The gaming thread! What have you been playing this week?
As a bonus question – Who's your favourite game character that would be considered "retro"?
by a-liquid-sky
The gaming thread! What have you been playing this week?
As a bonus question – Who's your favourite game character that would be considered "retro"?
by a-liquid-sky
22 comments
I’ve been playing **Tales from The Shire** while off work. It’s not particularly good but I can’t stop playing it. Much like Stardew Valley, it’s so easy to think ‘I’ll just do one more day…oh, only two days to the end of the season, I’ll finish the season…’ etc. Definitely a cosy game, no threat or action whatsoever.
I’ll probably try to finish the story (such as it is) but doubt I’d play it again.
Slay the spire – finally beat the heart on A20 with defect yesterday after two years of trying.
I’m considering PS1 retro so I’ll choose Skullomania from Street Fighter EX+a
A little bit of Civ 5. Although I have a urge to go back to Civ 2 that got me started, I feel like installing Windows 3.1 on VirtualBox and having a blast from the past.
I’m a filthy casual so I’ve just been playing the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy on the Switch haha
Still on **Death Stranding 2**, 130hrs in and still having a great time, just trundling around doing orders, gaining stars with people etc. Having an easier time of it now thanks to a truck upgrade.
Favourite retro character? Hmm tough one but as I’ve apparently got a thing about eggs (I ate an egg in a team meeting one time, it was pointed out and I’ve played up to it) I’m gonna say Dizzy.
**Abiotic Factor.** It’s basically original half life meets project Zomboid. Super chill first person survival game in a high security lab.
Lots of aliens we’ve brought in, grunts who are trying to contain it and tons of fun things to craft, build and play with.
Me and 2 friends have just beaten act 1 after about 20 hours and I think there’s roughly 5 or 6 acts total so lots of fun still to be had!
As for my favourite retro character? I know he’s brought back in everything now but the original Shy Guy from mario. He was always the chillest of the enemy characters and a fun little design. He’s always my go-to in Mario Kart.
Elvenar, city builder that’s been around a LONG time – low stress and constant city rebuilding to “optimise” definitely reduces as the game goes on (thankfully!). Not too shockingly pay to win either, can easily get away with spending no money if you’re not bothered about fast progress (pointless anyway in a city builder IMO).
God of War Ragnarok. Tackling the Valhalla DLC before I move onto new game plus (still cannot believe Santa Monica Studios gave us that for free, lol). Also a bit of LA Noire.
Just downloaded The Finals because all the Battlefield 6 talk made me want to play a new shooter and my PC can’t handle the beta.
Slaps.
Time Flies. You play a fly (or many flies over time) and have around 80 seconds to complete a series of challenges before you drop dead. It looks like someone made it using MS Paint in the 90s and I’ve caught myself laughing every time I play. Only a tenner too!
Disney Dreamlight Valley. The fomo got too strong to resist
Hacked my 3DS a couple weeks ago after being meaning to do it for ages, and dumped almost the entire Mega Drive and SNES libraries onto it.
Been playing through Chrono Trigger, which I haven’t played in about 20 years. Obviously it’s a really good, charming game but I forgot how short it was! Almost at the end (just got the optional side quests to do really) and I’m only 13 hours in. Definitely doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.
At the risk of doxxing myself slightly… And hoping Reddit auto spam filters don’t stamp on this, as I’ve been posting variations of this under an alt and Reddit’s been nuking them… but this is hopefully relevant to the thread:
To answer the relevant question in the thread, ie “what have I been playing?”, I’ve been rather taken with Space Invaders on the Atari 2600, this has needed a lot more “testing” than other machines and games. You’d be surprised at how popular Pong is, too – I can’t get people off the bleedin’ thing.
And the reason why I’m really going full blown retro is that I’m involved in an upcoming event at Kingston University, and if you’ll forgive me, what follows is a gratuitous plug: our Archive of Retro Computing will be running its semi-annual exhibition on 21st-28th August 2025. You can find out more at http://www.arcatku.org.
This year, we’re focusing on the period of computing history that really interests me the most. The 80s and early 90s were the period of time where computers made the transition from being something you found in libraries and big companies and started appearing in people’s homes, in kids’ bedrooms. We forget what the P stands for in PC, but this was the period of time where the computer first became truly *personal*. We don’t separate the idea of a “home” computer from regular computers any more, but conceptually, our everyday laptops, PCs, Macs have their roots in the Spectrums, the Commodores and Ataris of old.
