The usual Sunday megathread hasn’t been posted so I’m posting this instead 
You must log in or register to comment.
Bought Fursan Al-Aqsa: Knights of the Al-Aqsa Mosque a while ago on discount. Finished it last week.
For those who don’t know, it’s made by a Palestinian man that lives in Brazil. Got banned in the UK and EU after he added a “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood” mission(basically october 7)
There are actually 2 games in it. One that’s already finished called “Classic” and one that’s currently being developed called “Remastered”. The classic plays a lot like early 2000s shooters like Delta Force. Expects you to go in carefully, conserve your resources and peak around corners and such. I like it a lot but it would probably be frustrating/feel outdated to people used to modern FPS. Contains classics like fighting on an Israeli “frigate” that looks like a WWII battleship, feed the captain to a giant shark with Palestinian flag painted on it before blowing the ship up. Or sneaking into the Iron Dome command center, rescuing Abu Obeida
before blowing the entire base up. Abu Obeida sacrificing himself to ensure the success of the mission.The remastered version plays more like shooting galleries with wall runs and regenerating health. Has less substance IMO except hilarious cutscenes straight out of Mortal Combat. Currently only has 4 levels and is in the middle of an engine upgrade, so who knows if it will ever be complete. The “update preview” shows a 3D render of Yahya Sinwar
, which is cool.Should only take about 7 hours to complete. With an all achievement completionist run taking 9-10.
Mario Maker. Please play my Mario Levels
0XB-33C-RVF
I started playing Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon. It’s like a slightly less polished (now, not at launch) Skyrim. Not quite as open world, since things are sectioned into 3 areas/acts but you can sequence break if you really wanna.
Its got very cool lore and vibes because its a dark Arthurian setting which I don’t think I’ve seen too much in video games. The game boots up with a Danish and Old Norse chant and a background of King Arthur on top of a pile of corpses.
Very unexpected but its got a lot of interesting tension between Kamelot, the prosperous kingdom, and the other lesser subjugated regions and indigenous tribes who had their lands stolen. Picts and other made up tribes of people get a lot of screen time and importance in the story so far.
There’s also an ongoing plague and wyrd myst that turns people into creatures.
The gameplay is not really that complex but its a lot more intense than something like Skyrim with parries and dodges.
Its also automatically a GOTY conteder because its one of like 5 games that let’s you dual wield shields and it isnt a meme. Theres talents that support it.
This is on the top of my wishlist currently but I’ve heard it could use a bit more time in the oven so I will pick it up later. It seems like my type of game so I’m looking forward to it.
Still on Baldurs Gate 3
Got Death Stranding 2 and completed the first couple of missions. The new elements with weather are pretty cool, really looking forward to how weird it’s gonna get. I shy away from big games like that these days because all my time is taken up by work, parenting, and party organizing, but I couldn’t stay away from Kojima and his madness.
I didn’t even realize it was out, I thought it had just been announced or something and it turns out it’s been out for a month already wtf
same… i guess because it’s not on Steam?
I also have started DS 2. If you see anything built by “Rest Chockwell” in the game, that’s me! I hope to connect with you and many more comrades.
Kojima’s fucking cooking.
Wife and I finished up bg3 over the weekend and then started Divinity Original Sin 2. Really enjoying the fact that it runs well on steam deck so we can take the game to the backyard and hang with the pets / smoke joints instead of being tied to a computer
I love my partner but playing bg3 with him has us at each others throats lmao. I want to role play but he wants to min/max and check under every rock.
DOS 2 fucking rocks. Really thought the story was going to be bog standard but I’ll be damned it throws some fucking curveballs here and there.
i got guild wars 2 waaaay back at launch, played it for a while, and just recently picked it back up after literally a decade of not touching it
the ui’s aged like complete fucking dogshit but other than that it’s good fun
I bought this on release after being a massive Guild Wars 1 fan. I have tried 5 or 6 times to get into it but I just can’t, it just isn’t guild wars to me.
