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

I've just re-installed Disco Elysium and I'm going to give it another chance. So many people list it as one of their favourite games, so I'm going to start over and see if I can get more involved / care more about the story this time round.

Factorio, but this time the Space Exploration mod

I'm what I would consider a veteran to Factorio, I'd played it for over 300 hours over the last almost decade. I've more or less done the big things in the base game enough that I've felt like I have seen it all. I've tried a few of the overhaul mods like Krastorio and Warptorio and Seablock, and they were fun but never quite grabbed me. Krastorio seemed too much like vanilla but just with more complicated recipes. Warptorio had a great idea but I could never tread water in it. Seablock is good but it takes a loooong time and I always end up having to figure out how to eek out the next bit of a recipe to get on to the next bit of research -- felt more like a puzzle game to me than anything else.

I forget what caught my interest about Space Exploration, I think I was reading about it somewhere and the build and fly a spaceship part grabbed my attention. Every once in a while I get an idea in my head to do another long game of Factorio, with something past the base game win condition to keep my interest.

I've been giving Space Exploration a try and raw thoughts: it's good, I like it, it seems like it adds a big layer past the base game that fits in with the game, holy crap it's long.

According to many experts (i.e. I googled it and howlongtobeat.com says), it takes about 50 hours to "beat" (i.e. launch the rocket) Factorio. That's all the stages of belts, to coal power, to solar power, to nuclear power, to bots, and finally launching the rocket.

It took me 42 hours in Space Exploration just to get in space -- effectively starting the mid-game. It took me 55 hours just to get the requester chests. I think it's going to take me many more hours just to automate the science production levels I've already reached, and have been doing partially by hand.

Main takeaway intended from that is that it is long, but nonetheless has felt like an interesting challenge of that time. The way the mod gates the progress is interesting and doesn't just feel like drawing it out for the sake of drawing it out. The parts that I was hesitant to build out with belts, trying to delay until I could research logistics chests (until I realized that was too far in advance to be realistic), end up being the big building block of the next step of the games, and not a one-off thing you need to build.

The first chunk of the "early game" is building out raw materials (iron plates, copper, same as usual), then the next is manually building out the parts for the infrastructure of your base (belts, inserters, motors, etc.), then the next is circuits and chemicals, then the beginning of space launches (just satellites, not cargo rockets, not you going in to space) with stuff like low-density-structures and solid rocket fuel. Once you've gotten enough research to start looking at launching cargo rockets in to space, you shift in to preparing to build your base in orbit, which quick-starts the "mid game".
You have to be in space to do the space research (the fundamental science pack for mid-game and beyond), so you need to have the resources in space to build the space science pack, and also to do the research in space (can't build the right science lab on earth). The resources being the expensive ones you had to set up production back on earth using belts for, like blue circuits, low density structures, rocket fuel, glass, etc., along with all the science packs you already have chains set up for on earth -- now those packs need to be blasted in to space for research use.
Once you've gotten your beginner space research up and running in space, you need to set up outposts on other planets to mine resources -- only available on other planets -- that are needed to do the next tiers of research (including, notable for me, the logistics chests like requester chests that I so badly craved).

Once you hit that point of launching rockets to other planets and back, where I am right now, you've entered this interesting tier of the game, past what vanilla lets you do, of starting to automate shipping rockets between planets to be able to gather resources and send them back, to continue researching. The base-game's different mods of transport/infrastructure (i.e. belts, trains, robots) still shine, with a big addition of cargo rockets and blasting resources around between planets -- and eventually fully automating it with circuit networks.

Anyway that's my long spiel on Factorio's Space Exploration mod. I'm about 60 hours in to it after 2 weeks, it's consuming my free time, it's a long game, I've been enjoying it, and it seems like I have at least twice that amount of time to see most of what the mod has to offer.

Currently just started nioh, it’s a refreshing take on the souls gameplay so it’s a welcomed change. I also have horizon forbidden west that I’m trying to power through and am currently grinding out power levels in destiny 2.
Horizon is an odd one though, it just doesn’t grab me like other games, and it’s funny because everyone praises it to no end but I’m just sitting here trying to figure out if there’s more than just pretty graphics and robot animals. The combat feels weak, the stealth is boring and not very intuitive, the survival aspect feels meaningless and the story so far is interesting but it’s just a continuation of a story I didn’t find all that interesting to begin with in the first game. On one hand I would love guerilla games to branch out, but I kind of just want them to go back to killzone, and then I remember the horrible ending of shadow fall and get annoyed.
I also want to go back to days gone at some point, it’s not the greatest of games but it’s a pretty well balanced survival game.

World of Warcraft - Dragonflight (Retail).

After @aphoenix's encouragement, I not only leveled my Tauren Paladin to 60 but also purchased the Dragonflight expansion with a 20% discount. Did I enjoy my time in Retail? Absolutely I did, but it's a very different kind of enjoyment. Classic is, essentially, a 2008 game, with all the good and bad that comes with it. It could be described as relaxing, hypnotic, and "romantic". Retail is really more of an action game, and, because I'm a tank now, things can get pretty tense. It's frenetic and dangerously addictive, like mobile games and slot machines. I created a chat macro that amounted to "Beginner tank here, please be patient!", and most people were nice, some even taught me stuff.

I barely did any quests, once I got used to tanking it was just dungeons back to back. The XP is insane and the items are great. It only took me 40 hours! The past few days were a crash course in tanking, and I guess I got my diploma.

