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

Recently, I have been fascinated with a Rust-based programming game called Oort.

The premise is quite simple. You control a fleet of ships and control them via an API in Rust. All programming is done using a built-in code editor. I can't word it better than the tag-line of their site:

Oort is a "programming game" where you write Rust code to control a fleet of spaceships. Your code is responsible for the engines, weapons, radar, and communications of ships ranging from tiny missiles to massive cruisers.

You compete with other players on a leaderboard by trying to complete the various missions in the fastest time.

I have found it thoroughly addicting. I wish they had an option for setting up local leaderboards, so we could have a Tildes one as I'm sure that's something a few here may find interesting [Note: I submitted this as a suggestion to the developers shortly after writing this post].

I'm continuing with Exanima since the last post, because in exploring more of that game I think I've come across something truly special.

For one, it's actually quite old. I owned it for about four or five years, but because I couldn't get used to the combat I didn't play in earnest. The game is more than ten years old. It's being made by a team of seven people, led by one guy. On the surface this sounds like the worst example of Early Access shenanigans, but what's been produced is well beyond most of the things I've seen in that space. Exanima doesn't play like any modern dungeon crawler I'm aware of. If anything, it feels a lot closer to much, much older titles, like Dungeon Hack. Using the game's physics system, not only are you meant to learn and then master combat, but also look around and use your environment to get around. That means some elements of something like an adventure game - look around the room. You'll find things like keys, chests, and you can move most of the objects you can see. You can use those objects to build paths to places you can't reach, as well as reveal new paths by clearing away debris. The AI can pathfind over these things, so you're not free of danger and your companions won't go stupid on you. In one session, I had spotted what I thought was a safe drop down to a stone path along a cliff face. I was right, and by very carefully, slowly inching along I made my way to a wider path which eventually came to a tower. I got up onto the tower's edge, and got around the side of it, to find a series of those wooden, kinda house-looking things castles have. These were dilapidated and had all sorts of fleshy tentacle shit growing through them, so what I had to do was use a long plank to make a path across. I'd pick up the plank, set it down across one bit, get across, then pick up the plank to keep going. This all happens in real time, with no scripted events and no animations (in the traditional sense, I guess). You just manipulate the environment like you would if you were trying to get through it yourself.

That means while it's probably kinda boring to look at and read about, it feels absolutely incredible to play. You're in it. Each level is enormous, and has all the things you'd expect in a traditional dungeon crawling experience - hidden buttons, pits, spiky walls, a labyrinth, etc. When you get past the third level, the game then opens up into a much, much larger space. There's a set of interconnected levels, representing a crossroads on the ends of which are things like a market and castle, a residential space, and then sewer networks underneath each area. The sewers are accessible too, where you find undead and some sort of growth punching through the walls. The deeper you go, the weirder it gets, and you start encountering worse versions of the things you've been seeing.

The game feels like a complete experience as it is. It having been in Early Access for years is the result of how development is being done - this is a guy's passion project. It's an attempt to make a game he himself wants to keep playing. He has a very specific idea of what that is, and is trying to realize every detail of that. That means things like clothing of various types and materials, armor with the same kind of variation, weaponry of different makes and types, and a procedural system for spawning these things in appropriate places. There are dozens of the same kind of thing, so that every time you play it feels a little different even when you're finding the same kinds of things. Combat has such a high skill ceiling and is so dynamic, that you can radically change the outcome of a run both by practicing and through dumb luck. Despite the layouts of the dungeons being persistent, along with some of the items you find, they are so large and so varied that each run can feel markedly different. Even if you're the same class, even if you try specializing in the same things, the systems for generating loot are so nicely done that it does just feel a bit different every time you play.

The sound design is also attempting to portray things realistically, so in many places the game is dead quiet. There is music which continuously plays, but if you turn that off you can really appreciate how visceral the whole experience can be. Combat is loud and uneven. Metal clanging and the whoosh of swinging things, the sound of leather and metal being bashed and shuffled around. Your armor clinks and you can make loud noises running into stuff in it. Slamming a door is very loud, and can alert things to your presence. You can hear your enemies long before you see them, sometimes.

