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

I finished Half-Life: Alyx. Took me roughly 20 hours of play time. It's a fantastic game and derserves all the praise it gets.

I have some minor nitpicks though:

• A few times the game didn't properly track when I opened my hands to drop items. It worked fine when I opened the menu overlay, so it seemed to be an issue with the game instead of the tracking itself
• Some controls felt awkward without haptic feedback. Namely that includes pulling any sorts of levers. It's okayish for small levers, but for anything larger it just feels weird
• Physics is another one. It's great to be able to interact with so much stuff. Throwing boxes around, opening drawers. But you can't do much with it. Props are just props, they don't do anything.. You can crush cans, but not cardboard boxes, and there's no indication how you can interact with certain things. To me it feels right in uncanny valley

Other than that the most frustrating thing probably is that I have gotten my hopes for an actual HL3 up again :)

I've been playing Uncharted 4. Again, really. I've played it before closer to launch but am checking it out again since it's free on PS+ and I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would the first time I played it, to the point that I really did want to play it again and this was the perfect opportunity.

First off, it's the best Uncharted game by a wide margin I think. It hits all the right points that the series has aimed for with almost none of the missteps. I always thought that something felt like it was missing in the previous three games, to varying degrees, but Uncharted 4 is a home run.

The key is that this game isn't extremely linear. The previous games were almost effectively "on rails". You move from one room to the next without any variation. You climb a cliff from one directed handhold to the next. When you get into a gunfight, you start in one spot and then fight your way to the next spot, as enemies spawn in from set points as you progress. You could play the first three games a dozen times each and have almost entirely the same experience every time.

With Uncharted 4, all of these situations have a lot more choice involved, to varying degrees. There's more than one series of handholds to climb a structure, there are multiple directions and angles to clear an enemy arena, and there are plenty more opportunities to explore an area. There is also a much bigger reliance on stealth and sneaking so now most enemy encounters are more like an Ubisoft-style open-world camp than a shootout gallery like before.

The end result is that you actually feel like an adventurer now, and less that you're told you are. You come to a large area, some so large that you have to drive around kilometres at a time, and you explore around it trying to find clues and the next place to go. When you climb structures, you look around more to find the best way up or around.

And no matter what you choose, it's the right choice. The game doesn't punish you for failing to maintain stealth or choosing a longer way up something. It gives you plenty of support and tools to tackle it any way you like. Combat arenas have interesting weapons hidden around in case stealth isn't for you, the NPCs provide plenty of hints and directions in case you're not the exploring type, and the increase in possible handhold paths means there's less chances of bullshit "wrong way" deaths that happened in the previous games.

So gameplay-wise, this is easily the most satisfying Uncharted game. It's the least linear, and the least constricting. Combat encounters are much more intricately designed, loosing the messy feel of 1 and 3, or linear setpiece feel of 2. The single biggest new addition is the grappling hook, which truly comes alive in the combat more than the platforming. Using it to swing across combat arenas much faster than any other method in the game to lose enemies, or reposition yourself in the arena is a genius move in its simplicity for the game, it adds so many new possibilities and dynamism to what would otherwise be more flat combat encounters.

This time through, I'm playing on Crushing difficulty, not Normal. Naughty Dog's Normal modes are probably most games' Easy mode, they're more designed so that everyone can get through the game without much trouble. Hard is where having a basic knowledge of all the mechanics is at least encouraged to complete. I decided on Crushing because it was the hardest and I was curious. Now I think Hard is the way to go but playing games on the hardest difficulty has always been a method of mine to peek behind the curtain of a game a bit and see how carefully it's designed. How a game demands you play it on the hardest difficulty can reveal just how much (Devil May Cry) or how little (Call of Duty) thought goes into the combat design.

Uncharted 4's ranks pretty highly! Much, much moreso than the previous games. It's not at all perfect but it's a lot better than most other games' hardest game modes since you can tell there's some consideration behind the level layouts, enemy and supply placements, and even what weapons the enemies are carrying relative to the environment and situation.

