Finally playing through all the Hitman reboots in one go (They’re called 1-2-3, or now “World Of Assassination” for the whole experience, plus paid DLCs for additional missions). I played through all the original Hitman games back in the day.

While you can of course cheese your way through each mission pretty easily (NPC: “Well, he only held that weapon in his hand for less than 2 seconds, so I’ll ignore it.” or “Oh, coins on the ground! Better open that locked door to get to them so that you can follow me inside!”), it actually IS a lot of fun if you deliberately take it slow and discover all the stories that are hidden in each mission. It opens up crafty ways of getting to your targets & entertains much more than just exploiting the game engine’s weaknesses. Truly something for #patientGamers

I’ve been playing some Bomberman.

I feel like I’ve started so many games these past weeks and months but haven’t stuck with any… but I guess nothing new for me really as I never finish games anyway.

I finally got Mario Kart 8 on the switch. It’s a blast playing with my kids and showing no mercy 😈.

I also installed the Jupiter Hell Classic demo (a demake of a remake of a roguelike unmake of Doom.) I enjoy it but similar to Jupiter Hell I’m pretty terrible at it so far. It’s definitely worth a look if you’re a roguelike fan. You can play the original unmake DRL (Doom: the roguelike) for free, or also try the demo for JHC on steam.

Once again trying to do a good redstone in Minecraft. But mostly just mine and chill.

Dysmantle has me looking for skulls and tires to crush.

Started playing Half Life 1. Never played any of the Half Life games before.

As for a recommendation, Chrono Trigger and the Silent Hill games (1-3, including the remake of 2).

Playing horizon zero dawn atm. Got easy red 2 and battle front 2 and road craft for multiplayer with my group

Sim city 4

My son bought Cyberpunk 2077 on sale. I got hooked immediately.

I finished my play-through of Skyward Sword HD. Story 10/10, game 7/10, overall 8/10.

Continuing to play through classic Zelda games, I started a play-through of Minish Cap. I played this once before years ago, but I don’t remember any of it. The Minish are so freakin’ cute, I forgot how fun this little game was!

After finishing Nier Automata in my Switch (quite an awesome port tbh, I cheated a bit as I overclocked my unit to make it run smoother) and Breath of The Wild I am focusing on smaller games, which are:

• Monument Valley (Android)
• Retro City Rampage (PS Vita)
• Pokémon Omega Ruby (almost finished, 3DS).

Been working my way through the achievements for State of Decay 2, I’ve almost got all the supplies gathered up in my community to speedrun through the last two legacies on the hardest difficulty.

It’s a really solid zombie survival, that walks a nice balance of not having standard survival micromanagement. Accessible(fun) combat, and some expression in base/resource management but not to the point where it dominates moment to moment play. Hits the good middle ground of permadeath in terms of losing survivors, but still having a community so you’re not losing all your resources/progress.

I’m playing two games this week. First is Pentiment, and the only reason I’m also playing another game at the same time is that I needed something to break up the sometimes excruciating sessions of playing Pentiment. I’m in the final act now so I don’t think there are too many hours remaining.

Now, Pentiment is actually not a bad… I want to say game but let’s face it, it’s not a game. Pentiment is not a bad visual novel. It is absolutely gorgeous, it’s extremely well researched and it has some interesting things to say, and some interesting characters to get to know that are more layered than you think at first. But holy shit is the game tediously slow and laborious to slog through. Half the playing time is spent blankly staring at the screen as your character slowly waddles around the town of Tassing. The conversations themselves are painfully slow, and many feel shallow and sort of… banal. There is good stuff sprinkled in there, but you have to sift through a lot of mundanity to get to it. It also sort of rubbed me the wrong way that everyone uses such modern phrasing and language when historical accuracy was such a selling point for the game. I’m still appreciating it - mainly the art and the history - but I need to take breaks from it.

…which I’ve done by playing Mandragora: Whispers of the Witch Tree. I’ve had my eye on it since it’s written by Bloodlines-writer Brian Mitsoda, and with it being 25% off at the summer sale I thought why not.

It’s a Metroidvania Soulslike with a skill tree inspired by Path of Exile, and I’m really enjoying what I’ve played of it so far. Combat has been solid though I’ve only played a few hours, but the bosses have been good. There are a bunch of different play styles that all seem very different and I am already having fun thinking about builds and planning a second run with a completely different character. The game is beautiful too, the art style is great and I like the splash art for the characters.

The writing has been okay so far, the world is kinda cool but nothing earth shattering - generic evil energy threatening to consume everything type deal. I’m hoping for some twists down the line. You’re playing as an inquisitor so I assume it will be revealed the witches you hunt are maybe not so evil after all. The goldsmith Yrsa is so far the highlight with some entertaining lines.

So far from what I’ve seen I definitely would recommend it if you like these types of games.

Continued playing Metro 2033 Redux.

Still trucking on the [email protected] with Antimatter Dimensions, lovely unfolding mechanics, would probably appeal to completionists because getting achievements actually gets you in-game bonuses. Also have been playing the Zachtronics puzzle programming/electrical engineering game Shenzhen I/O that could make a person a bit more comfortable with in real life assembly languages.