The systems for weapons and armor are complex - both types of items are randomly generated with factors like material and physical condition having weight. The physical condition of something directly impacts how protective it can be. As an example, I found a plate breastplate, made of brass, tarnished and old. I had a magic orb that can one time restore something to its original condition, so I did that and gained significantly more protection. It transformed too - wearing it as it was when I found it, it had a deep patina. Restoring it made it shine like gold. Weapons vary not just in type, but in weight, balance, and their visual appearance directly translates to combat effectiveness. You can find two items, both labeled "shortsword", but one is longer than the other, and that advantage is felt when you're backtracking and swinging at things. It could be though that this longer version weighs more, so the power of your swing and inability to build the same momentum might mean that advantage isn't enough to warrant its use. Two handed weapons have the best reach, and have the capacity for tripping people and knocking them off-balance. There is a big difference in how it feels to try to hit things with a mace, for example, or with a greatsword. You might find weapons you didn't think about, actually feel the best to use. The way people move and react to things has been honed into a very smooth and (mostly) realistic portrayal.

Importantly, the game does not portray things like a need to sleep, eat, or any of those sorts of mechanics. You're primarily fighting stuff and navigating difficult places. Perhaps calling it an "action-rpg sim" might mean something to you, it's a very "sim" approach to an action-RPG.

It's just incredible the level of detail that exists within this game, in all of its different aspects. That it's $15 genuinely feels ridiculous to me. The best part is that from what I can tell, development is set to continue for however long the devs can maintain it, and they have not stopped at all in the ten years the game has existed. Seems they're able to just keep going practically forever, and their ambition is to create an open world experience using these systems. The game will eventually conclude and be released. But what's there now feels mature and produces experiences I always imagined, but until this point never actually saw in a video game. It sounds mundane and perhaps a bit silly, but consider it like this: Think about the simple image of someone tripping in the sewer, dropping their torch and then seeing the eyes of a monster as the torch tumbles. That exists in countless games. As cutscenes, as sequences which play out with control restricted, as quick time events, combinations of these things, etc. In Exanima, that happens to you in real time, as the result perhaps of running too fast and tripping over a stone, or trying to turn and running into something in your heavy armor. The experience is simultaneously, classic and unlike anything I have ever played before.

Edit: I killed some skeletons in the street with a fire sword, and here's a fun struggle in the sewer

Cities: Skylines 2

Having fun, performance hasn't been as much of an issue as the blogomediasphere has made it seem. The bigger actual ongoing issues are the incredibly bugged parking and worker/resources/economy systems.

Cities: Skylines 1 didn't really have much of that kind of thing anyway (and C:S1 performance got awful anyway), so its an even step from the first one anyway.

I'll continue to play it as much I did the first one, especially when mods come out, because I still do enjoy sculpting pretty cities, and the rest of the city-builder genre is pretty dead, and I really don't feel like going back to SimCity 4.

Still, overall feeling kinda disappointed, not mainly in how rushed the game is, but also in the weird decisions the developer (Colossal Order) makes, their weird viewpoint of how cities and geography and such works, and their, I don't know how to say delicately -- but I don't really get the impression that they're the most able of developers.

Anyway, if you don't have a burning desire to play it now and put up with its faults, I'd say give it a few months to finish cooking and try it then.

I finished Everspace2 Sunday (I mentioned in a thread a week or so ago).

I enjoyed it. But it's left a really bitter taste in my mouth at how easily we are impressed these days.

Freelancer is 20 years old, it's THE space sim as far as I'm concerned. 50+ systems, trading, RPG-ish elements, Factions, dogfights and crashing into a neutron star because it's funny. Each system and ship is lovingly handcrafted, with the systems each having an array of legal and illegal entry points and hundreds of hidden bits and bobs floating around. Each system feels like it's alive (even if it's only an mirage due to engine constraints) where you feel like the world doesn't really mind old Freelancer 1-1 and his cargo run of Cardemine that you got past the Rhineland Military. Each system has no loading zones, 5-15 docking locations with wildly different missions, cargos and weapons sold at each place.

