I've grown quite fond of the Mauser pistols, myself. Good fire rate and it reloads fast, which is critical in an intense gun fight.

I have PS+ Premium and started jumping into various games yesterday. I started playing this game Banishers Ghosts of New Eden for PS5. I was pleasantly surprised with the story mostly. This game is a horror/action. Here is what kept me playing and why you may enjoy it.

I don’t want to give away too many spoilers if any really. So I will keep this short. You are a couple that banish ghost set in the year 1695. You are part of the banisher community even though you work independently with your partner of course. The story is well crafted you interrogate individuals to gather clues. The story is slower paced, so if you need a fast paced game this is not it.

Once you have the clues you search for the evidence of what unfolded. This is done by conducting a ritual with three choices. You have to chose correct ritual the game will not prompt you. All rituals bring forth a ghost/spirit. You may have to fight that spirit or put it to rest.

Here is where I was surprised. My second case the game makes me choose. Between placing Blame, Ascend or Descend the spirit and its most loved one. That shapes the game for you each case choice matters in the end.

The game controller mechanics are pretty simple not that complicated at all. The graphics are great but I don’t have a Pro so didn’t get full effect.

I played it for free well sort of, but if I had to purchase it. I would probably pay $25-30 for it. I don’t purchase games that often and rarely pay full price.

Bloodborne 2, surely

Today's game is Red Dead Redemption 1. I did Nigel West Dicken's quest today, and i forgot how old he looked. Since i last played the first game, i've always just had this image of him i guess being a little younger.

Instead he's this kind of wrinkly i don't remember. I don't know, maybe his tophat makes him look younger?

I also got this lovely quote from him. Words to live by honestly. I'm currently waiting for him to recover. While i did i went and did another stranger mission. Namely American Appetites Pt. 2. It turned out to be more difficult for me than i expected though because i went up the cliff. Turns out though that i didn't need to go up there. I ended up accidentally falling down the cliff though to get where i needed too. That's where the main screenshot is from. Moments before the fall.

The last mission i did was the Cow herding one with Bonnie. It was a chill mission, and it was nice to see John in his element instead of just Shooting guys. I'd have to assume the Bonnie questline is to show how John can't lead a normal life due to his past catching up with him since it ends with the barn burning and Bonnie being held for Ransom.

With how Rockstar is i wouldn't be surprised if this was intentional. It's a very nice detail to notice regardless if it is though. And it's part of what i love about these games. That's where i chose to end off for tonight though. The New Austin Chapter is a lot longer than i remember. And it seems to be longer than the other ones too. Maybe this weekend i'll sit down and just binge the entire game. I'd love to get to Undead Nightmare soon (one of my favorite parts of this game)

I've been stuck at this boss all day, it kinda sucks. There's quite a few undefendable moves. You can't even block when it goes to its third form and takes about 1/2 health with its attack. With a character they pulled out of their butts.

And to top it off, I ended up with zero hp here and the game is still running. This is an extremely frustrating and buggy experience. Going to take a break for a while, might even stop playing.

Somehow the game is continuing past 0hp. https://piped.chrisco.me/w/8pxMpZpXnw5QmU52catuJR

Before Tetris took over arcades and consoles, it was just a computer game.

Not even a Western one. It started on a Soviet mainframe.

What most people don’t know is that its first home versions were for DOS. The very first DOS port came out in 1986, made by Vadim Gerasimov—a Russian developer who adapted Alexey Pajitnov’s original concept for IBM PCs.

Then came the flood. Lots of other DOS ports followed, some barely licensed, others “licensed” in the Cold War handshake sense.

But the first official DOS release made specifically for the West? That was Spectrum Holobyte’s version in 1988. It beat the NES. It beat the arcade version.

And yes—this version was still based on Gerasimov’s DOS design.

Now, I don’t think it’s the best home version of Tetris. But it’s easily the strangest—and maybe the most interesting.

For starters, Spectrum Holobyte leaned hard into the Cold War theming. One of their print ads straight-up asked: “What are the Three Greatest Things to Come Out of the U.S.S.R.?” The answer? The Bolshoi ballet. Stolichnaya vodka. And Tetris. That was the pitch. The ad featured dancers in mid-leap, a frosty bottle of Stoli on ice, and a red game box with Cyrillic text and Saint Basil’s Cathedral slapped right on the cover. It was less a software ad than a cultural export campaign—equal parts kitsch, nationalism, and Cold War tourism. You didn’t just buy a puzzle game. You bought a Russian moment.

Inside the game, every screen drips with Soviet vibes: fishing vessels, space cosmonauts, Russian folk music, even a reference to the “Miracle on Ice.” The high score list? Labeled “Top Ten Comrades.” That kind of commitment.

This was deliberate. Spectrum Holobyte’s CEO literally asked the devs to preserve the “Soviet spirit,” not tone it down. He wanted Americans to want to buy a Russian product. Which, in 1988, was a pretty wild ask.

There was also a plane that flew across the title screen—an easter egg referencing Mathias Rust’s illegal flight into Red Square, which had humiliated the Soviet military the year before. Elorg, the Soviet licensing agency, didn’t love that. It got patched out. Along with a bunch of other Cold War touches. Fighter jets? Gone. Submarines? Replaced with a man on a horse.

Pajitnov himself insisted that Tetris be “a peaceful game heralding a new era in superpower relations.” Apparently, that meant fewer tanks.

