Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

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…)

And just like that we get a patch reducing the combat encounters and adjusting the difficulty @Metonymy so it should make our NG+ runs a little smoother

Thing is though I had the Wolf and Spider charms at the end so my light attacks were doing crazy damage and barely reducing in durability. Meaning I could beat most enemies in only 3 swings so... I didn't mind the fight gauntlet everyone else moans about. I thought it was cathartic even 😅

And for sure I'll be going for the other endings. But I may do that after a little break away from it before heading back in.

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?

I’ve been back on Elden Ring Nightreign ever since the DLC trailer reveal during the State of Play Japan on Tuesday(?) and I’ve been having a blast. I’ve missed it a lot and I’m kinda sad I dipped away from it initially as I do really enjoy it despite the game not necessarily being the typical Souls formula you’d expect.

I’ve managed to beat both Everdark Soverigns this week in Augur and Libra, who are both absolutely insane but beating them felt amazing considering I still really struggle with both of them.

Haven’t tried too much of the Deep of Night mode (which is essentially a sort of ranked mode that gets harder the deeper you go) but I’m sure I’ll give it a go at some point.

I've sunk a few hours into Elden Ring Nightreign, and am a bit mixed with it. It took me me a few goes to get out of my usual play style of slowly exploring every nook and cranny of the map. Nightreign you need to be on the move all the time to keep up with whoever you are playing with, and eventually avoid the night rain that closes in. Once I got my head round this I found the combat, fighting with other people really fun.

You can play solo but this makes the games more difficult, especially with the bosses.

I've only reached the Day 3 boss once, we actually did quite well. I only had the minimum healing flasks though and felt like it was dying really easy.

You can get more flasks by visiting churches, and there have been a couple of times when the group have done that. But most of the time they have not, and when I've gone to a church I've got seperated from the other players and not been able to locate them.

There has also been a few times that we've reached a day 1 or 2 boss, and either one or both of the other players are not in the game anymore and left me to face the boss alone. I've also only seem to be facing off against the same two bosses on day 1, which I'm getting fed up with. Day 2 I have seen more variation which is cool.

So overall the combat is fun and when everyone on the same wavelength, it's great. But that feels like the exception rather than norm for me so far, and most of the time it feels really shallow and you are left with what the RNG gods deal you or the players you are with. Maybe things will get better if and when I ever reach and defeat the day 3 boss

@Metonymy Evil within 2 is a very good game not sure why it didnt sell

@JohnnyShoulder I just bought Nightreign as it goes. From what you’ve said, it sounds good… if you can get a solid consistent group (preferably on comms). I’m not in any rush to play it but will probably try and get a boosting group together when I do, as it sounds like playing with randoms can be a problem waiting to happen.

@graymamba Yeah when it all clicked it was great and took about about half hour to get to the day 3 boss. I think they are about 7 or 8 of them that you need to defeat in the main game, plus the back story for each of the heroes.

@JohnnyShoulder I'm not the absolute best at the game by any means but I'll do a few runs with you sometime if you want.

I'm continuing to have fun in Where Winds Meet.

So I've been playing some Crow Country before going back into Silent Hill f for a new run.

I will say it is pretty good. There is a but though. And it's a pretty big but.

I really don't like how Crow Country deals with it's resources. You get very little and can't hold much ammo... But at the same time you have infinite ammo? 🤔

I get what they're going for in creating tension by giving you a miniscule ammo count to make fights very tense... But the fact that you can just shoot open a box/jar, rummage in rubbish bin, kick a vending machine or go back to your car also means you're never gonna run out.

It's... Just weird. I get why as there's no melee weapon so you HAVE to be able to get some ammo but yeah the resource management is just not my cup of tea. I'd prefer the standard method to be honest.

I think Alisa, that I played earlier in the year, is the better retro survival horror game at the moment.

Also I'm pretty sure I already got the reveal about Mara only an hour in.

The easier resource management (I think there's a settings option to add lives too) and the fact there's a mode where you can play this as a atmospheric "puzzle" (It's more just use the correct items not actual puzzles like Silent Hill) game with no enemies at all means it IS very easy to get into as your first surival horror.