CS:GO, I just have level up on GN2

Bloodborne.

I couldn't get into Dark Souls 2, but I'm feeling this so far, although in spite of the "tough but fair" reputation of the series, some of my deaths have felt distinctly cheap. Two bosses down so far.

ed. And the Blood Starved Beast is down on my first try. I stumbled into its area completely by accident, I had a huge number of blood echoes that I didn't want to use, and when it went down, I was out of healing items and swearing profusely ... but man, when it did go down, what a rush. I really am into this.

NEO Scavenger... or should I say it's playing me?

For my tax refund I began rebuilding my Playstation 2 collection (yes I could have gotten a PS4 but there's nothing I want to play as far as physical games there, plus I have a bandwidth cap and the high watt draw caused me to reconsider). On the PS2 I'm playing Sonic Heroes, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec and will begin Wild Arms 3 in earnest soon (I need to pull out my strategy guide for it, now that I think about it).

On my iMac, I just bought Everspace, which I'm in love with, and I recently earned over $1B in Transport Fever. Before Spring Break 2017 is over I want to also start Invisible, Inc. and the DLC.

Alley Cat. Just can't get past that final difficulty level. Too much trash being chucked out of windows and not enough clothes on the washing line :P

I'm playing "The Summoning" right now. I've just entered the ebon knight's domain. But I'm not worried, because I've been carrying around a dagaz rune for hours.

Shadowrun Returns

Not sure if it's still crpg. Looks like linear adventure with some combat for now. I hope it'll give me some more freedom soon...

It doesn't. I really loved the game, and apparently Dragonfall adds a bit more in the way of traditional RPG party / character / story development.

But I still thought Returns was great. I really like the strange techno-fantasy world Shadowrun spins and especially enjoyed messing around with the oddball races and classes that are implemented totally differently from most of the types of RPGs I've played.

If you're looking for a bit more freedom but liking the core gameplay, setting and race / class mix you might want to try Dragonfall instead. Did you maybe accidentally get it as a freebie a sale or two back and forget about it?

The freedom in the SR games is about - how you win the fights.
And I actually love them both (have yet to play HongKong). :-)

Absolutely this. I've always *known* about the Shadowrun world, but Returns was really my first serious experience with it. I'm usually a fan of "set" parties and growing with your group, but the way Returns let you constantly experiment with your team was a lot of the fun.

Being new to actually playing with these guys, it was fun to constantly swap in everything from a shaman to a troll to a mage, etc. Really let me get a taste of all sorts of weird class combinations.

What I always liked about the SR games is: The feeling that fans of that world made the games for .. fans of that world. I can really relate that. There are flaws, but there's passion all over the place too.

Steep

WTF do I know about extreme winter sports? SFA! But Steep is free to play this weekend on all platforms so I downloaded it onto the Xbox for a go. I actually had some good fun for about 3 hours...then it sort of trailed off, started feeling like nothing new was left, just more of the same. Up until that point it was fun...I really liked the timed checkpoint runs, but came to dislike the trick style runs. Unfortunately there aren't enough of the former and too much of the latter.
But you have to understand my lifelong views on any "sport" where you need a panel of judges to award scores based on arbitrary made up degrees of difficulty. If it ain't won against the clock or by scoring goals then shit-can it I say - so those freestyle runs in Steep were never going to be my sort of thing really. I prefer my sports to have tangible targets.

But Steep does have some fun still and it runs smooth and looks pretty amazing, especially jumping out of a balloon with a wingsuit over the Alps. Thanks Ubi for the free play weekend to give it a try, but there's not enough in it for me to buy it.

Yep, I've got it and it is already queued :)

Exactly the same here. And the setting works like a charm. I need to agree with Ixamyakxim's opinion cited below. It's fascinating mix of different ideas, which works surprisingly well.

The only issue is that I love exploring the world, choosing my own path etc. In SR game makes you to follow storyline and pushes you from point A to point B without possibility to mix an alphabet a bit. Great graphics and unique atmosphere of cyber-fantasy cause that I miss such freedom even more.

Project Cars

I'm loving this one! I really should have bought this long ago, but was put off by some pretty average reviews. But then it was made a recent GwG game, so I basically play it now without paying anything extra. It turns out the main issues people have with it are trying to play it on PC with keyboard (seriously...why?) and difficulty on consoles and PC with standard pad controllers. But with my wheel it controls outstanding for me. The cars have a real feeling of weight and momentum and there are plenty of tuning options and race options. There's nothing flashy about it, but good racing sims just need accurate tracks and decent handling, not gimmicks or Codemasters rubber band AI.

It's running smoothly even with full grid of cars and great view distance and clarity- the most important things for race sims. The career story mode is a bit weak and is the only negative from me so far. Rather than a fictional career mode over several seasons, I'd just prefer the devs selected a few major historical periods and properly simulated the real seasons from them...70's Euro Group 5, early 80's Group A, late 80's Group A, 90's DTM, 00's WTCC etc.

Anyway, I can see myself putting LOTS of hours into this over the next few weeks...I think I'll even try for the "finish a 24 hour race with real time progression" achievement. It's not that bad, you have co-drivers to take over...just like real- hopefully they don't fuck it up when I'm sleeping...

So I'm just playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild right now (on Wii U - owing to a lack of worthwhile games on the Switch right now I've decided to pass on buying one until there's something worthwhile to play on it that I don't already have for Wii U).

The game is pretty awesome on the whole, and fairly hardcore in how resolutely it refuses to hold your hand. You get a few explanatory text boxes along with a section at the start that's designed to teach you how to use the rune powers (bearing in mind that it doesn't even explain THAT - the game's idea of a tutorial is briefly explaining how the controls for a power works and then just leaving you to your own devices to see what limits that power can be pushed to). While the game has a map and a quest log, many of the quests don't have destination markers - you're expected to find certain locations based on information and riddles alone. Where a quest marker is given, you'll often find that getting from A to B is actually never as simple as it sounds.

One thing that has just blown my mind is a singular trek across a desert. Treks across challenging environments have always been something that open-world RPGs have trivialised to a mind-numbing degree, so I was surprised to see how tensely and horrifyingly BotW depicted the experience. At night, temperatures drop to freezing, so you have to keep a supply of cold resistance foods or a lit torch with you, wear warm clothing (not easy to find) or stick close to a fire. If you don't, your life hearts ebb away in a matter of a couple of minutes. During the day, temperatures rise to searing levels, so you have to stick to the shadows, the distance between which can be substantial on open ground. Exposure to this sunlight also reduces your life points, and there are only a few hard-to-find ways to protect against it. Bearing in mind that, while you can save anywhere, I did end up losing 20 minutes of gameplay twice because I got ambushed in the middle of open desert and in a sandstorm (which deactivates your main map and minimap), leaving me blind and aimless (you can only skip time at a fireplace, of none was to be found).

First time in a while that I've felt genuinely challenged by a game without having unannounced surprised jumped on me. It's only March but this is a fairly robust candidate for GOTY for me so far.