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Friday Fun Thread for May 29, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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What are you playing?

Dunno why I'm starting the thread when I'm barely playing anything but I finished an Ascension 2 and an Ascension 3 run in Slay the Spire 2 this week! :D

I saw that a Sims-like game released this week, called Paralives. Hopefully you can do horrendous things to the characters. That was half (all?) the fun in those terrible old games.

I wouldn't mind trying the new Lego Batman game at some point.

I played through Esoteric ebb and thought it was a really mixed bag. I liked the art and the music was OK, but I found the writing to be really uneven, and that's a problem when the writing is the centerpiece of your game.

It's like a low rent disco Elysium in D&D stage dressing. If you're going to vomit massive amounts of text at the player then it better be compelling. Here its mostly just OK. Some of the writing and worldbuilding was good but it's surrounded by so much just serviceable writing that it gets lost in the mix.

I tried EE as well, but it didn't really grab me either. The six D&D stats have always been a poor choice, and using them in a Disco Elysium clone is a double mistake.

I understand why he did this. Whether they are good or not, Strdexconintwischa are a D&D staple, and without them the game would have practically no link to the D&D at all. But this doesn't make the experience less clunky.

The new diablo 4 explansion. the game turns into path of exile light. That is a good thing in my book. What can I say - junkies gonna junk.

When I have time for gaming (lol) I'm currently prone to hitting either Manor Lords or Factorio, in which I'm just now getting Gleba up and running after spending like 80 hours getting Vulcanus just so. 216 simultaneous rockets launching every time the cargo ship comes in is such a rush! Fulgora was first and that decision has paid off enormously. Anyway I put off Gleba for a long time because it sounded like a pain in the ass, and I mean to some degree it is and that's just the nature of the game, but actually I think it's my favorite of the three. I find it pretty and laid-back, and I like the ag vibe and weird self-sustaining supply chains. Only downside is that the surface can be a bit difficult visually.

In a hotel on a work trip tonight and was just trying to decide which of those two to play. I think sometimes about how my analogues a generation ago would have been turning on pay-per-view porn. But actually I think I'm gonna watch a couple-few hours of Legend of Galactic Heroes. It's that kind of night.

Original LoGH is better than the remake. But the remake has a great opening song.

I haven't really been gaming for some years now, but I'm strongly considering picking up Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition from GOG on sale and giving it a whirl. Been a fan of the cyberpunk genre ever since it became a Thing, and AFAICT it actually grew into a good game years ago, so why not?

It grew into a game without as many bugs. I feel mixed recommending the game too strongly despite having a few dozen hours in it.

The main story didn't hook me too strongly. Its one of those main storylines where the more you progress down the storyline the worse things get for the protagonist. If you like the protagonist you don't want to torture them. If you don't like the protagonist you just feel disconnected from the whole thing. I started with liking the protagonist but ended up more on the side of not liking them.

The side missions and exploration was a lot of fun. I especially enjoyed infiltration/theft missions which offered a variety of solutions. Either quiet hacking stealth mode, guns blazing mode, stealth killing, stealth knockouts, or just running in and out. Or some blend of all the options.

Hmm, any thoughts on how its "open world" compares to similar games like GTA/SR or Elder Scrolls games? Asking because I kinda feel like if I were to spend a few dozen hours just appreciating the beauty and depth of the game world then I might be reasonably happy with it, and you do make the side quests sound good enough for the purchase.

The city areas always felt pretty busy and active. But under the paint there isn't a whole lot to do most of the time.

I liked getting fast vehicles and driving them in the desert areas at full speed. Some of the country vistas looked pretty awesome.

I've never personally liked cities, so they bothered me with some of their gritty realism.

I recommend it, especially if you're interested in highly story-based games and enjoyed The Witcher 3. It's not the "be literally anything you want to be!" game that it was pitched as, but it's very, very good for fans of story-based games. The gameplay is also excellent, and I say this as someone who usually doesn't enjoy first-person shooters. You feel like your cyberware actually enhances your character, makes you more powerful. At a certain point in progression you feel invincible.

I didn't play until a few years after it came out, so most of the major bugs were ironed out. There are still lots of bugs, but they're manageable.

Thanks, appreciate the recommendation!

I'm looking for new games to play at this point. I'm thinking of replaying Halo 3 with the boys. Not sure. I might give Clair Obscur another try, saw my fiance beat it but it seems fun to play myself.

Librarian - Tidy up the arcane library. Had more fun with this game than anything else this year.

It would be extremely funny if a next-level masochist were to obtain the catalog and floor plan of a real library and create a similar game with that dataset. There could even be separate game modes for different classification schemes—e. g., Universal Decimal vs. Dewey Decimal.

A great idea but you'd need to tweak it. Real books fit a lot more per shelf than arcana codex books, which have a sort of minimum size for ease of manipulation. Damn if I don't love the idea though.

I picked up Remnant: From the Ashes after a multi year break, and I forgot how much fun it was. More than anything, I love the intentional vagueness of the narrative. Over-explaining is rampant in the medium.

I'm happy someone else played this game

I think there's a sequel now

Over-explaining is rampant in the medium.

It really is. I think I have yet to see a video game with subtle facial expressions or vocalization. It's all made veeery obvious and simple. Which is fair for a game that's fit to be played when your brain is fried after a long day, but they shouldn't all have to be like that...

I’m playing Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2. Continuing my registered fondness for widely-considered-to-be-bad RPGs, I’m quite enjoying it! The writing is nothing special but it’s regularly entertaining, I really like the night-time-in-Seattle vibe (and am a sucker for games set in the modern day / ‘real life’ in any case), and the gameplay is surprisingly not terrible. I bounced off the original years ago, so don’t have the fondness that others do, but it’s pretty fun.

Oh, this is the first time I've seen anyone talk about the sequel (except I saw there's debate on whether it should be considered a sequel). Why'd you bounce off the original? Did you play it many years after its launch? I played it at launch, during a time when you had to get used to bugs and jank. It was pretty fun. Very unpolished, but fun. I think they got the atmosphere very much right, even if the combat wasn't great.