Combat has always been a weak point for the Uncharted games. The first game's was bad, with bulletsponge enemies that frequently spawned behind you (e.g. the empty cliff face you just came from). The second game was a lot better only because they greatly cut down on the gunfights, introduced better sets, cut down the enemy health, and only had enemies spawn between you and the objective. The third game's was fine, I guess, but that one had larger problems with how inconsistent and incoherent it could be, it also wasn't exactly an improvement on 2 besides some more added pseudo-stealth sections.

Uncharted 4 isn't amazing combat-wise, but it's a lot more satisfying and fun than ever before. It's clearly considered enough, to the point that the game actually offers a combat encounter mode where you can replay each individual combat arena at will from the main menu. The guns all perform differently and have different strengths, the enemies are more responsive and intelligent, and the amount of freedom you have to approach fights is much, much higher than previous entries. First of all, the stealth in this game isn't some weird half-baked mechanic, it's about on par with the latest Assassin's Creed games. On Crushing, it's even more difficult than the AC games since the enemies have very realistic lines of sight—they can see you across a combat arena if you stand up in tall grass. Maintaining stealth is downright impossible for anyone but the most seasoned Uncharted 4 players on Crushing, the ones who have every enemy and location memorized like the back of their hands, but it's not at all a total wash if you're found out. On lower difficulties, this is when the combat arena changes gears and you go from stealthing and sneaking around to running and swinging around, as you take out the enemies one by one. On Crushing, it's just more frantic as you can be shot from any given direction. Most of the levels are intricately designed enough that you can find the hidey holes and calmer spots where you can regroup, reassess, and relaunch your assault.

The appeal in playing this game's combat on Crushing is that, like other games that do difficulty well, you can learn a little each time you fail. You realize where you should and shouldn't use grenades, which enemies to prioritize over others, and even which directions and pathways are more promising than others. When you finally get through an arena, there's a real sense of accomplishment that matches Nathan's own in-universe feelings of exasperation and thankfulness. And I think that's key, the difficulty seems equivalent to the character's own journey, and the sentiments for both Nathan Drake and myself are similar. He's not shrugging off a gunfight that it took me 2 hours to get through, he is relieved that the ordeal is over.

This isn't to say that every fight feels this good on Crushing. There are exactly three fights that are within the realm of Bullshit but that it's so few is a good sign in my books. I'd say that Dark Souls has more Bullshit spots than this game.

But that all aside, what endeared me to the game, and what made me really want to replay it, is the story. I've never seen a story like this in a video game before, where a large focus of it is Nathan's marriage to Elena. I can't think of the last time a video game dedicated a large amount of screentime to maintaining and growing in a marriage with your partner. The relationship drama in this game isn't stupid melodrama, it's a wonderful (if simple) character study of Nathan Drake, not as a plucky happy-go-lucky adventurer but instead as a man who has an insatiable urge to explore and discover but can't figure out how to connect with the people in his life or how to be honest with himself about his ambitions or desires. And Elena isn't just some damsel in his life, part of what Nate has to learn is that she has her own agency and her own self that exists outside (and despite him)—that's what a marriage is, she's not just the femme fatale from one dedicated adventure long ago who comes and goes.

The addition of Sam, his brother, to the overall canon is a great choice. First of all, Nolan North and Troy Baker together is a treat. Secondly, the brother relationship adds a dynamic that none of the others in the series previously could match—in a series filled with cheesy villains and obvious betrayals, or fakeout ones, having brothers who will always be committed to each other creates a strong anchor point for both Nathan and the player within the story. It also functions as a perfect mirror to Nate's marriage, a relationship that will always be there with no (or even negative) effort versus a relationship that requires effort to last.

Even the rest of the story is remarkably refreshed. There are less rehashed tropes and character archetypes, and more interesting character dynamics and relationships. Even the more meta elements (e.g. why are the bad guys everywhere in these ancient tunnels?) are given better considerations (e.g. because they literally blow up everything since they're impatient idiots).

I enjoyed Druckmann's work in Uncharted 2 well enough, and I liked TLOU enough to look forward to Druckmann's future work. Uncharted 4 really sealed the deal for me. This is a better game than I thought an Uncharted game could ever possibly be, it exceeded all my expectations and then some, and told a story I never would have expected to come out of this medium.

