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

I played a lot of Borderlands 3 with friends this weekend because it's a free play weekend on Xbox. I've played Borderlands 1 and part of the second one but didn't love the second one. The third seems like they've just made another Borderlands 2. It doesn't really do anything to improve on the formula and feels a bit dated due to that. Almost everything about it is just OK, but the overwhelming amount of voice acting and sophomoric jokes really drag you down over time. I'm glad I got a chance to play it, but that will likely be the last time I play it.

I've been trying Overwatch again after taking about a 9-month break. I don't know when they added role queue to quickplay, but it's vastly improved my experience. (tl;dr - Instead of queueing and selecting any character, you preselect whether you're going to be a tank, damage, or support). The two main benefits for me are:

1. I primarily play tank/support anyways, and the queue benefits those two roles the most (shortest wait times + bonuses just for picking these roles).
2. It forces our team to do 2/2/2 tank/damage/support. While it cuts down on choice a bit, I'm glad I'm no longer forced to play support on a team of 5 damage dealers anymore!

I'm also excited for OW2 because the coop missions are the most fun part of the game to me.

I recently started playing Squad, a military FPS which is really focused on cooperation and communication.

I've played a fair number of multiplayer FPS-es over the years, but at some point I didn't really have fun anymore. I was basically just grinding for unlocks and awards.

Squad is not arcade-y. You spend a lot of time without any action, e.g., travelling between objectives, building bases, patrolling, sneaking into enemy territory and waiting for the enemy. You need to chat with your teammates to be successful at your tasks, and you have plenty of time to shoot the breeze (pun intended) in between them. Also, there is nothing to unlock. No upgrades.

Squad has made me appreciate playing multiplayer FPS again. :-)

Red Dead Redemption 2, on PC

The Rockstar launcher unfortunately doesn't track time played in their games, so I can't say for certain how long I have been playing so far. However, I have completely finished the single-player story mode and its epilogue, and all the currently available online co-op story missions with a friend (some of them multiple times)... so I am probably around at least 100 hours played at this point. But despite that, I am still having a lot of fun doing online events and the various trader/collector/bounty missions by myself (and with a few random people I have met along the way), as well as just putting around exploring and hunting.

Mini-review (as spoiler free as possible):

The single-player story mode was a bit of a mixed bag for me. There were some really great moments littered throughout, with an amazing cast of characters, and the story arch for the main protagonist is fantastic... but there were also plenty of moments that really dragged on and got incredibly tedious/repetitive feeling as well. Thankfully the middle act of the game takes a really unexpected but fun turn, which reinvigorated me, however it was so short-lived, felt so rushed and was so underdeveloped that I just wound up being disappointed by it. The ending more than made up for it though... it was incredibly well done, highly emotional, and overall very satisfying.

The epilogue was really boring to start, but once it opened up again and I could start exploring again, it was great. It was especially nice to be able to finish off exploring every nook and cranny in the map, conclude some of the "stranger" mission chains, and finally find out what happened to all the other characters you grew to know and love over the course of the main story. The very ending of the epilogue story was also very satisfying as well.

The online co-op story missions are also great, however they are incredibly short, and Rockstar are clearly not done making them yet, since you wind up left with no real conclusion to it... which sucks.

A++. Much like the original game, I will likely keep playing it for another 100 hours or more.

*Project Zomboid

On a technical level I'm still well inside the learning curve here, and starting to tweak the world generation options when I die. There's a remarkable degree of customization; you can have sprinting supersoldier zombies a la 28 Days Later or weakened shambling hordes, change the likelihood of different loot types... Whatever you want. You can start from any of the presets and tweak from there, if you want something almost but not quite like one of the base modes. It's still fun, and the ability to tweak the day range when the water and power fail means you can set the general time when you suddenly have no light or refrigeration but still be surprised and devastated when it actually happens.

This game has me caring more about my character than most survival games. Other zombie games let you get totally wrecked by zombies and then you bounce back and everything's fine in a few days. PZ is not like that. If you're exploring a house and you don't clear your path back out or fail to watch your back, you can be bitten. Once you're infected, that's it. You may walk around for another couple of days, but there's no cure. You're going to die. Giving the player some time to accept the futility of their efforts is cruel and really, really effective.

I made a bad call clearing a house looking for books on carpentry, and a swarm of zombies piled out of the upper floor to cut me off. I got away, but I didn't get away clean. I disinfected and bandaged what I could with the limited supplies I carried with me, and piled into the car I'd been carefully babying along the broken roads. No longer time for quiet, I peeled out for home, bleeding on the seats and praying that I could get to my supplies before I bled out, but also that my screeching tires wouldn't draw a horde. Finally back at my boarded-up house I bandaged my wounds and ate the first robust meal in ages. I'd been trying to draw out my food supplies, but none of that mattered in the face of needing to heal. I changed the bandages and disinfected the wound regularly, but even as the bite slowly healed I grew hotter and hotter. It was just a matter of time, and I couldn't bear to watch her end.

