I like to try games of all genres such that I’d at least have a passing familiarity in them even if I’m never going to be an expert. One obvious lacuna in my ludography are military simulators. Well, here we have a submarine simulator that renders the German u-boats of World War II in such detail that you can walk around inside one in first-person view and press all of the buttons and switches yourself. It’s kind of insane and actually not as difficult to learn as I’d feared. I still didn’t spend that much time on it because it’s realistic enough that running a submarine in wartime is tedium most of the time, punctuated by brief moments of pure terror. But I sure enjoyed learning all about how submarines work and it is a very pretty game!

This was a free game, on Steam this time, and I’d never even heard of it before I saw the offer. It seems one reason why this was given away and then subsequently taken off the store is that the publisher lost the right to the IP. Unfortunately the offer was only for the base game and now you can’t even buy the many DLCs even if you wanted to. After playing this for a while, I very much wanted to because the prospect of having the extra ship types to experiment with is very enticing. The strategic layer is lacking and feels inconsequential. But the tactical layer is very strong and one of the best implementations of fleet-based starship combat I’ve seen.

The Remastered version of the game includes all three parts of the so-called The City Never Sleeps expansion. The story takes place after the events of the main game itself and features the characters Black Cat, Hammerhead and Silver Sable. Miles Morales gets a bit of character development as this does lead to his own game but Mary-Jane Watson unfortunately has a reduced role. She does tease Peter Parker over his relationships with other women but that’s about it. I disliked the power-ups Hammerhead gets to make his a worthy adversary here but the rest of the story isn’t bad. It does mean that the combat difficulty is ramped up significantly, enough to encourage me to regularly use gadgets which was no doubt the designers’ intention.

I’ve lusted after this game for years but this was another PlayStation exclusive. The original version was in fact never adapted for PC. We had to wait until after the Miles Morales sequel added a Remastered version of the first game before that in turn was released for PC. So it took a very long time for me to be able to play this, but at least it does have updated graphics and supposedly better performance. It was absolutely worth the wait as even after so many years, this is a top notch superhero action game.

I like to try weird and novel games. Sometimes this is rewarded when I come across unexpected gems. Often this is not. Kenshi is a game that unfortunately falls into the latter category for me. Yet if I’d encountered it at a much earlier age, I can see myself falling in love with it. The game is advertised as a kind of RPG in which you can do almost anything and that’s largely true. But it’s also rather ugly, has a terrible interface, and is fully of janky, inconsistent mechanics. You can get all kinds of amazing stories going with your characters, but you’d also have to put up with a lot of grinding and boring moments in which nothing happens and I’m just too old for that now.

I became a fan of the new style stealth-focus RTS games due to Shadow Tactics but unfortunately the developer Minimi Games is no more. I’ll probably get around to playing their last pirate-themed game at some point but in the meantime here’s a World War 2-themed game in the same vein by a different developer. This one is much more combat focused and features a base management component in between missions.

I always like a light game in between heavier ones and this plant collecting title is just the ticket. Thematically it’s somewhat similar to Potion Craft in that customers come to your shop with their problems and you offer them plants. Mechanically it’s completely different as it’s really a sort of deductive, puzzle-solving game. It has a decent story, mostly fair puzzles and is short enough that any missteps are easily forgiven. I’m not sure I’d want more of the same but it’s perfect as a light game.