Everspace 2 on the other hand? Is 6 systems. Each system is actually more like a group of hubs surrounded very a very pretty ennvironment. The systems don't feel alive at all. You have to warp between each area and you can choose to be distracted by random things on the way (Where Freelancer will throw things at you like Lane Hackers and disrupt your carefully laid plans). Each area is really well crafted, but you start noticing the same assets reused again and again. There's only so many giant, derelict battleships you can look at before you just kind of 'shrug', especially when the scale goes awry (Enemy battleship you can fight? It's ten times your fighter, The derelict? HUNDREDS of times bigger.) There's no faction system either, you just kind of get on with everyone very sarcastically. There's maybe 10-12 types of cargo, nothing illicit and everyone will buy and sell TONNES of them quickly, leading to you making money hand over fist and absolutely breaking the balance of the game.

In Freelancer there are the NOMAD systems. Two or three systems where if you go there, you will get absolutely fucked by alien fighters (and battleships if you mod it) if you aren't prepared. Everspace 2 gives you the same at the end, with a variable slider on difficulty. I get that we have to have DARK SOULS-esque hard for every game, but it feels woefully unnecessary to have.

They are two different games and I enjoyed both. But they couldn't show the dispora between gaming in the early 2000's vs now.

Everspace2 is a "come look at the shiny thing" design that feels deeply ingrained into every development studio these days. Apparently the last system unlocks sometime next year? I can't say I'll go back to it. It's a blast, but it's just boring when you start to get top tear gear (Except the weird supernova grenade launcher thing, that's hilariously overpowered.)

I finished my platinum for Spider-Man 2 last week (loved it) and am working through Super Mario Wonder right now! So far it's alright, I like some of the ideas but I'm not too sure how groundbreaking a lot of the stuff is tbh. It's definitely a fun, tight Mario game though. There was nothing I've seen so far that was, imo, "I've never seen this idea before in any other game". But I don't regret picking it up! Probably moving on to Cities Skylines II next on Gamepass, and going through Wizard with a Gun, which I started before Spider-Man!

Ghostrunner II

A must play if you enjoy fast paced games with parkour elements. It is a solid sequel to its previous entry and offers even better flow of combat,parkour and story directive.

To introduce the serie; you play with an extremely fast and reflexive cyborg who wields a sword. You die and kill in a single hit. But don't worry about spending times on a loading screen, re-spawn time is like 0.1 second so you are back to action in no time and there are no loading screens inside a level.

You usually have many forms of movement paths as you outrun your enemies, wall-jump and dash to wherever you want with an ability to temporarily slow down time as well. Although with a limited but fast re-charging stamina bar which you could choose to block/parry/deflect as well.
You also have several versatile tools that you can use to alter the playing field or engage in ranged.
Also I greatly enjoyed the way how you activate your skill shards in the first game thus a bit saddened it did not make it into the second game.

Parkour isn't anything hardcore and flows really naturally once you get the hang of it.

Story wise, it isn't too special but it does the job. You don't have to play the first to understand the second but you could be bored of combat if you choose to play the first later.

Textures and art style is a bit dull but it makes it up with lightning effects, I also enjoy the heavy motion blur but might not be a popular choice.

Music and sound effects are alright but not memorable.

A solid 6/10 - 7/10 depending on the person.

3DS - Been having issues with my hacked 3ds lately. The battery was draining almost instantly so I reset it to a backup but I ended up losing a lot of games I'd downloaded. Currently downloading New Super Mario Bros 2 for some nostalgia.

PS5 - Still running through Cyberpunk. I haven't touched the main storyline in quite a while, really enjoying just wandering around and "living" in the world. It's quite gloomy in my part of the world at the moment and the atmosphere matches well.