I admit, I walked away and I grieved a little bit. I had such plans! I had the start of a garden! A working car! I was just a little practice away from building rainbarrels so I didn't need to just leave out buckets and pans to catch rain! There was so much to live for... and none of it mattered in the end. A careless moment and a bite. This was how I died.

My gaming for the past week has been pretty basic:

• Bastion: beat this on the story mode. I didn't enjoy it as much I probably would have back when it releases. I played it on story mode just so I could get through it and not have to think about it anymore in my back log.

• Madden 20: unusually play this throughout the NFL season. Currently running a few franchises with different teams.

• Call of Duty: Modern Warfare: I bought this a few weeks ago and have been probably putting in ~5 hours a week since around launch. I am not too crazy about it. Every time I launch the game I have to wait several minutes for "shaders to install". Then I notice that after every match is concluded, I have to go through matchmaking and am placed in a new lobby. It drives up the wait time for a game that has pretty quick matches. It feels like I spend more time waiting to play the game than I do actually getting to play it.

• Pokemon Go: I missed out on the craze several years ago but it's better late than never! This has completely caught me by surprise. I went for a 15 mile bike ride yesterday to all the pokestops and gyms. I managed to get to level 15 this weekend.

Edit (2019/11/26): Pokemon Go is consuming my life. I have spent all day thinking about going to pokestops, gyms, and raids all day while I have been at work. The plus side is that in addition to the 15 mile bike ride I did on Sunday, I am averaging over 10,000 steps a day since Saturday. That's over double my daily average. I think I am going to get really fit with all the additional walking and biking I am doing. Another bonus is that I am eager to get out of the house and in densely populated places, my significant other is thrilled.

I am currently way into Zelda botw. I bought it when I bought my switch in spring of this year. I played just a bit out first. I think I was to kakuriku village and had 2 or 3 extra stamina pieces (no hearts). It just never hooked me at first. I went back to it for some reason I can't remember last week and it hooked me completely this time. I don't think there is anything I dislike about this game, including the weapon durability. Weapons are tools to be used. As you progress, you have to get better at the combat, you don't just bet bigger weapons. It truly is a wonderful game.

Civilization VI

I won a game on the hardest difficulty, and I'm not sure if I should be proud or ashamed. I don't read strategy guides either, finding it much more fun to come up with my own. In case you're interested though; here's how I did it:

Tiny map, with as many AIs as it can fit. This gives them less room to expand before they start antagonising each other, diminishing the impact of their massive production bonuses. I played as Saladin, which ensured me a religion, something which is otherwise almost impossible on Deity if you add the maximum number of AIs. At one point one of the other AIs had enough apostles and missionaries inside my borders to threaten the existence of my own religion. I declared war on him, so I could kill his religious units with my military units. There was an ocean between us, so I didn't have much reason to fear his military, and he was willing to negotiate peace after I'd destroyed most of his army with ranged attacks. Then I just waited it out until the two other AIs with religions had changed their governments from theocracy to something more modern, and sent in my own apostles to convert their cities.

Disco Elysium

I'm really impressed with the depth of dialogue in this game. Of course, that's easier to achieve when you don't voice act every single line, as big budget games tend to do. Less cinematic, sure, but the depth draws me into the game and makes it feel more real than any big budget RPG I can think of.

I thought I'd solved the murder mystery, but the game had a twist in store for me. Honestly I have no idea how close to the ending I am.

Dungeons & Dragons

Tonight my players are likely to encounter a group of failed entertainers pretending to be vampires. I'm going to ham it up something fierce. If I was better at writing lyrics I'd do a musical number. Should be fun in any case! Also, there's a battle with three manticores that I'm looking forward to running. The rogue likes climbing the roof with his slippers of spider climb to be able to use his sneak attack from a safe distance, but that's not going to work against flying enemies.

Trackmania 2: Canyon

Been playing online, not a lot, but now and then. It's lots of fun. There's some real creativity and ingenuity among the map makers around the world. I never win, bus as long as I don't finish last I usually get some ladder points.

I'm playing Zelda Link to the Past on SNES for the first time (on switch) - wow, this game is quite amazing. In the first dungeon of the dark world right now.

Insurgency: Sandstorm was not a game that was on my mind. However, I gave it a try and it's the perfect mix of half hour sessions combined with near mil-sim gameplay that hooked me. I love the feel of gunfights in this game, the sound design is either awe inspiring (A-10 fire is no joke) or nerve-shattering. It could be the sudden but subtle sound of a grenade rolling on a concrete floor or the phone ring preceding a suicide attack.

I've been really busy lately, but most of my gaming has been Hitman 2, Battlefront 2, and Eternal Card Game.