Technically, this version of Tetris is barebones—but in a foundational kind of way. It’s missing a lot of what we now take for granted. There’s no hold piece. No wall kicks. No 180° rotation. Some versions don’t even give you bonus points for clearing four lines. Which, let’s be honest, kind of defeats the point of a Tetris.

Instead, scoring is mostly about how fast you drop pieces and whether you survive. That’s it. There is a hard drop, though. And you can set the starting height and level. Which was a nice touch.

Rotation is basic. Just clockwise and counterclockwise. No fancy adjustments. If a piece doesn’t fit, it just doesn’t. There’s no wall-kick logic to save you. And once a piece touches down? It locks immediately.

No second chances. No little delay. You either commit or you stack badly and panic.

Even visually, it’s oddly compelling. Only CGA and EGA are supported—VGA was still too new—but the artwork is stylized in a way that sticks with you. The backgrounds are moody and distinct. It doesn’t feel like it’s trying to be flashy. It feels… ideological.

I know the Mac, Amiga, and Atari ST versions had more colors. And some fancier music. But the DOS version has character. It’s a cultural time capsule disguised as a puzzle game.

Also worth noting: this version sold like crazy. Over 100,000 units in its first year. The average player? Mid-30s, probably an engineer or middle manager. Half were women—which, for a PC game in the ’80s, is almost unheard of.

And if you’re running this today? You’ll probably get a divide overflow error. You’ll need a patch just to launch it.

This wasn’t just a game. It was a diplomatic artifact. A licensing mess. A Cold War curiosity. A version of Tetris that, for all its simplicity, tells you more about 1988 than most history books.

Warning: Think of this as a shitpost. This, seriously speaking, is my experience. But it's horrible quality. You'll gain nothing but written entertainment from reading it. This is a very long post. You've been warned. I tried to keep this as accurate as I remember. Some stuff I don't precisely remember was compromised with words describing what I felt then.

How do I begin?

I decided to split various phases of my actions with ellipses (...). First-person thoughts are shown with the Reddit quote mode, and (second-person?) thoughts are in the text body.

...

I first tried to understand the game.

I went through the tips in the game. I chose to be a fixer. It showed how to adjust various aspects of the level. Then I tried changing the first setting for adjusting the difficulty, then I realized I forgot what the setting meant. I just read its tutorial 20 seconds ago.

Note: I'm a college student, 21 credits through a Bachelor's in Electrical Engineering, with a cGPA of 3.92/4.00. Precalculus and Calculus 1 were not hard.

...

I decided that I understood enough since the tutorial turned off and it highlighted the (co-op?) button. So I clicked it, and it went into matchmaking mode. I was confused. Like, is it fine to dive straight into a co-op game being an absolute beginner?

Well, the game tutorial guided me to this. So, I guess it's fine.

I clicked the button and waited. It seemed like the game was searching for a third player? I don't even know how many players are in a party. Eventually, nothing happened. It stopped matchmaking.

Then the session just sat there, paused. I thought the game was doing something. I waited. Nothing. I was confused again.

notices the text "Ready" and "Not Ready."

Oh.

selects "Ready."

Then the game started loading and then it froze. I thought it would recover. I waited for a full minute. Still frozen. Even the taskbar didn't pop up.

I decided to force shut down my laptop. I felt bad for the guy who was with me, but oh well.

I was kicked out of the party in my second matchmaking session.

You can do that????

Third matchmaking was successful.

Note: I did not modify my loadout as I trusted the game's defaults.

Then I successfully entered the game with no freezes (a few freezes for a few seconds maybe).

Note: These freezes lasted only till here. Rest of the game was a smooth 60+ FPS average on low settings

So I spawned. What do I do? idk. I tried to look for something in my HUD that indicated a goal. I didn't find anything obvious. I saw my teammates just standing around doing nothing. Well, I'm off.

Outside my spawn room stood a guy with a gun, swaying like a drunk. He had a kinda red outline. He did nothing for a few seconds. I ignored him, thinking he was some random guard, and ran. I was shot.

WTF?

I shot him. At least I attempted to. My main weapon was some weird shit that only flickered some electricity. At the time of writing, I still don't know what it does. I somehow figured out how to change to my revolver and shot him.

I saw some other drunkards. I realized they were some kind of zombies, so I rained bullets on them. I wasted a lot but didn't mind, thinking I had infinite bullets.

Note: I do remember the mobs being introduced in the beginning cutscene. But I was unfamiliar with their behavior. The beginning cutscene explained... pretty much nothing about how they behave. The behaviour shown in the cutscene looked like comical idiocy and so, I disregarded it. It didn't say what they really look like outside of a simplified drawing. Hell, I even forgot what they were called. Fireblazer? Firebreaker? Isn't that us? Whatevs, I'll refer to them as zombies for now.

I continued wandering around, searching for a goal and killing zombies. I ran out of bullets. idk what to do. I got knocked down. idk wtf I should do. I see a force respawn or something button and I use it.

enters spectator mode

waits to spawn

nothing else happens

sees respawn button and uses it to respawn

respawns with revolver locked and loaded

goes out and attacks more zombies

cycle 2x

I tried attacking with my useless main weapon several times.

I decided to stick with my teammates. I regrouped and attacked the zombies with them. I still didn't know what the goal was. I ran out of bullets again. I decided to kill myself. I wondered how. I opened the menu and saw force respawn. I attempted to do so. Somehow in the middle, I got knocked down again. idk how but I was happy. Then my teammate attempted to revive me.

