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

I played through Unpacking this weekend! I thought it was a fun, quick game. I really loved how each new place had so much of a story to tell, and how much the different items really gave so much characterization to the main girl and her friends and love interests. It's an interesting introspection as this person grows up, finds love, chbages, and makes a family.

One of my favorite parts was after leaving her boyfriend, she got more into coffee. When unpacking after the move, she had her own grinder, press, and coffee beans and I just think that was neat.

I was just so delighted in all the little details that made up the people and how you could surmise the happenings yourself. It was also just a fun game to play, like trying to figure out what makes sense to put where and if it makes sense to put certain things in certain spots. Very satisfying.

So, in December of 2020 I ended up buying a physical version of Xenoblade Chronicles 2 on eBay for just $48 (yes, I got very lucky) because I had read about it being the best JRPG on Nintendo Switch. I was excited to play it, but once I got rolling with it I became very frustrated with the combat. I felt like I was getting slaughtered by enemies who would attack me out of the blue, just running around trying to avoid everything, and getting frustrated with some of the quests. I watched some videos on YouTube about it and felt a little better, but it all still felt so convoluted and difficult. So I gave it up after about 15 hours.

More recently, I've had two discussions here on Tildes with @psi who loves the game and has tried to help me see how good it is. After the latest Nintendo Direct thread I decided to give XC2 another shot. A real, grindy shot. I'm now at 48 hours into it and, well... I love it! Around 35 hours, the combat clicked for me. I had this moment of clarity where I was just kind of dumbstruck, "I get it. I actually get it!"

Just this weekend I bought the DLC (mostly for all the goodies you get, like Core Crystals and Overdrives), but I'm also excited for what Torna brings to the story once I finish the main game. I'm flush with rare Blades, I feel confident going forward in the main story but I'm also enjoying taking little detours (currently about to start the Land of Challenge), and I can definitely see how I could sink hundreds of hours into this game. I'm glad I stuck with it. It's really a deep and full game.

I picked up The Witness on a recommendation from @cfabbro back in December and I can't believe I waited this long to play it. It is fantastic! The sheer breadth and diversity of puzzles is almost overwhelming. Without giving anything away, I was shocked to discover how much of the game was interactable. I have tried to complete the game without any hints, which has lead to putting the game away in frustration many evenings, cajoling my partner for help, and creating pages of handwritten notes and drawings.

I don't think I've ever played a game like this before. It is both very basic and very complex. If anyone has other suggestions of similar titles I'd love to hear them!

Command & Conquer: Renegade - The quirky 2002 first-person shooter spinoff of the C&C Tiberium Wars universe. I'm not really much of a FPS player so I can't say how this stacks up against other games in the genre, from that time period. You play as Havoc, a Duke Nukem-esque commando caricature that is completely over the top. Gameplay is mainly centered around filling enemy soldiers with as many bullets as possible, but there are some fun base-destroying aspects that involve infiltrating facilities and exploding the buildings from within.

I wouldn't say the story is particularly great but it's a serviceable connective tissue between action set pieces. I like the range of weapons, from conventional guns to sniper rifles and rocket launchers, with wackier items like flamethowers, chem sprayers, energy weapons, remote-detonated C4 explosives, and a building-flattening orbital ion cannon. From time to time you come across heavy artillery like turrets and driveable vehicles which are pretty fun.

The single-player campaign is harder than I expected it to be. Missions are long and require frequent saves as you progress through them. The AI is dumb as rocks; the difficulty mainly comes from scripted events like ambushes and snipers taking cheap shots. Seems like the expected path through is to let them take you out once, then remember their locations so you can target them quickly in your second run. Which is unfair and can be frustrating! Is that normal for FPS games in general?

I'm having fun with it though. The mission objectives are varied and interesting, and take place in a wide range of different settings. Last night I was struggling to take out a full enemy camp from a sniper's nest inside a building before they spotted me and blasted me dead with rockets and an attack helicopter(!) ...until I had the crazy idea I could hop in a tank and drive it through the front door and up the stairs to complete the objective with it. I appreciate that the game allows for creative problem-solving like that. Level maps are open-ended and contain lots of secrets too, though they occasionally require an uncomfortable amount of backtracking.

Supposedly this game is more beloved for its multiplayer than campaign mode, and online play is still available through CnCNet, but I've never been into competitive online play (in any game). There's also a fan project called RenegadeX that remakes this game in a more modern engine, but I haven't looked into it much since I'm pretty sure it's exclusively for online multiplayer, with no solo play. I did find an AI-upscaled texture + shader mod to pretty it up a bit. It plays at 120FPS on my machine, which is nice. I'm in full-on patientgamer mode now, waiting two decades so I can play it better than was possible when it was new.