The maps in Hitman are so insanely detailed. There are hundreds of ways to complete any objective in that game and it can be so overwhelming, but I like that they've included even more structured paths in this one to give you an in to the story of each level. I love this game, but I've barely discovered 10% of what it has to offer.

Battlefront 2 had a really harsh reception when it first came out, but I honestly think that over the last two years it's grown into my favourite team FPS. And I am addicted to the new co-op mode. Finally, I get to play as a hero and not get killed in two minutes!

Eternal isn't nearly as big as Hearthstone, but it's so much better, in my opinion. Basically picture Magic the Gathering, if it was designed specifically to be played digitally with mechanics that are only possible on a console/computer/smartphone. And it's actually free-to-play. A lot of FTP games make you feel like you need to spend money to not suck or even just to play the game, but I've been playing this game for over two years and the only money I've spent on it was because I felt like I owed the devs money for having played the game so much.

• Undertale - Did a pacifist run all the way to the best ending. I didn't bother with the genocide path this time because I felt like it was a missed opportunity with only two challenging bosses and a cop-out ending the first time around.

• Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition - Since I swore off of Blizzard due to the recent Hong Kong controversy, I picked this up to cleanse my pallet of SC2. It annoys me that so few people are playing this version of AOE2 because it truly is the best one. Aside from the obvious graphical overhaul, they fixed all the lag problems present in previous game versions while making much needed balance changes. It's a shame that the AOE2 community is fragmented across DE, Steam, Gameranger and Voobly.

• Citystate - I have a love-hate relationship with that game. It's a bit like SimCity but buggier, with more performance issues and with an emphasis on making political decisions that impact your economy. Thing is, it feels like there's only one right way to play the game without either neutering your city's growth potential and/or going bust. I would not recommend it, especially since the sole dev has stopped development on the game to work on a sequel.

• League of Legends - I absolutely hate the 2020 prepatch. Elemental drakes give overpowered permanent buffs which snowball the game in favour of your team while the Elder Dragon gives you a buff that deals true damage over time to any enemy heroes you attack and instakills them when they drop below 20% HP. They also nerfed mana regen on support items and completely neutered the role. Then there's Twisted Treeline, which they removed in favour of keeping their Dota auto chess clone...

Pokémon Shield has been amazing. I am thoroughly hooked. This is truly the first mainline Pokémon game I have ever played. I never owned a gameboy but would occasionally play on a friend's. There is quite a bit to do in the game and there seems to be a lot of knowledge required to truly unlock the games potential.

This week has been Rage 2 and Bad North. Both games are new to me and pretty fun. Rage 2 was a big surprise, it reminds me of Borderlands 2 somewhat in the play style. Story is good, action is good and very satisfying.

Bad North is a pretty fun time killer, easy to play and different from other RTS type games.

I've been too busy to focus on any particular video game this week. I did, however, reinstall Game Dev Story on my phone at the end of last week and it took a lot of my free time then. Luckally I was able to stop after one playthrough. For the unfamiliar, it's basically a combination of a game developer simulation and an idle game.

And now there are a bunch of PC game sales and I am somewhat lost about what I am going to play next. I'm pretty sure it will be Atelier Sophia, though.

For those who have never played an Atellier game before, I would strongly recommend picking up one of the ones on sale now. The series is basically made up of a bunch of lighthearted relaxing RPGs that are focused on creating items through Alchemy. For some reason the series never seems to go on sale and doesn't seem to sell enough physical sales for the console versions to drop in price very dramatically.

In my last post, @TheJorro and @ThyMrMan selected Steam tags as a way of picking a game for me to play, which prompted me to choose Layers of Fear as my next game. Unfortunately, I'm here to mention that I have yet to follow through on that promise. Sorry you two!

I haven't had much time to game, and when I have, I've wanted to spend it on something mindless rather than something substantive. As such, I've been sinking a good amount of time into Tesla vs. Lovecraft as a simple destresser and background stimulus for listening to audiobooks.

If you've played any other of the 10tons shooters (e.g. Crimsonland, Neon Chrome), then you know what to expect. It's a twin-stick shooter that's repetitive yet replayable, familiar yet dynamic, and grindy in a good way. I actually feel like Tesla vs. Lovecraft stands alongside JYDGE as the best iteration of their formula yet. They expanded out the grind so that it has several different layers, and it feels integrated into the game with the level progression they pulled from Crimsonland, rather than just throwing yourself against the procedurally generated wall over and over again like in Neon Chrome. Though JYDGE is certainly the better game overall, TvL is still good fun.

If the idea of grindy twin-stick shooters sounds good to you, both JYDGE (which is like a cyberpunk Hotline Miami) and Tesla vs. Lovecraft can be had over in the Fanatical Staff Picks Fall 2019 Bundle for cheap. I picked up TvL for $1.00 and have gotten far more than a buck's worth of play out of it.