What games have you been playing, and what's your opinion on them?

Crackdown 3 (Xbox Series S)
The original Crackdown is one of my all time favourite games. I never played the sequel, due to it's mediocre reviews. The third game's reviews aren't really any better, but I decided to give it a try.

The franchise is pretty far from its glory days, but it's still fun being a superpowered cop in a city of criminals, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, throwing cars and dead criminals at their soon-to-be-dead comrades.

Most things in the game feel a bit half-baked. From what I understand, a lot of development time was spent on making the game world destructible, allowing players to use explosives to bring down every building in the city. However, this system ended up on the cutting room floor before release, and the rest of the game suffers from it.

Critical Mass (Android)
One of my all-time favourite PC games has finally been ported to Android! (It's been available on iOS for years, so not sure why it took this long.) It's pricey for a mobile game, but absolutely worth it in my opinion. It's still as much fun as playing it on the family computer back in the mid-90's, and it has the must-have features I require of a mobile game: It boots up almost instantly, resumes exactly where you left off with no extra taps required, and can be played for anywhere from 30 seconds to 30 minutes at a time.

Fantasy AGE (tabletop)
I bought this a couple of years ago, when I was having one of my D&D burnouts, and finally managed to get a campaign off the ground! The AGE system doesn't solve all of D&D's issues, but it solves some of them, and introduces some cool mechanics; primarily the stunts system, which makes combat more dynamic and surprising, while giving monsters some more flair in their play styles.

GearCity (Linux)
The developer proudly describes this game as a spreadsheet simulator. It's about running a car manufacturer. As a true indie project, it's a bit rough around the edges, but I'm really liking it. Maybe a bit too easy, as my company is currently swimming in cash. (Although I am playing on easy difficulty. Maybe I should start over on normal.)

Mysterium (tabletop)
I finally had a chance to play this with more than three players, but sadly didn't enjoy it as much as I thought I would. Probably partially because the ghost wasn't very good at giving hints, but I'm not thrilled about the mechanics either. I'll give my copy to the thrift store, perhaps someone else will get more enjoyment out of it than I did.

Snowrunner (Xbox Series S)
I did most of the missions in Taymyr, got my hands on a couple of amazing trucks (the Azov 64131 off-road and the TUZ 420 scout) and the suspension lift for the Tayga 6436, then went back to Alaska. Driving through the snow and mud is now a joy. Then I learned that the second map of Alaska is mostly paved roads, so I think I'll go to the truck store and find myself a nice-looking highway truck.

I completed Resident Evil 7 a few weeks back. I've never fully completed a RE game before although I definitely have tried and failed to finish lots of RE games (including RE4). RE7 is utterly brilliant and I really enjoyed my time with it. I'm strongly considering getting RE8, even though I've heard it's more action packed (which given my favourite levels in RE8 was Mia's levels when she was watching the tape recapping "the event" that lead to all of RE7, that's probably not a bad thing).

I also completed Bioshock last week on PS4. I've completed it before, but after RE7 I was hankering for a FPS game, and this did well enough although the shooter aspects are pretty weak.

I'm now playing Bioshock 2 and man it's like they listened to every complaint in B1 and fixed it. I've played it before, but even though the story isn't exactly great, the improved gameplay more than make up for it in my eyes.

A friend sent me a link to Vampire Survivors the other day and I'm hooked. To the point I've actually been booting Windows so I can play the Steam version, which has more features/stages/etc.

It's very simple but very addictive. All you have to do is survive a night brimming with vampiric terrors, with whatever weapons you can find along the way.

Still playing League of Legends in NA. Great game, liking the meta and the new champions and upcoming champion reworks. (New Udyr looks badass.)

Got an account in plat and now I'm playing placements on my smurfs and climbing with off-meta builds. (Surprisingly the off-meta builds are easier to climb with. Maybe that's because of smurf queue though where better smurfs win.)

I think a lot of the fun in league is finding new ways to play the game. Bringing other players out of their comfort zone and abusing that. There are many hidden mechanics or map features that you can play around. Or champion combos that abuse the current meta. It's fun to do theorycrafting and fine tune various ideas.

