I finished doing all the everything in Hades 2 and moved on to another, much weirder roguelike, BAZR, a mod of Super Mario 64 which makes it a roguelike deckbuilder. Great game and easy recommend, but time bonuses make it hard to suggest to anyone who hasn’t played a lot of the original already

Red Dead Redemption 2

…again

I’ve just resurrected my partner’s old(ish) gaming PC. It’s got a reasonable GTX1060 GPU, so I’ve installed Kubuntu and am dipping my toes into the world of Linux gaming. So far it’s been pretty smooth.

Difficult to know how well it’ll handle RDR2 properly until I’m out of that accursed opening section up in the mountains. Not for the first time I wish there was a way to skip straight to the train holdup.

X-COM 2: War of the Chosen:

I’ve played this game off and on for years. Fondly wishing I could get back to it and just not having the time. Then I caught strep throat and literally couldn’t do anything but just play games.

Honestly? Finally. I felt like crap, but I was so happy to have an excuse to just enjoy myself instead of being obsessed with what I “had” to do.

The game changed a lot since I last played so I had to start a new save, and I’m having a blast. I love this game so much even with some of its flaws. Do your squaddies miss a 90% shot sometimes? Yes. Infuriating.

But when they make that hail-Mary hit that saves a teammate, or you sneak through a compound to break out an imprisoned comrade and exfil, it’s ADDICTING.

Also, not gonna lie…the game hits a little different in 2025, seeing as it’s about being resistance fighters waging insurgency and a propaganda war against an alien occupying authoritarian regime that is kidnapping people and hauling them to blacksites. Man, that uh, is a little uncomfortably close. (But it’s only a game…The aliens are actually competent.)

The custom voice packs are incredible too. (My sniper with a Bob Ross voice calmly saying “Let’s do a little painting today.” Or “Let’s get a little crazy.” When setting up a shot from across the map never gets old.

This game’s complete version I’ve seen on Steam for like $5 before. This is one of the best tactical experiences there is, and at first I hated the “pressure” this game puts on you, but I’ve come to enjoy the urgency and being forced to weigh difficult decisions rather than just sending my “A-Team” of snowflake OCs to clear every single mission at a leisurely pace haha.

And the soundtrack. Oh man. Once that “Ready for Battle” track hits where you select everybody’s loadout, you really feel the weight of assembling the right squad when you never know 100% what you’re about to send them into.

Went back to try Tokyo Xtreme Racer 3 for PS2 after getting into the series from the new game on Steam.

The driving is a lot more unforgiving than the new game but It started to grow on me the more I played it.

Dead space. Such a simple and fun game. Like literally just follow the white line and shoot the baddies.

After seeing comments here on patientgamers I was reminded that I wanted to play Yoku’s Island Express. So I did. 97% complete. Not sure what’s left to do but I’ll figure it out.

Also around half-way through Pepper Grinder so I’ll be working on that for a couple evenings.

TETR.IO

I don’t remember if it’s been less than a week since I last played it, but I started Master Detective Archives: RAIN CODE recently. Judging off the first case, it appears to be simultaneously the smartest and dumbest game ever produced.

I’ve started Cave Story for the first time and it seems really cute. I recently modded my old DSi, so I’m playing that version.

I’ve fallen for Cyberpunk 2077. I had nearly forgotten how much fun Cyberpunk as a genre is. Just driving around the city seeing the sights right now.

I bought Detroit become human on the steam sale. Gonna finally give it a go

Mad Max

I’ve played it before and own it on a few platforms but it is £2.99 on Xbox at the moment so thought why not. It looks and plays great with the auto HDR and FPS boost and is kind of the perfect game to jump in/out of using quick resume. Started a new save this afternoon and will probably try and get some of the achievements I missed first time round.

Also been playing some demos on Steam and looking forward to a few of them. Tavern Keeper is my favourite so far.

Trying to give BG3 another try. Also want to finally beat Undertale. And still continuing Chrono trigger.

Decided to give Baldur’s Gate 3 another try, though this time I’ll also be doing some modding. I wish I could remove most of its D&D-ness, but then again, at that point I might as well just replay Original Sin 2 instead. I’ll at least have a mod with 2x or 4x Spell Slots, because that’s one of the most obscene mechanics in a TTRPG with spellcasters, but also other general gaming changes like merchants dropping items or better highlighting.

Still having fun with Deep Rock Galactic, unlock the Hazard 5 difficulty but don’t see myself getting too deep into it. Though I also wish the game had ‘pointless’ Assignements besides the weekly one, I play a lot better when I have a fake objective to pursue, rather than just going through missions at random.

Broke my normal rule of waiting for a 50% discount (or better) and picked up KCD2. I’ve just been mainlining it. It’s a bigger, better version of the first game (which I loved, hence the early purchase), and picks up right where that one left off. No complaints, except maybe that horseshoes are a pain in the ass to forge.