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

I've been playing Disco Elysium.

The voice acting and writing is incredible. It's an absolutely hilarious RPG centered around role playing the different parts/systems that make up the body of the body of the protagonist.

For me this is the front runner for the best game (fully released) in 2021. It's definitely in my top 3 of best written video games ever, if not the best.

I cannot recommend this game enough.

I finished Marvel's Spider-Man. The super-reductive review of this is that it's Batman: Arkham with web swinging instead of gliding, and that's just fine because those games are awesome. But I don't want to praise that. What I want to praise is how intelligently they layer on activities. This is an open world action game, and they could've Ubisoft'd it by blasting the map with icons right from the start. They didn't do that. It starts off with a few activities available. As I completed story missions, they added more activities. The newer activities also gradually increased in difficulty as I was getting better at the game. That was really well done and way better than overwhelming me with a shitload of icons, some of which I can't do much about because I'm under-level or just haven't internalized game systems yet.

Got to the end of the main quest line in Kingdom Come: Deliverance . (semi spoiler) The "ending" was a bit anti-climactic. It was akin to what they do in movies where they don't really "end", they just leave things open for a sequel. I'd be thrilled to play a sequel, but I'm a bit disappointed in the mediocre ending. At this point, I am free to wander the world and do any side quests that I haven't done yet, as well as get to the DLC quests I purchased. I'm not sure I'd be interested in doing a full re-play of the game, as this playthrough probably took over 100 hours. I can see how I could hurry through in a subsequent playthrough, but there will probably be some minimum amount of grinding needed just to get the character stats up to decent level in order to improve survivability. One thing I do want to achieve is to win the ("the") tournament. I thought that, with my character's stats as high as they are (at or near max in most), I would be able to win on my next try, but no, that wasn't the case. This will be quite a challenge, it looks like. It seems as though I (as a player, not the character) need to master all the combat skills, in terms of keyboard and mouse mechanics, and maybe even in terms of strategy.

I picked up Everspace on sale a few days ago, and started playing it. About 4 hours of play into this game, and here are my initial thoughts: Something the game does a little differently than others is that it is built into the game design and the storyline that you improve your stats only after you die. So, the game loop is basically: try to survive longer in a life than last time; spend money on upgrades after you die; spawn and try again. In a given life, you jump from sector to sector, doing various grindy tasks like mine for resources, destroy hostiles, and occasionally interact with a non-hostile NPC ship (trader, repair station, etc.). You need resources to repair your ship, craft ammo, and refuel for more jumps. There is also a built-in, implicit "time limit" for each stay in a sector: If you tarry too long trying to explore and squeeze out every last resource possible, a fleet of hostiles spawns which is essentially too difficult for your single meager ship to deal with on its own. Moving forward (fleeing) to the next sector is something you're forced to do with some regularity, sometimes even as soon as you enter a sector, due to how dangerous the area is. I'm enjoying myself so far, but I do hope they continue to introduce new game features or mechanics, as I can see this getting monotonous if it's the same game loop for another 10+ hours of gameplay. The upgrade path seems reasonable and within reach. After each life, I'm able to unlock 1 or 2 new upgrades.

Vaporum

This is a genuine hidden(ish) gem, IMO. It’s a first-person grid-based dungeon crawler in the same vein as Dungeon Master or Legend of Grimrock. Gorgeous graphics and good design. It’s very polished for what it is, but it is also clunky by nature of the genre (combat is an awkward, rigid square dance due to the grid restrictions, for example).

Being more interested in the puzzles than the combat, I played it on easy mode and I'm glad that I did. Even that was a bit of a challenge! I think if I’d chosen a harder difficulty I’d have bounced out of the game very early on, as it can be quite unforgiving. All together the game took me ~12 hours to beat, which is noteworthy, as I don’t finish games all that often. This one had enough pull to it to keep me coming back and see it through to the end.

DOOM (2016)

I’m just starting this one out, but I’m playing it all wrong. It’s supposed to be a fast-paced action-packed demon death romp, and instead I'm treating it like a calm, slow, first-person platforming collectible hunt. I just want to find all the secrets! And these pesky demons keep interrupting my exploration!

The game is gorgeous though, and is a good modernization of the series. It's similar enough to old entries to be recognizable and familiar, but new enough to not just feel like a rehash with better graphics.

I've gotten really into The Long Drive. You're just driving down a long desert road in the apocalypse, exploring abandoned buildings, picking up car parts, fixing cars to drive, grabbing supplies, and fending off gigantic killer rabbits so far. I don't know why it's so fun, despite the massive amounts of jank.

EDIT: Also just started playing Skyrim. Fortunately for this run, I'd apparently started it already, so I didn't have to sit through the cutscene. I already got to Whiterun, and it's been fun.

I've tried to sit down to Morrowind, and made some progress in Oblivion, but they feel really drawn out compared to Skyrim for some reason.

I had picked up Ordia a long time ago. Probably over a year ago. I played it for about 5 or 6 levels then got bored with it and stopped playing. I saw it on my phone and picked it up again and am enjoying it. Not sure why I got bored with it originally. Seems like I was just getting to the good part.

The premise is that you're a little tadpole-like creature. You have to jump from peg to peg while avoiding various enemies and obstacles and picking up various bonuses. The goal of each level is just to jump out from the ooze at the bottom and climb all the way out the top without dying.