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Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?

6h 50m ago by sh.itjust.works/u/BurntWits in patientgamers@sh.itjust.works

I randomly thought about a freeware game I played probably 20 years ago called Notrium and found out that it's on Steam for $3.

Same when I heard the guild wars 3 release announcement I went back to guild wars 1 for a bit, not going through the whole thing but it was fun to go back to a few times

More S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly this week. I feel comfortable enough with the gameplay experience I'm starting to think about making some additional number tweaking and starting from scratch with higher difficulty. My current playthrough works well as a tutorial but I feel like things (especially in terms of equipment) progressed a little too smoothly.
I was thinking about making this new playthrough a themed one, with some basic reasons for entering the Zone, in-character journal entries about my adventures and just general focus on role playing. I'm still thinking about some of the details but even in its current form, playthrough like this would be the most involved project I attempted so far and that makes it kind of exciting.

Modding also continues, with the number of addons more than doubling since last week. New additions are mostly gameplay improvements as these are honestly the things that stand out the most for me. I'm used to old graphics and play on an outdated hardware so visuals aren't a priority for me, despite that I did find a few additions which allowed me to improve the graphical presentation with very little effect on performance. Enough to leave me satisfied at least. Here's my current mod list, just like last week:

Updated mod list
  • (New) AlifePlus - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on general NPC behaviour.
  • (New) AlifeTactics - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC combat tactics.
  • (New) AlifeGuard - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC cleanup.
  • (New) AlifeBalance - extension to Stalker's A-Life system focused on NPC respawn management.
  • (New) Anomaly Notebook - adds an in-game journal you can use to write your own notes. It's kind of janky to use but it works.
  • (New) Anomaly: Real Distant Mutants Sounds - fixes broken mutant noises that suppose to play at certain distance ranges.
  • Arti and RavenAscendants Mags Redux - detailed magazine and ammo management.
  • (New) Beloved Photo - a simple immersion addon which allows you to use an otherwise junk item to look at it, that's it.
  • Blindsides Weapon Reanimation and Rebalance - dependency for other stuff.
  • Boomsticks and Sharpsticks - dependency for other mods, improved weapon animations are a nice bonus.
  • Dark signal weapon soundscape - dependency for other mods.
  • (New) Decreased Bush Hearing Distance - NPCs can't hear you walking through bushes from the other side of the map.
  • (New) Dialogue Expanded Expanded - more NPC dialogue (direct, PDA messages etc). Had to do some manual merging with this one due to the conflict with LASS and fix some incorrect characters caused by different encoding, I think? I also left a ton more cause I was too lazy to go through all of the issues.
  • Food, drug and drinks animations - should be self explanatory.
  • FDDA Enhanced Animations - Food and Drinks - animation improvements for the above.
  • He's with me - prevents friendly factions from attacking your companions, even if they are from opposing force. Not sure if I'll stick with this one but it's on for now.
  • HTS Bars - hunger and thirst status bars. For whatever reason base Anomaly doesn't show them even though both are tracked and affect gameplay experience (I don't mind the latter but I like to have information about such things).
  • (New) HUD icons time - displays remaining time for status effect icons on the HUD.
  • (New) Instant Tooltip+ - pretty self explanatory.
  • Inventory Anrifreeze - lazy loading for in-game containers, helps with the hitching when opening things with lots of items.
  • LASS (check full mod name) - female player character.
  • LASS Population Addon - adds female stalkers to the NPC pool.
  • (New) Ledge Grabbing / Mantling - adds a simple climbing/mantling system to the game.
  • (New) Michikos Weather Revamp Revised - more natural look for all weather conditions (bright and colourful for clear skies, dark and moody for rain etc) and restores moving clouds to some of them. Also comes with an option for dynamic wind behaviour (changes based on the weather and location).
  • (New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Bottled Water Adjusted** - change number of uses for mineral water from 3 to 5, restores the same amount of thirst (just divided by 5).
  • (New) Modular Miscellaneous Tweaks - Talk to Everyone** - as the name suggests, it allows you to talk to every NPC instead of just team leaders.
  • MSBS Grot - cool gun that doesn't really appear in games often (ARMA 3 and Girls' Fronline are the only titles I can think of right now).
  • (New) New Zone Mutants can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
  • (New) New Zone NPC's can't see through foliage - pretty self explanatory.
  • (New) NPC Weapon Jamming - pretty self explanatory.
  • (New) Sickhowl's Grass Tweaks - more lush version of vanilla grass grass and trees with little to no performance impact.
  • (New) S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 HoC - Soundscape Overhaul for Anomaly - improved ambiance sounds. I'm a bit mixed on this one - on one hand a lot of the new sounds add quite a bit to the atmosphere, on the other some changes (especially in regards to fake mutant noises) act pretty much as sound pollution, making it harder to react to real threats (in a bad way).
  • (New) Sascha's S-40 Sirens - period and region appropriate siren sounds for emissions.
  • (New) Simple FPS Monitor - pretty self explanatory, useful for tweaking my graphics settings.
  • (New) Stealth - bunch of tweaks to the stealth and detection system.
  • Tactical Movement Speed - change movement speed depending on weapon status (holstered, lowered, drawn, aimed).
  • (New) Weighted Probability Weather Manager - improvements to the weather selection system.
  • (New) xlibs - dependency for other mods.

