Bit a of mishmash, with Disco Elysium, Session: Skateboarding, Imperator: Rome, Shadow Warrior 2, Oxygen Not Included and Cities Skylines all taking up a bit of time in the past few days. Granted, nearly all gaming time went to Disco Elysium, with a few dozen minutes here and there for the others - thankfully, most of them cater well to quick palate cleansing.
Disco Elysium is great. Enough so that I like progressing a bit everyday, then digesting it in the time before I get back to it, like a good book. I wonder if I would tolerate the format/wordiness in multiple RPGs back to back… I suspect I probably only have an interest in a game like this once a year, and other “RPG” time would go towards something like RDR2/Witcher style ARPGs in big, open worlds. This is pretty much the perfect implementation of the isometric RPG, previously held by Planescape: Torment. No combat mechanics are a huge pro, in my opinion.
Session: Skateboarding remains the best go to for 5-60 minute gaming sessions that are mostly mindless (well, muscle memory). It’s like a fighting game, but where you do skateboarding tricks instead. I love it.
Imperator: Rome is feeling more interesting now with the 1.3x updates (I haven’t played since 1.1, and then only briefly). I started a new game as Rome and conquered most of the southern half of Italy, trying to grasp the various new or adjusted mechanics - missions, family, population, etc. I can now foresee investing EU4 levels of time into this, gradually over the coming years, knocking off one war/conquest a day. I’ve never been able to binge grand strategy, but they do have gradual staying power.
Shadow Warrior 2 - more muscle memory, bright lights gaming. I like how the levels allow me to drop in for a wild, 10-15 minute ride every few hours, days, weeks, months - basically at whatever frequency I want - an easy game to drop back into without having missed anything. This is like the FPS version of a good sports/fighting game, easy to get into and walk away from.
Oxygen Not Included - still GOTY. I’m yet again at that point where a base is mostly self sufficient, and thus starting to get a little boring/gripping, which means I can mange to tear myself away after just some minor tinkering for efficiency/specific goals each day. For my next run I think I’ll try a mod that makes germs a real challenge, or a harder biome, or probably both! And this will then shoot to the top of the list, again…
Cities Skylines - I saw someone else post about this recently and it piqued my curiosity. Played a few dozen hours on release and left it, disappointed it wasn’t challenging enough. Sad to be reminded that is still the case after another 30 minutes with it this weekend. Might try modding in difficulty, but seems most are strictly cosmetic with limited interest in making things harder among that community. Really wish there was a good, challenging city builder out there.