Switch - TOTK mainly but finding it hard to go back to it. Think I've gotten quite burnt out on it so I'll come back close to Christmas!

I just finished playing Extermination. I have come to consider it a very good kusoge. It’s got some pretty good visuals for an early PS2 game, with some fairly realistic looking human models that are very well animated. The gameplay is also pretty innovative. It’s often described as an horror game but it’s really more like a horror themed action game. There are literally infinite bullet dispensers after all.

But in spite of the pretty strong opening segments, the game just kind of gets worse as you keep going. All the enemies are bullet sponges. They all have weak points but good luck hitting them because they all move fairly erratically. There is an auto-aim feature but it obviously doesn’t lock on to the weak spots, and manual aiming just feels kind of wrong which means accurate aiming is very difficult. Some enemies can be cheesed through when you figure out the strategy, but some of them are basically impossible. There also isn’t really much reason to actually fight most of them because your character is quite nimble and can likely just run through the whole thing without getting hurt.

The boss fights tend to be the worst though, because you often can’t figure out if you’re actually hurting them unless you hit their weak spots, and hitting those tends to give them invincibility for a while which might work against you some times. There is one portion of the final boss who I shot their weak point about a hundred times and still lost, but then I tried again and shot it with a missile three times and I won.

But by far the worst thing is the sparse save points and how quickly you can die. There are points where you can jump off of cliffs and instantly die. Often you will need to jump over a gap but because the movement controls are kind of slippery this often means missing and dying. And when you die it means being thrown to the title screen where you will have to reload from way far back. I played on an emulator with save states and I can tell you for sure I would have not made it through without that.

These aren’t killer issues by themselves, but it’s death by 1000 cuts. It’s got a nice soundtrack but it cuts off and restarts every time you go into the menu. And every time you pick up something - which you are doing constantly - it takes you into the menu where it’s multiple button presses to get out of it. There’s also somewhat long animations whenever you interact with anything, and doors are the worst. Even when it’s not loading anything, the screen will fade in and out. And in the time it takes for that to happen there are hazards that can hurt you while you can’t control it.

This is also an early game from Sweery65, and it really shows. The plot kind of makes sense but it’s just kind of stupid overall; it’s filled with contrivances. There is a part of it dedicated to a personal drama and it simply adds nothing of value and doesn’t really resolve to any payoff. The guy doesn’t get the girl (which is fine), but the resolution of the whole thing is just an apology for not being more sympathetic. There are some bones to the story that could have been great but the execution mostly fumbles them - especially because most of it is done through text that your character doesn’t really react to for the most part.

Playing Ak-xolotl for our upcoming roguelike podcast episode.

This game has Gordon Ramsay-style "ITS RAW!" labeled all over it. The more research I do on Ak-xolotl the more confused I become, because even after an exceptionally successful kickstarter, there doesn't seem to be a whole lot of content other than cute graphics. The gameplay is ok and straight-forward, but feels like it's missing 90% of features or variety you see in other twin-stick roguelites.

When we played Enter the Gungeon for the podcast, it took me a while to get into it, but now I can really see how Gungeon shines and is a standard-bearer for its sub-genre compared to something as half-baked as Ak-xolotl.

For a game that's being sold on multiple platforms and for like $20, other fully featured games of this kind are not only cheaper, but offer so much more variety and interesting difference to this that Ak-xolotl isn't really worth it in it's current state and it feels like it would take a ton of effort to make it comparable. Maybe the solution here would have been to have the game release in EA for $9.99, but that isn't feasible at this point, as they advertise the game is fully released now after a closed beta.

Two comparable games are Voidigo and Tiny Rogues. Voidigo also released earlier this year and is super interesting. Voidigo's art style is very unique and offers a lot of interesting decisions to make in a new spin on the puzzle-dungeon-shooter format. Like having to follow bosses to different rooms, weapon mastery, and types of meta-progression (selectable difficulty levels too). It's the same price point as Ak-xolotl, is much more visually interesting, and is quickly climbing the ranks of one of the best shooter-rogues, despite it not being out for very long.

