I've been diving back into Ghost Recon Wildlands after discovering just how damn enjoyable the game is at the highest difficulty levels. Suddenly sniper rifles and stealth are the only viable playstyles, and I feel like I'm actually being tested by the AI rather than watching all these paper narcos obligingly fall over and die for my amusement. I also love how unwoke the game is. Very America Fuck Yeah.
I also dusted off Master of Magic. Still haven't found a 4X that rivals it in my eyes, and it's not nostalgia talking. I actually never played it growing up (though I played MoO and MoO2 like my childhood depended on it). Good shit.
I played Battletoads. It's honestly frustrating top to bottom. The combat is okay, though the enemies are a bit too spongy for my liking and some of the animations are far too long (though can be cancelled at any time). I'm fine with the art style, really. It's cohesive and mostly clean and the designs are largely decent.
Shame about the writing. It's Thundercats Roar levels of shit all over again. The franchise would be irrelevant if not for the fans of the originals keeping the flames of hope alive for over two decades, and the writers make a character that's a stand-in for the old fans and kill him. Some of the scenes could work much better with a little tweaking: mentioning Rash not being seen for a few days or a week before or during the conspiracy theory/diaper scene would have helped. Making it obvious Dark Queen is now insane from being locked away for 26 years might... no. Nothing could save that "eat my ass" scene. It's shit-tier Rick & Morty humor. I held out hope she'd look like her old self after getting her powers back. Silly me.
The gameplay's schizophrenic, with multiple competing minigames thrown around with little rhyme or reason. A turbobike level, then fighting followed by several hacking puzzles, then terrible Flash-tier minigame levels.