Don't overlook this game. It's not another on-rails adventure shooter with another Indiana Jones ripoff story and characters.

Oh, I guess a final word on the graphics: they're incredible. Even years after the game's release, this is one of the best looking games out there and has, to date, some of the most gorgeous outdoor environments and character animations in all of gaming. The Madagascar levels are still my favourite thanks to its luxuriously rich reds with all its green foliage, with Libertalia coming in a close second for some of the most lush and alluring greenery I've ever experienced in a video game.

I'm not sure if I'd call Uncharted 4 a masterpiece just yet but I'm more inclined to call it one than not. As far as linear adventure campaign goes, it's one that has stuck the most with me in recent years. It's certainly one of my favourite games of this past generation, and heads and shoulders above even the previous entries of its series. I'm sad that this is the "last Nathan Drake" game because it felt like it could have been the start of a better Uncharted series. I did play Lost Legacy and enjoyed that one a lot, I highly recommend it as a great followup to this game, but it's of a much smaller scale and it's hard to replace Nathan, as great as Chloe and Nadine are.

P.S. If anyone feels inclined to play the first three games, which I would recommend, play the PS4 re-releases which fixed the aiming.

Hades. So much Hades. It is by far the most story-rich roguelike I've ever played that has no quests. All of the story comes in little snippets of conversation as you interact with the denizens of the Underworld and Olympus. And the conversations you can have depend on the other conversations you've had in the past, so you slowly expand your understanding of the situation over time as you get to know the people around you.

Advancement also depends to a remarkable degree on befriending the people around you, which is narratively rebellious for a game where you're bloodily fighting your way to the surface. It seems like it would clash, but actually works very well. You die a bloody death, and then you're back in your home again with your friends and dad and everything is calm, if not acceptable.

Mechanically, it feels like a sped up version of Transistor, absent the pause feature. It feels like they took the new game + feature of leaving you with a limited power set and ran with it, to great effect. It's really good.

I've been playing Fallout: New Vegas for the first time. Fallout 4 was my first Fallout game and I'm a reluctant fan of FO76 as well. Obviously I've encountered a lot of loathing of 4/76 around the internet, with people praising NV for being the 3D Fallout experience. But...

The game is painfully unstable (and the only mods I have installed are to address that), often crashing on the loading screen and sometimes completely at random. I've put 7 hours into it according to Steam and I've had at least that many crashes of the game. I looked into getting the PS3/X360 version instead, but apparently that's incredibly unstable as well and has issues with save bloat or corruption. It just shatters immersion and makes playing it more frustrating than it is fun.

Just in general I'm not finding the environment, characters, or story to be as compelling as I did 4. I think it's just a personal preference thing.

I'm probably just going to play 4 again and hope that someday we get a remaster of 3/NV so I can experience them.

This has been bugging me for a while. So I've dug up my old 360 from the basement because I wanted to play with my 6 yo to get him away from those shit iPad games. Now, I have never been and so much of an active gamer more like a watcher and reader of games. I grew up with my C64 and early PC and loved games like Sensible Soccer, Arkanoid, Prince of Persia, Pinball Fantasy, Logical, Sim City and Doom I + II. I've since found that I have a really difficult time getting involved in a game and since almost all popular games nowadays have so more much around the actual gameplay I lose interest almost instantly. I have tried Doom 3 several times and it's just too scary (and I love horror) and it took me around 30 minutes to finally shoot my gun for the first time and I completely lost interest. These FPS games are just too complicated and fast for me. I have Gears of War that was OK but Assassins Creed 3 I gave up on because it was just boring. I like Burnout 3 a lot but I can't save games because of some bug so I have to start all over every time and it gets annoying. Tony Hawks game is kinda meh too and Colin McRae is too difficult. Luckily my son LOVES The Simpsons Hit and Run so we play that a lot. He mostly enjoys to just drive and run around exploring things (never mind the missions - I think it stresses him) and I can totally relate. Also it's quite funny to hear him talk about the characters not knowing anything about The Simpsons.