I had more fun than expected with Sunblaze, a precision platformer with emphasis on puzzles. I haven't played Celeste yet, but have played the normal difficulty of Super Meat Boy. Thought Sunblaze would be the same, where I'd play the normal mode and get frustrated enough, and hands hurt enough, to stop right after.

Instead, was pleasantly surprised because the puzzle emphasis took away the frustration of a high bar of execution. It was fun to play in 10-minute bursts, and I ended up making it all the way through hard mode. It also helped that hard mode introduced new mechanics instead of only relying on harder precision and timing. Overall a mostly smooth difficulty curve. The pixel art and music are pleasing too.

I've been playing a bunch of random web published games on itch.io. They're mostly short and not worth mentioning.

I am at the endgame portion of Pokemon Legends Arceus, but I wasn't really thrilled to continue because it meant accelerating the extremely boring plot which I was very much not invested in. So I gave it up earlier this week and finally decided to go back to playing The Outer Worlds upon which I quickly got to the endgame section of that as well, but I haven't gone into it because I didn't want it to end.

And so let it be known that The Outer Worlds is the only game I have ever bought the Season Pass for at full price. I'll be digging into the two DLC packages at some point in the near future.

But honestly I'll probably be putting more effort into The Count Lucanor; it's a game that I picked up for a pittance but I've been wanting to play for a while because it's the game made by the team who later went off to making a personal favorite of mine, Psycho Yuppie. It has so many similarities that it feels like it's almost the same game with a different skin.

Factorio: I started a peaceful run (with biters) to get to a rocket launch. I started my save months ago, but it was so damned tedious because of resource spacing I walked away from it. I jumped back and have so much red and green science going I actually had to double my power, coal, and iron production. The goal is to do a bunch of research and just play around with stuff to get where I want.

Half-Life: I backed off it, even though it was the one game I wanted to do for the Backburner, but I'm going to work my way back into it. I'm at the fire door in Black Mesa which is definitely not very far.

A friend wanted to try No Man's Sky. Which is sorta like Subnautica, but in space. I had played the game before, after that big update a few years back that fixed/completed a lot of the base game. Put in like 20hrs back then. Friend #1 didn't like it, but I was able to get Friend #2 to try it, too. Friend #2 and I put in at least 60hrs in the last two weeks.

Playing with someone else really helped me enjoy it more. The first time I played, it was still a cool exploratory, weak-survival-like game, but I didn't have anyone to share my findings and discoveries with. And there are some really cool things to find like weird planets or massive mysterious portals. Other than the trade hub or playing in an actual game-defined party, you're not going to come across other players (or the chance is super, super tiny). The universe is supposedly massive, and I believe it. Our starting system, including most systems around us had never been explored, but there were one or two nearby that another player had first discovered. According to the game, that player found it 6yrs ago.

So when playing by yourself, those "woah..." or "that is awesome!" moments are only yours. But even though I'm predominantly a single-player gamer, NMS by myself was just too lonely. Glad I got to experience it with some friends.

Also picked up Front Mission 3 on my Vita. This is an old-school, PS1 Tactical RPG with batlemechs. I was itching for a TRPG since I can't wait for Triangle Strategy (Switch) to come out. I saw some suggestions for it on r/jrpg so thought I'd give it a go. I'm only a couple hours in, but it's got me intrigued. It is weird to be playing a TRPG without some of the more standard features we see in the genre today, like being able to see enemy damage range and character turn list. But I'm enjoying the nostalgia of a game from a different era of gaming.

Still playing Elite: Dangerous. Currently, the most fascinating part is taking part in the political aspect of the game (called "PowerPlay"). In it, as a large group, we coordinate the efforts of dozens of players in order to achieve goals in the game. By the nature and scale of PowerPlay, no single player can do this on their own; it requires cooperation among multiple players to have any success. The actions that can and should be done are not always straightforward; it takes some calculation, strategizing and planning. There are a few people in charge of doing all this strategizing, and the rest of us follow their directions. It's cool to see us achieve success week after week (one real-life week is one tick/turn in the political game). Even failures are interesting (because it wouldn't be fun if it weren't challenging). There are feints, and last-minute pushes, and transport ships being intercepted and destroyed, and calling out for help in Discord when attacked in PVP. Fun stuff.