I spent more time on Cyberpunk 2077 than I wanted so I decided to opt for a simpler game to cool off. Obviously I know about poker, but I realized while playing Red Dead Redemption 2 that I’ve never played it seriously. A surprising number of players enjoyed the poker in the Western game including myself but long sessions on it doesn’t seem very feasible. For one thing, Arthur might starve if he spends days and nights at the poker table. So I bought this poker game that seems to have been made by just one person. It does use AI-generated art assets but I don’t much care about that and it seems whoever made it takes poker seriously enough to spend a lot of effort on its AI opponents.

Playing this including its sole DLC took a whole lot more time than I expected. In particular I didn’t realize that there is quite a bit of unmarked or hidden content that pops up only after you’ve visited certain places or done certain actions. Nonetheless it’s done and it’s been a blast. Players love this DLC because it gives you new, more powerful toys. But I especially appreciate that it includes a number of intense, heavy combat scenarios that finally allow you to make use of the full suite of your abilities. The main story is decent even if it’s oddly isolated from the events of the main game. But the new area of Dogtown, small as it is, is amazing and I’d rate this as a must-have DLC.

These days most of the game I play have such modest system requirements that they don’t really justify the price I paid for my PC. Cyberpunk 2077 would be the major exception as it most definitely wouldn’t have run well on my old system. The game was notoriously bugged on release so it was just as well that I took my time to get around to it. This is now a far more complete and polished game and though there are still some glitches, it’s absolutely the open-world Cyberpunk game I’ve been hankering for. It even holds special meaning for me since I’ve owned a copy of the original Cyberpunk 2020 pencil-and-paper RPG since my high school days and this game references so much material from it.

I’ve said it many times before, I tend to dislike roguelikes because of the lack of long term progression and I’m bad at twitch games. After hearing so much about Hades, I finally sat down to play it and I’m instantly hooked. This might be a roguelike but it is all about long term progression and it’s very twichy but it’s also very forgiving in terms of difficulty. Following everyone’s advice, I turned on God Mode and didn’t look back, which practically guarantees that anyone would be able to beat the game eventually. I still think I did pretty well in getting to the end boss by about the 12th attempt and beating him after another 12 or so deaths.

I last played Spintires years ago. Since then the series has grown from strength to strength with a dedicated fanbase. This current version of the game has a whopping 18 seasons worth of additional DLC content. I noped out of the previous game before too long because it started to feel too much like real work. The new version has so much more content, a bewildering variety of vehicles and customizable options for them, larger and more complex maps and that means lots more work to do!

I’m a huge fan of the storytelling games made by Inkle and what’s more this is a prequel to Overboard! so I just had to get it. I wasn’t too fond of the earlier game as I found it too short but I did like the story and the characters. This game too has rather little content but the effective playing time is lengthened by it being significantly more difficult. It’s difficult enough that I would consider it a puzzle game rather than just a storytelling game.

I generally dislike online games but this is free and very popular, so I thought I should at least check it out briefly. After all, I rather the idea of a wuxia action game and it’s not like any Western game developers are going to offer something decent in that genre. Now more than fifty hours later, I’ve still playing and nowhere near the end. As far as I know, the main quest isn’t even complete yet as updates are still adding new content to the game. I’m not sure how long I’m going to keep playing because it’s very time consuming and there’s so much to do. But it is a fricking awesome action and it being free is a fantastically good deal.