Games that I like but don't have are Peggle and Trials (!) and I like the smaller weird games that's playable from the get go. Driving games I think I like because they're usually pretty easy to into. I've been eying City Skylines but it just seem so immense. I lost interest in the Sim City genre after Sim City 2000.

The funny thing is that I have always been deeply fascinated by the open world concept and the thought of just exploring but when it comes down to actually playing it's just so overwhelming and I give up. Maybe it's because back when I started the opens worlds were actually quite limiting and that soothed me unconsciously I don't know. Can anyone relate to this? It's like I love the worlds and fantastic things games can offer now but I I have a hard time actually playing them.

This comment is a bit all over the place and I apologize but it's frustrating. What I'm getting at is can anyone recommend some games for the 360 that might be fit for me (and my son)? I would love to give him (and me) some amazing experiences through gaming and explore the vast amount of different games that exist now. I'm open to buying a new consol but until I know what I actually like playing it doesn't seem necessary right now.

I’ve been playing Hollow Knight, after @kfwyre gifted it to me at the beginning of April. It took me a bit to find the time, but I’m really getting into it now. Easily the most I’ve enjoyed a game in years.

I’m really enamored with the way the visual themes of each zone blend at the boundaries. It’s such an simple thing, but when you travel through the boundaries of 2-3 zones in quick succession (especially within a single map/load area) it’s really breathtaking.

Factorio, apparently 120h 135h in the past two weeks. I don't have much to do, got good grades, eat healthily and sleep regular hours, so playing games all day is fine imo.

Some people attempt to speedrun it in 8h or less; l'm going for a slowrun with well over 100 hours in this savegame, slowly tackling problems and generally having fun. Good game!

Zoria: Demo/Prologue, didn't like the mechanics. Didn't get far enough into the story to state one way or the other on it.

Rustler: Demo/Prologue, medieval Grand Theft Auto Horse, potential to be top down stupid fun if they figure out the controls. They're awful at present.

Offworld Trading: Fun take on RTS (economic instead of confrontational), but since the group/backstory you choose to start with doesn't limit the units/class you can use as you progress through the story I see no reason to continue playing.

Hollow Knight: Meh.

Battle Chasers Nightwar: Not bad, story is better than average, and the game style was nice right up until you are introduced to the second female character and the artist's uhh... creative interpretation of how she should look and subsequently explained the "breasts often jiggle" line in the ESRB rating. Never been a fan of unnecessary/adds nothing to the story nudity/oversexuality in just about any form of media. Outside of cutscenes, it's pretty much never in your face again until the last mission where the female serpent lady boss is front and center.

Shadow Tactics: Blade of the Shogun: Good game, good story, well made, I almost finished this. I say almost because it's a game about stealth and I played it as such but on the second to last mission you have to brute force your way to the finish and having found this out after I had put in too much time on a perfect run I quit, uninstalled, and watched the last mission and ending on youtube.

Frostpunk: Good game, interesting take on RTS, I liked the story, options are kinda limited on ending outcomes to three overall versions (good/neutral, police state bad, religious zealots bad), but the story scenarios have a nice mix of challenges. No real replayability for me.

I've started Blasphemous. It's been sitting in my queue for a while because I loved the look of it but I wasn't sure I wanted a 2D Dark Souls. It's not really that game though, or at least nowhere near the degree that Salt & Sanctuary was 2D Dark Souls. It's faster moving and a bit more forgiving. Still, I'm jammed up on a difficult boss and I really just need to get back to the hub area and upgrade my skills, but I'm annoyed about the backtrack, and then I'm going to be annoyed that I have to go back through what I did to get to the boss. It's fun but also a bit frustrating.

I've restarted Indivisible, this time on PC rather than Xbox One. Damn that's a pretty game. Haven't put a ton of time into it, but it's a fun combination of platforming and action RPG combat. It took me a minute to figure out the battle system.