I picked up Rover Mechanic Simulator for the Nintendo Switch this weekend because it was on sale for around $8. Wasn't sure if it would be for me, but I'm oddly addicted to the satisfaction that comes with taking the things apart, cleaning and fixing them, then putting them back together again, all while earning skill points to reduce the amount of time it takes to perform certain actions and unlock various quality of life improvements as you go.

This is my first foray into the mechanic simulator genre as a whole, so can't really compare it to other titles. I can say that it's super repetitive, feels a little unpolished at times, and (I think) may lose its replay value once you've seen the innards of all the different rover models (I've seen 2 so far, not sure how many there are total) and maxed out your skills. But it still does the job scratching an itch that I never knew I had. I'd say I'll easily get my money's worth out of this, even if I had payed the full $12 non-sale price.

My husband finally got his PS5, and he has proceeded to buy every PS5 release that remotely caught his interest. That poor SSD is probably saturated already.

Rather than talk about any particular game, I'll just talk about the "next gen" experience.

Honestly, it makes me realize how spoiled I am in terms of video games right now. I'm lucky that I have a pretty decent computer to play high-end games on, even though I'm rarely actually playing them. I haven't given up on console gaming, though, and with the PS5 I can say that I'm not really blown away by anything; rather, I'm happy to see that console gaming has finally reached what I was expecting out of my PC games.

I've never really been much of an FPS player, but with the way that games have basically all changed to require that kind of gameplay, I've adapted to it. In a somewhat simelar vein, I've never been a big stickler for FPS - as in framerates - but the PS5 has really done a lot to demonstrate how important that figure really is. I was gifted Far Cry 6 for PS4 last year and played through it for quite a while, but I eventually got stuck on this one mission because I kept dying. Fast forward to today and get the free PS5 upgrade, and as soon as I load the save game I finally make progress on the mission (though Ironically don't finish it without dying first because the mission is to save a person controlled by an AI that is dumber than a box of rocks). The change from 30 to 60 FPS has given me godlike ability to pull off headshot after headshot.

Coincidentally the day after the PS5 arrived, the only game I actually wanted to play on it was released: Horizon Forbidden West. And boy oh boy is this a next-generation game. Everything is gorgeous, and even though most dialogue is skipable you will want to sit through it all because the performances are all so great and everyone's so crazy realistic. Horizon Zero Dawn already had amazing costume design (why there is no video game awards for best costume I will never know), but the clarity in which you see them in Forbidden West on PS5 just makes all that much more impressive.

The extra clarity is actually a bit of a double-edged sword, though. Things are so detailed it's easy to get lost in it; without the ability to use your Focus to highlight when something is collectable or is a grip for climbing on, you'd be completely lost because everything is so detailed that the important stuff just blends in.

Overall, though, the thing that makes the PS5 feel truly next-gen is the controller. The improvements in haptics are almost magical, particularly when it comes to the trigger buttons. It's not something that can easily be put into words; you really do have to experience it to understand how much it improves your experience.

Destiny 2: I haven't touched it since Dying Light launched, and had only played an hour before. I started out in the Witch Queen opening mission, according to my brother. I just wanted to test GeForce Now on an FPS because I find the service fascinating, and it worked really well. I'm playing on legendary and feel that the game is manageable, even if I'm basically my own fire team by just throwing myself at the enemy every time I die, moving, and ganking them with my shotgun. I'm basically an unlevelled titan, so it's the base weapons and abilities, but I don't know anything about my build.

Skyrim: The sword and board Nord is back on track, and I've been cheesing to level stuff up like shield and smithing: Dwemer ruins to make a shit ton of arrows to use as currency and grind smithing, and probably 45 minutes of standing next to a giant using a shield. My next goal is to get 100 alteration for that sweet magic resistance perk, using the "Filament and Filigree" Black Book to hold telekinesis across the whole map. One of my brothers issued a challenge to actually hold the spell and cross the map myself, so I may try that. I'm not trying to use any huge crazy exploits, like big armor or anything, but don't have any concern with building a skill I only want for the perk, and avoiding grinding it. The useful ones like Alchemy and Enchanting I'm at least going to put in the work to grind.

I played a little OpenTTD out of boredom and decided I don't like its AI system. It builds too damn fast, and I can't keep up. Playing solo is boring as well, as it's not exactly like Sim City or Roller Coaster Tycoon, but it's similar enough that it worked when I first started the game. I think I may just lean into the single player experience, even if I feel I'm somehow missing by not using AI opponents.