Return to front page

Some Games I Like

Either I keep expanding this list or I make a new page.

Very Random

These are known as "roguelikes", where the layouts and rewards change in each run. Sometimes you get to ride roughshod over everything, and other times, you get ridden over.

The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth is a no-brainer. 1565 hours of play since its release can't be wrong. I fell in love from the moment I understood its twin-stick concepts: Robotron meets Legend of Zelda dungeons where you are Isaac, trying to escape a deranged, homicidal mother. There are multiple endings, and now multiple routes to meet your destinies. And all of this rendered in pixelly goodness that makes the general atmosphere of death and doom almost homely. Bosses can be tough, especially once you unlock The Ascent or The Corpse. Yahtzee doesn't know what to make of it. I think that's a positive.

Neon Abyss is a side-on platformer with a slick neon-drenched environment and a story about defeating the new gods of the world. Crazy weapons and even crazier pickups can and do make or break your run and some of the bosses are hairy fights. My only beef is that the teleport system is a bit janky; wouldn't it be better to use direction keys to swap from one valid node to another?

Balatro is a newcomer, but quite stressfully relaxing (eh?) You build poker hands with the aid of a range of jokers that can augment your score, your score multiplier, or both. There are special tarot, spectral, and planet cards that can also help if you can afford them. Basically, you beat bigger and bigger blinds until... um... well, I always lose. I guess there is a win condition, and I suppose they give you £-/5s.6d and name a park bench after you.

No Man's Sky can be described as a roguelike; you are a traveller in an shared (I am currently in a system called "Nick Sux") alien galaxy apparently designed by Roger Dean, pulled in various directions. With far more planets than anyone can explore in a lifetime, you can explore forever without meeting anyone, until you find the ideal place to settle down and build a base, or purchase a used freighter, or or or. Nowadays there is a hub you can meet people, or rather see them racing about doing the questline and ignoring everyone else. I'm more into the "find a nice spot on a nice planet and build a nice base" sort of thing myself. Which can and does get rather grindy.

Pacific Drive attracted me because it entirely revolves around maintaining and upgrading an old station wagon to explore your way into a reality-challenged zone, a nice change from the usual. Every expedition offers the chance for death, right up until the end. The story is a bit vague but still enjoyable.

Science Friction

This was going to be about space games, but those are pretty much sci-fi.

Elite Dangerous needs more love from me. Frontier have really started hitting their straps with this game: last year four new ships came out; there was the end of the Second Thargoid War, which culminated in the last alien vessel jumping to and menacing Earth itself; I got my fleet carrier to Tir (finally!); and now there's the option to bagsie yourself your very own solar system or three or four! It's still, at its base, the same game from the BBC Micro in the 1980s, but the ships are sexier, the opportunities more plentiful, and now I actually know what's going on. And yes, I have become Elite... an Elite Exobiologist. Grab your HOTAS if you're fancy or controller if you aren't, and, as CMDR Burr says, "O7 commanders, follow the greens on the way out, and do keep clear of the toast rack!" (Or keep your docking computer installed.) Well worth it.

No Man's Sky is more freeform and more colourful, and more focused on planet-side pursuits. 'Nuff said.

Viscera Cleanup Detail is one that I need to play more. Instead of being Manly Powernards McMansMan, you're a space janitor sent to clean up the mess he and his gunbunny mates made. Burn up waste, fix holes in the wall, stack barrels and boxes back in their places, sneak trophies out, and mop up the... stains. Maybe I should stream this game?

Doom (2016) is miles better than the sequel. You cannot change my mind. Yes, I have tried the sequel.

Saints' Row IV — man, I loved this game, and played it right to the end! It's a big dumb over the top finale, where you, the President of the United States, have to fight your way out of a Matrix run by aliens in order to free humanity, even though Earth gets blown up along the way. But don't take that seriously. Don't take the game seriously. They sure didn't.

Rage 2 feels more fun than the original, and more free. You're Walker, the last Ranger, out to put the kibosh on some degenerate cloned cyborg claiming to be General Cross, leader of equally degenerate cyborgs claiming to be The Authority. Lots of Mad Max road shenanigans, lashings of hot pink and, yes, yellow paint, mutants, post-apocalyptic bombast, the whole thing is a frenetic shooter and Hollywood corn flavoured.

Cyberpunk 2077 was a bit iffy in places, but I did complete it... once... and now it's almost time to try for another ending. I understand updates have been fixing some issues, but I'm still waiting for better modding tools so I can set up a housing mod as opposed to that goddamn prefab in Megabuilding H8. Tell Silverhand I sent ya, choom.

Satisfactory — ah! my new love! Almost as many hours poured into this as I did into BoI. A sci-fi factory building game, where you carry out FICSIT's Save The Day project by solving problems... which you solve by creating new ones for yourself. For instance, let's say you want nuclear power. Cool. That means you need a miner and feedline for uranium. And water feedlines for the reactors themselves, the sulphuric acid factory, and the nitric acid factory if you're making plutonium rods. And you need a concrete factory, a silica factory, a steelworks, a copper mine, a caterium mine, an encased industrial beam factory, an electromagnetic control rod factory which in turn depends on yet more factories...

...yet once you get all that set up and running, and running smoothly, it feels good. It's just so... satisfying. Well done Coffee Stain Studios.

And finally, Fallout London gets you out of the States and across the pond to jolly old England in general and London in particular. Being a Fallout 4 mega-mod, it can be uneven in places, subject to sudden crashes, and requires you to purchase FO4 GOTY on GOG for easiest setup (there's a reason for that beyond the team's control.) Unexpeectedly sprung from a mysterious underground lab (literally in the Underground), you end up grovelling through the ruins of post-war London, looking for answers and trying not to die doing so. Well done to everyone in Team Folon for such a massive, near total conversion.

(Hint: there's a full set of rozzer's dunnage and riot gear in the Bromley nick. Just watch out for ghouls, and don't mess with the local womble.)

Other Honorable Mentions

Webfishing is a nice chill, indie game where you... fish. Whether you're a low poly cat or low poly dog. Yes, you can focus on making numbers go up, but the draw is that you can share the fun and shoot the breeze with other players. Incredibly straightforward, and what is with those unidentified fishlike objects anyway?

Kind Words and Kind Words 2 are also chill, where you can write "requests" seeking sympathetic and/or helpful ears, lend such an ear, flick little witticisms into the ether. Kind Words 2 adds to this with additional spaces for media recommendations, chance conversations with strangers, the void, and the chain forest. All in a cute, lo-fi and lo-poly style. Dip into it as and when, nobody's depending on you. Mind you, I find it feels a bit isolating sometimes, since you never who with whom you're talking and never will.

Stardew Valley is a farming game, with all sorts of secrets that reveal themselves over time, wrapped around the quotidian tasks of tending and expanding your farm. I'm seriously thinking that I might start over, forearmed with what I've learned from my initial playing.

The Borderlands series... well initially I struggled with it, thanks to the ad's slugline being "the FPS and RPG had a baby". Balls. It's an FPS where you can buff some skills, but there's no deep stories here: some jerks are gonna unleash Very Bad Things and you and up to three friends get to stop them. If you die, you respawn at a station, unless you're broke. So don't get broke. And I like Torgue's weaponry. I don't like the constant freezes when the more recent games try to connect to the now defunct SHiFT servers.

While we're there, the Bioshock trilogy also deserve a mention, with their sci-fi and retro-styled leanings. I still haven't finished the original, but the other two I have. Buried under the tonics and plasmids are some serious questions about morality and governance, but don't get distracted from all the nutters trying to kill you.

Return to front page