Tiny Rogues is similar to Ak-xolotl in gameplay loop-design, but developed by 1 person. In very much a similar style of room-reward layout with boss fight at the end, Tiny Rogues is better because it's more focused on gameplay as opposed to meta base-building. There's a lot more weapon and item variety and you're able to unlock character classes much faster as well. It's also like 3x cheaper?? Kind of a no-brainer to pick this one up instead of Ak-xolotl, IMO.

I've been saying this for multiple weeks now, but I finally, finally, "fr fr, no cap," finished FFXIV Shadowbringers. Just finished it Saturday morning (like at 4am). Like I got to the ending credits. Definitely best of the expansions so far.

I also started the Sage healer class, as I said I was going to do. I think this was the right choice of healer classes. As someone who pretty much always plays DPS, Sage feels like a good middle ground. There's an important spell where the damage I do to mobs gives heals to a party member that I've designated (typically the tank), which means I still have to DPS. I can't just sit around doing nothing--not that a healer should ever be doing that in the first place, IMO. It makes it so that combat is just as important as healing.

I'm starting slow, just doing low-level, noob dungeons to get used to the class, the spell mechanics, and just healing in general. So far, no one has died because I missed heals and/or wasn't paying attention!

We'll see how long that lasts...

I decided to try the Cult of the Lamb trial on the Switch right now. It's pretty entertaining, and I've definitely stayed up too late playing it. Right now, my main complaint (as a casual gamer, mind you) is that the health is so limited. Four hearts for a total of eight hits, and limited healing opportunities. It wouldn't be as bad if weapons weren't randomly chosen.

First two times I went back to Darkwood after beating the first boss, I got the same 1.8 strength Traitor's Razor, apparently the weakest dagger in the game. It isn't very helpful when all the enemies are now stronger. I don't think I even made it through the first area before having to flee or being martyred. I wondered if it was intentionally set to have the weakest weapon until I got a different weapon on my third try.

Playing Sonic Adventure DX on the Steam, modded. I beat the original SA on the Dreamcast and then the DX remake on the GameCube when they first came out.

I'm surprised by which parts of the game hold up and which don't. I have a memory of Sonic being the funnest story, and whole his stages are still obviously the focus, I had a surprisingly amount of fun with Gamma. Even with the story, I remember Gamma's being compelling, but whereas most characters are hurt by the shoddy direction and silence, these shots actively benefit the feel of Gamma's story, since you can read it and him processing the horrible shit that's happening.

People say SA2 holds up better, and I'm not sure I agree. Of the six playable characters in SADX, I fully enjoy playing 4 out of 6. One is boring, and I actively don't like playing as Amy. In SA2 there's three playstyles, and I only really like one of them. The treasure hunting feels better in 1. The Sonic stages feel more open in 1. And Gamma's shooting stages feel much better than Tails and Eggman's in 2.

I'm glad I went back to this game, because I fully expected that nostalgia was blinding me.

I'm late game Fallout 2. I still have a few tough places to go, but I already rock.

Wgile his game has slow turn-based system and date graphics, it is still the best in series for me. It is full of characters and quests and decisions to be made. So many ways to play it. This ain't your modern game "You are a thief already? No problem, you can be honorable warrior in our guild too", in Fallout 2 when you make a decision it is yours to live with for the rest of the game. I love the game, it is so good. I recommend everyone who likes post-apocalyptic games to try it. It can be bought in sale for less than one beer would cost you.

I finished both Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception in the last week after finishing the first Uncharted the week before. This was my first time playing the Uncharted games, which I've always somewhat avoided because I'm not a huge fan of third person platformers.

Overall, it's a solid series. I'll definitely play Uncharted 4 down the road, whenever I get my hands on it. BUT, all of the games suffer from the same sort of problems that I think I associate with platformers in general. Sometimes it's just too hard for me to see what I'm jumping toward and I end up falling to my death and have to repeat the section. Which, like, sure, is part of the experience of playing these games, but I guess that's why I generally don't play this genre.