NO, YOU FOOL. I'M TRYING TO KILL MYSELF TO RELOAD.

I was revived. I went to some corner and committed suicide. Once again, I regrouped with my trusty teammates.

At some point, I saw a diamond pointer that seemed like it wanted me to go there. I also saw a sentence indicating the goal on my HUD. So I did. My teammates were lagging behind. I'm off again. We regrouped at the target location.

I saw some kind of fire hydrant that was next to the target. It was leaking water and flickering electricity. Me being the fixer, tried to fix it. I couldn't. I tried pointing my "electricity creating" main weapon at it. I clicked all sorts of buttons. Nothing happened.

I didn't know what to do. I don't know what we did. After a while, a ton of zombies spawned and it was attack time. The diamond pointer and the sentence explaining the goal had both disappeared. I was, once again, a man without a goal. I stuck to my trusty teammates.

After a while, they went to a room that looked like the spawn area. There, I saw them draining water down the sink. I was confused. Then I did as they did. I saw my health bar going up. I realized that it was a water level bar. I decided to also think of it as my health bar.

After the drink, I wandered around the room looking for ammo. I mysteriously found some. Wondering whether I'm fully reloaded or not, I left the room.

After some time, another goal sentence and a diamond pointer appeared. My teammates were lagging behind again. I went off on my own again. Halfway through, I turned back, worried about my crew.

I found one of them being chased by a horde. I shot the horde.

Shit, I shot my teammate.

I thought my brother in idiocy was a zombie. I didn't even know friendly fire was allowed. We ignored what happened (we couldn't talk to each other anyway. idk how), and attacked the horde.

We all regrouped and reached the target location, an elevator. Nothing happened. Some more zombies spawned. Killed, still no improvements.

Later, I opened the elevator, I think. Actually, we did some random shit and there was a warning of some sort of explosion. I ran, fearing for my health. One bozo stood right next to it. He didn't die.

The elevator opened. We went in. I waited for more zombies and for the others to prompt the elevator to move. Nothing happened. I turned around, saw a lever. I tried pulling it, wondering why these idiots didn't. It was broken.

It's fixer time ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Me, still struggling with the controls and the instructions, tried fixing it, fixed it, broke it (I think), fixed it, pulled it down, pulled it up, and pulled it back down. More zombies spawn. We attack as the elevator closes.

Mission accomplished

...

I am using the Game Pass free trial. I was testing various games to see if they were fun. And if they were, I'd buy them after the free trial ends. That's how I found this game. I only watched some gameplay footage. I didn't read any reviews before playing.

It is a fun game despite me not knowing a lot of things about it. I thought I'd buy it when it gets at least 50% off on a sale. I don't mind waiting for it. Then I thought about how long I could play it. Completion time?

That question doesn't make sense. Isn't co-op in this like the competitive mode in CS:GO?

I was wrong. It's fine tho. Then I looked for the reviews of the game just to check. I also noticed that it was just released a month ago. This guaranteed I should wait for a year before buying. I based this decision on my personal beliefs about good games. I decided I'm fine with the game even with all the bad reviews I read.

...

So I looked for a guide on the game.

I looked at the fandom for details on weapons and other stuff. Didn't see much info.

Then I watched a guide on YouTube. But it was actually a video about tips despite being named a guide. I tried searching for another video, then found one named "FBC Firebreak - The Complete Guide". I went with this.

I interrupted the YouTube guide as it was time to do my daily chores. I was about to do it, but then I paced around for half an hour, thinking about what just happened. I started to doubt my own sanity. Like, why am I doing this? Usually when I play games, the tutorial gives most of what I need to know to play at a basic level. Here, I didn't even know what my main weapon does.

Then I did an introspection:-

Physical Health:

Am I high on drugs?

No, I don't do drugs.

Am I drunk?

No, I don't drink alcohol.

Am I high on caffeine?

No, I didn't and I don't drink that much coffee.

Am I sleep-deprived?

Not really? I have a light headache? I have a horrible sleep schedule and occasional light headaches are normal to me. Maybe the answer is along those lines?

Mental Health:

Am I mentally sound?

Usually.

What was my most stressful experience today?

It was an event at my relative's house. I was sitting awkwardly in a room filled with people I don't know. For half an hour, I distracted myself with my phone.

What was my most irritating experience today?

I spent 40 minutes waiting for my order at McDonalds. My brother's order was fresh and piping hot, while mine was cooled down. I didn't know what to say to the staff as I already completed the feedback before I received my order. Completing the feedback gives you a free Americano.

Did I drain my head with something?

Usually when I study a lot for exams and I am at my peak performance, I have a headache, I feel sleepy, hungry, and am finished off with a raging boner for absolutely no fucking reason. That didn't happen here. Maybe the answer is along those lines?

...

I did the job.

Today's game is Zomboid. Yesterday was a lot of fun, and i had fun seeing everyone's opinions. I saw Zomboid mentioned a few times again yesterday and i got really in the mood to bring back Jerry and Cable. It's been a hot minute since i played Jerry i think, so for anyone who hasn't seen him before: Jerry Attricks basically a middle-aged Suburban Dad who when the apocalypse hit wanted to watch the big game and have a cookout. On his way back from the store he picked up his "son", Cable (played by my friend), off the streets. Cable is actually a "20 something gay stoner" (word for word quote from my friend), but he just goes along with it, despite the fact he's lost more limbs than a person probably should due to Jerry's actions.

