Topic: What PS5 Games Are You Currently Playing?

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@Tjuz I'm not a big fan of survival fare, so I need that other person there to keep me engaged and to have fun.

• You summed up what survival games were for me before solo-life. Previously in games like Day-Z, Conan, Ark, Rust and pretty much any survival game that had multiplayer I was with a Clan and like I said before I didn't know what Elitism was and even if I did I think my offline relationship to Elitism would have blinded it to me in the game. In hindsight my Clan were more about being the best than living in the moment and that's true for a lot of Russian Clans, often it's the numbers, or a willingness to use excessive force. Female solos don't last long, you either join a Clan or get run over.

For me it meant seeing only one side to survival games, base-building/crafting and providing sniper support. It took playing with an American to see things differently. After my Clan was gone, and he too was gone it was just me. Rust was impossible because everyone raided me, Conan too, Day-Z became more about walking the world-map and occasionally letting myself into peoples bases and borrowing a couple of crates of gear/items/sodas/etc and burying them in places no one could find. It became a completely different game, as did the others. Eventually what I found was a kind of luxury in the struggle, it made me work for everything I had, I'd never earned anything before on my own. Now I depend on that something as a kind of je nais se quois, that tells me I did something right and I don't get that from any other genre. For a time Ark provided something unique, my Dinos, I had so many and I really bonded with and cared about them but Ark is brutal and they all started to die, so naturally I'd bury them but that was a reminder of how non-permanent Dinos were.

Then one day I found Palworld on Steam, I knew one Pokemon (Sylveon) and never made the connection with Pokemon and still don't. I saw my Dinos again but in a more forgiving, colourful, and frankly welcoming looking world. I wasn't dying like in Ark and watching my items fall though the map, I didn't have to keep expanding my Dino cemetery because Pals weren't dying just sleeping. The U.I. and items all looked like Ark, the whole Technology Tree, but it wasn't Ark. It was like someone came along at the exact moment I needed it and provided a survival game that made me feel that something and made it really welcoming too. I've never felt like I was meant to be in a game-world before even Minecraft because the world I built was a 1:1 of the actual world and real places, but Palworld is different.

In a way I'm glad I never experienced Palworld in co-op, I think it might have created a specific feeling, or perspective of the game and then once I played it solo I'd feel that something was missing, it's an odd feeling. Even in your cause you could play Palworld for some weeks with a friend and get really invested, look forward to doing more in that game and then your friend might say they want to play the new something else. You can't tie them up and say no you must play with me or else your legs won't work anymore, that doesn't work, and you shouldn't. But it's going to affect your playthrough too especially if you are left with a big base or in the case of V Rising were doing the bosses in a particular order. Or worse you built your character as support and they were damage, so all you can throw at the boss are drive-by insults. With any other genre co-op is as simple as a random match, with survival there's a need for cooperation and communication. It was teaching me the latter. Not only that but it's a kind of shared journey full of memories. Probably why men go camping in the forest, it's that same primal experience, and if it's cut short things go into a holding-pattern, a kind of limbo where even seeing that games name is the reminder of things left unfinished.

I guess maybe it had less to do with the game and more so him just not being a nice person in general. Maybe he was just looking for a reason to go off at you, and with that he found one that he could pass off as being ''fair''. What an idiot.

• I'm not entirely sure. We played together for years, No Man's Sky, Borderlands, Wildlands, Breakpoint, Conan, Diablo, so many multiplayer games. He'd joke about marrying rich and I told him if Anyone offline heard him say that it would be bad for his health, so he finally stopped because he knew it was true. He was handsome, though young, but to me it was just a friendship. It could be that he saw it differently, I'll never know. I don't really think about gender, to me people are people and perhaps because I like both I miss certain clues.

I think the biggest change came from weed and beer. He did weed occasionally at the weekends, I'd hear the bubbles, he thought my hot-tub was weed too, we were both bubbling away. He would do that and get really relaxed, he had a sense of humor. Then he started doing it everyday even before work and his focus started to go. At the time I was experiencing small bouts of chronic jet-lag so I knew what having no focus looked like. We were making no progress and my allocated game time was strictly controlled, his wasn't. One-hour for me meant just that, all I could do was wait and then turn the game off.