But I liked the story (though 3 was a little hit or miss) and Drake's cockiness really never gets old. There's this pretty grating section in 3 where you wander through the desert, which borrows from what is by far my least favorite trope in gaming, where the protagonist gets injured and has to limp from one end of the map to the other without any other gameplay elements. Assassin's Creed 3 does this the worst, but Uncharted 3's was pretty bad. It seemed endless.

Up next are Death's Door and TUNIC after which I'm probably going to unsub from Game Pass as I've basically played everything that interests me that's currently available.

Cyberpunk 2077, specifically Phantom Liberty. I played through the main campaign back at release, and have returned for a new play through with the expansion. I'm also trying to find aspects of the original game that I didn't try on the first play through (which clocked in at about 67 hours if the save game prior to the final mission is accurate), like the street racing and finding the Delamain cars.

The expansion storyline is -imho- really good, and more than long enough to justify the expansion tag, and the characters sticks to the same shades of grey and dour outlook as the main story. The side gigs and other missions layer some really neat extra content into the new area, giving the whole thing a pretty solid number of hours of new stuff to do. I enjoyed the original story when I first played through (playing on the Series X apparently didn't suffer many of the day 1 issues plaguing the launch), and Phantom Liberty is even a bit better.

Tried Alan Wake II, uninstalled it. I found the evidence drag and drop flow really tedious and immersion breaking. It's silly to have to guess the one spot the game designers intended you to drag each item to, and it felt redundant to the story narrative. I recognize it as a novel alternative to the "journal" section of AAA games and plot reminder cutscenes, but while there was more to do it felt equally on rails.

In the intro portion of the game there's a couple times you're prompted to reflect on evidence to synthesize new thoughts, and each time it plays the same slow animation of Saga lit by green having a burst of insight that was heavily predetermined by the story. Sitting through this identical animation for the 3rd time was the exact moment I decided I was out.

My 3080Ti struggled to reach 60fps, causing really bad VRR flicker on my display. This was particularly disappointing because I'd read press that the game was well optimized. Beautiful looking scenery but in 1.5h it wasn't capturing the magic of Control for me.

I'm a bit torn because I love Remedy as a studio and appreciate Epic funding development, but the experience of playing through the Epic store (and having to run it through Steam anyway for working controller support!) was awful. I think I'll wait out the exclusivity period and maybe have a better optimized game / better rig to play it on Steam in a year or two.

Still playing Fate/Samurai Remnant on PC (streaming to the XBOX upstairs.). My son poked his head in and said he appreciated that the characters were not as hypersexualized as you see in some Fate games. There are some new storytelling techniques, such as many of the Servants having infectious enthusiasm about the world they’re spending a limited time in, that help you develop a crush on them which is the point of the game. It’s heavily story driven, combat can be a little slow but that just gives me a motivation to optimize it.

It might more interesting that I bought a Meta Quest 3 because I am interested in developing XR applications so I am playing games to familiarize myself with VR. I got the 512GB model which comes with a subscription to Meta Quest + which, like XBOX Gold back in the day, gets you two free games a month. Last night it was Angry Birds VR: Isle of Pigs which I enjoyed a lot.

I find “virtual world” environments like VRChat and Horizon Worlds slow to learn when you are not wanting to make an ass of yourself in public, but I find games like Angry Birds VR immediate to pick up. You are transported to this islands where the pigs are in a fortress made of blocks and you slingshot birds at them like you would with a real slingshot, you can move to different points, look at different angles, I found it really a lot of fun, but a 15 minute session was definitely enough.

Even though it feels like a succession of minigames, it has almost 110 levels and also has a level builder so I think it could keep somebody busy for a while.

Next week I’ll still be playing Fate but I’ll probably have more than one VR game to report on.

