow up to one of my favorite games. And then mixing in some Overwatch as well which, despite its problems, is still pretty fun to play with some friends.
Deep Rock Galactic is such a gem that I can always come back to! I hope you two have a lotta fun with it. There’s a lot of cool stuff going on right now, with the lithophage outbreak, and a couple really tough enemies.
