Enough about the bad stuff; what games are you ENJOYING this month!

Yes I know this is System Wars and talking smack is part of the deal here, and that's fun and all. But every war needs it diplomats, so Comrade Diplomat Bojangles is here to focus on some happy thoughts!

So I ask you:

what good games are you playing this month?

Have you discovered anything to rekindle your passion for gaming?

What has surprised you, pleasantly?

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As for me, I am really enjoying Jedi Survivor, despite all the technical problems (was able to find some workarounds, and a PC patch is incoming soon). Like the first game, it just oozes Star Wars through and through. Such a great immersion into the lore, atmosphere, and culture of Star Wars.

I also got Age of Wonders 4, a really cool fantasy-based TBS/4X game from one of my favorite publisher-developers Paradox. Definitely has that "one more turn!" vibe to it.

And Silica, from Bohemia Interactive (makers of ArmA) recently went into early access. It's very rough and barebones, but that is there seems like a lot of fun already. Can't wait to see this game take shape into a final product.

And finally, while I won't sit here and make excuses for it...I am really enjoying Redfall. Part of it might be it's Game Pass (and thus I didn't pay full price), part of it might be I wasn't expecting much from it, but damn it all, I just really am enjoying my time with it so far.

I guess there's something to be said about not hyping games and having reasonable expectations.

I enjoy talking about the 4/10 Redfall. What a great product.

As for playing, RE4R. On Chapter 11, and i don't want it to end😥

Lots of clowns here talking trash about redfall. Personally I think alot of the issues will be fixed, and in a few months we will have a super quality title.

As for me, I'm enjoying redfall right now. The game is a bit formulaic, as in the typical ubisoft style, going around map and rescuing souls, and beating up bad guys. But the story line is also unique and enjoyable.

Another great game I'm playing is nobody saves the world. Originally it was a gamepass title that I enjoyed, so I ended up purchasing it.

Re4 remake. It's a solid game, I'm going through it for 3rd time. Not sure I want to go at it again, but I guess I do want to run through it on hardcore mode. Getting the achievements, I've hit a bottleneck and need to figure out how to approach it.

Currently Redfalll playing as Devinder. His ult is ridiculous against vampires.

Just finished FF6 this morning, and currently playing FF12.

@lundy86_4: I tried Final Fantasy 12 but I just couldn't get into it

Still playing Xenoblade 3 Future Redeemed. Bigger than i thought it would be (though i'm not making a B-line for the finish either in fairness). Enjoying it but will also be happy to see that Xenoblade 3 brought to a close. It does get a bit too heavy on the fan service. In saying that i hope they carry some of the philosophy around making exploring more rewarding and enjoyable forward to future games.

After that I don't plan to play anything for a while. Time to focus on my Godot/Blender/Krita studies.

Advance Wars, just no game like it. After playing Wargroove I didn’t think I’d enjoy it that much. But this game is so fun. And it gets pretty deep in technical things too.

Reached 150 hours of Hitman 3. These new Hitman games are fantastic, I just hate the unnecessary online-only connection to complete most of the content. It's a single player game. Contracts mode makes sense because you are playing contracts made by other people uploaded to the server but not being able to do challenges, elusive targets, escalations unless you are online is just extremely dumb.

Xbox Series X - Hi Fi Rush

Fantastic game. Looks great, has cool and fun gameplay mechanics, and a very good sense of humour.

Switch - The Legend of Zelda

Recently finished playing through this again as I got the urge to play through it before Tears of the Kingdom comes out.

PS5 - Spider-Man Remastered

As a big Spider-Man fan I’m very much enjoying this game. Looks great, traversal feels amazing, and combat is a lot of fun.

Still playing Star Wars: Jedi Survivor on PC and still love the game too. Just beat it 3 days ago and I'm now, I'm playing in NG+ as we speak. That game is going into my GOTY list for sure. Still need to try and finish up with Dead Island 2 though. Oh and Ravenlok is really fun. (Despite the low scores which do nothing for me btw)

I decided to replay Fallen Order while waiting for Jedi Survivor patches. When I played the game the first time, it was right before I retired as a game reviewer and I was just kinda burnt out on games, so I really half-assed my playthrough and I don't even think I finished it. Having a much better time with it this go around.

