Got 3 games I rotate now of which only 1 I haven’t played before.

Death Stranding: Finished it on the PS4 way back when and bought the PC director's cut a long time ago but only recently picked it up again.

Cyberpunk 2077: Technically bought it day 1 but I am just now doing my first modded playthru.

Starfield: I am not a Bethesda fan so I was 0% hyped for this and only watched a lot of YouTube content about it. Randomly decided to pull the trigger recently tho. Completed the game vanilla first now I am doing a modded playthru and taking my time with it.
This one surprised me the most because I’m having fun and really enjoy my time with it. Funny thing is that most of the negative stuff mentioned about this game absolutely holds true, the game kinda ass. And Nasapunk is an oxymoron. But I’m a raccoon I enjoy trash. And if u shove 600 mods down Todd’s throat you actually get a really cool experience out of it.
Still wouldn’t recommend it tho.

Just started Gran Turismo 4 carreer got my b licence but man i suck hard in this game

Im playing gta 3 on ps2. Nice nostalgia trip but the story telling is kinda dated especislly since gta 4 was my first real playtheough of a gta game back in the days and that has great story telling (and the protagonist even talks!!!!)

This week end an old buddy of mine is visiting and we will probably be picking up some old gc and ps2 titles.

Also had some more fun on my wow private server.

PEAK with friends, otherwise, grinding through Marvel Rivals ranked, and keeping up with Nikke. I was also getting through FF16, but put that down for a little.

I'm playing Disco Elysium on android and I gotta say I'm loving it. I couldn't really get into it on PC but I'm enjoying everything about it here.

Farcry Primal. Saw it was on sale recently, so I decided to snag it. It's not bad so far and a fun setting to mess around in. Works with my linux setup and steam deck.

Finally completed the hitman 3 main story! Time to get to the story missions and achievements

I just scooped up Killzone Shadow Fall and I'm enjoying it, even though the beginning part of the game was basically a half hour long movie disguised as a tutorial. I also got the Shadow of the Colossus remaster for PS4 so that's next.

For quick sessions, I've gone back and started half heartedly trying to 1CC Danmaku Unlimited 2 since the new trailer for 4 just came out.

I've been playing Conan Exiles, a survival crafting game that's been out for several years but still receives regular major updates.

It's a bit generic - there's little I haven't already seen in another survival game - but it's more polished than most due to having a major developer behind it. There's a lot of content, bespoke animations for nearly every weapon, and the base building is a delight. Exploration is also great due to diverse biomes and the game's climbing system, which also lets you grab the wall while falling and slowly slide to a halt - this looks and feels great and turns avoiding falling damage from a headache into a cinematic moment. It's not parkour, but it tugs the same strings.

The game has an unfortunate tendency to crash when messing with companion inventories, though that may be due to a Steam Workshop mod I'm using (one I can't bring myself to remove because it makes inventory and companion management so much easier). Aside from that hiccup - which only triggers once every few hours, which is tolerable for me - and knocked out enemies occasionally falling through the ground (you need to drag them back to your base to recruit them as NPCs), the game has been rock-solid.

I'm somewhat tempted to buy the new Dune game by the same devs, but I've heard mixed things about the solo experience.

This week Blasphemous (the past week I played (and finished) Resident Evil 4 Remake)

I'm working through Act 3 (Lawful route) of Tactics Ogre Reborn. It was getting a bit challenging, until I tried crafting to get +1 weapons and armor.

Hearts of Iron IV with the Millenium Dawn mod as a newbie.

I'm playing on recruit difficulty, cause the AI would have gotten a bunch of bonuses whereas I would have been left with 0 advantages. I'm playing as Hungary with the goal of going through the historical route till 2010, cause the hungarian focus tree seems to prefer that, and I'm in the process of puppeting Slovenia by inflience alone and attacking Slovakia way later.

We love irredentism. I'm not an actual irredentist nutjob, but grand strategy games bring out the most unhinged version of ourselves.

Assassin‘s Creed Unity

I‘ve complained it the past about Shadow of War that I felt like I had to fight Talon to get him to go where I want him to. Now that I’m close to 100%ing ACU, I want to apologize to Talon cause ACU has the most sluggish, slow, and imprecise movement I‘ve ever wrestled with in these kinda games. Really made me realize how good I had it in Shadow of War lol. Every enemy just screaming at me on sight for no reason and tryna pick a fight with me when there‘s 50 people around me is also getting annoying. I think I love these games mainly for their sight-seeing and podcast side-activity capabilities now (collecathon). And revolutionary Paris is definitely a good sight-seeing location.

DiRT Rally 2.0

I‘m more of an arcade racer fan, but I‘m trying to challenge myself a bit with this one. I sometimes don‘t understand why I‘m spinning out, but I‘m hanging in there. The goal is another 100%, we‘ll see how far I can go! It‘s a pretty good rally simulation game, for anyone who doesn‘t know. It‘s also dirt cheap (hah).

Octopath Traveler

Hardly playing it atm but man, the theme song speaks to me, what a good piece. I‘m done with all chapter 1s, currently following a guide to pick up the missables before I go into the next chapters. There‘s something cozy about voiced pixel graphics JRPG storytelling to me. To anyone who‘s never heard of this game: Imagine old Final Fantasy titles, still pixel graphics, still turn-based, but with a few modern twists and the graphics pop out like a children picture book with modern effects. Full 60 at native res at max graphics on the Deck.

