I jumped into the modern age with my first recent FPS in a while - Shadow Warrior 2013. Awesome, cheesy, fun and excellent game - everything about it is fluid and beautiful with a pefect set of gameplay mechanics, gorgeous visuals, laugh out loud moments and fun gameplay.
I've also been playing (but put on the back burner due to SW2013) the second Van Helsing game. I like the tower defense stuff, I like the Assassin's Creed Brotherhood "Mission" stuff where I pick a captain and send him off, I like the gameplay segments where I feel brilliant and gameplay just dances as I effortlessly switch between melee and ranged, peppering in skills all the way.
What I DON'T like is I feel large parts of the game simply require me to spend money to win. For every section where I think it's my skill flipping between guns and swords which carries the day, there are ten where I just spend the gold to respawn. I either suck at the game, or it really does intend cash to be used solely as a mechanic to progress. Frustrating. I don't like "Kill a guy, die, buy a respawn, kill a guy, die, buy a respawn..." over and over again. And because the respawn is (thankfully!) proportional to your current gold, there's no reason you can't keep doing it over and over and over again. Doesn't sit well with me as a gameplay loop, which is a shame because so much else of the game is done right.
DampSquib: Soviet-Afghan War - one last time before i get rid of it.
I've never heard of this one - I'm guessing serious grognard hexbased wargame? Is it recent? Or a throwback? Also, nice to see you! Hope you're doing well! (I rudely asked a personal question once and had enough of an answer to hope everything's been on the up and up!).
*edit to add
drealmer7: but I recently got FTL
I just saw this. I don't know what it is about the game, but FTL is that special sort of perfect game. Probably one of my favorites of the last few years. I'm not even sure what it is it does and yet at the same time I can't figure out why other game can't capture "it" as well as FTL. It's so simple, yet deep. You're always "kind of" doing the same thing every time, yet it's different every time you play. There's no story, but your little guys weave their own story just by moving from one dot to the next. I so love this game!