After that he started mixing it with beer and became a different person. Twitter started being his go to news source, he kept needing money for things and I kept helping until one day he said Biden gave Ukraine X amount of the money he'd paid taxes into and that I needed to give him X amount because the SVO situation was my fault. I told him no which brought about a temper which you saw. Then it became a week of unalive yourself kat comments, I'd had them before from other people and deleted those games. I waited it out to see if he'd stop, after one-week Someone offline saw. Told my Partner and all Hades broke loose. That was the end of our friendship and I never had another PSN friend again. I'd love to return to V Rising, the game was brilliant, I'm just not sure how. There are many reminders there.

Add the fact that you're incredible at building bases, and we would've been a perfect match on that front!

• The world isn't ready for the explosions of colour that we could create, but thank you truly. I think anyone can create something beautiful in a game like Palworld, the tools are all there and I think what stops a lot of people is assuming they can't. When really they can and should.

I guess maybe it had less to do with the game and more so him just not being a nice person in general. Maybe he was just looking for a reason to go off at you, and with that he found one that he could pass off as being ''fair''. What an idiot.

• I can't be certain, but I did have some time to ponder it. I think the castle and everything I put in it were to him a reflection of real life. He became obsessed with money, always talking about how great life would be with X amount, things he'd do or buy. As a rule I don't talk about those things, I don't really have the words for it because I don't understand his obsession. In my experience there's no such thing as enough, People with all of the zeroes want more and once they Own everything they need to Own everyone, in my case literally. I think also social-media paints a kind of perfect image of that lifestyle too when it's not, and far be it for me to come between someone and their goals or dreams.

Your Palworld build continues to look beautiful! I saw the pictures you posted of it on Discord too and was highly impressed. I suppose the Pals can be a big help there, but I don't know how many of them you have.

• It was a mix of Pals and me but more-so it was their company, it was enjoyable chopping half a forest of lumber with one of them right there, they provided defensive support too, not just Palship.

Though now I have this man right here, his axe is bigger than I am.

I don't have that many, the five slots are obviously taken up and my base only has fifteen out of fifty. I'm level (checks) fifty-seven but so much of my time is spent building. I have only three story dungeons done, it's more about being in the world and in the moment, watching them do Pal things. The biggest problem is food, I need to start performing surgery on them to install a diet trait, they have huge appetites and are destroying plates of stirfrys, steaks, grilled lamb, stews, even cakes. I think I need to turn my original base into a farm full of crops. Multiple kitchens too.

And yes, my last few weeks have been filled with non-stop Baldur's Gate 3. You should definitely give it a shot sooner rather than later with how I know you enjoy getting lost in these long, expansive RPGs!

• I'd like to but my worry is that it will be flooded with dialogue and I'll drown in the narrative, saying I'd like to play it for the world and the loot is a insult to people who are there for the story and I imagine most are because I read some of your musings and thoughts on the game and the story is so integral. I don't suppose there are animal companions in the game?

I can't say I haven't gotten my money's worth however! I'm now 78 hours into my save file and am only just about to enter the third and final act. And if Sol is to be believed, that's going to be the one eating up the largest amount of time!

• The game sounds short if it only has three Acts but so does Uncle Vanya by Anton Chekhov and that's not exactly short, though some will say it has four acts. Are Acts in Baldur's Gate 3 separated into smaller segments and zones/quests? I'm sure I read it wasn't open-world but did offer some exploration and side-quests. I'm not sure what else to ask about the game, it's not because of a lack of interest, I don't know the series and it sounds rather complex.