We started with a light modpack. Spongie's mods, some car mods for flavors, and the Only Cure. Keeps things light but adds a lot of flair in my opinion. I accidentally gave my friend the wrong spawn town so i had to hunt down a car for Jerry to get over there. Luckily i found this lovely thing a few houses down. I tracked down some gas and managed to get it running.

After picking up my friend, we drove by a Drive In and planned to stay there. It had lots of space and it was secluded from society. It made the perfect base for us. Not to mention there were a ton of cars and a gas station right across the street.

We found a better base though after driving into a nearby town. We were making a supply run for metal sheets to repair the vehicles, when we found a Military Apartment Building. In our very first save we had a motel base, and remembering that we decided this could be the motel base 2.0. We looted shotgun shells and stuff from the local houses and used the car horn to draw them all out. Then we started house cleaning. Before long we had emptied the entire building basically. Next up on our list will be too cut down trees for planks and make barricades too protect the building. We saved that for later though because Jesus christ are there a lot of windows on the bottom floor.

I overheard someone talking about this weird sci-fi cloning space game with survival/crafting/base building elements a few days ago. It sounded so unique, preposterous, and yet intriguing. I had to track it down and check it out.

The Alters is a game about being the sole survivor of a space mission. You are stranded on a dangerous planet and are forced to create clones of yourself - with an altered past - to assist with various specialized roles around your base.

It reminded me a bit of The Invincible, another game about being stranded on an alien planet and trying to escape. Except that game is more of a story-rich walking simulator, while this one actually has you collecting resources and building as you go to ensure your survival.

Also, I want to point out that this game looks incredible in 4K with maxed out graphics settings. So much detail was put into this world! I wish I had 4K video to show the rainfall and the ocean crashing against the beach. Screenshots don't do it justice.

The Alters opens with your character, Jan Dolski, crawling out of an escape pod on a dark planet. It's perpetually raining on this planet. He notices the emergency flare near his pod and sets out to find other crew members by searching for their flares.

He finds the captain's pod intact, but she's dead in her pod. Several other pods can be located nearby, but despite all being intact, they all hold deceased crew members. Jan discovers he's all alone and sets out for the nearby mobile base. It looks like a massive tire with shipping containers arranged inside of it.

All of a sudden, a radioactive wave hits! Jan has limited time to get to the shelter of the mobile base!

Once inside, your view changes to a sort of 3D side-scroller. You can walk around the various interconnected rooms of the base, or you can switch to a base overview mode, which is a cutaway view of all the rooms.

You need to get to the Communication Room to call for help, but you can't currently use the elevator for... reasons. The game teaches you how to rearrange the rooms from the Command Center. I brought the Communications Room down to my floor so I could just walk across to it.

Once there, Jan answers a call, only to get a garbled message from the distant end. They seem able to hear him, but Jan is only getting partial transmissions. The words "imminent danger" catch his ears, and he surmises from the jumbled communication that he has until sunrise in 9 days before he's burnt to a crisp by a nearby star. So now we're on a time limit!

He retreats to the captain's cabin to read the logs for his next steps, then goes to sleep for the night.

I should mention that there is a limited time to be active each day, as you can see in the bottom left of the screen. I definitely wasted a few days wandering around, trying to get familiar with the local area and the mechanics of the game. I'll probably be more streamlined on my next playthrough.

The next day, Jan sets out to find shallow deposits, as there is a shortage of metals on the mobile base. You can track them down by their red glowing light.

When you get enough metals, you can create a Workshop room, where you can craft items.

The first thing you need to craft are scanners. You're looking for organic deposits, which present themselves as blue smoke coming out of the rocky surface. When you find an area like this, you place down several scanners in a square to help scan underground for the best place to drop a mining outpost.

You want to identify the darkest red area underground. I had to make 3 separate scans of the area to find it. Fortunately, you can individually pick up and move your scanners and it will leave the previously scanned area visible.

Once you've dropped a mining outpost, you then need to run pylons all the way back to your mobile base to transfer the organic deposits to your fuel reserves.

I had flashbacks of running transmitter nodes in Deep Rock Galactic while placing all these pylons.

While exploring, I also stumbled across a strange glowing area that made the region fuzzy and streaked. You can see, even on the ground near me, it looks like it's been smeared upward with a giant paintbrush.

This is Rapidium, a plot-centric mineral you need to harvest. Extract a sample and get it back to your base!

You receive a new call from your mysterious garbled connection. You mention the Rapidium, which gets them very excited. They insist you test it to verify it's real. You're sent blueprints to create a new room called "The Womb," along with a DNA sample to test the Rapidium on. You set it up and out pops...

Rapidium, it turns out, was the resource you were sent to find on this expedition. It's an incredibly rare resource that, in theory, can rapidly age an organic item. By combining it with sheep DNA, out pops a cloned adult sheep! Jan names her Molly.

Incidentally, the name of this expedition is "Project Dolly." In real-life history, Dolly was the name of the first cloned sheep. So, a very apropos name for this game's expedition.

By now, the waterfront valley you're located in has (ideally) been picked clean of resources and your mobile base is fully fueled. It's time to get it moving! You go to the Command Center and attempt to start up the engines, but they fail to start. You reset the machinery and try again, which causes a catastrophic failure!

Not knowing what to do, you turn to your garbled friend for help. They mention something about Rapidium being able to save you, and they direct you to check out the data in the base's Quantum Computer. They give you the captain's access and you log in... to find "mind records" of all the crew.

