Take your pick from the 9 games below.
Star Renegades: I started this over again just to remind myself of the controls. I really like the world in this game. It's a hard SciFi environment. You're team fights across dimensions on different worlds. The story is complicated. There's an enemy trying to take over the whole universe it seems. I only vaguely understand it. My characters in this strategy RPG are varied. One is a human stealth rogue, another is a valkyrie heavy fighting woman with swords and armor, and another is a sentient robot that has a strange religion; he's sort of the healer because he can regenerate shields for anyone in the party. I like my SciFi strange, on other worlds and full of thinking machines. It's just my thing.
Well, I played until I got beat by the first behemoth. The game is a roguelike, so you have to start over but you keep your gear and just return to a hub world where you can buy equipment, upgrades and recruit new teammates. I'm diggin' it.
Phogs!: There is a Japanese game that uses a similar mechanic I can't remember at the moment. The mechanic is that you control a cylinder that can stretch and change shape to solve puzzles. In Phogs! you have dog heads at either end that can bite to hold things. I was enchanted by the game until I got to a spot where I couldn't stretch far enough to reach two things to grab. I couldn't figure out how to get my phog longer so I stopped. You can play this game multiplayer, I assume that each person controls one of the two dog heads.
Serious Sam Collection: I got really frustrated with one part of the first Encounter game where those bone horses swarm the heck out of you along with multiple bulls. I just got overwhelmed by them over and over. Stupid bone horses have so many gaps in their bodies it's hard to damage them. I guess I'll try it again on Tourist mode. Funny, I've played this game many times over the years and never had to lower the difficulty to Tourist.
Outriders: I was going to dig into this again to see if I could like it more than last time, but the Game Pass rewards quest popped as soon as I booted it, so why continue? I will though because I think I will like it when I fiddle with it some more.
Farm Together: I wasn't going to play it again but I had so many downloads I was waiting on, why not? I gained 20k diamonds but need 27 for the next land unlock. I can stand this in short bursts now, otherwise, it becomes too much like work.
Borderlands 3: Director's Cut DLC: I bought this with my rewards points but it wouldn't work. I got it for the one piece of story content and it wouldn't let me play it because the game kept telling me I didn't own the DLC. All the other parts of the DLC worked fine like the behind-the-scenes videos and a raid boss I tried and failed on ('cause you need more than one player). I don't know what's wrong with it because I have the confirmation email of my purchase and the downloaded file and everything. This is a very serious error that I hope will fix itself sometime soon.
Flock!: This an old Xbox 360 live arcade game I got for $2 on a sale. You pilot a UFO and herd sheep and other animals into your ship for abduction. I used the game to get quick achievements to fulfill various Rewards quests but I eventually got fed up with it because your UFO herds sheep in a very confusing way that makes it easy to send your animals in the wrong direction. It's a charming and cute game with basically good controls but I got a little frustrated with it.
Gnome's Garden: New Home: More of my favorite casual resource collecting sim and nothing else game. This replaced Flock! as my achievement game. I needed one achievement for a MS rewards quest and got it on the first level. I'll save the rest for another time.
Dark Void: I was still waiting for a lot of Game Pass rewards quest games to download so I tried this old Xbox 360 game that was given free this week as part of Games with Gold membership. I remember playing the demo for it when it came out and having trouble with the flying controls. I don't know why because this controls just as good as Crimson Skies, which was excellent. There is a lot of third-person shooting on the ground too which works just great as well. I spent a good long time with it today and hope to finish it soon.
The two main characters are almost exactly like Uncharted both in voice, look, and even dialog. I find them annoying because of it, but I'm in it for the gameplay not the story anyway.
That's a duece of days.
In that Star Renegades game, the "valkyrie heavy fighting woman with swords and armor" sounds cool!
I loved Phogs! It came out late last year, and had I had a chance to play it then, it would've gotten on my GOTY list. I did review it earlier this year. Anyway, a couple of things. First, to stretch your dog abomination out longer, hold down the R trigger button, at least on the PS4. And two, this is actually NOT a Japanese game, even though it looks like it. The game was actually made in the UK! Anyway, here's my review:
Dark Void was flop for Capcom, but they made a 2-D 8-bit version on DSiWare that was actually pretty good called Dark Void Zero.
She's the tank and I try and get the other characters to give her gifts of health and shield boosts because she takes most of the damage in battles. She's going to have multiple relationships I think.
On Xbox the triggers cause the dog heads to bite. You use the sticks to stretch the dog body only it wouldn't stretch far enough. I'm sure I just missed something obvious.
Oh, and I knew it wasn't Japanese but there was a Japanese game with a similar mechanic. I should go try and find it but I don't really want to right now.
Too bad for Dark Void because it's fun. I played that DV Zero game, I may even still have it somewhere. I didn't get deep into it probably because it killed me. I should try and find it and give it another go.
Noby Noby Boy. It just sprung into my mind suddenly. You can stretch Noby Noby Boy's body to incredible lengths.
