Beat Squidward’s Legacy (excellent) and still had an itch for more open world game, so decided to buy Red Dead Redemption 2 on sale. Beat it on PS4 a few years ago and it’s just not hitting the same way Hogwarts Legacy did or like it did back in the day.

Slow start, combat is straight up boring compared to Hogwarts, there is no difficulty mode adjustment other than turning off auto-aim which the game was clearly built around, extremely limited way to approach missions (oops you stepped off the designated trail, gotta retry again), audio mixing is fucked between gameplay and cut-scene dialog, already had a couple crashes including one that a lot of other people reported years ago that can only be bypassed by skipping a cutscene. Also that horse traversal is so slow in comparison. It’s still alright and the story and presentation is fun, I had much more fun with it 4 or so years ago. Maybe it will be more fun once it opens up a bit, but I’m already a few hours in.

System shock remake… Pretty incredible. Never played 1 but beat 2 a few years ago and it’s awesome playing an old school game again with a modern flair. Hoping to finish before baldurs gate comes out.

Just finished Sleeping Dogs, strange hybrid game from 2012. On one hand story mission structure from GTA games, melee combat emblematic of that era (focused on countering like Batman: Arkham or early AC games), shooting feels terrible and it borrows heavily from Max Payne. Then you have Hong Kong setting, but the game is made by a Western studio which allows for more graphic violence than say Yakuza series. All in all recommended for open world aficionados, who enjoy that GTA-feeling story, but definitely the ideas become stale after around 3-4 hour mark.

Just got the Spyro and crash trilogies on sale on my Xbox. Haven’t played spyro since it came out on the ps1. Nostalgia hit to the max, and my 3 y/o daughter loves watching it too.

Remnant 2. I didn’t like the first one but man they’ve made an awesome sequel. It’s a ton of fun and very replayable, they’ve really managed to nail the Souls-Like formula while acing the procedural aspects as well.

Remnant 2 - fun game, not as difficult as Remnant 1 imo but better for it.

Cities Skylines - no idea why I got the urge to play it. I’ve had a few failed attempts previously. And I still find it hard as hell to plan my shit out instead of haphazardly placing zones and industries. I’m still very early on (pre-office blocks) and my map is already a mess. I’m playing with the industry, mass transit and plazas DLCs. The industry one seems like fun but I haven’t got to the other two yet. I’m looking forward to the sequel but I know I’m going to suck at that too

I am still going strong on Tears of the Kingdom. I love exploring a world I already new with changes and additions. I love having an open world game where I am still mandated to be a good person. I love getting creative with weird things. I love that my oldest kid plays as well and my youngest likes to help me solve puzzles. It has just been a blast for my family.

Naraka Bladepoint. It’s a shrinking-circle-style battle royale focused around fast-paced melee weapon combat. It’s been out for around 2 years but just went free to play a couple weeks ago. It’s fantastic. I’ve always loved invasions in Dark Souls, and while the combat is definitely different (maybe closer to Sekiro, but that’s not quite right either) it honestly feels like an improvement, as its designed for PvP first.

I’ve been giving Exoprimal a try (free on GamePass). It’s actually a really fun mix of PvE and PvP so far! The story is hilariously strange as well. Not sure I’d think it’s worth $60, but for free it’s been a blast!

I recently got a ps4, and am catching up on things I’ve missed. This week I finished Infamous: second son Infamous 2 was my favorite open world game of its generation, and Second Son felt like a lot of the same. I feel like it was short, a lot of the missions felt copy/pasted, and I think the karma system wasn’t as interesting. The multiple power gimmick was fun, but I wish it was easier to swap around. It was disappointing that my favorite power is unavailable for the last few boss fights.

Overall I felt it was a 6/10, I liberated all the regions and beat the story with the “Good” end, but I’m not compelled to go back and try the evil route or finish everything 100%

Zelda TotK and I just love how I run around the most random places and there‘s an activity there (like the sign support dude) lol, it gives the completionist in me anxiety though. Still not a fan of the glass weapon system, it just makes me not use the good stuff. Hope there‘ll be a version with better image quality and framerate in the future, maybe a bit crisper textures too. The game deserves it.

I’ve jumped back into Fallout: New Vegas recently. I’ve had a really hard time getting into games properly in the last few years, so figured trying a return to an old favourite might be worth a go. I’ve tried my hand in modding it a bit to try and make it feel a little less dated, and so far I’m enjoying it. That said due to chance I’ve not been able to get much more than 40 minutes at a go in game before something’s lead me to have to go and do something else, but baby steps.

I’m looking forward to Baldur’s Gate 3 later this week and I’m hoping it’s not going to be another case of me playing a couple of hours and enjoying it before not returning to it for a few months, restarting it, not keeping it up, coming back a few months later and restarting it again ad infinitum.

Pikmin 4, it’s got so many more useful navigation and UI features than the older games it really takes out a lot of the tedium, really getting in to it.

Hunt Showdown with my mates, really loving this event. Had been burned out of the game for a long time but it feels sorta new now.

Crusader Kings 3, loving Tours and Tournaments. Hadn’t played much ck3 till now, I miss some features from CK2 but, I’m sure it’ll get there eventually. Not like CK2 was perfect out of the box.

Project Zomboid: doing a TLoU inspired run with a bunch of mods on apocalypse settings. It’s pretty hard, but very fun.

Rimworld: always there when I need it. Currently running a mafioso vampires run, pretty fun, but I think I’m ready to move on.

LoZ: Ocarina of Time. I really appreciate that I can run across the main part of the map in less than an in-game day. BotW and TotK are vast and I love them in their own right but I am really enjoying the OG scale of the map.

Edit to add: and the dungeons! :)