It maps out memories of the major life events of Jan, from his childhood, leading up to his joining of the Project Dolly expedition in his 30s. You can click on each life event and read up about his past.

In the Communications Room, the distant contact suggests using this life data on Jan to create an "alter" with a branching past. The Quantum Computer pinpoints a branching life path in his childhood that would lead Jan to join Project Dolly as a technician, then simulates a fake memory path leading to that end result.

The Womb starts churning, and before you know it, out pops a clone of Jan! Except he's a bit more rough around the edges.

I noticed he has a "03" on his clothing. Jan has a "01" on his suit. What happened to "02?"

"Jan Technician," as he's known in the subtitles, is not happy to discover that he's a clone with fake memories of a life that never happened. He begrudgingly helps you get the base's engine working, but he doesn't want anything else to do with you.

You get a new menu to track your alters. It's important to be aware of their emotional status and keep them happy, as they'll perform poorly if they're in a bad mood. While you're talking with them, you'll occasionally get emotional state clouds pop up behind them. If they're red, they're negative. If they're green, they're positive.

With the engine working, you start up a journey. The mobile base goes on autopilot, heading toward a better pick-up location for your eventual rescue. Meanwhile, you repair the communications (because Jan Technician refuses to help) and you're finally able to speak clearly with someone! Your distant contact is named Lucas Peña and he's fascinated with the results of the Rapidium branching.

When you mention that your clone isn't talking to you, Lucas suggests bonding over a shared memory. I went and convinced him to make pierogi with me, just like Mom used to make!

In a much better mood, Jan Technician informs you that this mobile base is a beast to operate, and the only way the two of you are going to survive is if you make more versions of you. You'll make branching memories to create alters who end up as scientists, botanists, refiners, miners, and doctors, to name a few.

It will quickly get crowded in the mobile base and you'll have to upgrade the size of the base and create more rooms to house all the resources and people that you bring into the world.

I played for 3 hours and only barely finished the prologue! Granted, I took my time and explored everything. By the time Act 1 was starting, I was already on Day 7 of my 10 days until sunrise. So I bet I'm likely to die soon and will have to be more efficient with my next playthrough.

Or who knows where the plot will go; maybe I'll be able to survive the sunrise somehow and get more time to build and expand my army of clones. It seems like too short of a timeline for how story-rich the gameplay is. If you've played this game, let me know how much you enjoy it! I'm excited to play more and find out where the plot leads.

cross-posted from: https://beehaw.org/post/21152300

• YouTube video (first 7 minutes): https://youtu.be/rIR3PpQ82yE
• SkipVids (same video, but without ad): https://skipvids.com/?v=rIR3PpQ82yE
• New site: https://www.thisweekinvideogames.com/ (at the time of the posting the website opens extremely slow, they might get hit with lot of visitors)

The first 7 minutes segment explains it. Its kinda self advertisement, but I think this is important. One of my favorite Gaming YouTube channels "Skill Up" launched a new website for gaming articles. The goal is to have articles without Ai, no advertisements, no sponsored articles, no CEO optimized content, to maintain a high quality content. I think this is really really important and a good step.

>>This video's first part<< is his pitch for the website if you want to hear it from him directly.

But basically he wants to make a website that is fully ad-free, truly independant and community-funded, not funded by publishers or venture capital. With pieces written not by AI bots but actual people that don't need to pander to SEO in their titles or articles.

And yes, you can redeem the expansions even if you already have Civ 6 in your library. Patient gamers win once again~

Today's the Day! The 1 year anniversary. Today's game is Halo 3, I decided the best way to celebrate with a new year would be by kicking back and relaxing with some of my friends. We have here what we call our Spartan B-Team. We suck absolute ass, and are the last ones they'd call for the job. But we're... we're uhhh... we got nothing going for us...

All joking aside though, we played a few social matches and had a lot of fun. Despite the jokes we actually did pretty well. Most matches were tied pretty evenly and were a close call. It was a really satisfying game. Besides that though I'll hold off on talking about more, because I already have a decent bit more for the 1 Year Anniversary. Namely the...

Best of Section (or the section where I talk about the most memorable games I've played)

I was initially going to pick the best Screenshots, but I'm not really sure how to pick the best, plus there's a lot of them and this has always been more about showing the games than the pictures themselves.

So instead, I'm going to do a bit more like what I usually do in a retrospective manner.

Uncharted 4

Initially, when I started, this was my first game. That was back when I was just doing screenshots from my backlog of screenshots, though. I took this screenshot probably around a year before I started? It’s of the cave where Nathan first falls when he crashes on the island. I remember picking this one specifically because I really liked the colors and the view. That’s always kind of been the mentality I’ve gone with for these. I’ve loved taking the photos more like an art piece instead of making them just regular old screenshots. I’m definitely no artist (I nearly failed art class in high school), but I feel like it adds a bit of a personal touch to the screenshots when I take the more artistic angle.

With that screenshot being nearly a year old at the time of posting it, at some point, I had planned to return to the game for a crushing run. Uncharted was one of my first games growing up that I actually owned myself. I bought it to play on a hand-me-down PS3 Super Slim I got from my uncle. I only beat the first 2, but about 110 days into the posts, I decided to pick it up again. It was one of those games where I loved it and wanted more, so the best way I decided to show my love for the game was to try and go achievement hunting. I still need to reach that goal someday, but that’s what kickstarted picking up this game again.

