Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

Currently watching the PS Store countdown for Satisfactory. I'm really looking forward to see how well it performs compared to it's PC counterpart. I have my spread-sheets ready to go. It takes a lot of planning to get a working factory/supply line off the ground. I expect they'll include a tutorial for newbies.

One minute to go.

Edit: The Devs are doing a launch stream over on Youtube. About 500 people so far.

It's beautiful and they did a fantastic job with the UI/Tutorial.

Currently watching the PS Store countdown for Satisfactory. I'm really looking forward to see how well it performs compared to it's PC counterpart. I have my spread-sheets ready to go. It takes a lot of planning to get a working factory/supply line off the ground. I expect they'll include a tutorial for newbies. It’s kind of like other online platforms, where strategy and careful planning make a big difference — for example, on interactive game sites like https://moro-spin-fr.com/ , a thoughtful approach pays off.

Same here! I love that kind of structured chaos where everything clicks perfectly. Hope the console controls feel natural — building with a controller can be tricky.

@parhko Satisfactory? They are perfect, I played from 12 noon until 3am, it made the time just evaporate into nothing. That's not happened since Elden Ring, I already have 13hrs logged and all I've gotten off the ground is the start of a small power plant and iron factory. It makes such a difference to have infinite screws, rods and plates. I've been exploring a lot too, kiting and dodging things that can one shot me in order to steal the loot that I shouldn't even have yet. So many tickets for the Awesome machine.

@HallowMoonshadow Silent Hill f is such a great ride. I got pulled away from my New Game+ run by Cronos but now that I’m finished with that, I’m gonna jump back in right away. I do think it’s let down by an overly clunky combat system but it’s a minor gripe in an otherwise excellent horror game. I look forward to reading your thoughts!

In between games of Battlefield 6, I'm playing The Cult of the Lamb. It is another game i though would only take me a dozen or hours to complete, yet you could probably double that with my current time with the game.

It's an interesting mix of of roguelike (which is so far the runs are short enough not for me to get sick of them) and cozy base building. Cosy base building when you sacrifice your followers and can make them eat the meat of the dead ones (tip: don't do that at first, they will most likely get very ill and die).

I think I have spent too long on the base building, as at one point I ran out of a resource to perform Rituals, which currently I can only get by doing the dungeon runs. At first you have to do everything for your followers, but you can upgrade your base so they become more self reliant. I was so glad when I didn't have to clear up their poop and sick anymore!

@JohnnyShoulder
I really enjoyed Cult of the lamb, it has a lot of charm and despite fairly repetitive gameplay it never got old. Really upset me when one of my flock went to the big shepherd in the sky.

@Bentleyma
Yeah Thief is very much underrated imo but I guess it didn’t match what they think a thief game should be. However I do think the main hub is a bit of a mess and I did get lost quite a few times but thankfully the load times aren’t as bad as the PS3 version. Also quite a rare platinum if that is your thing.
Thief VR is out next month so it should be interesting to see how well that is received.

@JohnnyShoulder @CaptD Cult of the Lamb was great fun and I really liked the humour of it, and the combat was pretty satisfying.

The platinum was a challenge with the no hit runs on the bosses which I found was best done with the cloak that increased damage with every hit you did on an enemy but lost it all if you got hit. It was so frustrating to lose your 300% damage to a cheap shot just before the boss.

It sounds like it’s been made much harder since one of the updates though.

@Thrillho
I did manage to get the platinum post updates, it wasn’t too bad and I’m someone who isn’t very good at these types of games. I think the platinum is just time consuming more than anything, getting all the lamb variant types was the real grind. I also completed the dlc which added a chunk of time but it was all good fun.

