What games are people playing these days!?

[Camper-Hunter]

You're not up to date Frigidman. Gone are the days of slow IPS panels. TN has mostly disappeared, even in gaming monitors: good riddance! So the choice is now reduced to IPS or VA panels, with OLED added to the mix but still very expensive.
With that said, I prefer VA over IPS because of the latter's glow, especially noticeable when playing in a dark room; and VA black is truly black, not dark grey.

[Cougar]

You're not up to date Frigidman. Gone are the days of slow IPS panels. TN has mostly disappeared, even in gaming monitors: good riddance! So the choice is now reduced to IPS or VA panels, with OLED added to the mix but still very expensive.
With that said, I prefer VA over IPS because of the latter's glow, especially noticeable when playing in a dark room; and VA black is truly black, not dark grey.

There is also mini led (which is technically just an IPS variant), as featured on the Apple Silicon MBP. Has the advantages over OLED of being brighter, cheaper, not having to worry about weird subpixel layouts that result in badly rendered text. Unfortunately there aren’t a lot of them out there. The ones that do exist have way fewer dimming zones than even a 14” MBP, and are butt ugly. For whatever reason I think most gaming monitor manufacturers are more interested in jumping straight to OLED. But there are no 27” 4K OLEDs on the horizon, which is what I’d want...

[Frigidman]

Decided to finally get into Hogwarts. I put it off hoping they would resolve the stutter/jerk issues due to NPCs, but they never did, doesn't look like they ever will.

So I'm playing it now to do the adventure and then eventually call it quits to clear it from my backlog. Its a fun game, I just wish running through town or the castle wasn't met with bad jerks and hiccups every ten feet (or ten meters? was hogwarts on the metric system?). Lowering crowd density didn't do jack either, its just badly optimized for NPCs.

Fun game though outside of those areas.

[Matt Diamond]

Finished Opus Magnum (main quest). Decided not to do any optional challenges at this time.

Replayed several levels of Titanfall 2 (xbox) to get to the level I missed last time: Effect & Cause (recommended by one of you.) Thanks for the recommendation, it was well worth playing!

But after the next level I lost interest again, same as happened last time. It's a perfectly fine game, plus I got it dirt cheap, but something about it doesn't make me want to keep going. One possible factor is that unlike most campaigns, you don't gradually get more powerful. (The campaign is there in part to introduce you to the multiplayer, where the weapons are pretty balanced.)


I'm finding it hard to pick my next game. They are all such huge commitments (Dishonored Dishonored 2, Cyberpunk, ME 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Red Dead Redemption 2..) Leaning to the first two, but I'm waiting for inspiration to strike (and a chunk of free time.)

[UmarOMC1]

Just finished The Last of Us: Part 1 remake on PC. I'd never finished it on PS3—the load times after dying so often just pissed me off. I finished it on PS4 but I felt like I flew through it on PC, although Steam shows about 25 hours playtime. Any way, highly recommended.

[Cougar]

Just finished The Last of Us: Part 1 remake on PC. I'd never finished it on PS3—the load times after dying so often just pissed me off. I finished it on PS4 but I felt like I flew through it on PC, although Steam shows about 25 hours playtime. Any way, highly recommended.

Did you play it with KB+M? How were the controls?

I tried playing it years ago on PS3 and hated the combat with a controller, so I gave up.

I'm finding it hard to pick my next game. They are all such huge commitments (Dishonored, Cyberpunk, ME 3, Dragon Age Inquisition, Red Dead Redemption 2..) Leaning to the first two, but I'm waiting for inspiration to strike (and a chunk of free time.)

Dishonored is under 20 hours, so it’s not the biggest time commitment, and I can’t recommend it enough. Cyberpunk 2.0 just dropped with Phantom Liberty coming next week, with excellent reviews for both. Was planning to hold off for the first Phantom Liberty sale, but now I am not sure I will.

[Atticus]

Just started Starfield on my new PC build and I think it'll take me at least three years to finish. Big game.

[Matt Diamond]

Dishonored is under 20 hours, so it’s not the biggest time commitment, and I can’t recommend it enough. Cyberpunk 2.0 just dropped with Phantom Liberty coming next week, with excellent reviews for both. Was planning to hold off for the first Phantom Liberty sale, but now I am not sure I will.

Whoops, typo. I LOVED Dishonored. In my queue is Dishonored 2.

Based on how I did with the first one, its going to take me a lot longer than 20 hours. :-) I died a lot and I'm a compulsive explorer.
But D2 is still probably the shortest game I listed, so I think I will play it next.