The first time I absolutely hated it because I thought I was going to be playing a similar game just improved and updated and it is so different I couldn’t stand it. Since then I have tried to get into it with a more open mind knowing I wouldn’t be getting a game that plays the same as GW1 but it just never sticks for me and I find it boring within around 10 - 15 hours.
If they made a remastered GW1 I would buy that shit in a heartbeat, just no other MMO has hit the same for me :(
i played the first one enough that yeah, i get where you’re coming from. never seen anything else quite like it
I thought I was going to be playing a similar game just improved and updated and it is so different I couldn’t stand it.
Literaly me. I still consider it a far better MMO than WoW back then. Of course GW1 eventualy had its own issues too, but I was heavily invested in the GvG aspect. The competitive pvp along with the complexity of team + character building was truly unique.
I too hoped GW2 would be much closer to GW1 but instead GW2 is very much a complete pivot towards the more traditional MMO aspects, I was never a fan of the open world shit, GW1 wasn’t even an “MMO” to begin with(I’m sure you remember these talks even back then lol) and if I wanted open world shit I would have picked WoW or whatever clone.
Yet even though the MMO community generally likes GW2, I can’t judge, seems like a fine game on its own but its definitely very little to do with GW1.
A proper sequel to GW1 would be amazing but I’d hope its single player or even more instance restricted. So many good RPGs have scratched that character build depth since then and the PvP aspect, these days on the modern internet is just not appealing anymore.
I couldn’t agree more. I tried getting into WoW back then and remember it just didn’t compare to Guild Wars.
I loved the different builds you could make and then later on when they introduced heroes you got to play around with builds and their synergies with each other in a more in depth form. The whole thing is just unmatched in my eyes.
I can also never forget the in engine cut scenes which supplied some moments of gold like Rurik surveying the chart advance whilst staring at a wall that was twice his size as the character model couldn’t see over it.
Guild Wars 2 is just a generic MMO in the world of Guild Wars :(
I was never a huge Guildwars 1 guy but I gotta agree that at least (back in the day) It was the only MMO that had the “sauce” like WOW did for me.
I play a lot of Guild Wars 2. They just announced a new expansion, too.
I really appreciate that you can mostly just pick it up and go do stuff. Don’t need to make a formal group, don’t need to commit to a particular build. There’s not a gear grind. Some of the instanced end-game content people will want you to fulfill a particular kind of role (eg: dps, healing, various buffs) but mostly it’s very relaxed.
The wizard tower convergence was also good big content. 50 players killing demons across a few islands. Fun stuff.
Even though there’s not a gear grind, the optional "legendary equipment’ stuff is kind of fun. Makes it so all your characters can share a freely stat swappable, freely reskinnable, item. Like i made a legendary sword, and now all of my characters can just pop on a sword, set it to whatever stats, and go. It’s not mechanically better than a regular sword of the same level, but it’s mildly convenient.
i finally turned my pile of 12 year old mystic clovers into a Sunrise thanks to the wizard vault starter kit, I know it’s stupid as hell but it feels like I just tied up a loose thread in my life
I literally just re-installed GW2 after not touching it for like 5 years. I stand by that it’s one like one of 3 MMOs that actually have good movement mechanics, along with FFXIV and WoW. Everything else is jank.
Because it’s so fast paced though, I’ve never been able to get used to the combat. I used to raid mythics in WoW and am totally fine with tab targeting, but weapon swapping being part of your rotation just breaks my brain. So does needing to dodge attacks with actual dodges and not just stepping out of the way.
I always feel overwhelmed with how much stuff is on screen and that I’m supposed to pay attention to. I did find this website that tries to create things like low APM builds to accommodate different cognitive and physical abilities. Obviously these won’t let you blend in with the sweats, but it’s a good start if it helps anybody else.
funny enough weapon swapping fucks with me for a different reason, I spent so long maining the only two classes that can’t swap (engi/ele) that I routinely forget other classes can swap
They can’t swap weapons, but I guess my problem is like the main bar skills swapping back and forth and trying to time this with the delay. Ele builds that have to weave between all 4 elements are just as wacky. It’s just really different mentally than like contextually switching weapons between melee/ranged, single target/aoe, etc. It seems like Thief is the only one that plays this way because it uses Initiative and so doesn’t incentive putting all your skills on cooldown for both weapons, but just occasionally swapping for boons or whatever.
