Baldurs gate 3. I started when it came out, but then got distracted by a few games. It took like 200+ hours, but I finally got my fill of factorio. So now back to bg3-it’s very good.

I finished Hellblade and am feeling ready for the sequel that’s coming soon. It wasn’t a perfect game, but I really appreciate what they tried for and I think a lot of it was successful. The visual and (especially) audio design was stellar and the narrative is really interesting and touching and the presentation was mostly great. The trials were my favourite part, in particular the blind one where you have to navigate by sound and controller vibration and ignore the scary enemies. I almost wish they went all in on that sort of thing. Or if not, that they tuned the combat encounters differently. I actually quite enjoyed the combat system but there wasn’t much of a reason to fully explore its nuances.

After that, I finally started Red Dead Redemption 2, which is my current game. So far it’s mostly living up to the off-the-charts hype, though as usual I had to tweak some things to taste through mods (yes even on a first playthrough). I’m really enjoying it so far and can see myself either spending 400 hours on this game or get completely burned out (as I was by Ghost of Tsushima). Curious to see which it will be. I also sadly got the ending spoiled for me (way back) and I’m really sad about it because I can already tell the impact it would have had on me and I’m deeply sad I’m never going to get to experience that.

Skate 3

I’m almost done with it, I only have two challenges of the Maloof DLC left. Definitely the worst one, the map is so boring…

Also, to Hell with online achievements. Servers for the game are very unstable and only a handful of people still play. Two achievements are simply impossible because it’s no longer possible to upload replays, and designing a logo requires going to a website which no longer exists.

Monster Hunter World

Stardew Valley

Dark Age of Camelot (Eden free server)

The original NES version of Legend of Zelda! I want to (slowly) work through the whole Zelda chronology, barring like, the CDi ones. I’ve had the NES Zelda games on my 3DS for ages but I always found them difficult to play and pretty bad at telegraphing where I was actually supposed to go.

This time around, I just bit the bullet and used a walkthrough, and collected a whole bunch of power-ups before the first dungeon. And now a couple dungeons in, I’m actually having a lot of fun with it! I even kind of like how completely open it is. I stumbled across the eighth dungeon, took one look at the four-headed bullet-spitting plant thing, and turned right around. But it’s cool that I can go there pretty much from the start!

Just started up Cyberpunk 2077, which I’m really enjoying so far! I’m playing it on Steam Deck, so some of the UI elements are really teeny-tiny, which is probably my biggest complaint.

Curious about something, I installed Dragon’s Dogma since I had it from sometime it was given out free. It wasn’t what I thought it was. I must’ve confused it with this other game because I’m actually getting into DD here. Still no clue what the name of the game I was confusing it for is though.

Steadily trying to 100% Bejeweled 3, but have definitely been slowed down as today I discovered the joy that is rollercoaster tycoon deluxe and played for about 6 hours in one sitting!

Middle Earth: Shadow of War: Good old open world action fun. Kill countless mobs, gather countless collectables. A bit annoyed that subtitles are only implemented on some voice acting. Slightly indisposed that the protagonist (Talion) looks too much like an unkempt Ron Desantis.

Last week Snowrunner had an update that moved my truck into storage and held it hostage. After paying the extortion fee ($3) for the tire DLC I got it out, apparently one of the default rims was accidentally marked as dlc? Really weird bug.

Also I started playing Dark Souls II, which is very good but I’m also pretty bad at it

I gave some attention to World of Warcraft Classic - Season of Discovery. It is certainly enjoyable to have a lively world with plenty of people interacting everywhere, but the nuts and bolts of Vanilla are largely the same. The slow leveling, the 1-hour cooldown for my Hearthstone (the item that takes me back to the Innkeeper I set), the fact that I must be physically at the dungeon location to enter an instance, and the demands for being highly social for a bunch of basic stuff feel exhausting. A lot of time I need people for group quests and runes, and the mere thought of talking to strangers is discouraging. I realized that, while I enjoy social interaction, that is not necessarily true for the majority of my playtime. Classic Wrath always feels like a good compromise for me – it is still Classic and the open world is still relevant, but it has a lot of QOL that makes it manageable for me. The Hearthstone cooldown is 30 minutes, I get my first mount at level 20 instead of 40, and the Random Dungeon Finder puts me in an instance automatically. Granted, there’s not a lot of people on Wrath right now, but I still enjoy leveling my character, leveling mining, getting ready for Cataclysm, and making money on the auction house. I found a nice wholesome guild, but it seems that most people are just playing SoD.

Currently playing Persona 3 Reload

Tomb Raider Anniversary was dirt-cheap on Steam so I bought it. As a remake it feels a whole lot smoother to play compared to the 1996 original, no tank controls. I also installed ReShade and a couple of texture upscale mods to make it more pleasant-looking, with add-on enhanced ReShade I could also use ray-traced global illumination.

I played BattleBit Remastered for the first time since August and I really need to hone my skills.

I also several demos on Steam, News Tower really got me hooked with its gameplay. The full game should release on Early Access in a couple days, might as well buy it.

My RX 6850 decided to die on me, just when I finally had the motivation to continue BG3 and/or The Outer Worlds. So I’ve been playing mostly Vampire Survivors on the Deck. Had some catching up to do on the new content anyway.

I’ve been really enjoying racing in Automobilista 2 with several friends recently. A bunch of us went from using a controller to having a wheel and often a wheel stand in a short period of time, because we all got so into it.

I think there is a lot going for AMS2 (as it is commonly abbreviated): lots of variety in the cars and tracks, it is easy to set up casual races with friends, it is very dynamic (like in varying track and weather conditions), works well with a controller or a wheel, looks good and performs well, etc.