[Frigidman]

Dishonored is under 20 hours, so it’s not the biggest time commitment, and I can’t recommend it enough. Cyberpunk 2.0 just dropped with Phantom Liberty coming next week, with excellent reviews for both. Was planning to hold off for the first Phantom Liberty sale, but now I am not sure I will.

Whoops, typo. I LOVED Dishonored. In my queue is Dishonored 2.

Based on how I did with the first one, its going to take me a lot longer than 20 hours. :-) I died a lot and I'm a compulsive explorer.
But D2 is still probably the shortest game I listed, so I think I will play it next.

My playtimes for those are:

Dishonored: 74 hours (70/80, somehow I missed 10 achievements?!?!)
Dishonored 2: 92 hours (100%)
Dishonored Death of a Salesman: 34 hours (100%)

[UmarOMC1]

Just finished The Last of Us: Part 1 remake on PC. I'd never finished it on PS3—the load times after dying so often just pissed me off. I finished it on PS4 but I felt like I flew through it on PC, although Steam shows about 25 hours playtime. Any way, highly recommended.

Did you play it with KB+M? How were the controls?

I tried playing it years ago on PS3 and hated the combat with a controller, so I gave up.

Absolutely much better with keyboard and mouse—precise aiming, for me, with a controller don't go hand-in-hand. The controls are a lot more fluid, KB & M.

I'm looking forward to a few days for the CyberPunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC to launch.

[Matt Diamond]

My playtimes for those are:

Dishonored: 74 hours (70/80, somehow I missed 10 achievements?!?!)
Dishonored 2: 92 hours (100%)

Stupic XBox. It shows my achievements and other stats for the first game, but apparently I somehow did all this with 0h0m playtime. Talk about speedruns.

Dishonored Death of a Salesman: 34 hours (100%)

[nef601]

I'm giving Baldur's Gate 3 a spin on my 16 Gb M1 mac mini. And it's playable at 2560 x 1440, with the majority of graphics set to medium. It's a chunky installation at 130 Gb.

And it's not bad, but it (understandably) lacks the polish and performance of WoW (my main time-killer). That said, I played the hell out of BG1 & 2 (and Icewind Dale) back in the day, and I still play them, so it's a comfortable fit for me. The turn-based combat seems a little clunky compared to its predecessors, but I'll get used to it.

[Cougar]

Dipped my toes in Cyberpunk 2.0 before Phantom Liberty... I played it on launch as a netrunner, stealthily/without killing, and while it was way too easy, it was really fun. They seemed to have nerfed netrunning without giving stealth the same attention they gave combat. For xample, there are no additional takedown options like there are finishing moves. And now, if you use almost any hack you are automatically traced and it’s basically impossible to stop it (at least on Very Hard), so everything just devolves into a firefight anyway. Might give this one some more time to cook in the oven before giving the DLC a go.

[Frigidman]

Dipped my toes in Cyberpunk 2.0 before Phantom Liberty... I played it on launch as a netrunner, stealthily/without killing, and while it was way too easy, it was really fun. They seemed to have nerfed netrunning without giving stealth the same attention they gave combat. For xample, there are no additional takedown options like there are finishing moves. And now, if you use almost any hack you are automatically traced and it’s basically impossible to stop it (at least on Very Hard), so everything just devolves into a firefight anyway. Might give this one some more time to cook in the oven before giving the DLC a go.

Really? So for a sologame, the whiners about people 'cheating' or 'having it too easy', won out and they nerfed it like it was some shitty PVP game?

Guh.

[Cougar]

Really? So for a sologame, the whiners about people 'cheating' or 'having it too easy', won out and they nerfed it like it was some shitty PVP game?
Guh.

I’m not sure I’d put it like that. It was pretty ridiculous how you could just spam Contagion outside a building and make everyone die without setting foot inside, so I don’t blame them for that. But it doesn’t seem like they did the work to add interesting tools to keep netrunning viable in a more interesting way.

[Frigidman]

Really? So for a sologame, the whiners about people 'cheating' or 'having it too easy', won out and they nerfed it like it was some shitty PVP game?
Guh.

I’m not sure I’d put it like that. It was pretty ridiculous how you could just spam Contagion outside a building and make everyone die without setting foot inside, so I don’t blame them for that. But it doesn’t seem like they did the work to add interesting tools to keep netrunning viable in a more interesting way.

I see.

Just seems like making it impossible to stealth, seems a bit of a heavy handed way to 'fix' a problem.