CRAFT BEETLE

Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

Playing...

HITMAN: World of Assassination

Playing...

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun

Playing...

Cyberpunk 2077

I have to admit I was a huge hater when this game came out. I had absolutely no hype for it, didn't watch any trailers and new very little about it. So to me, all I saw was a game struggling and floundering, and developer promises broken and a poor product sold at full price. I wrote the game off and moved on. Fast forward to the 2.1 patch. On a whim I broke my promise of never playing this game and bought it and the DLC on sale. Little did I know the game would become one of my favorites of all time. I think it really helped that I didn't have any expectation for the game, I know a lot of people expected an RPG with dialogue and decisions and character progression, and of course were disappointed with a mostly linear game. Meanwhile I came in expecting to shoot a bunch of goons for about 10 hours and was happily surprised with 100 hrs of beautiful realistic and well acted characters, a compelling story, and very fun gameplay. Johnny Silverhand lives rent free in my head.

Monument Valley

A cute little game kill a few hours. None of the puzzles were stumpers but the vibes were clean and it didn't overstay its welcome. I also played the bonus levels and found them to be about the same. I first learned about this game from House of Cards. That did not age well, but the game was good enough to survive that hit.

Downwell

I played a bit of Downwell on Play Pass. I found it to be okay, nothing compelling. Obviously it's only meant to be a little mini game but it didn't have the draw found in Flappy Bird or 2048.

Slay The Spire

I played this game in short bursts on my phone over the course of a week. I think that is really what it was designed for, I can't image sitting down at a computer and focusing on it. The mechanics have enough depth to be engrossing until the end of the game. I slew the spire and unlocked all 4 characters, though The Silent was my favorite and was the one I used to beat the game. Overall a very enjoyable experience.

Final Fantasy Tactics

A foundational game with absolutely beautiful artwork and animations. I would watch an un-narrated long-play of this game just to follow the story. Though I do not have much patience for the difficulty mainly due to the clunky interface and slow time to get back in the fight. I have played hours of this game and enjoyed them but I have to put it down.

Sifu

I had a passing interest in the game and finally decided to pick it up after Jacob Geller made a video about it. It has such an amazing progression, from the episodic aging to the true ending. I started out as I assume most do, running around getting hit, dying, barely making it through levels. But as I got better at the game I slowly mastered the flow of bait and punish, as well as the rush and strike. I easily made it through large portions of the game untouched and finally finished the game first in the bad ending and then the good. The bonus stages were also a blast. In a strange turn of events, this game caused me to want to play Sekiro. I needed more of that beautiful parrying gameplay.
Side note: I played on Linux and experienced a GPU memory leak. The game would get progressively slower until it became a slide show and I had to reboot it. I finally found the cause in one of the graphics settings and it was fixed.