I've jumped back into Strafe, having read about the new Gold Edition update. They've reduced each of the four (?) zones to two levels instead of three, which is enough for me to think I can get to the end again. Previously, I've gotten to the boss twice. I couldn't beat it but I had everything leading up to it down pat, so I wasn't really compelled to make another run. With the runs shortened, I think I stand a better chance of getting to the end before I get bored and actually finishing a run. I have a lot more to say about Strafe but I'll stick to my chief complaint here: once I figured out my favorite weapon, the rest of the game was a repetitive slog just to get to a boss that I couldn't beat.

Finally, I played about an hour of Fallout 4. I've owned this game since launch, never got far in it, restarted it on Xbox One last year, put it down again, and now I'm taking another run at it. I think the settlement stuff sucks, so this time around I'm going to ignore it.

CrossCode: 2D pixely action RPG where you play someone playing an MMO. I'm only a couple hours in but I'm enjoying it so far. It feels like a light-hearted JRPG of old but with a lot of modern quality of life updates. There are lots of puzzles and exploration to do and the combat is very fun.

Chess: I have an old lichess account where I'm mostly doing best-play exercises. I'm terrible at the game and I don't really have the time to play long matches anymore, but I used to like it a lot and want to give it a try again.

I've managed to play some games this past week:

Picross S4: the latest release of the Picross series on Switch, still a very good background game while watching a stream.

Rimworld: created my colony of the semester, watched it grow, watched it fall.

Stellaris: I've bought the game and one DLC during a sale outside of Steam, game seems solid! Way less grand strategy than I expected, I get flashbacks of Sins of a Solar Empire but with a lot more diplomacy which is great.

It's been a while since I played any simracing games. Maybe I burned myself out. I've also waited for Animal Crossing to come out on the Switch since the day the console was announced. And my playcount has plateau'd at around 20 hours, played only for a week or so. Still haven't finished Half-Life: Alyx, don't really feel the need to. I've never had so much time to play video games (at least since the last school summer breaks) but I don't. Being confined for an extended period of time isn't that good for morale as it turns out, but I'd hope that the need to play video games would come back at least a bit.

I have been playing, for some reason Olli Olli2, Welcome to Olliwood. It's a 2d skateboarding game. The graphics are uninspiring, though the different level graphics are interesting. The soundtrack is okay, but certainly not blowing me out of the water. The system of progression is relatively good, but not great. But I keep playing it because it feels so buttery smooth. I love the controls; doing tricks feels like it is natural, and the trick progression is easy to grasp. Everything relies on split second timing, and everything just feels great.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this if you're a hardcore Tony Hawk Pro Skater fan or anything - this is a 2d game, and it might be underwhelming (though I only vaguely recollect those games, so I don't know for sure). But if you've picked it up for free, it's a really nice to control game, and I recommend giving it a try.

I just purchased Old World after seeing a few of the YouTube channels I subscribe to play it briefly. I absolutely love it so far. I'm sure I'm terrible at it, but it has been a joy to learn. I've had no desire to re-learn new mechanics for Stellaris even though I really want to play and I was afraid the fatigue of learning a new game was going to set in again, but it has been quite the opposite!

It's Civ-like, but with so many scenarios and decisions to make that impact your civilization throughout the years. It has a royal family with lineage and so your modifiers and story changes as people die from natural causes or are murdered so that others can get closer to the throne.

Absolutely fantastic so far and I want to play it all day during work! :P

I'm playing through Assassin's Creed Odyssey, I'm at about ten hours in. I've never played an AC game before and I've heard that this one in particular caused a bit of a rift among existing fans, but as someone with zero context I'm enjoying a lot about it. I have some small complaints and I am of course completely ignoring the microtransactions, but it's a game that makes it easy and fun to explore.

I like the level scaling, it feels fair enough but you also get to feel powerful when you go back to a previous area. I also like the idea of being hunted by enemies that are much stronger than you and having to build yourself up to face them later. The controls took me a bit to get used to (been a while since I've played an actiony game, honestly) but it's just... fun to climb stuff and jump off.

My minor complaint is that sometimes the stealth feels a bit too easy, with almost an overabundance of tall-grass hidey holes. And the world seems intimidatingly big, with it going back to the old chestnut of randomly generated quests to make things feel fuller than they really are. I also wish there were more reasons for me to hang out in cities.