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

I'm still playing Horizon Zero Dawn; camera control is a lot better after turning down the sensitivity, so that's good!

I have paused briefly, though, and might go back a save or two. I'm finding that the dialogue choices don't really say what I think they'll say, which is frustrating. I've been chosing "brain" a fair bit, and it can be a lot more bitter than I would like.

I'm not sure if it counts as a "game" per se, but I've really been enjoying these regular expression crossword puzzles. For those not familiar, regular expressions are used (mostly by developers and admins) to search for patterns in text. They're really handy but super difficult for humans to read and understand, which makes them perfect for puzzles. They have a tutorial if anyone is interested in trying out these unique and fun puzzles.

https://regexcrossword.com/

I've been replaying Disco Elysium after completing it for the first time last month - this time specing heavily into INT and MOT instead of PSY and PYS. I've also started (and subsequently dropped) Horizon Zero Dawn - the world was beautiful and the combat fun, but the wooden dialogue and janky face animations made me fairly disinterested in the story for some reason.

I've been playing a lot of Fallout 76. I'm coming into this game really sideways. I played it prior to the Wastelanders expansion. Those were the before times, when there were no human NPCs. I didn't get very far, but I put maybe a dozen hours into pursuing whatever quests it had.

Now the game has been expanded, human NPCs have been added, storyline quests have been added, and they don't do much to communicate what you should be doing. I initially picked up where I left off with the main game quest. I put a bunch of effort into following that quest series. Eventually, I hit a level wall. I ran into a level 60 enemy that I could not possibly kill solo at level 20.

This is when I started to look around. How am I supposed to get up to 60? I left a trail of side quests behind me as I chased down this main story. I also picked up a couple quests from these human NPCs.

Long story short, the Wastelanders expansion kicks off with a series of quests intended for brand new players and I followed that to its conclusion. It would've been obvious to me that I should do those quests early, because they start with a person waiting outside the game starting point, but I was out in the middle of nowhere. They've led me to more storyline quests, so now I feel like I'm on a track again.

I'm less bothered now, but I was pretty salty at hitting such a hard level wall in the main story. I don't know how it was intended to be climbed without Wastelanders, but I'm guessing that just comes with the game's overall poor reception. I still think it would be a smoother experience if the game did a better job of communicating what you should do next to progress.

I've been playing Grand Theft Auto 5 (the online mode), Red Dead Redemption (RDR) 1 and Metal Gear Solid 5.

I want to talk mostly about MGS5. I just finished it's 1st chapter and I knew there had to be more to the story. Too much yet to be explained. I didn't like how they previewed the 2nd chapter. At first I thought it was material for a game never created but then I realized it's just the 2nd part of this game. I didn't want to see scenes from what I'm playing next. Overall I'm finding the game grindy, lacking the "magic" of previous titles and yet when it comes to the technical aspects it is the best MGS game ever.
First of all the game has way too many fluff missions that could easily be good side missions but were included in the main storyline. I've played the game for more than 20 hours now and I feel like I barely made any progress story wise.
Second, I just cannot relate to the characters. I don't find the revenge angle compelling and I don't understand what the creators want me to think about the characters. To me they seem just some weirdo mercenaries who act all tough but then are constantly emotional about their past. In the past (that is, in the game that precedes this one, Peace Walker) they were also weird mercenaries. I guess the target audience for this game is people in the military lol.
Technically the game is quite good. The controls, graphics, gameplay are all great. The loading times in the menus are a bit too long though. I also like the amount of freedom that is given to the player. There are dozens of guns, gadgets, buddies (partners you can take on missions), suits, etc. I just use the tranquilizer weapon 99% of the time but I like that the game is so vast. Then there is the whole RPG element of the game that started with Peace Walker (PW) I think. You develop your base over time and you have more and more perks, more and more options in terms of gameplay. You can send your army to offline or online missions to collect resources and recruit more soldiers. These offline missions take actual play time to complete but the online mission's timers just keep going even if you aren't playing. There is even a premium currency that let's you skip the online timers among other things.
The game also brought back the mission modularity from PW. You can redo any mission whenever you want, even with items you acquired later in the game. No need to keep save games at certain points just to replay a part of the game. For a game like MGS where killing even 1 enemy makes a difference, this modularity is great.
One thing I also don't like about the game is that there is a lot of lore in audio tapes you collect as you go along. I never listen to them while playing because I need to focus on what is being said and I don't like sitting still doing nothing while listening. So I just listen to the tapes on YouTube. I guess Kojima (the series director) learned over the years that people also don't want to be watching 1h cutscenes instead of playing. There should have been an official website where you could listen to the tapes you collected so far. That way you could listen on the go.
There game has an online mode and it has an online PVP mode that is integrated with the single player mode. You can attack other people's bases and get attacked. Not for me.
There is also something a bit off-place which is the development wait times. What does that mechanic add to this game? No idea.
I am playing the game having seen very little feedback on it. The game is 6 years old now and I am itching to go online and see what everyone thinks about the game. But I don't want to be spoiled so I thought I would just write about my experience so far.

So now I have a whole new chapter ahead of me. I'm still intrigued about a lot of things (remember that this game is a prequel to many games in the franchise) even though I think the story is very farfetched. I think I'm going to take a break from the game and finish RDR1 first as I'm playing it through PS Now and I don't want to renew my subscription when it runs out.

A group of friends has started a "Video Game Club" like a book club but for games. Every month we're going to choose a game and everybody will play it, then after a few weeks to a month we'll all get together on Discord and talk about it. We've also already had a habit of getting together once a week and just playing something together anyway, so we've mostly been playing this month's game at the same time and all streaming to Discord so we can compare progress.

This month's game was Resident Evil 1 (the remake on PC), which I have started a couple of times before this but never gotten very far into. I actually managed to get through the whole thing this time, and aside from some anachronistic mechanics that were really frustrating (I'm looking at you, typewriter ribbons) and some design choices that were clearly meant to add to the atmosphere of the game but mostly just end up being frustrating (like the limited inventory space), I actually wound up really liking what the game was trying to do. It was basically a survival horror game with a lot of puzzle mechanics like old-school point-n-click adventure games, which was kind of charming to me in a way. I had also played some RE2 which I feel like was more of a straightforward survival horror game, and then RE4 and beyond just seem like they've basically become third-person shooters, so I really kind of liked what RE1 was doing, it seems much more interesting to me.

Now, would I play it again?

Definitely not. I'm glad I stuck it out but I think that well's pretty much dry for me after just one playthrough.

Revisited some old games. Tannenberg (WWI FPS), and Cities::Skylines . Not much to say here, other than me turning to C:S because I wanted something relaxing and low-effort. Sorting out traffic problems is actually somewhat interesting and challenging, because you are somewhat restricted by past decisions on how you laid out your roads and zoning in the past.

Other than that, I've actually been playing MLB: The Show (19) on and off for the past several weeks. Something about this game keeps me coming back. I've yet to master hitting (at Legend difficulty), and I keep trying. Pitching is a heck of a lot easier, in comparison.

Sp!ing released an update with like 60+ new levels, so I spent some time playing them. I really like this game. It's a simple casual game that just keeps delivering. The new levels largely play with gravity. There are various pads around the playing board and when you hit them, gravity switches direction. As you can imagine, this greatly affects game play. But it's lots of fun!