Despite not being sure about returning to it, I finished “Lost Judgment”. Took me another 20 hours on top of the 30 I already spent on it.

I will preface this by saying, that I love the Yakuza series this is based on. But man did I hate “Judgment” and “Lost Judgment”. The mechanics are good and the second one improves them in a lot of ways, but the writing of the story and the characters is just really bad. I am glad that there will never be a third part.

I also played the first hour of “Quake 4”. Feels like “Quake of Duty”, not impressed.

That was… something.

I liked the creativity and the humor, but it certainly was not the best way to present games. It was kind of difficult to follow and the names of the games weren’t shown long or prominently enough.

Anyway, wishlisted Menace, Mars Tactics and Breachway.

Nice. Of the classic Yakuza games I liked 4 the best, I hope you will enjoy it as much as I did.

I will just mention some of the games I played from the genres you like. They are all pretty well known, so you probably played them already or have them on your list.

Puzzles: Does Turn Based Combat count as puzzles? Tactical Breach Wizards and Into the Breach (A rogue like, but it is sooo good).

Platformers: Celeste, Horace, Dustforce and Little Nightmares

Metroidvanias: Guacamelee

Point and Click: Everything by Wadjet Eye Games. Seriously, everything they developed or published.

Story aka Walking Simulators: The Suicide of Rachel Foster, Firewatch, The Beginner’s Guide, Dr. Langeskov (It’s free!), Jazzpunk, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter

+1 for Yakuza. I hope you have played 0, Kiwami 1 and Kiwami 2 before 3.

What genre of indies are you looking for?

The rerelease of Doom 1.

This time with Pistol Start, as I recently learned that the levels were balanced around that. It is challenging, but feels so right. The beginning of a level often plays like a little puzzle. Who to kill in what order to get to a decent weapon, before your 50 pistol shots run out. Can’t wait to play the new semi-official expansion they added with the rerelease.

Yea. that is pretty much what I had in mind. A huge persistent battlefield with an ever changing frontline. Players who fail the time travel missions lose their character, but succeeding sents equipment or units to the future or hinders Skynet in some way.

A video game. Terminator crossed with Helldivers, set on a big open battlefield in the future.

The resistance is controlled by the players, AI controls the machines. Players can conquer time machines to go back in time. There they clear small side missions to change the battlefield in the future.

Some more Crime Boss. I tried the Multiplayer. It is nice, but repetitive without any clear overarching goal. They recently patched the game and now the enemies spawn weirdly all around you. I think that killed it for me.

Supermarket Together. Free to play Supermarket Simulator. Played it for about 13 hours with two friends. Quite fun together, but I imagine it to be too bare bones to enjoy it alone. Still, it is free. Give it a look if it sounds like something you might enjoy.

Kind Words 2 playtest. I already “played” a lot of Kind Words 1 a few years back. They added quite a few things to do, besides writing letters to people. The playtest ended, but there is a demo. Try it!

Started the Amid Evil DLC, The Black Labyrinth. Really good stuff and highly recommended if you enjoyed the main game.

Finished Zortch, a boomer Shooter made by a single person. They even wrote their own engine for the game. Plays a bit like Turok. Enemy variety is great, weapon variety not so much.

Some Cosmic Collapse, a neat Suika-Like. I tried a few different Suika inspired games. This one is the best by far.

How about a documentary? I really like this one about the Easter Island: https://youtube.com/watch?v=7j08gxUcBgc

Looks good. Would be very thankful for an invite to the playtest.

I’ve put many hours into “Crime Boss: Rockay City” in the last week or so. I had a lot of fun with Payday 1 & 2, but 3 left me pretty disappointed after trying it on PC Game Pass, so I gave Crime Boss a chance. Apparently it got fixed up pretty well after it had a rough launch.

Crime Boss focuses on its rogue-lite campaign, which works well enough. The game is split into two parts. One is a world map in which you plan heists, hire personnel, buy equipment and attack the four other factions to take their turf. The second part is basically Payday with fewer cops, a bit worse gunplay and smaller heists.

All this is garnished with lots and lots of 90s direct-to-video action movie charm with (phoned in) voice acting by Michael Madsen, Chuck Norris, Kim Basinger, Danny Glover, Danny Trejo and Vanilla Ice. Also licensed music by Jon Bon Jovi, The Prodigy, Body Count, Boomfunk MC’s and so on.

It all works pretty well, even though some parts feel a bit low-budget. My only real complaints: Some mechanics are not explained well or at all. It took me a few runs to understand how everything works together. Also, attacking and defending turfs gets boring after a while.