What have you been playing recently?

Baldur's Gate 3: I've played it a bit, but I'm waiting for the full release (tomorrow) to really dive into it. I'll probably mostly be playing BG3 until Starfield is released, then I'll be mostly playing that for months.

Write 'n' Fight: A Street Fighter/Mortal Kombat clone where the fighters are famous historical authors. Someone posted about this game in one of the meme threads, but at the time it was taken down because of a bug that made it unplayable. It's available now so I got it. Mostly a novelty purchase, and I've played it a total of 30 minutes.

GTA5: It's been on my "I'll get it eventually" list for years. I've played through the main story and dabbled with GTA Online a bit. Definitely something I'll go back to here and there. Only think I don't like is keyboard/mouse sucks for driving, and controller sucks for shooting, so I constantly have to switch.

Starfield: Haven't played at all yet, obviously. I have a feeling it'll be my new favorite game.

Fallout 76: Played a bit. I'll probably get into it eventually but I'm off to a slow start. With the single player Fallout games I get a bit console-happy, which I can't do in 76, so getting started feels tedious.

RDR2: Just finished story mode, and dabbled a bit with online. Similar controls to GTA5, but horses only go so fast so I can stick to keyboard/mouse. I'll definitely be playing more here and there.

Among Ass: I typed "ass" into search on steam for some reason, this game came up, and it was only $4, so why not? Novelty purchase, and it was fun for five minutes. It's a stripped-down Amoung Us parody with no online play where the figures are asses and the "Bad Ass" attacks Regular Asses with dildos. It's dumb.

I just started playing Pikmin (4th game I've bought) on the Switch.

Totally hooked. Haven't lost track of time like that in ages.

Picked up Far Cry 6 around the beginning of the year, it's not as good as Far Cry 5 but I do like that it has Gian Carlo Esposito as the main villain.

Picked up Far Cry New Dawn about a month ago. It's a nice continuation of Far Cry 5.

Played a couple of another games on X-Box, most of them are boring after a couple of hours.

24 hours later, I'm halfway through downloading the update. My room mate's Xfinity plan is for 3Mbps. When I had a Comcast account, they automatically increased the speed every two years or so. His, for some reason, has been the same for 15 years. Currently, the slowest speed one can sign up for is Xfinity Prepay, which is 50Mbps, and their slowest regular plan is 75Mbps.

I tried upgrading it a few months ago, but the website was being difficult, and Princess couldn't be bothered to call them.

I think I'm going to try upgrading again. If I can't do it through the website this time I'll at least try to add myself as an authorized user so I can call them myself.

Xfinity's website was still being difficult, but I successfully managed to upgrade my speed to 400Mbps. My current modem isn't compatible with the service, so I'm only getting like 60Mbps (I'll get a new modem tomorrow.) However, the BG3 update will be done in an hour, instead of tomorrow evening. Next month, I'll actually be able to play Starfield on launch day.

My current plan is for 350Mbps(?), but I get around 700-800Mbps and have gone as high as 1.6Gbps.

Contrary to what some folks here might think, Xfinity/Comcast are a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes.

I don't know how your ISP works. From what I know of Comcast and my area, it's unlikely I'll get the same. Considering I've had 3Mbps for the past decade, I'm happy for the time being. Still getting a new modem tomorrow though.

Anyway, I am currently playing Baldur's Gate 3 and don't have to wait another 12+ hours.

Interesting, according to my copy of the Guide, they were the first up against the wall when the revolution came.

Back onto Star Wars: The Old Republic following Jedi Survivor. I've re-subbed for a bit so I could progress to the Knights of the Fallen Empire content but I also decided to go back and try some of the other class storylines now they've allowed you to mix 'n' match combat styles - I hated the lack of decent AoE on Jedi Knights/Sith Warriors, for example.

Still haven't done the Imperial Agent or Republic Trooper storylines, working on Sith Warrior (I started once but gave it up) and Bounty Hunter (never done it).

Also, as part of a "need to do more exercise" kick (I started spin classes but they've fucked up my knee...) I updated my old Oculus Quest to a Meta account so I could get back into Beat Saber. They've released a Queen music pack!! I fucked up some of the tracks due to a new mechanic that wants you to follow a saber path to the next cut but managed full combo on Another One Bites The Dust (on Normal). So yay!

There's also a Rock Mixtape pack with the following tracks: Steppenwolf - Born To Be Wild - Survivor - Eye of the Tiger - Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird - KISS - I Was Made For Lovin' You - The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army - Nirvana - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child O' Mine - Foo Fighters - The Pretender

Will try those out later but time to get my Sith together first.

American Truck Simulator.

I have more than 300 traffic violations at this point, but by god I get there on time.

Does it have a Capitol Riot mode?

I wish, that would be fun as hell. I wouldn't even have to get out of my truck.

Right now, the game map is only the western part of the US into the central plains. Every year they come out with a few more states. DC will probably be among the last of the areas, unfortunately.

Faeria is still keeping my interest, although I will probably go back over to Stellaris soon. It's very solo free-to-play friendly. The expansion decks seem to be the only part locked behind real money, and you can use their cards in the draft-a-deck mode. There is a lot of solo content with puzzles, and creative boards, and endgame content, and "use this card" quests to get you to build decks around cards you wouldn't otherwise think to play. Also you get plenty of deck slots to experiment with, which I think was part of my problem with something like Elements, which had 12 different colors but only maybe a couple of deck slots for F2P? Faeria seems very well designed all around, but not getting much in the way of updates these days. People talk like it's dead, but I see monthly board activity.

