I just finished my second ever playthrough of the original goldsrc Half-Life. It gets all the love it deserves. So few games craft an atmosphere of horrific mystery like that game, and I love the payoff of that tension. I know Xen gets hate for being rushed and the levels being chaotic, but I like that. EVERYTHING about Xen feels alien and terrifying. Then when you find out more about the alien society it turns the entire “invasion” on its head. What a great fuckin game.
I think now is as good a time as any to finally finish (after restarting) Half-Life: Alyx
I've been working through my first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 - it's fairly enjoyable, I'm glad I ignored it outright until well after big patches rolled out. There's something very satisfying about blowing up enemies through a camera.
I've also picked up Dwarf Fortress (Steam) for the first time. It has a lot of depth but has been fun to learn and try and figure out. I just flooded a section of my fortress by digging into an underground river.
My chill-out puzzle game has been Can of Wormholes and it's pretty fun! It's weird for sure... but definitely fun.
I grabbed "Total War: Warhammer" in the steam sale last week. I'm about 35 turns in trying to wipe the greenskin scum from my ancestral dwarven lands. I like it so far! I've never played any other Total War games.
I played a fair bit more Backpack Hero, and made some more progress in the story mode. Still a bit too grindy for my tastes, but I'll either finish it or just stick to the classic roguelike mode.
I've been playing more Starfield, and the recurring thought I have every step of the way is, "this should be better". To go into much more detail than that would be to right a dissertation, but the short description is that the game has barely changed compared to Fallout 4 and Skyrim.
I got through another few missions of Wargroove 2. It continues to be a worthy successor to Wargroove.
Combined with Starfield, Pillars of Eternity is helping me resist starting a new run in Baldur's Gate 3. I also have that feeling of, "this should be better" here, but it's pretty much entirely down to production value. Number 1 with a bullet is that I wish it was fully voice acted, including narration. Still though, loving everything else so far despite real time with pause, which has been less of a problem than I thought.
I got through another few missions of Wargroove 2. It continues to be a worthy successor to Wargroove.
I didn’t have high hopes for WG2 at first but I saw they made some really good improvements with the map editor.
I’m still on the fence about buying it though, I heard it doesn’t have ranked match making so if I get it it would only be for the single player. Might get it if it goes on steam sale
I don’t know that I would call Northgard a Warcraft clone. The mall is divided into tiles and each tile has its own resources and building limits. Units can only attack other units that are in their tile. There’s a much bigger emphasis on building up your tech tree and taking tiles.
Still, it’s one of the more interesting and fun evolutions of the RTS genre. If sci-fi is more to your taste, Dune the newer gameby the same studio is similar.
Just so you know, StarCraft 2 is free to play now, including the terran campaign. It even has a more relaxed co-op vs ai mode with a lot of replay value for the people who can’t put up 300 apm any more in competitive play.
Back to catch up on Baldurs Gate, finally tied up act 1. Also back to Tarkov, the masochism is in full swing.
Aaand back to counterstrike, did i mention masochism? CS2 has brought the gang back together though, really feels like almost a decade ago when we had full lobbies every night.
I’m nearing the end of Crisis Core -Final Fantasy VII- Reunion. It’s still really mediocre, but I got into that mindless grind of those 300 side missions. The main story is pretty lame, the only interesting bits are those directly connected to FF7, basically when you’re in Nibelheim, although even that is a bit of a let-down.
I also played more on my Steam Deck than expected, mainly because I got sick a few days ago and would just dabble a bit here and there while lying down. I did a some Vampire Survivors runs, but it’s basically always the same, so I need to look into those unlocks I’m missing. Then I tried Boneraiser Minions, but I’m not sure about this one. It’s a Vampire Survivors-like, but here you summon different skeletons to fight for you. The first few runs felt really slow and boring, but some of the unlocks improved it somewhat. I’m still not sure about the minions fighting for you thing though, since it feels a bit too RNG, but I’ll give it a bit more time.
Hogwarts legacy: I think I already reached the last quarter of the game and it is fun so far. The main story feels more like a side quest, but the world has the right feel that the books and movies left behind. Only the side activities become a little too much. I still keep finding new stuff I could do, but always in so many iterations that I already know that I will not do all of them. Why can’t there be just 20 Merlin trials that are fun and diverse instead of 100(?) that quickly become repetitive?
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