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

I'm a little late to the party but I finally tried Bioshock (2007) for the first time. I recently picked up the remastered trilogy for PS4, on my PS5.

I love the setting and the backstory. The sound design is great and the plasmids are fun to play around with. I'm really loving the world of Rapture, it's like no other fictional place I've seen. But I'm torn. I really don't like the horror genre overall, I hate gore and jump scares and violent shooters that have you slaughtering wave after wave of grotesque zombie stand-ins. And (at least so far) that's exactly what kind of game this is. I've just completed the Medical Pavilion and I'm not sure I can stomach much more of that. I want to keep going but I'm losing my motivation.

Started playing Voxel Tycoon, which is a more modern take on Transport Tycoon. It's in early access, but it's a pretty solid game all the same. My only gripe with it is that the UI still needs some polish, but it's early access so that's to be expected. Cloning a vehicle requires opening up the list of vehicles, finding the right one, then opening up a garage and then using the clone tool there to select one from the vehicle list. Adding more vehicles to a transport line via the clone tool is a big part of the game, so being able to do that directly from the vehicle I want to clone would be nice.

But all in all I'm really enjoying it. It's a great game to kill a few hours here and there.

My partner snagged a PS5, so I've been playing the little robot demo (super cute and nicely forgiving) and Horizon Zero Dawn. I've been wanting to play HZD since it came out, and I was planning to get it on PC, but it was free in the PS5 store so... Can't complain!

I'm playing HZD on easy, so for the most part I'm managing quite well. I'm not used to controllers though, so the moment something goes wrong in a fight and I start to panic, I fuck up my camera. Suddenly I'm looking at the ground, or the sky, or the exact opposite direction of the robot attacking me. It's intensely frustrating and I wish there was an auto camera feature, or at the very least a button to press to recenter it behind Aloy.

I also tend to hit the wrong button frequently. I'll crouch instead of picking something up, or swing a spear (and move out of cover into the view of a machine) instead of taking out my bow. I figure eventually I'll get more comfortable, but incorrect button presses are much more likely to mess something up than in a game like Animal Crossing.

On the plus side, it's really pretty and there are robot dinosaurs and I get to shoot a bow and arrow and sneak. Which is great!

New Pokemon Snap just came out a few days ago. I loved the original, and was sad that Nintendo to 20 years to make a sequel. But so far it's a lot of fun. The formula is very similar to the original, you ride around in a cart taking pictures of pokemon. Each track has xp bar you can level up by taking pictures. And as you level up the track, the pokemon you encounter will behave differently (new locations, new behavior, etc...) Sometimes the track itself even shifts some. But you can always go back and do the track at lower levels, so you never miss out on an opportunity.

Additionally each track has a day, night and SPOILER version which all level up differently and have different 'mons that show up.

So far I've unlock 4 different tools that let you interact with the environment, it's unclear if there are more, but I'm only a few hours in.

I'm really please with it. It said New Pokemon Snap on the box and that's exactly what it is. It's Pokemon Snap with modern graphics and design along with a whole bunch of modern 'mons to take pictures of and throw fruit at. So if you liked the original or just think that riding around and taking pictures sounds like a good time, then check this one out.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance : I was able to win the Rattay Tourney after two more tries. Had to make a change in strategy, emphasizing a certain tactic more than others. I'm not sure it makes sense, but the game seems to favour doing a certain something (I'm being vague so as not to reveale spoilers) rather than other things. Once I figured that out, victory was achieved. I also did a side quest involving a horse race, and that was pretty fun. I actually had to load my savegame not once but twice because I foolishly got my horse caught in some bushes or other obstacles. My desire to continue playing this is beginning to wane, so I may wrap up and do the game-ending quest this week.

I tried out Dreamgate , a single-player card game. It's... kind of meh. Well, somewhere between "good" and "meh". I got it on sale, so I don't have much buyer's remorse, but I'm not sure this will be taking up much of my gaming time when I have other unplayed titles in the queue.