A few friends got me back into Insurgency Sandstorm since they are hosting their own server for co-op, and playing that again with those guys on a private server has been a lot of fun.

I'll probably pick up Darkest Dungeon 2 soon as well, which will probably be great.

Aeon Flux on PS2.

@nod_calypse: How is that as a game?

It's actually really good. I mean, if you watch the animated series you'd probably understand easier. Aeon is an agent that moves between two societies, and is forever hunted by the leader of a totalitarian regime, which she is trying to expose. Gymnastic parkour type stuff, martial arts, some stealth, etc.

That's good to hear. I'm playing as Remi and I enjoy the C4 and support role, but was curious about the other characters.

Hey! I said "enough with the bad stuff"

😉😋

bloodborne. loving it. im near the end, will be starting the dlc soon. i just recently finished elden ring and this is soooo much harder lol. i refuse to grind for souls / echoes / runes in these games. im having to really focus, prep well for each area / bosss etc. and there's none of this grace / lantern next to the boss business if you die, you've got generally a long walk to get back, and things like no map markers showing you where you lost your runes. didn't quite realise just how much elden ring helps you

I have bern playing some Quantum Break. It’s exposition the game, but I like this sci-fi stuff, so I don’t mind 😁! It’s enjoyable for sure!

Plays a lot like Control, which I guess was no suprise.

RE4 Remake was excellent. I did 4 runs already, and plan to 100% it (still need to do 7 more runs lol) , but I'm taking a break from it for now.

I'm re-playing Batman Arkham City. When I'm done with that I'll play through Final Fantasy 7 (original) since it's been awhile. I'll also be doing another Minecraft survival world this summer- I go back to that game every 2 or 3 summers to check out the updates that have released since.

Tears of the Kingdom comes out this Friday! Can't wait

@girlusocrazy: ive absolutely hammered demon's souls mate. i know it inside out. probably played through it at least 10-15 times. despite that ive put far more hours into just two playthroughs of elden ring than i have in all of my demon's souls playthroughs combined lol

Dragon Quest XI. Game is super underrated around here but is easily one of the greatest RPGs ever made.

Been playing Knockout City before they shut it down. Really good fun and I've never had to wait long for a match. A shame things didn't work out. Hope they revisit the concept with local multiplayer.

Redfall

For a good 6 months largely been ignoring new games. Though did pick up one of two Steam sales, obscure Chinese games.

But, mainly been playing Build Powered games (Blood/Shadow Warrior/Duke3D) and various titles running on GzDoom (Heretic/Doom/Hexen/Doom II)

Still need to go back and finish off the Duke3D expansion content and just teetering on finishing Doom 64.

Then plan on checking out Final: Doom which seems to have a very direct contraction of opinions of some people calling it shit garbo, and others lauding it well taking into account it's a mixed bag.

This fellow implies it directly better than Doom 2.

Wasn't big on Doom 2 at all playing it years later proper, dare say kind of almost hated it. Though not quite.

Nice thread. It is refreshing to talk about positive gaming experiences instead of all that ridiculing.

Really enjoying Bard's Tale Trilogy, which I discovered on Gamepass. It is hard as hell, but I like a good old-school challenge.

While waiting for Redfall to receive a couple of patches, I decided to try out Black, a very old FPS from EA. Outdated graphics and AI of course, but still pretty good fun. It's refreshing to play a shooter without regenerating health. It makes me wonder why the hell regenerating health has become the norm.

I've been playing Spider-Man remastered but I've also been replaying A Hat In Time and a game I recently beat called No Straight Roads. It is an amazing and extremely underrated game! Humble Bundle is having a rhythm game bundle right now, you can get NSR and other games for just $16! It's worth it just for No Straight Roads! If you love Hi Fi Rush you'll definitely love No Straight Roads!

Been excessively no lifing TotK the past few days. Emulation was spotty at first (obviously), so was inching along, not to spoil the experience. But damn the community was quick on the patches and mods. Even have graphics mods like high res shadows already working lol. Been a wild ride following the emulation since day minus. The game leaking was one thing, but somehow an official day 1 patch leaked too. Like, wtf?