I definitely wish there was more situational use for different weapons and kits instead of “just keep literally everything except cc on cooldown”
Been grinding away at my Hollow Knight achievements. Currently working on Steel Soul 100%. I doubt I’m ever going to get through all the Godhome content on my normal run—my old man fingies are just too slow, now.
I think I’m still suffering RSI from doing Godhome like 4 years ago.
Alone: replaying MGSV, Rimworld (with the new DLC, I’m about to hit 6k hours I think), and WH40k Rogue Trader.
With friends: WH40k Darktide, Ready or Not, and a bit of Arma Reforger. We’re probably going to start either a new Enshrouded run soon, or a new Baldur’s Gate run soon.
I’ve been having so much fun starting lost tribe start games in odyssey and collecting all the different animals and fishing. Haven’t touched a gravship lmao
I started on the gravship scenario intending to do a “what if” the dwarves from DRG decided to rebel against the company (which the empire stands in for).
About 7 years in and I’ve maxed out my ship (The Alerunner) and will probably look to settle down on an asteroid, build a mines of moria kind of deal but in space.
I think this DLC is nearly as good as ideology, depending on how much modders are able to use its systems it might become even better.
Oh nice haha thats a great role play
Ive been playing an unhealthy amount of minecraft recently and ive been having loads of fun with it!
look at this goob
Just started playing spec ops: the line, as I hear it’s a good plot with a subversive ending.
About an hour and a half in. Not been blown away so far - it really shows it’s age mechanically as a very uninteresting shooter with chest high walls everywhere.
It was mechanically uninteresting when it was new. It was about as cookie cutter as a 2000s/2010s shooter could be. It’s all about the meta commentary.
Yeah, I’m getting the impression the gameplay loop is a vehicle to tell the story/comment on the military shooter genre, not the other way round (the story being a vehicle for the gameplay loop). Which is more than fine , as I’m specifically here for meta commentary.
In a way the gameplay also serves the meta commentary, though I’m not sure if that could be attributable to intended design choices or just was a lack of vision/production.
Nevertheless, it’s a fine game and one you’ll probably remember specifically for the story and the way it’s presented.
I was playing the Demon’s Souls remake. I’ve played a number of Soulslike games before, but never any from the original line of Demon’s Souls or Dark Souls, and I figured it was about time. It was pretty much exactly what I had expected (which is good), given what I’d heard about it and what I knew from other non-Fromsoft games plus my playthrough a couple years ago of Bloodborne. Probably not much I could say about it that hasn’t been said before, but I was certainly enjoying it.
I also have found I love metroidvanias so I’ve usually got one of those on rotation. Right now it’s Laika: Aged Through Blood which stands out largely because it is focused on a movement mechanic where you’re entirely, always on a motorcycle, very unique for a metroidvania. Combat all happens while you’re rollin’ and you only get two bullets (4 after upgrading) and the only way to reload is to do a backflip on your bike. There’s a lot I could say about it, but I’ll just keep it short and say it’s definitely fun and unique but also deeply flawed. The story is really quite gruesome, just describing the opening scene and plot motivation would require a number of content warnings. It’s got some great original singer-songwriter music, the woman who sang and produced it (honestly has a beautiful voice and clear musical talent) was apparently full on co-creator of the game, heavily involved in the coding and nuts and bolts of the gameplay too, which is cool. One of a slew of indie games coming out of Spain, it does have a strong western “libertarian” vibe, but as is often the case (imo), it feels right on the edge of being a potentially strong left-libertarian story if the creators were just a little more politically aware. I think. The protag does live on a dying commune, after all. The creators do know who the famous Laika was, since the main character is a dog who looks like, well, Laika. But unfortunately, there is nothing in it relevant to the Soviet space program (that I know of so far) aside from a few vague jabs at gommulism=bad, but you have to look for it. Considering its Spanish origin, I wonder a lot about potential inspiration from the Civil War, and who on the team may actually be anarchists, meaning maybe I should actually be giving it more credit as left-libertarian than the initial vibe I got.