Celeste - Replaying from a fresh save slot. I watched VOD of a streamer 100%-ing it (202 berries) in one go and I guess it inspired me to play more. I'm nowhere near his skill level (and have no intention of getting the 0-death golden berries) but I thought it would be interesting to see how much lower my death count will be, now that I've been through it once. Feels like it's going pretty quick; I'm on 7B. Though I know what the difficulty curve of the game looks like so maybe it won't feel so quick real soon haha.

Slay the Spire - Contrary to what I was saying last week, I decided not to turn the difficulty down, and was able to win A20H runs with Ironclad and Defect. Also died to the Heart with Watcher. I still hate Silent! Maybe I should watch more Jorbs Silent runs. I was kind of stubborn and tried to avoid doing that kind of thing when getting my first heart kills and trying to figure it out myself / hoping I would luck into a good run eventually...boy that took a while.

Wingspan - second time playing this game and apparently I learned nothing from my first. Put a bunch of resources into 1 bird that synergized with my objective card and the round bonus, but was way way behind and had to take a bunch of inefficient actions to claw back enough cards and food to do anything. Opponent was able to play out a few birds on the cheap (cheep?) then build an actual engine and crush me. I think if I play again I will need to tinker with it on Tabletop Simulator first so I know what I'm doing.

Patchwork - tried for the first time, to find out why everyone "can't recommend it enough!" I like the piece selection/board advancement system. Seems really good. I'm not really good at the whole Tetris-y tile placing aspect of it, but I didn't really need to be as the game ended before board space got really tight. I just focused on trying to maximize button income and it worked out for me in the end - though my opponent was keeping pace with me picking up a bunch of cheaper tiles. I really only pulled ahead towards the end of the game.

Decrypto - First time trying this one too. It's a really interesting take on the team word-guessing game. I really like the tension of trying to make your hints obvious enough for your team to guess but not obvious enough for the other team to catch on. Unfortunately my teammate was not on the same page as me, but one of my opponents was! It was a slaughter. But it was still fun.

I've recently picked myself up a handheld emulator (ambernic rg280v) and I've been fiddling around with that a fair bit. This weekend I've been playing advance wars 2 and I've actually been loving it. Never played it before and it's a great game to pick up for 10-20 minute bursts. The constant text box instructions for the first few missions have been very annoying but I think I'm near the end of that now.

Been playing Caves of Qud, got it last week and it's been a lot of fun. It's pretty neat how well the procedural generation can make stories and cool locations, even if sometimes it just makes a jumbled mess (I don't know if any books in game are coherent in the slightest). It is crazy hard, but I'm a huge fan of roguelikes so dying repeatedly comes naturally haha.

Also picked up For the King to play with my partner and it's been neat, wish the game took the time to explain the systems a little more or at all but it's been a cool adventure game that is also sorta rougelike

I played a bit of Vampire Survivor and found it extremely boring.

Playing Submachine legacy while hoping we get an mk1 patch that doesn’t hate sub zero.

Scratches the Myst itch and is much lower effort with just as much great atmosphere. I never finished it when they were on flash so I’m very excited to get it done and finally get into some of the post game/side content I’ve already found.

Edit:

Like others playing marvel snap. Decided to play my last gold ticket and just pre snap every round until I lost. Beat infinite in an 8 game win streak. Werewolf is going to get nerfed for sure. The deck for anyone wondering:

Ghost spider
Night crawler
Dagger
Kraven
Jeff
Cloak
Silk
Juggernaut
Werewolf
Spider man
Shang Chi
Captain Marvel

It’s weird but able to out power some games and control others (Spider-Man and juggernaut with werewolf on board is a gross final turn). The deck is super chaotic so you can often juke your opponents on their final turn.

I bought Ride 3 cause it was on sale on the xbox for 5$ and im thoroughly enjoying it. I usually play career mode for racing games while listening to audiobooks and podcasts and after the seriously disappointing forza motorsport career this is really hitting the spot. I just did some dirtbike races with jumps and tight turns which really switched it up from the road bike races and it just showcases how bad FM's design is.

Awesome game for 5$ and i think im now a fan to start buying newer releases once i get through this campaign.