Dome Keeper

Straftat

Tetris Party for the Wii

Blast Off for the PSP

Both emulated on a Retroid Pocket 4 Pro. Just been getting into emulation properly over the past few months and I've been loving playing retro games.

Pikmin 2

I've mostly played on the Switch this past 2 weeks as my kids have taken over everything else...

Also a bit of Outrun, Circuit Superstars and Absolute Drift.

Just started Dread Delusion and Monster Sanctuary. Both are real good so far!

OK, seeing the fighting game community is experiencing some kind of tag fighters resurregence right now, I decided to give them a fair shake.

I had not before because they seemed too much work. Like, picking and learning 1 character is so difficult that I felt exhausted just at the thought of picking and learning 3. I also always thought the team composition aspect of it adds a premeditated layer of strategy that I could do without.

All that said, I still felt I was missing out, so I picked up Dragon Ball FighterZ and Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 this week.

Now, I faintly remember watching parts of some DBZ episodes when I was younger, and just loathed it. I did have a weird and not necessarily good taste as a child though, so I'm not sure if I'd hate it as much now. That said, I still do not feel desire to check out the show, TBH. I feel it doesn't have a lot I'd be interested in after playing the game.

Before getting to the gameplay, and even though I bought it on a deep sale, I'd like to bring up that buying it was not a pleasant experience. Bandai successfully bamboozled me into buying the base game and the first season pass separately, which costs $2 more than the FighterZ Edition, which includes both. TBF, I could not have foreseen my desire to buy the season pass because I don't know much about the roster and couldn't have foretold I will like and want to designate Android 17 as the point in my team.

I'm willing to admit the fault is mine as much as it is Bandai's, but I still feel bitter about the $2 😅

Gameplay is surprisingly super fun, although I'm yet to figure out how to effectively do tag combos, chain supers, or any of the super fun shit I picked up the game to ultimately experience. Learning BnBs and getting familiar with the game mechanics has been fun so far. It helps a lot it's an Arc System Works game and I'm familiar with their combo systems and whatnot.

I still haven't fucked around enough with Marvel to talk about how I feel, but I can say I bought it on a deep discount too, did not run into any issue buying it because it's the Ultimate edition, so no DLC bullshit, and I'm excited to learn Viewtiful Joe and Amaterasu.

Even though it's revered, a reason to hesitate before buying UMVC3 was it still has delay netcode to this day, which more or less means it's unplayable online. I hope this changes at some point, but just the act of buying it now represents the first instance of my breaking the "no rollback = no buy" rule… I don't feel good about that, but the way I try and cope is justify it with: (1) it's a super deep discount—less than $5—and (2) it's Mahvel… way I understand it it's the quintessential tag fighter… avoiding it would feel like avoiding Kurosawa while exploring Japanese cinema.

EVO The Search For Eden

Old ratchet & clank on RPCS3 are a freaking blast.

Extra long post today, so I'm experimenting with spoiler tags to not take up too much space. Let me know if it's a good idea.

After that I was in a mood for something different, and after realising how easy setting up Xemu was I went headfirst into Ninja Gaiden Black. I played Ninja Gaiden (2004) on the original Xbox as a kid back in the day, but I never finished it and always wanted to go back. With Ninja Gaiden 2 Black being released recently-ish and Ninja Gaiden 4 on the horizon this felt like the perfect time to play the definitive version of the best game in the series.

Now, I don't know whether I'll be able to finish it. I'm playing on "Normal" and not "Ninja Dog" (the easy mode). I'm 8 chapters in now and so far so good, but I'm well aware of the game's reputation as being prohibitively difficult. And I never did beat it back when I still had teenage reflexes.

That being said, I'm loving the ever-loving shit out of every moment so far. There is nothing like Ninja Gaiden combat out there, the relentless nature of every single encounter with extremely aggressive enemies constantly forcing you to push yourself to the limit and use every tool and trick at your disposal is satisfying like nothing else. It's extremely fast, but at the same time measured, deliberate and precise. You can't get away with button mashing, you have to consciously use actual combos and you have to use the right techniques and right weapons at the right times. The essence mechanic is also unique and offers constant mid-battle decisions.

The story is... it's there I guess. It's pretty terrible, truth be told. And the voice acting is hilariously bad early 2000s style. But let's face it, nobody plays NG for the story. At least the environments are cool and well designed, as are most of the monsters and characters (let's not talk about Rachel). The futuristic mashup with traditional Japanese ninjas and samurai is a very cool setting.

The graphics also need to be shouted out. Sure, I turned up the rendering resolution by 6x in Xemu, but still. Barring some low-res ground textures and the like the game looks phenomenal for a 2005 console release. What Team Ninja were able to extract out of the scuffed ass original Xbox hardware is just black magic. Character models still look great and the animations are fantastic.

Definitely recommend checking it out if you like character action games. NGB is considered by many to be the peak of that genre and it's easy to see why.

Earth 2150

I might be a bit obsessed with Project Wingman at the moment.

soul reaver remastered

Almost done with the mission mode on Mario Kart DS. Gonna start a playthrough of Shadow the Hedgehog next.