Metroid Prime (which I am playing on the Wii U gamepad controller) is phenomenal to play even today. Only limitation is the grapics, they were gorgoeus for the time, but a bit blurry for todays eyes. But it’s an awesome experience, regardless.
I will have to write my own entry on the Wiki 
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Haven’t replied to one of these threads in an age or so…so let’s see what I’ve been up to.
Star Citizen
Played it last December/January, more or less for the first time. Friend bought a starter pack ages ago (like, 5 years ago, maybe?) and I never really had a computer with enough grunt to run it passably. So, anyway, they were doing a free flight weekend/starship show and I figured I’d give it a try. Loved the sense of scale and design of the ship which highlights, once again, how silly out of proportion the cockpits in Elite: Dangerous are. Loved sense of place within the ships and world, all that felt really neat to me. Piloting them felt like being a person in a vehicle in a way I haven’t really encountered in a long while, and that felt nice as well. I can say i even dug the personal outfitting options, but…I wouldn’t touch it outside the free flight weekend. The grind is not something I’m interested in, and the prison mechanics are so jank doing anything fun leads to waiting out a multi-hour timer 'cause everything was too broken to actually do anything else. Also the forever impending character wipes don’t really do a lot to convince me I’m not gonna play, get into a comfortable groove, then get knocked down to starting over from scratch.
Highlight: Was traveling through space on autopilot on one of the, at the time, newly added ships, went to visit the head, sat down on the toilet, and was sucked out into space. Must’ve cackled for like ten minutes when it happened.
Genshin Impact
Have just been doing dailies. Had some fun with the Lantern Festival event stuff. Did the recent Geovishap hunt and was underwhelmed by fighting two adults being generally easier than fighting a single of the hatchlings. Mostly just in a holding pattern, tbh. Do some dailies, go do something else. New big event coming up, but impending eviction kinda puts a pall on continuing to play or be interested in future stuff.
Star Trek Online
Apparently I’m playing this again. Picked it up for the first time in I dunno how long, at least 5 years, maybe more. Been kind of an experience coming back to something that’s exactly as janky as I remember, albeit the power creep has kinda exploded in the interim. Makes doing pub stuff boring in the exact same way pub play is often boring in Warframe: You get one super powered ship that just kills everything before anyone else gets a chance to contribute, which…well, it’s nice that I can go into “Advanced” difficulty and put in token effort and get rewards from time to time and not worry about getting tagged AFK. The campaigns they’ve added have been kinda all over the map fun wise, but the most recent arc has been pretty solidly fun, imo.
Highlight: I didn’t know I could disintegrate people with dropkicks, but I can and I have.
Project Wingman
Was a fun Ace Combat like, played through and beat the hell out of it. Kinda gave up on playthrough 2 at the final boss on the highest difficulty 'cause it was just dragging on way too long with the over intense orange effects. I generally enjoyed the flight model and air combat a fair bit more than in Ace Combat 7, though there is a tendency for some missions to be overlong.
Highlight: Fought the ace difficulty campaign just about end-to-end in only the F-4 and the Su-25.
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I’ve also started playing Loop Hero, took me like 100 trips around the loop in many expeditions to get to the second chapter of the game, so I may not be very good at it? I did manage to unlock two additional character classes and build out a lot of your base. I’m…not so sure where it’s going to be going from here, all available evidence seems to indicate it’s just going to get mega-fiddly, we’ll just have to see how that goes.
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Thanks for the Sekiro tips. They enabled me to beat the first miniboss. But then I got to General Naomori Kawarada.
I tried him repeatedly for quite a while, but even with an initial sneak attack from the roof and consistently countering his sweep and jumping on his head, I can’t get his posture bar down halfway.
I think I’m done with this game. I knew it really wasn’t going to be for me, but I like the other From Software games so much that I had to at least give it a chance.
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I hated that fight almost as much as I hate the next early miniboss (the shinobi hunter, wait until you get to him) and early boss (the ogre, also sucks and teaches you the wrong lesson), because it inexplicably teaches you that you have to pay close attention to the various kinds of colour-coded unblockable attacks, which you really don’t! you can almost always jump rather than dodge, it’s an overreliance on dodge and insufficient pressure that will get you in trouble.
it took me months before I was willing to give it a second and a third chance, I think the early game is genuinely horrendous and should’ve been totally remixed, but I really did wind up enjoying it
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the best tip I can give is that a lot of early bosses are skippable for a reason and the level design is a lot of fun once you start making forward progress. but I’m genuinely surprised that more people didn’t give up on the game initially, because it earns very little goodwill at first
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They kinda-sorta did this with the Hirata estate being available from roughly the first 30 minutes of the game. It’s got some way harder encounters and bosses but it feels like a better place to learn what the game “really wants” than the stuff leading up to Ashina castle.
