I returned to Warframe a few months ago after nearly a decade away from the game. I got my brother-in-law to try it for the second time and this time around he got hooked.

It’s surprising how rough multiplayer still is nearly fifteen years into the game’s development. Story missions can only be played single player, but they’re also the main way of unlocking new multiplayer content. Nearly every single session he’d have to drop out of co-op to do a quest or junction challenge - it got better the further into the star chart he got, but this was a constant problem up until the entire map was unlocked (which took weeks of casual playing even with me carrying him through harder content).

The story is also incomprehensible to a new player. Story bosses pop up at random places on the star chart and these assassination missions take place at different points in the timeline (never stated or explained, of course). It took ten minutes just to explain the antagonist Alad V, this game’s Revolver Ocelot equivalent who has missions with him on every faction’s side (including the player’s).

Despite that we’ve been having a ton of fun. The game has a ludicrous amount of content and constantly introduces entirely new gameplay modes. We’ve put in probably 100-200 hours so far but, looking at the changelogs on the wiki, we’re only caught up to what was released in 2019.

(Also Follie is absurdly OP. Not only can she create mission objective items, she can summon objects and gear that outclass anything a Warframe can do. This includes a Thermian RPG that does high seven figure damage, enough to one-shot even raid bosses like Eidolons. She can do this at level 1 with no mods. Meanwhile the crit-specced Vectis Prime I’ve Forma’d several times and filled with maxed out mods can barely hit low seven figures on red-crit headshots, and does maybe 20-40k damage on regular hits.)

Look Outside! I’m continually impressed at how seamlessly the game blends JRPG mechanics with Survival Horror. The writing is incredible, and surprisingly empathetic for a story about people transforming into body horror abominations in your apartment complex.

Dune: Awakening (single-player)

Been wanting to play the game since it released but have no interest in PvP at all. Almost got it a few times before just because I wanted to play it but held off until now.
The patience here is more "waiting to see if they add a single-player feature and then once that was announced waiting for it to release.

About 30 hours in and I’m surprised by how good it is and having a blast with all parts of the game. The combat just keeps getting better and the survival aspects are great (which is rare IMO) with the sun and sand worms being a constant factor that shapes how you play.
The Holtzman shields work very well for a game too, both for yourself and on enemies. You need to be smart and pick off unshielded enemies first then lure out one or a few shielded ones to handle in melee, doing fast hits or using skills (like voice stuff) to stund them so you can get that slow hit in that gets through the shield.
Exploration is fun with many options for all parts of it. You can climb almost everything like many other games like this but there are several cool gadgets too. A grapple hook that feels great, a category of devices that affect gravity in different ways, like decreasing it which allows you to jump higher and further, floating, fall slowing etc. but not all at once, you pick one which fits your playstyle or depending on what environment you’re gonna be in.
The vehicles feel good and I like the systems for each part having their own health bars, and there are several different additions like storage, boosters, scanners, mining equipment but you can only have one on at a time (at least for the tiers I’m at).
Crafting, building and resource collection is fun too, overall a very well designed game.

Valheim went 1.0 release, so started up a new server to play it through through the final biome.

Classic Oblivion (Can’t believe I’ve lived long enough to see horrors beyond my imagination), with about 30 miss. Better looking bodies, QoL fixes, leveled lists, new races, romance mod (needy Argonian waifu), and some new weapons and armor.

I just picked up Satisfactory on sale and will probably give it a try later this week.

Wife and I are grinding remaining skins in Sonic Racing Crossworlds which is our favorite local multiplayer racing game these days. It’s really good! Actually better than Mario Kart

I fell into Frostpunk again. I love the game but have the unhealthy habit of spending way too much time in front of it and never stopping after a reasonable time.

Pokemon Red

Legend of Grimrock it’s an old school style dungeon crawler… brings back memories of games from the early 90s for me.

Blur

I picked up a cheap Xbox 360 last week so I can use Bad Update and Blur is my go to game. It’s a shame it’s not backwards compatible on the newer consoles because it’s an excellent combat racer.

Sniper elite v2 remastered. Pretty fun on the steam deck with gyro aiming.

https://navigatorsharp.itch.io/steponit

Lego racers brought back by fans. Worth a look.

I’ve been jumping back and forth between three very different games since last week. They differ in gameplay, themes, atmosphere, art style and age, leading to a pretty significant whiplash when switching between them. These titles are: Castlevania: Circle of the Moon, Cyberpunk 2077 and Dressmaker.

I mentioned last week that I planned on being impatient with the release of Control Resonant, but that did not end up going well for me. Where I live has really shitty satellite internet, so in order to download most games I need to make a 1.5 hour drive to a family member’s beach house to take advantage of their sweet normal-world download speeds. Got there Tuesday, preloaded the game Wednesday, and was on my way by Thursday morning. Unfortunately, the devs pushed what was supposed to be an update/hotfix Thursday for the release of the game, but that got bungled and resulted in preloaded versions of the game being deleted automatically, which I found out about once I had made it home and got ready to boot up the game. Honestly, I wasn’t even mad, I knew patient gaming is the way and I chose to stray from that path. Oh well, way she goes, boys.

So now I’m kind of considering jumping ship on my plans for Control Resonant and instead doing a replay of some other Remedy games. Specifically Alan Wake Remastered, then Control, then Alan Wake 2. I’ve been meaning to replay the first Control for quite some time and the Alan Wakes should mesh nicely with the upcoming spooky season.

Additionally, I think I’m going to put an indefinite hold on buying games through Steam because GOG just lines up better with my values/interests and usually encourages a more patient approach to gaming.

And as far as what I’m going to play this week, I think it’s the perfect time to do another playthrough of Crow Country.