I HATE playing mobile games but my wife got me hooked on Dawncaster. It’s a roguelike deck builder. I think it’s like $4-5 and no micro transactions but there are expansion packs to add new zones and enemies. I’ve since picked them all up. It’s regularly updated with free content packs and balance changes. The devs are very responsive with the community.

I tried a bunch of different gaming headsets over the years but as I got older and gave up on online games, I grabbed a pair of AudioTechnica ATH-M50 and have probably had them at least a decade now. They’re closed ear studio monitor headphones so they sound great and are comfortable with long use. I’ve replaced both the cushions and the cable and they still work great.

I think the current variant is the ATH-M50x.

I loved DA:O. It was far from perfect, but at the time it was the closest we could get to a spiritual successor to Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights, and Icewind Dale - dark fantasy, tactical combat, and a decent story.

Then DA 2 came along and it felt like an entirely different series. I didn’t get it at the time because of how simplified and arcadey it looked. I picked it up on some deep sale and got bored of it pretty quickly.

DA:I seemed to be trending back in the right direction with a bit more tactical combat. I never finished it but it was decent enough on a sale. This looks like they doubled down on DA 2 here and…meh.

Doubtful I would have gotten it anyway since it’s EA but I would have loved to have been proven wrong.

Cool, thanks for that. I read John Romero’s ‘Doom Guy’ earlier this year and it was pretty good. Not perfect, but it fed my nostalgia for the olden days of Commander Keen and Doom.

I think some of the later stuff aged well if you’re into point and click adventure games and some “retro” looking graphics. But the early ones might be a little janky for anyone who didn’t live through that era.

You have to type in the actions you want to do and they looked like this:

The “small” games that inspired, if not invented it were Doom and D&D. There was a Doom map called Fortress where you’d attack each other’s base and the further you’d progress into your opponent’s base, the better weapons it’d unlock for them to use.

A few guys in Australia combined the ideas in a Quake mod called Quake Team Fortress. Then they got hired at Valve to remake it on the Half Life engine as Team Fortress Classic.

I think the “Microsoft dilemma” is just called capitalism. If you’re not making all the money, you’re losing the game.