:::

I keep going back and forth on whether I want to use KVMA (mod adding higher quality character models) in my game. On one hand NPCs do look much better with the mod, on the other it only supports handful of female character types and since I play with LASS + female NPCs, that leads to an ugly mix of old and new models. That also includes my character. @Coelacanth@feddit.nu graciously shared a customised mod with additional female models which does help. Unfortunately, even this setup lacks HD alternatives for some of the outfits - including those I tend to lean into, at least in the early game.

I dunno, I'm sure I'll make a decision before starting the new playthrough. I'll just keep toying with both ways until then.

I don't have much to write about The Elder Scrolls Online honestly. Between modding and playing Anomaly as well as real life activities I didn't really have much time to spend with it. After playing some more I can confirm that bumping up difficulty does make the game feel better but that's about it. It's too early to write more about how much this single fact will improve my overall experience with the game.

Continuing the mission of finishing games where I'm saved at the final boss but just didn't finish the game (Narita Boy probably) and looking to indulge for my birthday in something on my wishlist.

The Metro trilogy (so far) was on a sale a couple weeks ago. Beat 2033 Redux and am on Last Light Redux now. Good stuff!

Most people probably know about it, but for those that don't, it's a story driven FPS with a mix of chaotic combat and stealth sections. The story is decent, and the gameplay is satisfying. I played the first one with a QOL modpack and the second unmodded.

Redux versions I believe have upgraded graphics, gameplay tweaks to make the game more approachable, and integrates content from expansions into the story. Don't quote me on that though.

Recommended.

I'm really excited for a new DLC for the game subside. It's a snorkeling VR game that has the absolute best visuals of maybe any game ever where the gameplay is just swimming around environments collecting items and coins to unlock new environements and buy upgrades. So i started a new game this week to have enough coins to buy the new underwater scooter thing right away.

I've reached Halo 4 from the Halo: Master Chief Collection and look to finish it in the next 2 days. Not sure I can recommend it, though. Especially earlier Halo games were pretty .... well, not for me.

Finished Lil Guardsman. It's an interactive show with some branching plots. The visuals and VO are top notch. There just isn't a lot of game in it. I'd recommend it as a palet cleanser in between more serious games.

I focused on Jagged Alliance 3 this week. It's comedic in nature and fun.
The player rents the mercenaries they use, with a few exceptions. They have a map full of squares, and each square is a combat map. Move from place to place, explore, interact with npcs, capture objectives and kill the opposition.
The enemies can be deceptive in strength from square to square. There's like regular, veteran and elite and some squares have skewed distribution. Without information beforehand, one can easily get overwhelmed..
If also playing on ironman, mercenaries can be lost easily.

Anyway, I only have half a map done and there are raids, to it will take a while longer to reach the end, if I don't burn out with turn-based games by then.

After finishing Alan Wake, I'm playing American Nightmare, which shouldn't take me long to finish. Then I think I'll move on to Quantum Break, which I briefly played when it was new but remember nothing about. I'm also playing Cronos: The New Dawn little by little, I like the atmosphere of the game and the story is intriguing. I'm thinking about playing some kind of RPG, but cannot decide on what exactly.

I completely forgot about Quantum Break. I remember playing it, no idea if I finished it or not but I did put a good amount of time into it at the time. I think it was relatively new when I played it. I think I enjoyed it? I certainly didn’t hate it or I would’ve remembered that.

The only thing I remember is there are short live action episodes between chapters, so not much. It didn't leave a bad impression, but I'm 99% sure I didn't finish it.

I've taken a small break from Hitman to work my through Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. It's been really a really fun challenge. Long though, a lot of puzzles.