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@GirlVersusGame I'm glad that going it solo after a while ended up in you being able to experience survival fare on a more complete basis! While I'm sure you had fun with the base-builder role, I can understand it started feeling like a whole new world opened up when you were let go of that strict position and had to provide for yourself entirely. What might be my worst nightmare meant a highly different, even more enjoyable gaming experience for you! Add to that that you didn't have any toxic teammates to be attached to, and I can only imagine it ended up being a net positive. I've played a few dozen of hours of Ark with this same co-op friend as well, and I totally see what you mean with Palworld being a lot less intimidating. It definitely feels like a more comfy game you can just enjoy yourself in as opposed to the harsh realities of surviving in the former. You and your dinosaurs alike! I much preffered Palworld's chill vibe as well considering it's that exact survival gameplay I clash with.

It's a shame that it sounds like your friend was changed so heavily by substances. It's too often you hear how different people can become after they start abusing substances. It really does bring out the worst in people, especially when you start mixing and matching them in a way that you're both physically and mentally not prepared for. The fact that you ended up becoming the victim of that is sad when you say you otherwise had a good friendship with him previously! Nothing you can do about that sadly. I think it was the right call to cut him off, whether it was your decision or not. That said, I think you're giving the general player (me) too much credit in saying they can make something equally as beautiful as your builds! You need to have the right amount of creativity, time and patience for that, and you're lucky to have them all. A game could give me the most in-depth building system ever, and I can promise you my build wouldn't come out nearly as well as yours! I think my issue is ultimately mostly with the patience though... I'm not one for standing around making minuscule progress with every plank I put down.

You can commit surgery in Palworld to lessen their hunger? Ha! That's funny. I'm sure by now you have quite a few more than fifteen pals, so I have to assume these Pals have been operated on since or else you'll be standing in the kitchen all day. As for animal companions in Baldur's Gate 3, there are two different animals you can recruit to be at your camp. One of which you can summon to follow you around in exploration and will help you find hidden treasure by following scents and barking to come near. Yes, the story is very much integral to the experience, but I think even if you want to play it for the loot and exploration, there's a lot for you to enjoy there. There's no problem with focusing on the part of the game that you like! I love narratives, so I obviously engage with that to the fullest, but I'd never fault you for being less invested in it and being there more so to find all the hidden entrances and locations to fulfill your joy of exploration. Some people love making creative builds as well and try to min-max their gear, which is an element of the game I personally ignore completely. I frankly don't have the patience nor interesting to go over every piece of armour or weaponry and compare what might ultimately give the best synergy for my class and such. That's incredibly boring to me. I just use the gear that at a glance sounds the best to me, and I'll decide to upgrade as soon as I start hitting a wall with combat. That's the most thought I put into that!

And yes, acts in Baldur's Gate 3 are split up into multiple areas. There's five major areas in the game, the first three of which are Act 1. Or some would say that the latter two of them are ''Act 1.5''. Each is fully explorable like an open world during those acts, but you will lose access to them eventually if you progress further into the main story. It's not a big deal however, since you will simply have done everything an area has to offer if you go out of your way to do so. It's not the type of game that will let you actively miss out on content besides the choices you make altering quest resolutions and such. So if the exploration is the main appeal to you, there's a lot there you can do at your own pace! The game will also warn you when you're about to progress to a next major story area, so you know to wrap up anything you still have ongoing in the current area beforehand.

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@WaveBoy I had no clue there was a VR entry into the Little Nightmares franchise! That's super interesting. I'm sure these types of games that rely heavily on atmosphere translate really well into VR, even with technical issues aside. I don't own a headset myself, but these are the types of moments that I reconsider getting one eventually. I'm sure that by now there's a good amount of VR games in the backlog I might enjoy. Take those Batman: Arkham VR games for one, which I highly resent not being able to play! Ditto Half-Life: Alyx. Definitely some good stuff in that space by all accounts. I hope the PSVR2 still gets a good amount of releases too! I have no clue what the release cadence is for major VR games, but I have to imagine it's much lower than your regular flatscreen fare. Since I'm not in the space however, maybe there's just a lot of VR stuff that goes completely under my radar and I'm simply underestimating the breadth of choices available.