Uncharted is an amazing highlight of the kind of games I like, and I think after this you can kind of see a recurring trend with my choice in games. I like the kind of games with narrative lessons to teach the most. Being able to reflect on them and look back on them is something I enjoy the most, especially when I can apply them to my life. But beyond that, Uncharted 4 is one of the prettiest games I’ve seen. The water (oh great, here goes Atticus talking about water again) is gorgeous, the lighting is amazing, and most importantly? It runs amazingly! I got stable frame rates on Steam Deck. One of my favorite showcases of this is the Scotland chapter of Uncharted 4, where there’s just a lot going on. There’s rock physics and waves, and snow and just a lot of things I imagine happening, but honestly? I can’t tell much of a difference in performance.

I think Uncharted 4 was an awesome choice for me to start off these posts with. It’s an amazing game and really showcases what kind of games I like. It acts as a sort of showcase for the things I’d be sharing. It also started to be when I moved beyond the standard “Here’s a screenshot, now bye” format I started with and instead really started doing these long-winded posts. Maybe it’s just a memory bias, but specifically I remember the above screenshot because I thought the “Nate on a Crate” line was funny. I want to go back one day to finish 4 entirely, and maybe finish Lost Legacy too which I left unfinished, but for now I think it’s a good starting point for these posts.

Alan Wake (I, American Nightmare, and II)

This is the game I’ve been most excited to get too. I think it’s safe to say Alan Wake is my favorite game of all time. It’s the first game I’ve truly gone out of my way to 100%, and I enjoyed every second of it. I’m going to roll the 3 games into one to save on length because this already will probably be long, but the first game I feel like is amazing. The screenshot above was taken when I was messing around in the story, something I do from time to time. I took a selfie with a bear, which I think people thought was a reference to something else. Complete coincidence, but I’m glad people enjoyed it.

Talking more about the game, the gameplay is satisfying to play. It’s like a fun challenge of keeping your distance from enemies while also managing resources. The story is awesome too. It has so many little details to pick up on that even nearly 6 playthroughs in, I’m finding new things.

Alan Wake’s American Nightmare, though I think perfected the gameplay. It built off of it in a good way. The flashlight is a bit more floaty and easier to manage, and the game has more playstyle options. Story-wise, it’s a different flavor though. The first one is a thriller, while this one is a bit campier. I still love it, and the art style is amazing. The motel in the above screenshot is one of the most memorable places for me in the entire game.

Alan Wake II, though I feel like is where the story hits its absolute best. The time loop and all the foreshadowing it throws right in your face is amazing. And then the final draft is so fucking clever. I remember when I was doing the final draft, I went out of my way to try and word it like it’s my first playthrough for the screenshots just to go along with the bit. I even tried to mirror my screenshots just to play along with the Time Loop bit. One of the places that stuck with me most is the deer in the lodge Saga stays in. Alan is my favorite character, but Saga was fun and that Lodge was so cozy. It made amazing use of the Mind Place too, because it makes it seem safe, but at the very end, it rips that safety away from you and takes away that safety it established. It was really well done and I love that they did it.

Fallout New Vegas

This was another major game on here I did. It’s an amazing game and I love some of the points it tries to make with its story and DLC. And the way the DLC ties together is so amazing. The best screenshot from this I’d say is the “Left my ♡ in the Sierra Madre” one. It marked the end of that journey, and served as what I kind of consider the “Beginning of the end” of my overarching Fallout New Vegas journey. I really liked picking that one as the main screenshot for that day. It felt very fitting.

I think the other best photo for Fallout New Vegas though is my final main one. It’s a photo of Hoover Dam, which is where I chose to end it. With it being the very end of the game, it seemed appropriate, especially with how one of the main things in the game is how people are obsessing over it. That final post ended up being a bit of a breakdown of my thoughts and feelings of the game (and it was what started making these posts a lot bigger). After ending for the night, I actually went back though and stayed up to 100% of the game. It was a lot of fun. Never again though. I love that game, but there is a lot there to do.

Silent Hill 2

Finally, this is the last “Major Game” I’ve decided to cover. There are a lot of good options, but I don’t want to draw this out too long. But Silent Hill 2 was an amazing experience. I loved being on the streets and just capturing photos of it. Still, the most memorable photo for me of this is the first one I took of James standing there on the street. The town is phenomenal. It feels like a generic Midwestern town, which is where I grew up. The art direction, I feel like, is something that did not miss in this. They knocked it out of the park. I 100% it with my first run through, but god, it was so amazing. I'm not picky about my games; most things will get like a 7 or 8 out of 10 from me, 9 if I really liked them. But God, Silent Hill 2, I'd say it's a solid 10 out of 10 for me. It was amazing, and it was one of those games that made you feel empty after beating it. I was wanting more. I think the only other games on this list that did that were Uncharted and Alan Wake.

There's one other photo that's memorable to me from this game, so I'd consider it a contender for the best of. And that's this photo of James's car I took during my new Game+ run. It's of the backseat of a blanket in the back. You can't normally see this during gameplay, but I took a free cam back there, and I wanted to use it as a sort of photo mod to capture better screenshots, and the blanket is very body-shaped. If you know anything about Silent Hill. One of the big things is that Mary was in the back of James’s the entire time. And I'm 90% sure Bloober Team did this on purpose, and it's just a detail I love.