@HallowMoonshadow I agree, the game would have benefited from more enemy variety. It also doesn’t help that the situations in which you have to fight them become fairly repetitive towards the end. I don’t know, maybe it’s the excellent pacing of the game but it didn’t really bother me as much as a combat system that felt like it didn’t go anywhere. You’re doing the same thing by the end, against the same enemies, in the same kind of arenas…Upon reflection, I suppose my general “meh” feeling surrounding the combat is all of the above wrapped up together. Kind of amazing that it truly doesn’t wreck the game.

Nicely done on finishing those runs! Unfortunately, my Hinako was popping red pills from the moment they entered the palm of her hand, and didn’t stop even in New Game+, so I squandered half a play through 😬 She had a real problem.

I didn’t realize that the English VO was a dub so I started with that but ended up switching early on. There was nothing wrong with it, I just prefer to get the intended experience, so to speak. I agree, her acting was phenomenal. The presentation all around is incredible actually. Think you’ll go for more runs yet?

I'm not currently playing it yet but, after that DLC trailer yesterday, I'll be getting back on Elden Ring Nightreign from tonight.

December 4th can't come quick enough!

I got to level 50 of the recommended max level of 60 for Vigor in ELDEN RING today, after that (getting to 60) ,I just have to go up 7 more levels of Endurance and my build, stats-wise, should be complete.

@Tjuz (I moved my response over here for to keep the “latest purchase” thread tidy since I’m veering off into the how I choose what to play and how I schedule and this seemed as good a place as any)

But yeah, regarding the whole game schedule making and keeping process, at the beginning of this year when I set my gaming goals, I coupled them with my own specific schedule which would facilitate achieving those goals — a really odd thing to do, I realize, but my brain is wired weirdly. I think the goals and the scheduling help me to organize myself and be less anxious and overwhelmed when I look at my huge backlog. But I definitely agree that sometimes a gamer is just in a certain kind of unpredictable mood, so I want to maintain a little flexibility and spontaneity to maximize my enjoyment and keep the whole thing as a relaxing hobby and not a second job with quarterly and annual targets and metrics. So to that end, ironically one of my goals was:

“Embrace a little impulsivity - Play 2 games that I currently don’t have plans to play”

And interestingly it’s one of my few goals that I’ve accomplished this year. 😅

(This reminds me that I need to post an update over on the Resolutions thread… )

Anyway, what I’ve found by doing the specific schedule this year is that my game time is indeed quite unpredictable, and the ‘time to beat’ estimations for the games are quite off my pace. I’m a slow gamer and almost always seem to go beyond the average ‘time to beat’. This coupled with my diminishing free time to play has put me way behind the schedule.

So what I think I might do next year is a schedule that has a little more built in adaptability. I’m considering organizing plans of what to play by genre instead of a specific game. (Ex. January play an open world action game, February play a survival horror, etc.). I don’t know. I’m still mulling it over.

One of the other purposes of my schedule is to keep some of the backlog games in mind that are easy to forget about as they get buried deeper and deeper. It’s always easy to remember the new games or the ones in the zeitgeist that everyone is talking about, but there’s a lot of games that are exceptional but have dissolved from the public consciousness and I don’t want to accidentally skip those.

So as far as future outcomes for my game time and where I’ll be next year, there’s no telling. There’s always things that come up in life, both good and bad. A major illness, a change in job, a new game that I’m not anticipating, things like the recent Portal update which opens new opportunities, etc. Many aspects factor into what I end of playing and when. I don’t like the unknown though. I like to keep some semblance of control, futile as that may be. 😄

Oh and —

There absolutely is. Definitely. 😊
She’s partly responsible for throwing my whole schedule off. (I did have a very interesting interaction with Mizora recently though… but that’s a topic for another thread. 😂 Or maybe it’s best left unsaid…)

Looking at the news, it seems I picked the right day to start Horizon Zero Dawn Remastered. I guess I'll have to "steel" myself against "frontiers" of... of, er... oh, what the heck am I even trying to do? I can't make that work. Good grief.