I’m with Felix in thinking the level design of later areas is really worth seeing, especially as a fan of Fromsoft’s Souls games. What I am about to say sounds stupid, in that it makes Sekiro seem very one-note, though I think you can take it as really neat aspect that’s just kind of shockingly simple: but I really do believe that parrying is like the single obstacle in this entire game. Which means it’s kind of an impassible brick wall for some, buta singular and tangible goal for others who are determined enough to beat against it to see it crumble.
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the mid-game bossfights are very good and imo more forgiving and dynamic than a lot of the other souls games, it just eases you in disastrously badly
if you play it long enough to reach the centipede monster you will be furious on realizing that they could’ve made that the first boss instead
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hello past me
I have played Valis III since you posted this vicious lie
you were wrong and the ice level is still more fucking bullshit than the canal
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If anything Besiege is just satisfying since it combines building stuff with destroying stuff. The real shit is when you start getting in to flying machines. Though it’s probably easier now that they’ve got altitude sensors and such, but I never regret my steam jet monstrosities.
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cut your losses early around loops 10 or 20, you can’t get more than 10 of some resources in a single loop
Flying machines are so finicky! I kind of prefer building the Besiege equivalent of ultralights because it’s down a lot more to fine tuning stuff. I haven’t tried making a flier since I got into the automation blocks, it could be fun. It’s funny that building huge airships is easier than small ones because if you do the stacked wheels style of propeller you can generate as much lift as you want.
I got stuck in this game for two hours thankfully looked up an online walkthrough found out there was no puzzle just a bad camera angle and a finicky prompt for a door and 5 minutes later the game gave me a To Be Continued…
Still worth playing and if you didn’t get the itch bundle you can get it for 3 bucks. It’s cool! Slime mentioned it looks like a DS port of a PS1 game. Which yeah!!! Almost certainly will be in my top 10 for the year.
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baroque reference alert 
Oh that’s across many many expeditions, I’m not sure I’ve ever hit the resource cap.
today I played eschatos for the first time and oh my god
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I can feel Shadow of Wardor getting its AAA hooks into me so I’m going to go ahead and call it a day after beating the first fortress. I don’t think the game has anything new to show me after that except More Orcs and Somewhat Pointless Story Missions, which I’ll just read on wikipedia or whatever.
Stray thoughts:
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I do love the orcs a lot in this game. I absolutely love the captains that have hype men, that made me smile every time it happened. I like much of the incidental dialogue that you overhear everywhere, though I will be happy if I never have to hear anyone say “Pinkskin” again.
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Apparently orcs are carried back to “the vats” when they die, meaning that their parts are reused and brought back as new orcs. I overheard this from an orc wondering if he would be the same orc even after he got killed and arose again from the vats. Highly philosophical orc right there
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The less that talion and celebrimbor argue about shit, the less interested I am. Was hoping to get to hang out with them and shelob more, but the story has taken a backseat to the meat of the game, which I feel like I have a good grasp on.
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Even the story is a lot weaker now. It’s like “hey let’s go rescue people” or “let’s go kill some orcs” rather than “hey let’s go talk to the spider who will predict the future, but only when it suits her, and it’s unclear what her ends are.” The latter is good…though it seems that Shelob is just Not Here anymore, so it’s totally unresolved? I am not going to get all of her memories so that I can figure out like, her basic motivation though.
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This game alternates between Hit-Button-Feel-Good and “Talion Won’t Jump Over This 6 Inch Tall Curb Unless I’m Holding A To Dash/I’m Stuck On Top Of This Barrel Because Talion Is a Dipshit” very quickly. There’s not enough HBFG to make up for the latter IMO
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The nemesis system is very complete, except I’m sad that I can’t fully take over an area. There are always stray orcs just hanging out everywhere even after a takeover. I also read that if you get all the captains they’ll start betraying each other, so there are always orcs to kill. I kind of want a Crackdown situation where an area becomes basically peaceful after you clear it out.
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I do wish you could take captains from one area to another. I want to be able to have like a 3 orc crew that helps me conquer all of Mordor. I suppose this might make it too easy.
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The game is not quite chaotic enough to support the “interrupted by a random captain” thing that happens all the time. This should feel like fucking something up in Heat Signature and having to struggle to recover, but usually it just turns it into a binary of “can i kill this guy or should i run away”.
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It’s definitely an AAA game, but it’s not as much of a greased slide or an IKEA as other AAA games have been recently. I genuinely like it. I can feel it starting to become a compulsion though so I’m going to uninstall it.
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The Bruz questline is probably the best main story remaining, it should pick up back in the ice zone. Zog the undead is another good one.
there’s an Olog dressed up like Mario in the Eltariel dlc and a guy who wears a spider for a hat because his brain is marinating in arachnid venom
before you drop it, if you crank the difficulty up (Gravewalker = life is pain, Brutal = glass cannon), you can play it like X-Com where you’re at risk of losing the war and your army and permanently screwing your save file (it’s great). 1 save file, though, so if you care about it you need to back it up yourself
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this is unfortunately why I have stopped playing melee online
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