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@MightyDemon82 Hope Cuphead has held up for you still a decade later! I only played it a few years ago, but found it delightful. Was this your first time playing the DLC? I thought it was a great litte addition with some fun, creative bosses. I'm sure the sequel (whenever it releases) will be no slouch on that front either. I only hope it has as catchy of a theme song as the DLC did. ''Cuphead... Mugman and... Chalice make a deaaal'' still lives in my mind rent-free.

As for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33... if you're already at the monument, I'd highly recommend just doing that first of all. It'll unlock some new way of travel with Esquie that's going to make your time exploring the map both more thorough and easier. After the monument, you'll enter the final act of the game, which gives you ample time to explore everything the map has to offer at your own pace, or simply end the game when you're done with spending time on it!

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@Tjuz I'm glad that going it solo after a while ended up in you being able to experience survival fare on a more complete basis! While I'm sure you had fun with the base-builder role, I can understand it started feeling like a whole new world opened up when you were let go of that strict position and had to provide for yourself entirely.

• I think in a way the emphasis on 'stay, we're going over there to raid that base' did help me to slowly provide for myself because I was learning to organize inventory, understand kill-boxes, other player points of entry and while my Clan were focused on destroying I was focused on creating. So I think I took the good with the bad and made both work. I don't think the Elite mindset in gaming is healthy, they'd spend so much time talking to people on other formats too like Xbox to make sure it was a world record, records were a big thing. We did have some skillful members but for the most part it was numbers, an ability to have our own language that few others could penetrate and ability to know what the others were thinking, even when we weren't there. I never asked for elaboration there. I do know Day-Z was the most hacked game I've ever played and probably still is, they probably got into the other teams in-game coms, that was always my suspicion. It was probably my earliest exposure to hackers too, the rest I can't talk about but at the time I thought everyone did it, now I know different.

For the most part I didn't recognize what people call toxicity, the only other reference-point had been people much older and a couple went to prison because of me, the news article you saw some weeks ago. He was one of the last ones, it wasn't until much more recently that his wife was jailed too, all three served time. It's a side of gaming people don't see and even in the court documents the charge was only child endangerment, it should have been what it really was. A big part of it was that the American legal system doesn't understand the gaming environment and there aren't any specific laws against using PSN cards/etc to do what they were doing, and this was offline too, and still it's only endangerment. What I'm saying is my Clan came after all of that and that's just how I viewed online gaming, I thought everyone was like that, I think I saw the darker side of online gaming/communities, and because it came on the tail-end of all of those other previous networks I didn't question it. What Ravix said yesterday about friendship, it's not a word that had been used, hence my reaction.

I've played a few dozen of hours of Ark with this same co-op friend as well, and I totally see what you mean with Palworld being a lot less intimidating. It definitely feels like a more comfy game you can just enjoy yourself in as opposed to the harsh realities of surviving in the former. You and your dinosaurs alike! I much preffered Palworld's chill vibe as well considering it's that exact survival gameplay I clash with.

• So you understand what I mean about the shared adventure side of it all, and the memory building. I remember some really funny moments with people in games, lots of good times, it may have been virtual but memories aren't tangible either. They are just there, like Pals. You've seen how I get in private when the game takes over, hours dissolve, I miss messages when usually I'm alert, it's just me and those Pals exploring/building/making memories and they don't have to have human intelligence to do it, which I suppose is why I was so interested in what Sarge said. If I can run around with an artificial-companion and not only appreciate but cherish that time together then who am I to question someone talking to an A.I. for an hour or so each day.

Anubis is quickly becoming my best companion (he's so big too) you saw the journey to even catch him. I think that was one whole week, I kept getting murdered by him until finally he went into the sphere. That red dragon from last-night, he's my new flying mount, I named him Keith Flint after the Prodigy.

It's a shame that it sounds like your friend was changed so heavily by substances.

• I have very little experience with substances, by this I mean even being around them. My Family have a zero tolerance on drugs, and my Partner would kill if I ever tried. Not literally but you know what I mean. One of the first times I experienced anything drug-related was the PSN. Someone joined party-chat and was high on methamphetamines. He'd been high for days, hadn't slept. Unbeknownst to me chat had cleared out and it was just me left talking to him, for I have no idea how long.