At the top, I did say I “was” playing, but now I am not… because my fucking “dualsense” controller suddenly developed severe stick drift, making it too frustrating to play. I’ve only had it 2 fucking months.
I was literally saving up for over 2 years to get a PS5, it was a huge deal to get such a big treat for myself. I’m disabled, on foodstamps, basically no income, so for me, getting a console is a major expense and I felt guilty for spending that much on a treat. I knew stick drift was an issue, so I’ve been really careful, always washing my hands directly before playing and even keeping the controller in a plastic bag when not in use (it is really dusty here), I’ve not dropped it or banged it on anything a single time, always treating it delicately. But after only 2 months, fucking controller is practically unusable.
Isopropyl-dipped cotton swab + canned air around the stick ball edges haven’t helped so I think it’s just shitty hardware that is plain broken. And it’s such a fucking scam, I can’t believe it. Well, I can, but you know what I mean. The controllers are widely known to do this. Sony obviously knows and refuses to do anything about it, however many years it is now into the ps5 cycle. There have been a bunch of class action law suits against them (that of course were thrown out) for knowingly using their faulty controllers to bilk players by making them so they inevitably break and you can’t replace the parts and have to buy a completely new one for $70. Or you can buy their $200+ “edge” controller which has a few fucking bells and whistles but the main thing most people would want it for is that you can swap out the stick components for new ones. Only they’ve made those replacement sticks artificially scarce. And their “technology” is patented on all their controllers, so if you want the full functionality, you can’t buy 3rd party because 3rd parties aren’t allowed to make controllers with the full functionality. So everyone essentially has to just keep buying new controllers all the time as Sony rakes in the cash.
I realize this is hardly unique or new, it’s basically standard practice for this kind of shit. But it still pisses me off. Fortunately I’m still under warranty. I mostly only buy this kind of thing used to try to save money, but I knew this was a case where I might need the warranty, but I thought I’d have a little longer than < 2months. But part of the scam is that Sony is well known for being particularly bad with customer service to the point most people give up (again, nothing unique there, but apparently they’re really bottom of the barrel with this stuff), I will have to pay fr shipping to them, and it will be 2 weeks minimum before getting it back. So it looks like it will be a bit before I can continue my playthrough of Demon’s Souls. I have an old ps4 controller and apparently you can use them for ps4 games, but you’re locked out of using it for any PS5-only games like Demon’s Souls, and I do have a couple PS4 games I can play, so I won’t have to go cold turkey, but still… sucks. If you actually read my boring ass rant, I’m surprised, but thank you.
My ps5 controller also developed bad drift within the first couple months of use. And I shipped it back and they paid for shipping. It did take about a month to get back which was lame but I the replacement has held up for 3 years now, so hopefully if you get yours fixed it’ll hold up.
Thanks. Glad to hear you ended up with a good outcome. But damn, a month is quite the turnaround time for something like this.
Do you mind if I ask how heavy your use was of the controller that got the drift, and if your use changed when you got the replacement? I’ve seen some people (around the web) say they’ve had to replace theirs every few months like clockwork and others who’ve gone years without any issue.
I was playing pretty heavy yeah, Elden ring came out around then and I put about 100 hours in it or more. I’d also spent alot of time with hollow knight and gungeon and atomic crops. Atomic crops was the game I identified the drift in specifically.
But I haven’t eased off at all. I’ve got thousands of hours on the replacement controller. So maybe I got lucky with a solid replacement? It’s a real shame Sony basically killed off third party controllers so you have to buy from them now. The dual sense is fine, but most of its fancy features I don’t really care about (adaptive triggers has only made my fingers hurt so I always turn it off, the speaker is a gimmick, and the swipe pad is fine but just another button really).