Honorable Mentions

Sea of Thieves

Sea of Thieves is one of the games here that I wouldn’t be surprised if people recognize the most from me. It’s decently well known, I’d say, and I feel like I play it a lot with friends. The first screenshot for it I took the day of, and it’s the first one I did it for. I’m not going to linger too much on this game as ultimately I feel like it’s more of a footnote despite how often I feature it. This game is amazing to just hop into with friends and play around in. It has its share of issues, I feel like, such as network problems, and the local Voice Chat seems utterly janky as fuck. But ultimately I think it’s a good time to spend with friends and fun to just dick around in for an hour. There’s a good deal of fun to be had solo, but ultimately I think the most fun would be found in the Multiplayer.

Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid is another multiplayer game I play fairly often. Not as of late, unfortunately, but God it is so satisfying to play. It feels like a mini episode of The Walking Dead. The Walking Dead I grew up on, and I honestly am really disappointed. We've been denied a good Walking Dead video game. Like an open-world survival sandbox one. Zomboid fills that niche so well. Every session just feels like an episode of The Walking Dead, a good one too. Maybe it's just because I'm in that episode. But it's so satisfying. Like one of my favorite examples was my friend and me. And we went to go get a generator, and we had to go to this airfield to find it. But we crashed our car on the way there, so we had to carry the generator back by hand. Only a horde started coming in as we're dragging it back. So we had to take shifts dragging this generator back while also keeping watch on the hoard to make sure they didn’t get us.

The game is great for those kinds of moments. I feel like the only downside to it is that it’s very dependent on you being able to make your own fun. The game honestly led to my friends and me making a lot of lore. For example, there’s Jerry Attricks. He's like the middle-aged, unhinged American dad Barbie. I've cycled him through so many jobs. He's not qualified for any of them, but he picks them up in the apocalypse like hobbies. He's been a doctor, a soldier, a taxi driver, a chef, a stripper, a carpenter. All sorts of stuff. And he has a son named Cable that he picked up off the streets when the apocalypse happened. His son is like 20 and he's a stoner. He was an adult when he picked him up. Our lore is that the son just went along with it despite being an adult. He's not the best father. But he tries. Sometimes.

No Man's Sky

No Man's Sky is in a very similar place for me as Zomboid. It's a lot of fun, just hopping around discovering planets and honestly kind of role-playing as an explorer. I think it's very much the same place, though you have to be able to make your own kind of fun. I think since it's launched, the game has greatly improved. There's a lot more to do. The planets are more vibrant. And it feels like the game has its own kind of society. I've seen guild and clans pop up and run by players. And honestly, I think that's really cool. And I appreciate that they didn't give up on it.

Halo Master Chief Collection

Halo, honestly, I feel like it's an injustice to include it in the honorable mentions section. But there's just so much that I have to relegate it here. It is an amazing game, and when you're with friends, even the shitty parts of the games are fun. Like Halo 2 legendary? Fucking nightmare. But I have such fond memories of that because I did a co-op with a friend. Honestly, if it's a friend that I get along well with, I might do it again. I mean, it took me nearly half a year just to beat Halo 2 co-op. Just because it was so difficult. But God, it was so fun. And Halo, I feel like it has this magic formula to it. Or like a magic sauce. And just even the shitty, grueling, tiring sections. Can be really fun. I'm not sure why, maybe it's the wacky physics or maybe it's just because the highs of the game make you feel like a fucking bad ass. But those first four games, there's something magical about them. And honestly, if it wasn't for the fact that I would need to talk about Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3, Halo ODST, Halo Reach, and Halo 4, it would definitely be getting its own page at the top.

The Conclusion

Honestly, I've had a lot of fun this past year. I think there are some points where it just felt like I was going through motions. Less like I was talking about the game and more like checking off boxes. In a sort of “I did this part of game x” way. But I think the daily nature of that is going to cause that. Because there are only so many opinions you can have on a game. And I have more free time than others usually, but even still sometimes life gets in the way of that. Despite all of that though, having this community to share the games I like with has been really fun. And I think I will keep going for another year, Or at least try to.

At first, I was considering moving to a per-game kind of post after this. Like I said, sometimes I feel like it’s hitting check marks, but also I’ve always wanted to stream but don't want to overlap this thing I have going on here with that. But the more I thought about it and the closer I got to a year, I think I'm kind of having fun sharing these like bite-size pieces of a game. I feel like it points out details that a general overview would miss. Like the water ranking that I do or fish that I've been discussing. I think a full-length overview, those will kind of get brushed over. Besides, I think if I really wanted to start streaming, I think I’d be able to balance it out right now. So because of that, I think I'm going to try and go for another year. I think it'll be fun to get my own website set up one day too. Maybe even with like an RSS feed or something. But that's just me dreaming. I wouldn't expect to have a website set up soon. Anyways, I just want to thank everyone for being so supportive. It’s a nice community, and this is the first time I really put myself out there in this way and it makes me happy to know that I people enjoy these.

I love Operation Thunderstorm.

This game did something that almost no other game does. It kept me playing for an entire day.

No alt-tabbing. No checking my phone. Just me, glued to the screen. And I actually beat it. Which is saying something, because I own thousands of games and rarely finish any of them. But this one? I couldn’t stop.

Not because it’s polished. Not because it’s some hidden masterpiece. But because it’s the most bizarrely satisfying budget WWII shooter I’ve ever played.

And I mean budget. This game came out in 2008, right when WWII shooters were collapsing under their own weight. Everyone assumed it was just another Call of Duty clone. But Operation Thunderstorm isn’t that.