This year, we’ll have 60+ machines, all up and running, focusing primarily on home microcomputers and games consoles of the late 70s through to the early 90s. The era I like to call the Syntax Era (geddit? 🙂 So we’ve got Spectrums of every stripe, Commodores, Ataris etc – and some uncommon ones, like the Commodore MAX Machine. And some of my favourites, those glorious firefly machines made by small companies with a dream and some brilliant engineers, but that lasted about ten seconds on the market. Machines like the Enterprise, the Memotech MTX, the SAM Coupe, with bullish slogans like “with obsolescence built out”. Oh, and a plethora of games consoles two from the early 8-bit and 16-bit eras.
Were I a KU corporate shill, I’d also say something like we’ll be hosting the event out of KU’s iconic Town House building, which has won numerous architectural awards including the EU Prize for Contemporary Architecture and the “coveted” RIBA Stirling Prize for the UK’s best new building. But I’m not a KU corporate shill so I won’t say that 🙂
Apologies if it’s a non-starter for you (geographically speaking) but if you are going to be within a train trip of Kingston in that time window, why not make a trip to see us – we’d love to see you. I promise you there’ll be something there you’ll not have seen before!
Some gratuitous pictures follow… And there are much more on the website, http://www.arcatku.org.
https://i.imgur.com/2ZRwVIe.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/gr7hZS3.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/fsPTFw3.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/bapNtY3.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/nc0bO0O.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/fg64UZe.jpeg
https://i.imgur.com/W3c5aT1.jpeg
Kingdom 2 crowns, splitscreen. Amazing game for couples that want to play something simple from the sofa.
Been playing Schedule 1 and building a hilarious drug empire. The game play loop is good fun, and the bugs are not hugely game breaking for an early access release.
And Doom guy is pretty retro right, despite his recent incarnations (really must find time to play Eternal)
Been struggling for the longest time to stick to a singleplayer game and finish it (despite my ever increasing backlog) so I’ve decided to keep it simple and slowly attempt to unlock all the trophies in FH5.
Will it last? Who knows but I’ll certainly have plenty of high speed off road fun along the way! 🏎️
Bejewed 3, I know it’s old but I’m actually enjoying playing something like it on the Steam Deck!
Completed Donkey Kong: Bananza a few days ago and loved it. What a fun game.
I’m now playing Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and am loving it. I’ve always wished we had more mature JRPGs and this is filling the that space perfectly. Such a dark, beautiful game.
Playing Atomfall.
It’s quite good. Pretty much a more serious in tone Fallout set in the UK after the Windscale Nuclear incident. it’s a good game. But there is something missing, it feels like a game which could have been great but somehow is lacking in a few areas and misses the mark.
The world looks cool. It is very impressive exploring the abandoned railway yard with rusting locomotives and goods wagons littered around whilst stalking some outlaws or finding a bunker which was a repair station for Ferret armoured cars all rusting away.
**Everspace 2.** Space combat/RPG. Remember Freelancer? This is its spiritual successor.
The gameplay is very well balanced, with a bunch of ship classes, all of which feel different and play different. The item system takes a lot of inspiration from ARPGs, with rare/unique items and a great – and not too RNG-heavy – crafting system.
Want sci-fi Diablo with sci-fi ship combat? You’re good.
**Tiny Rogues**. Surprisingly good. It’s like Binding of Isaac mixed with a little splash PoE. I prefer it to Binding of Isaac though since you have a full and detailed stats sheet so you don’t have to remember what X obscure item does based on what it looks like.
You can tell they were inspired by PoE because some of the traits have the exact same names with similar functions to their PoE passive tree equivalents. Because of this (and the different weapon types, item affixes, combat mechanics, damage & defense mechanics etc.) it feels like you are making an ARPG style build rather than a typical rougelike style build.
It’s kind of like what Halls of Torment is to the Vampire Survivors genre.
More Pokémon Sword and Shield! I’ve just beaten Bea’s gym and now I’m looking for and catching pokémon I haven’t caught yet.
I’ve also set “goals” where I catch 1-2 pokémon before putting the switch away. That way I can limit the usage and make time for more important things
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