Cotton-swab?
, just douse that shit in isopropyl 
But fr, I’ve had that issue, I have to slowly drip alcohol inside the stick, wiggle it around, turn it upside down, wait for a day, check, do that again 3-4 times and it’s been working for 6 months (for now)
worst that could happen from pure alcohol - mic/sound breaks*also, as a sign for improvement for me, the drift was gone while it was wet from alcohol (it’s fine, it’s non conductive + voltages are low anyways)
just douse that shit in isopropyl
No more half measures.
OK, well cool. Maybe there’s still hope for me before having to do the return thing, then. So long as I don’t void the warranty, I guess I’ve got nothing to lose by soaking the sucker. But just so I understand you correctly, the drift thing happened to you once, you did that, and it has been good for 6 months since? Or you have had to do that more than once in the last 6 months, but it has repeatedly worked?
also, as a sign for improvement for me, the drift was gone while it was wet from alcohol (it’s fine, it’s non conductive + voltages are low anyways)
I did for a little bit at first think my attempt at cleaning it with the alcohol+swab had worked, but within 5 or 10 minutes the problem reappeared. I’m not sure if that’s promising or not, but I’ll give it another shot. Thank you for the tips!
yeah, happened once after 15 months maybe (?), with big breaks though, cause i use it for pc, maybe 4-6 months of active use or thereabouts, and then problems for a week and now been working fine.
my logic was that either some shit was stuck to thingy reading it out or dust was there, so when i wriggle the stick, and then turn it upside down, it maybe dislodges and flushes down with excess of alcohol (so onto the visible part of the stick), and then i wipe it, and do it again, and it kinda sorta worked?
*with return though, might be extra careful not to wet the sticker, there is mic hole nearby, it definitely was dripping from there during my machinations, so maybe put a tissue there beforehand
Ok, will do. Good to know about the sticker. You let it sit for a whole day, though? Seems the alcohol should evaporate pretty quick and either work or not within an hour, but I’m clearly no expert. Also, I only have 70% isopropyl. I’m thinking I should probably be using 91% for something like this.
I did just put a fairly hefty amount (but not enough to really douse it) of 70%, shook it around a little, rotated the stick around a bit, put it upside down for about 15 minutes. … No improvement. 😞 I’ll try again with more alcohol but going to try to find some 91% instead.
well, mainly cause i was doing it in the evening when “games not work” issues cropped up
, and from inside evaporation is slower cause i didn’t use fancy air cans to dry it, so waiting 2 hours or 1 day feels roughly similar tbh. I did use pure alcohol though, it is fairly cheap after covid in online shops.
may your ds5 be cured 
I want to play the new games I got but I’m too tired after work to learn so I just keep playing Warframe instead. I am shocked I haven’t burned out yet, I guess the weekly content is enough to keep me going for now.
What’s there to do if you filled your account’s capacity to carry characters? I maxed out those I have, with a couple ready but kept in a forge due to the lack of space. It seems without any option to buy more space I’m stuck. Is it possible to get over it grinding/selling in-game stuff?
Yeah, you can buy more frame slots for 20 platinum each, and you can trade things to other players for platinum. The main things people trade are prime parts (from void relics, typically go from between 2-10p), rare mods (like those from orokin derelict vaults, nightmare mode missions, or just rare or inconvenient mods, like Bite (1/15,000 chance to drop from any animal enemy, goes for 65p) or Rime Rounds (a reward from Spy missions, which most people don’t like, goes for 30p)), and riven mods.
Riven mods are total random chance, in that most of them are near-worthless unless you roll really good stats, but for certain popular weapons, even absolute garbo rivens can be worth 100+ platinum. A few weeks ago I sold a Furis riven for 150p, for instance.
The website almost everybody uses to coordinate trading is warframe.market. It’s 3rd party and a little annoying to make an account, but I’ve made several thousand plat trading through it. You can also always go to trading hubs like Maroo’s Bazaar in-game or try to sell stuff in trade chat, but there are a lot of scammers who’ll try to rip you off there.