What it actually is… is Polish Wolfenstein.

Made by City Interactive—now CI Games—a company that was known, back then, for shoveling out low-cost shooters by the dozen. In fact, this game was released during a very specific and weird moment in their history.

In 2007, City Interactive went public on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. And in 2008—the same year this game came out—they announced they were done with “budget-range operations.” They were rebranding. Shifting away from quantity toward quality. Operation Thunderstorm was the last gasp of their old model.

So what you’re playing here isn’t just a weird shooter. It’s a fossil. A transitional relic. The final entry in a dying era before City Interactive pivoted to big-boy games like Sniper: Ghost Warrior and Lords of the Fallen.

And you can feel it.

The game was developed with a team of 111 people. It used LithTech Jupiter EX—the same engine as F.E.A.R. Which is hilariously overpowered for what they made. But it gives the whole thing a crunchy, snappy, almost haunted-house quality that’s impossible to fake.

You play as British MI6 agent Jan Mortyr—practically the Polish B.J. Blazcowicz. He stars in quite a few FPS games—he was an established brand in Poland. Over there, this was Mortyr 4: Operation Thunderstorm.

But since nobody outside Poland had any clue what Mortyr was, we just got stuck with the most generic name in video game history. Operation Thunderstorm.

Which has a similar name to a Capcom arcade shmup, a Wii helicopter shooter, several real-world military operations, and at least one anti-logging initiative. Good luck Googling it.

Anyway, let’s talk about the actual game.

You’re sent behind enemy lines in 1942 to assassinate Goebbels, Göring, and Himmler. Yes, really, that’s the plot.

You just straight-up kill Nazi high command. No moral gray area. No pretense of realism. No problem. Never mind that these people died years later in real life. Operation Thunderstorm doesn’t care. It’s historical fan fiction. And it’s amazing.

Unless you’re playing the German version, where all the names are removed, the swastikas are replaced with “evil symbols,” and the blood is turned off permanently. The German version literally censors its own premise. It becomes a weird mission about killing… unnamed bureaucrats. It’s surreal.

But the actual gameplay? Surprisingly fun.

It’s a corridor shooter. Pure and simple. You walk forward. You shoot Nazis. You move to the next room. You peek around corners. You lean left and right. It’s Wolfenstein with some extra jank. But there’s one mechanic that makes it stand out: blind fire.

You crouch behind cover, and instead of popping up, you can raise your arm just high enough to fire over a box—guided by a little arrow icon. It’s crude. It’s clunky. But it works. And it gives the game a weird, accidental layer of tactics.

Then there’s the Karabiner 98k.

This rifle is absurd. You can shoot a guy in the leg and he dies instantly. Arm shots? Instant ragdoll. It’s one of the most overpowered rifles I’ve ever used in a game. And I love it. Because the ragdoll physics are completely unhinged.

Shoot a Nazi and watch him cartwheel off a balcony. Toss a grenade and send three enemies bouncing like crash test dummies. The game is full of “odd death positions” and physics bugs so wild they start to feel intentional.

And that’s the point. The game’s flaws are what make it good.

You get a broken knife that does nothing. You get a dumb mini-map that’s never needed. You get canned voice lines delivered with the emotional range of a voicemail. And yet—somehow—all of it clicks.

I mean, this game has a “see your own foot” feature. You look down, and there’s your left leg. Why? No reason. It’s just there. One foot. Floating. Always watching.

The campaign’s short. Maybe four hours if you take your time. Maybe two and a half if you sprint through.

And yet, I played it twice. Once on Steam Deck. Once on my TV with a Steam Controller. And shockingly? It’s incredible with a controller.

The gyro aiming on Deck is perfect. You line up shots from across the room and drop enemies before they even react. It was never designed for this kind of control scheme, but it accidentally became one of the best Steam Deck shooters I’ve played.

There’s multiplayer, technically. Deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag. All recycled single-player maps. No one plays it. No one should. It’s clearly a checkbox feature—something slapped on to tick off “multiplayer” on the back of the box.

Now, at launch? Critics hated this game. We’re talking 40–50% scores. Called it cramped. Monotonous. Ugly. Said it looked like a shooter from the ‘90s. Said the AI was dumb. Said the levels were boring.

But the critics were definitely wrong.

Because by 2025, Operation Thunderstorm has clawed its way back. It now holds a “Mostly Positive” rating on Steam. Over 300 reviews. 77% positive. It’s become a cult hit.

People buy it for a dollar during sales and walk away surprised. Not because it’s refined—but because it’s fun.

And not in the way the developers intended.

It’s fun because it’s broken. Because the physics are hilarious. Because the design is dumb in just the right way.

This isn’t “so bad it’s good.” It’s “so weird it’s great.”

A weird little game from a weird little moment in Eastern European game development history. A snapshot of a studio about to evolve. A broken, budget shooter that overshot its limits and became something memorable by accident.

Not many games can say that.

So yeah, I love Operation Thunderstorm. Not despite the mess. Because of it.

If you've seen my other post on this comm, you probably know why I am asking this. However, even if I did have a PC, I don't think I would have the time and energy to play a game anyway. That's why I'm now starting to prefer walkthroughs/playthroughs over actually playing the game myself. I know it's not a replacement for a PC but it's still enjoyable regardless. Also, my very first exposure to big games was actually through YouTube lets plays in the first place. What do you all think?

You know that personal film project they claimed one of the founders was distracted by? It was a Subnautica film they asked him to make.