Anyway, gorgeous game is gorgeous. Looks exactly as good as Forbidden West in all but the most obscure map corners and NPC models. Earlier in the year, LEGO Horizon Adventures made me realise how much I love the first game's characters and story (mostly by cutting a lot of it out in pursuit of simplifying the narrative) so I'm keen to re-experience it in the best way possible.

@HallowMoonshadow Too funny…gaming in 2025 certainly is something, isn’t it? Don’t think I found that charm so I relied on consumables, which did the trick. I only drew like 2 omamori and they weren’t very good, so I decided early on that I wasn’t going to spend faith on them. Perhaps I jumped the gun on that 😬

@Th3solution Haha, good you make the move, because I don't really pay attention where I yap personally! Thanks for the in-depth look at your gaming decisions. I think it's always fascinating to see how someone approaches this hobby, since I feel like we all have different ways in which we reason what we play when. I totally get that the picking and choosing of games just to lessen the load of the "oh my god, I'm so behind" is really helpful! I've run into issues with that scheduling with TV shows myself in particular, because I'd always be watching stuff weekly as well on top of what I had decided is my "focus" at any moment. Sometimes it just built up into way too much to watch that eventually my brain just switches off and I'm not watching anything for months! When it works though, it's a great way of organising your brain, and luckily games don't really have the same issue. Those are always dated well enough ahead of time that you can keep them into account when you do your mental gymnastics and you don't need to wait to play a new part of it.

Impulsivity has actually helped me regain my lust for gaming. As I've complained about plenty of times in the past on this forum, I was in a rut for years where I would often commit to playing games for a while, but always hit a dead end. I think that came from games just being a lot more unpredictable in how much time I'm expected or expecting myself to spend on one, whereas you can't really make TV shows longer than they are. Like yourself, I'm usually way over the curve when it comes to average playtime. The less linear a game, the worse it gets. I totally get how you can overestimate your time in that, and it can sometimes be frustrating when a game goes longer than you expected when you had hoped to get to the next one in line. I'm glad that you were at least able to fulfill that new year's resolution! Did you do it with ease or has it been a struggle and it really is exactly two at this point in time?

And yeah, it's hard to really remember the games you were excited to play a few years ago when they're out of the public consciousness. I tended to always keep an ongoing list of everything I was excited about at any point, but that just eventually turns into an indiscernible mess in and of itself and becomes counter-productive. Even worse so when you have broader tastes in games than myself, which I believe you do! At least even with all the uncertainty of what could get in the way of your neatly organised plan, it might be a comfort to know that that plan is still there for whenever you can resume it. As long as it's outlined in any way, it'll always be there to follow whether or not you did it within the 365 days you had expected!

I'd like to meet this alternate reality version of you who threatens you with (hopefully exclusively appropriate) impulses! Will Mizora have any tea worth canceling you over that I should know of?

Currently rubber-banding it around the 1000 MILES TROPHY AFK Playground in Dirt 5 for the Spare Some Change for Gas trophy, while cooking supper. I remember a few of the regs on here mentioning this trophy… and their respective rubber-bands back when it was first on PS+ back in the day.

I feel so productive rn 😏

Definitely did it with ease. I’ve played four so far. So perhaps I need to let myself be more impulsive. I obviously didn’t struggle finding opportunities to do so.

And yes, to your point about my schedule being still useful because I can roll it forward and resume it regardless of whether it’s this year or the next. (Or the next 😄)

And as far as my escapades with Karlach and Mizora, let’s just say that having a high persuasion skill really helps keep a guy out of hot water! 😅

@Th3solution I guess it's just a matter of being impulsive when you have the feeling you want to play something not currently on your list, but being able to fall back to that when no other game is giving you that feeling! A healthy mix of both. I look forward to you having finished your schedule in a few years!

I think I'll have to have a talk with Karlach and Mizora about what's going on here... haha!

45% complete of "NIOH" and having a good time with it! Also thinking about firing up the Ole' 360 to play "Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Athena".

@Bentleyma What did you think of The Evil Within 2?