Found my Switch at the bottom of one of the packed boxes. Replaying Zelda’s BOTW before getting TOTK. Apparently, I also have Hyrule Warriors which is all combat and no puzzles.

While playing Starfield, I started feeling nostalgic for space games I played in the past, and decided I wanted to take a break and play Escape Velocity. While figuring out the best way to play a game made for Macintosh System 7 (EV Nova port or virtual machine running System 7. I went with the EV Nova port), and then figuring out how to get EV Nova running when it can no longer be purchased or registered (I, uh, made it work), I came across a game called Endless Sky, which has very similar gameplay and is free on Steam. So, I'm playing Escape Velocity, but I did give Endless Sky a try and will play more later.

Got some time in on Stellaris yesterday and finished off the rebellious faction starting quest. Also some aliens waltzed right into the Sol system and wanted to start diplomatic relations. So that's them plus a possibly hostile race a little ways off I have to deal with. I *think* I probably would have asked for two competitors to start the game but maybe there's three. Still a really good game even if I'd prefer not to deal with the social side of running an empire, right now that just feels like a little extra difficulty to make winning all the sweeter.

After hundreds of hours of Starfield, I shelved it and went back to playing good old GTA V, since we won't see GTA VI for at least 3 years on PC. A few mods makes it so much more fun and keeps it fresh.

Fallout 76 just released an Atlantic City themed expansion.

Star Trek Online has the same old winter event up again.

Some things are easier this time. Some things are more difficult than I remembered. I got the two easy divine beasts (the lizard (Goron) and the elephant (Zora). Trying to get the freakin’ camel (Gerudu), but I can’t seem to hit the damn camel toes with the bomb arrows.

Phrasing!

I am seriously considering buying an Xbox just so I can play Starfield... Well, I'm sure that once I'm in that ecosystem, I'd find more to appeal to me, but yes... I really want to play Starfield.

I enjoyed the hell out of it. I don't try to build up expectations, but regardless of what others have thought, I felt right at home in space. Yeah, it definitely takes shortcuts, but I think they work for it. I don't understand people who want to spend their free time playing a space game that wants you to file your space taxes, e.g., games like Star Citizen, that add all of the monotony to living in space without the real fun.

Just go into it knowing it's not a true space simulator, and you should do great.

Started playing Starfield when it first came out. Got bored of it before Thanksgiving.

Razzin' frazzin'

*One* *idiot* thinks he's smarter than anyone else and now I have a xenophobic civilization accelerated up into 20th century tech in one of my systems and they know full well there's someone around to shoot at. From a practical standpoint I should've let the asteroid hit 'em.

New training regimen for any future civilization observers *will* include watching "Bread and Circuses" and "A Private Little War" to demonstrate what happens when you go meddling in pre-warp cultures. Anyone who then starts getting grand interventionist ideas while on the job will be required to watch "The Omega Glory" on repeat until the feeling goes away or their brain turns to mush.

Give "No Man's Sky" a try...

I feel like I'm doing pretty well for a first game on easy. It feels slower watching everything take so many ticks to go places and do things, but I think years-wise this goes much faster than Stars! and there's always events pinging or about to ping to keep that sense of accomplishment alive. Five colonies and a sixth coming within the first thirty years, plus gobs of tech upgrades, would be unheard-of there.

I could have a couple more colonies in the circled area, but as you see they're kind of backwater. I wouldn't be expanding my territory beyond counting planets which is the whole point of these games urrrgh let me conquer all the systems, and I need to conserve my 386+3 resource you see up at the top because that's what I have to spend to build starbases, and the further out I find habitable planets the more expensive starbases get. Case in point, I'm colonizing a star at the lower right there and that was expensive. So this is making me play a little painfully against my inclinations even without the internal politics. Feels good though.

I've encountered a few hostile entities you can see on the map, but so far everything's kinda background noise, I haven't actually run into my AI opponents yet. The victory screen tells me I'm #1 in score.

I've started a more bloodthirsty Insectoid game to see a bit of how that goes too.

after finishing X-com Apoc again, which has a long gametime (6 months knowing most of the research tree and how to work it) I decided to continue on with Xcom 2. I hope they put a little bit more into it than unknown because unknown was really easy.

If you're playing on PC, you can always edit the .ini files to tweak the difficulty.

It has much more punishing recovery times for injured squad members - infirmary stays of a couple of weeks aren't uncommon even for just a few lost health. You definitely need to invest in keeping an A and B team levelled.

If you have the DLCs, be careful with the Alien Rulers one - these are beasts to defeat (unless you get lucky with an Execution from a weapon mod) and if you play it the way you are intended to, they can randomly show up in any mission after you discover the first one. War of the Chosen offers the option to lock them as guards of certain facilities.

I'd recommend War of the Chosen as it adds a lot of options and new story missions, though you might prefer the aliens to remain more mysterious (the Chosen put a "face" on them, but only as more chatty personal nemesises... nemesi?). Lots of Trek voice actors involved too (Frakes, Sirtis, Crosby, Dorn, DeLancie).