What VIDEO GAME(s) have you been playing?

I have been thinking about picking up mlb the show to do career mode and just sort of space out from stressing about my life situation for hours at a time.

More Civ 6. I think I'm better off just treating the game mentally like a more sandboxy kind of thing. It's got a lot more moving parts than 5, and I don't know it nearly as well as I do its predecessor anyway. You definitely do have to adapt your play to whatever agendas the AI has, particularly your neighbors. I'm having enough fun to keep playing, and probably to grab the expansion before too long.

I completely forgot that at one point I downloaded Portal 2, which is a game I've only played for a couple of hours. I really enjoyed it, but it was at a pretty busy time of life and I never got back to it. I fired it up again last night and had a great time. Definitely glad to check out a game from 7 years ago if it's this good.

Far Cry 5. The original came out around the time of HL2 & Doom3. It was clearly the superior game. This one is no different. Sandbox gameplay and small improvements over 3 & 4. It turns rural America up to 11 and make you hate the bad guys in a way that the other games just didn't. A couple of missions (baby delivery, Widowmaker) turn it up to 12 and ten it just revels in the joy of video gaming for a couple of minutes.

Except ...

When it's not being a sandbox. Then it sucks shit. The game jerks you out of the sandbox, at points, to do "plot shit" and that stinks. It feels like it was farmed out to an external team that didn't understand the game. You'll sneak in to a base, plant some bombs quietly because you are the stealth shovel assassin guy ... and then the mission switches and 800 guys rush the base for you to kill/survive for 2 minutes. LAME. Or it jerks you out to a cut scene "press enter to do the action" thing, which at its worse also puts yo in to super slow or or unskippble scene. These are not Far Cry. If you can't figure out how to make those plot things Far Cry then don't put them in the game.

San, thé single player campaign of Portal 2 is really good but be sure not to miss the coop campaign. Find a buddy and do it. It’s really a special experience

More No Man's Sky.

Also been revisiting 2 old iOS faves: Desktop Dungeons and Frost. Both are worth checking out.

Heroes of the Storm
Golf Story
Mario Odyssey

I definitely turned a corner on Civ 6, and it's working for me a lot more now. The management and detail has opened up quite a bit for me. In particular, you really need to be alright with managing the tech and civics in such a way that you are taking advantage of eurekas. That's a decent way to get short-term goals into the game. I also realized that it pays off to be aggressive early, since there is no warmongering penalty and the AI seems to like to settle right up in your face. The best way to make sure they don't hassle you and declare war repeatedly is to be too big for them to want to mess with you.

I am still not thrilled with the way the AI transparently wants stupid stuff sometimes, but when I play more responsively to the AI it feels like I am a little more personally invested in what happens in the game. I'm still learning to put together long-term strategies effectively using the districts mechanic, but that is a pretty fun process actually.

So yeah, I'm starting to come around on it. It's definitely a gamier experience than something like, say, a Paradox title, but that's kind of what I appreciate about it.

Every 3 months or so I start a new factory in Factorio and lose countless hours to it. The game is basically the ultimate logistics game, but not bogged down in too much realism. You mine copper and iron ore, you put the ore into furnaces, you get solid metal out of the furnaces, you put the metal into "assembling machines" the machines pop out a new type of machine, the new machines get turned into "science packs" the science packs go into labs, which generates better technology, which expands what your assembling machines can produce, etc etc etc. You have to generate power which involves pumping water, heating it into steam and directing the steam into turbines. You eventually pump oil and mine uranium. Eventually you build a rocket pad and put a satellite into the rocket and launch it, and then you win, but just like Civ, you can keep playing.

This time around it's gotten just straight up ridiculous. I've fully "beaten" the game and am still playing and expanding. I'm well over 150 launched satellites and I have about 27,000 logistic bots keeping the whole thing running. It's a giant bowl of spaghetti and I love it.

lol, it sounds so much fun and satisfying

I'm playing Mafia III. It's not bad, although the opening segments are better than the meat of the game. Also messing around with a small dual stick shooter ridiculously called Jydge instead of Judge. It's decent fun.

On top of that, I'm still hitting PUBG pretty hard. And still loving it. It's now the most played game in my Steam library.

Was having a really good conversation on PUBG on the weekend. We think PUBG/Fortnite have officially taken over the CoD casual shooter crowd. That's a pretty big deal.

I also noticed that PUBG players tend to be super chill and transparent. But Fortnite players tend to dominate conversation about their exploits and how much better their game is and stuff. it's something i've noticed several times, what a weird dichotomy.

I'm basically waiting until Magic Arena hits Xbox, but from what I hear the economy is very difficult to grind so I don't know if I'll keep it up.

There is a bit of that stupid "gamer rivalry" between the two titles. I think it mainly comes down to your personal preference on aesthetic and gameplay. Fortnite is more goofy, PUBG is more realistic. Fortnite is also free, which surely has a lot to do with its success.

My girlfriend just introduced me to Fortnite. It's very tense. I'm not sure it's actually good from a design perspective but it's tense. It does fulfill that "Oh man if everyone was after me, where would I hide?" fantasy everyone has from time to time. I'm not sure the base-building is interesting, probably it's a leftover from the game that Fortnite was before they jumped on the PUBG bandwagon.

Haven't played PUBG, though.

Black Barney wrote: I also noticed that PUBG players tend to be super chill and transparent. But Fortnite players tend to dominate conversation about their exploits and how much better their game is and stuff. it's something i've noticed several times, what a weird dichotomy.

Without knowing anything about either game, I'm sure that the Fortnite community will be more toxic and worse than the PUBG one because the former is free and free games tend to attract more toxic players.

Black Barney wrote: lol, it sounds so much fun and satisfying

I find PUBG like god like levels more intense than Fortnite, it may be personal preference though, as was said before.