Also, if you do the weekly Nightwave battlepass objectives, there’s always 1 free warframe slot (and 2 free weapon slots) somewhere in the reward progression.
Thank you, I’m saving that.
Idk how people get up to speed with warframe. I played it during beta for a bit, then for a couple years until they introduced Rivens. Coming back after a long break to Plains, Eidolons, Arcanes, Venus, Deimos, Duviri, Sorties, Arena, Conclave, Index, etc. I’m so lost these days lol
- Plains, Fortuna, Deimos - max out faction rep then buy their equipment if it looks fun.
- Eidolons - don’t bother
- Arcanes - worry about them later, when you get to Cavia you can buy booster packs by melting dupes. And sometimes you can get them easily during events
- Duviri - get incarnon adapters in steel path or warframe parts without RNG in normal
- Sorties - skip if spy or radiation
- Arena, conclave - don’t bother
- Index - if you need credits
Try to prioritize unlocking steel path and finding a load out that works there so you can start accumulating resources faster.
Imo SP isn’t that important. If you just play the game normally you’ll have a massive surplus of most resources excluding edge-cases like tellurium, hexenon, and mutagen samples (if going for hema). Faster faction rep is nice, but you’re also capped anyway, and ime the SP bounties in the open worlds are so much slower until you really take off that it’s not even usually worth it (disregarding entirely that randos in public lobbies will generally do a much worse job). Acolyte arcanes and more arcane adaptors are nice, as are incarnon adapters, but you can easily get by even late-game with more easily accessible ones like the Laetum.
true, the SP bounties aren’t worth it (except in 1999 i think). still best to SP everything else you can just because having tons of steel essence and duplicate arcanes to melt is never going to be something you regret.
Yeaaaaaaaaaah I can see it, I quit shortly after Fortuna came out so none of the modes were too far out there from what I knew at the time. I mostly just went through the quests and looked up where to get the new warframes on the wiki, then would engage with that content until I got the frame which was usually enough to become passably familiar with it. In a way, it’s nice that the content drops are so siloed off because it means you can go do all of the eg Railjack content and can just focus on that until you’re done.
On the other hand, if you wanted to get caught up so you could actually play the newest event that was active until like a week ago, it meant doing like 20 hours of narrative quests in a row.
Too much Vermintide 2 on Quick Play with randoms.
It’s just nice when you click with a party and everyone’s caring to wait for each other, sharing items, etc. Never cared to play Sienna before but now I enjoy her AoE conflag staff and staggering a lot of enemies in tight situations, leaving a breathing room for others - although it denies cheap health for the team, using it conservatively saved us a lot of times. And flail, although suboptimal in pure damage numbers, trashes the new kind of shielded Chaos Warriors like wet paper bags, wow.
Just yesterday we had fucked up big time: I and Saltz got a Chaos Spawn to 10%, but as patrol jumped at us and murdered both, Krub and Bard got so unlucky CS sucked on them on them repeatedly up to the 100% health. ‘Omnomnom motherfucker’ as one of them put it in the chat after we all died.
I’m still looking for a PvE game that does it for me like VT2 does. Although not ideal, it’s movement and fights feel so natural and fluid. And the themes of getting by in the ongoing apocalypse hit too close to home too.
I’ve found Darktide a good upgrade to VM2, but I only started playing recently and from what I’ve seen online it’s changed almost everything since launch. If you played it previously it’s probably worth checking out again.
Lies of P
Sick, I finished that recently. What build are you going with? I went with dex because I never play dex and it was HARD.
I also did a Dex build - mostly with the booster glaive handle. I’ve been enjoying the dragon sword at the end, though.
I’ve had a relatively easy time (though I’ve been using the boss buddy), with a few hiccups on some of the harder bosses. It seems like I’ve been under using the perfect guard now that I’m on the optional final boss, so I’ve been trying to retrain myself to not always dodge.
It’s a cool game, I’m probably going to snag the expansion and start a new game lol