Back around 2012 or so, I played through Deus Ex Human Revolution and while I remember enjoying it, I don't remember much else. Recently, I've been looking for a scifi RPG to play, and I remembered that I had bought the Director's Cut edition a few years ago, so I decided to give it a try. It's been really fun so far, but I'm surprised by how "small" it feels to me.
These kinds of games have gotten massive over the past ~10 years and I guess that I'm just used to it at this point. Going back and playing something like DXHR and not being able to explore the entirety each of the cities that you go to, with the areas that are accessible even feeling a bit "sparse" despite how small they are, or not having your log be packed with active missions, and with missions themselves being relatively straight-forward (that's how they feel to me at least), it just feels kinda off I guess.
I'm still having a lot of fun however, though I feel like I might be missing some stuff here and there since I haven't actually played any of the other Deus Ex games.

Aside from WoW, there are three other games I've been getting into.

Friday Night Funkin' is really fun, but it does have issues like dropped inputs that don't make it play so well as a rhythm game. Week 7 was a blast to play with some real bangers, plus I'm super hyped for the Kickstarter campaign, especially since all their major stretch goals aside from the 10 week epilogue have been funded within 15 days.

If I had to rank each week by the overall quality of their tracks from best to worst, I'd go with: 4, 7, 2, 6, 5, 1, then 3. Favourite songs are definitely Satin Panties and Ugh.

Yesterday I bought OMORI and I'm about 4 hours into it. Already one of the best indie RPGs I've played and I haven't even dived into much of the game's content. I'm surprised this game has received nowhere near as much recognition as Undertale did, because it feels like the true Earthbound successor.

Also played Deadeus (Game Boy game that was released on itch.io a few months back) via emulator. Thoughts were... meh. As a game it was quite interesting and had some good world building but it's far too short and feels like little more than an overglorified 40 - 60 min long trading sequence. Doesn't take long to get all of the game's 11 endings either, takes a speedrunner about 1 hour and 20 minutes while a regular player would get about 2 hours of mileage out of the game. Deadeus is much better as a piece of art than a game.

I reached ending A in Nier Replicant. The quality of life improvements in this game, namely lock-on targeting, made replaying it worth it. I'm about halfway to the next ending.

I spent a fair amount of time playing with XCloud streaming to PC. I think it's cool but not perfect. The picture quality is good, not great. Not really noticeable on a phone, but more obvious on a full screen 4K monitor. I also found out it doesn't do well in Fallout 76 at all. There's a huge disconnect between controller input and actions on screen in the shared open world that doesn't happen when I run FO76 direct from an Xbox One X. Outside of indoors, instanced areas, it's almost unplayable.

But for single player stuff? Works great. Played some Hot Shot Racing, Batman: Arkham Knight, Power Rangers: Battle for the Grid, Doom 3, and Outriders without any real issues. Of those, Outriders was probably the most "slippery" but not to the degree of Fallout 76.

At this point, XCloud is a really cool bonus for the Xbox Game Pass I'm already paying for. Not sure I'd pay for it separate from XGP, but it's handy to fire up a game in a browser and just play it, with my Xbox progression coming with it, without messing about with installs.

Started playing Portal Reloaded, and honestly while I am barely into the game, I can definitely recommend it to anyone who liked Portal's puzzles. I don't think there's any major "story" stuff (or I haven't reached them just yet), but the puzzles themselves are really good.

Check it out if you already have Portal 2, it's free.

I found an old PS2 game available on my PS4 that I've been playing called Ape Escape 2. It's a pretty childish game but it's genuinely fun and brings back some fun memories.

Just Cause 3

I've been meaning to play this for a long time and just haven't ever gotten around to it. It's the exact sequel to JC2 that I wanted. The wingsuit and grappling improvements make movement and tasks in the game a joy, while the built-in settlement checklists make clearing areas so much more convenient and enjoyable.

The game is big, ridiculous fun, and I expect to get a lot of play out of it. I think it says a lot about the game that fast travel is an option but I don't want to use it because getting from point A to B in the game is a delight in and of itself.

After so much time in Skyrim, I decided to fire up OpenMW and finish a quest. It is janky, and I don't think it's OpenMW's fault. The combat feels horrible. I had to kill a dude and couldn't hit him for the life of me aiming like I would in Skyrim. I don't have much new to say about Skyrim which is, basically the only game I've been playing.

I got a translated copy of Rhythm Tengoku which is a game I've wanted for years. I tested it in an emulator, but want to get it on my GBA's flashcart soon to play on hardware. It's fun, just a bunch of challenging rhythm minigames.