The emu devs haven't even rolled out their versions yet, sidelining it until the game officially drops. But if it's running this well already, expect it to be pretty much perfect when the "official" builds roll out.

@hardwenzen: Just do another play through of RE4 Remake. It feels just as exciting to boot it up again.

Darksiders genesis is so much fun i have a 3D TV and use Reshade "superdepth3d" and it looks awesome!

Will play Hi fi Rush next.

Currently playing through Moss 2 on PSVR 2. The first one is great and so far, so is the second.

Also trying to play through dead space on impossible difficulty for the platinum.

And when I actually remember, I need to finish Horizon DLC

@ConanTheStoner: I haven't really touched Switch emulation, do think run alright on a fairly mid-endish system now getting abit dusty? GTX 1660 Super with AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core Processor 3.60 GHz? Assuming this will have problems?

Prob should upgrade but never playing any new games and have no problem dialing them down, so just haven't bothered.

@uninspiredcup:

Emulating more modern systems can be weird man, could run perfect, might not run at all lol.

I think you'd be fine with that setup though. I know you're not gunning for "omg 4k RTX 120 frames blah". For TotK specifically, might want to wait until after release. Right now it's cobbled together by fan workarounds. Actual dev release will be more straight forward and likely much more optimized.

But yeah can't hurt to try. First time setup, might be digging around for like 10 mins. Smooth sailing from there.

Mostly retro stuff atm. Sorta in a holding pattern waiting for Forza Motorsport 8 & Remnant 2 and will be smashing those when they release.

@ConanTheStoner: Ah, thanks for the info. Thinking more BOTW, go back and play it again on the PC instead. Never finished it and picked up, but never touched its expansion pack.

Mean, could just whip out the Switch, but if the PC's better it's better.

@uninspiredcup:

Oh BotW would almost definitely run great for you. Go for the WiiU emulator instead, nearly flawless. There's also a mod, think it's called FPS++. Basically all you need.

I will be enjoying Zelda, does that count?

Playing Jedi Survivor on PS5. It’s great!

A replay of Oblivion

Mega Man Battle Network

A replay of Star Wars: Starfighter

More stalker anomaly, baby. It's really fun and atmospheric. Puts a lot of newer Aaa games to shame, and it's completely free. I also installed the GAMMA mod pack on top of it.

So I take it has nothing to do with the Aeon Flux movie? I'm only familiar with the movie and I have vague memories on the animation that used to come on MTV.

No, it does indeed take cues from the movie. A lot of the visuals, including Aeon herself, are heavily influenced by the film. But the lore of the animation series is respected. The game bridges the gap between the animation episodes and the film, explaining some plot holes and such. It's an interesting experiment. Not a bad game at all, but hardly anyone knows about it.

Nah, first playthrough on the hardest available difficulty is what i am all about. Even tho i am sure this is a very replayable game, its just not the same when you know everything.

Yakuza ishin, really clunky however still enjoying the amazing story.

I just tried GT7 on PSVR2. The visuals were much better than I was expecting!

The negative… WTF was up with that intro movie that felt like 20 minutes long?!?! I already bought the damn game, what was the point of that?!?! That intro was pure mastubatory nonsense on the part of PD. How about let me play the damn game?!?!

Bramble

Right now I'm playing House Flipper Simulator (or something similar) just killing time until mighty Zelda drops in my mail box. Tried to start a couple of other games but I don't feel like committing to anything that isn't TotK. I don't think I'll be finished before June, but if I do I'll be playing the Outer Wilds DLC.

MLB The Show 23. I am 13 and 12 so far as Toronto. Funny story, I unnecessarily dove for a fly foul ball with my third baseman, who was on tear, and he injured himself for up to two months. Two of my best hitters are now injured.

Assassin’s Creed Valhalla. Really enjoying the English country side.

If my Airconditioning can‘t handle the warm weather, Advance Wars reboot. I’m already nine or so maps into it.

I am waiting for Anno 1800 to have a sale and then check it out.