I've breezed through many wonderfully designed dungeons, and it's a bit sad that past content is burned through super fast in autopilot. If I stop to watch the cutscenes or appreciate the scenery, when I get back to the game everyone is already killing the next boss. It doesn't help that, to be good at WoW, you're usually looking at very specific portions of the screen. A lot of times, you can't really acknowledge the beautiful art in this game. I wish the Dungeon Finder had an option for "slowrun", or "story mode".

I even made a friend and helped them at any chance. Some dude from Arizona. And I goofed around with someone that gave me a ride on their mount to an area I couldn't reach. That was pretty cool. By default, Retail is socially lacking, but it has its moments.

Anyway, now I get to see if Dragonflight is as good as everyone is saying. That's exciting!

Door Kickers 2

It's a super fun top down tactical shooter that plays like a puzzle game. I've been playing it with a friend, and we have really different approaches to the game:

I usually play with at least 1 heavily armored guy with a silenced sub machine gun supported by a guy with a sniper rifle: I plan out my route, placing pause markers so that my squad covers each other when moving, then flash into a room and neutralise the enemies.

My friend plays much more instinctively and with brute force: he runs with shotguns and when he finds an obstacle he will either bash his way through it, or around it; placing shaped charges on walls or buildings he wants to blow up, then throws frag grenades over the back and breaches into the front.

It's really satisfying when the plan comes together, and also fun to retry particularly difficult maps.

I'm on a rhythm game kick.

Played Hi Fi Rush, a new game from Bethesda that seems to be flying under the radar. It seems like a good game to introduce people to the rhythm fighter genre, the timing is very forgiving even on the highest difficulty. The game's story is very self aware and the art style is a beautiful comic book style, there's lots of meta jokes, particularly about plotholes (like returning to the base when it doesn't make sense within the story). The game has great personality and while there are very few licensed songs the few that do play are done to great effect. I'm not sure I'd listen to the OST by itself, but it also wasn't terrible, It lacked any standout tracks. I did find that the rhythms I was hitting in game seemed pretty disconnected to the music that was playing which was understandable but somewhat disappointing.

Gameplay wise it was pretty enjoyable, I found the 2d platforming a bit finicky at times, and there was something about the targeting that got me frequently attacking enemies I didn't mean to attack. The mid game I found quite button mashy. The main loop is that you have to hit (bigger) enemies to build up their stun gage before attacks cause them to flinch, you have a series of friends that go attacks and break through certain defences and do a small amount of dmg, one of the characters increases the amount of stun enemies recieve, which means you can spam each helper character over and over again to fill up the bar super quick and keep them stun locked, combined with a dash ability that also stuns the enemy and many enemies don't ever get a chance to attack. Your friends being OP was very thematic and it resulted in horrible score multipliers so it wasn't a devastatingly experience but I still don't know what some of the mid tier enemies attacks do. by the final boss and much of the post game content they managed to mitigate this somewhat and force you to use actual timing and attacks. Speaking of post game the game has a climb the tower style post game mode that I really enjoyed, there's a countdown that goes up when you perform perfect combos so it strongly incentizes using more of the flashy hard to pull off combos that you don't really need in the maingame. Overall It's a solid 6/10 for me, a good diversion that is worth the money, very bug free too. Took me about 15hours to beat the story and another 5-6 to do the tower game (I'm not sure I'll bother with some of the other post game content). I hope they make a sequel with a bigger budget.

The second game I sunk my teeth into was returning to Bullet's per minute. This is a rhythm shooter roguelite on the complete other end of the spectrum. At least how I had the game set up it is punishingly hard, it took me several hours before I could even get past the first floor, if you panic and miss the beat you can end up spending what feels like an eternity missing beats and consequentially doing absolutely nothing. Once you do get into the flow of it it makes time fly like no other! The art style is an acquired taste, everything is monochrome, in a way that made things often hard to see, but after a while of getting used to it, it really adds character. The music absolutely slaps, every song is a brainworm. I listened to the shop theme on repeat for a whole work day more than a few times. Unlike Hi-fi I found that, (especially as I was learning) the beat of the song was really in line with the combos I was hitting, for instance if I had a gun that could be shot on 8th note beats I would (at first at least) only hit shots on beat with the song, which made the occasional flourishes in the tracks where they hit 8th notes feel like cool moments where I could shoot really fast in time to the faster beat, and when low on health it plays a heartbeat sound helps you hit notes more consistently which is a nice comeback mechanic. It also gave each floor a unique feel. I really like the decision to make the beat the hard part and let the aiming be very generous.

While I said the game was hard, it also is very bang or bust. Some items (like no relaoding, double damage or explosive shots) can be extremely OP. There's also a special door to a bonus level on the first floor that can set up your entire run with some extremely op rooms. This isn't necessarily a criticism, I really loved the runaway runs and the dopamine hit of finding my favourite power ups, but I wish more was done (like special enemies or bosses) to give certain builds strengths and weaknesses rather than all strength. usually found that if I could get past the second level or so I would almost always get all the way to the end, I wish there was a few more late game enemies and those enemies had more unique attack patterns. that said I'm still playing on the more medium difficulties and the easier characters (in true rogue lite fashion there are characters that die in one hit). I wish there was a way I could test run the weapons before purchasing them as they can completely define a run, and depending on your build and how much you know the unique rhythm for shooting and reloading a weapon that is OP is one situation can be trash in another, yet there is no way to know how the gun handles except through experience. I give the game a solid 9/10. If you like challenging, runaway roguelites, hard rock and shooting to the beat this game is the sugarrush you need. I have played 30hours so far and have beat the game with 3 or 4 characters on the hard difficulty (note that you more or less have to beat them on easy first to unlock useful abilities), definitely plan on playing more, there's a character that dies in one hit that I know will be a very rewarding challenge.