I'm sure there are people who experience and respect the fun side of certain substances and good for them it's their life not mine, and what they put in their bodies is their business not mine. It was near the end of the PSN that I'd realized the sound a can makes when it's opened wasn't soda, it was beer and they were drinking it early in the morning, then throughout the day. I feel bad for anyone who falls victim to addiction, of any kind, he's no exception. It can change people like you said.

The fact that you ended up becoming the victim of that is sad when you say you otherwise had a good friendship with him previously! Nothing you can do about that sadly.

• I see it more as he was the victim, he knew to an extent what he was doing but if you wake-up each day and need something so badly that it alters your entire personality, then you are no longer in control of your life, time, body even. It can't be easy. You saw the conversation and would naturally equate a barrage of go unalive yourself kat/etc as an attack, and an attack needs a victim but I really do see it more as a person who's lost complete control of their senses. Perhaps I'm wrong. Offline took it serious enough to wipe every contact, Russophobia did the rest, but here is different. You too.

A game could give me the most in-depth building system ever, and I can promise you my build wouldn't come out nearly as well as yours!

• You are doubting your own natural talents, like a lot of people do when it comes to building in game-worlds. In my experience everyone has their own style and something unique that they bring to the process. Mine is definitely that drive for perfection, but that's an extension of offline too and everything in it, it's expected to such a high degree that now in gaming it's absolutely self-imposed. There's the ever present 'I know I can do better, improve' and then that's what I focus on. I've never been able to quieten it, just keep building/improving.

You can commit surgery in Palworld to lessen their hunger? Ha! That's funny.

• You sure can and that's what I was doing yesterday. Using my bounty tokens to buy permanent traits which I then surgically implant in each Pal. Artisan was the main one. It's a +50 percent work-speed, Diet Lover was the other, then there is Ferocious (attack) and Burly (defense) the idea being that you can switch traits around to make better suited Pals for the job. There is also gender surgery, girl Pals can be made boys and vice versa, it's for breeding. There are a lot of unique systems and tweaks that really do respect the player's time and make things more tailored.

As for animal companions in Baldur's Gate 3, there are two different animals you can recruit to be at your camp. One of which you can summon to follow you around in exploration and will help you find hidden treasure by following scents and barking to come near.

• That alone would be reason enough for me to try it. I've just been digging up treasure in my game while listening to the song 'Tracking Treasure Down' my HUD is full of treasure locations, I was hoarding up maps for better loot chances per-level.

I love narratives, so I obviously engage with that to the fullest, but I'd never fault you for being less invested in it and being there more so to find all the hidden entrances and locations to fulfill your joy of exploration.

• I'd be happy with the Fashion Souls part of the game, I've never been great with character min-maxing and even then I'd need a guide which meant I was trading my own experience for someone else's, I think also it's easier to learn by going in blind. It's good that you have such a passion for the narrative, everything I've seen says the game has a rich and well written narrative, I did look too close because obviously spoilers lurk in reviews and things. It's a shame you never stuck with Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night. It does get better after the first area, mostly because of unlocks but like a lot of genres they either are or aren't for a person and it can get frustrating hitting that wall. I really liked Dead Cells too, a lot but then I tried Slay the Spire and realized I was terrible at card/combat games. It stopped me trying Balatro and the Vampyre Survivors Crawlers one.

Each is fully explorable like an open world during those acts, but you will lose access to them eventually if you progress further into the main story.

• I'm not sure I've seen that system in a game before, or did and forgot because like you said I'd done everything in that area and never returned.

So if the exploration is the main appeal to you, there's a lot there you can do at your own pace!

• That does sound like a good system, I was trying to calculate the hours where it said you were playing the game and then get an idea of how big the game is, a couple of days ago I gave up trying. I'm not saying you were living in Baldur's Gate 3, just that it seems rather big.

Do you know what you'll play next or is that too early to ask?