I’d highly recommend PixelJunk Monsters 2 (the first one looks a bit ropey; haven’t played it) - the graphics are really exquisite, and it escapes some of the genre’s passivity by having you run your cute character around to build/upgrade your towers. It has three levels of difficulty for each map too, the top tier often being beyond my skills. Couch co-op, too, if you’re after that.
Have you played the Bloons series? Extraordinarily cartoonish–you’re part of a village of monkeys who are trying to pop balloons–but with surprising depth. Like Defense Zone games, there’s free placement of towers. There are also tons of upgrades–I think fifteen different upgrades for each tower, and you can mix and match up to seven (?) upgrades for each individual tower. Some upgrades are normal (shoot faster); others are bonkers (sacrifice all other towers in a massive radius in order to absorb their powers in a single godlike structure).
Every now and then I’ll get completely sucked into it. The latest, Bloons TD6, has some annoying pay-to-play features, but they’re easily ignored.
Thanks to the free servers, I’ve reawakened my City of Heroes/Villians addiction from years ago. or at least my altitis from said game. The game is both more fun than I remembered and disappointing in what could have been if the bosses had been more on the ball.
Having recently upgraded my GPU to a 4080, I have started playing Control again, with graphics and RTX set pretty much to maximum. It’s a gorgeous game, but I am about 12 hours in and am reminded why I didn’t finish it when I first played a couple of years ago. The sudden ramp ups in difficulty seem to correspond to how far away the last control point AKA respawn location is.
Still having fun but damn, it’s a hard game for this old man.
Yeah, I had a similar experience with it: I hit a certain boss fight where I kept dying, and suddenly realized, “Hey, this isn’t fun!” and quit.
It didn’t help that although the game was clearly an aesthetic triumph, its color palette–relentlessly gray and grim–conveyed a bleak dreariness that I find the opposite of fun. Like, good job, art director, but I don’t actually enjoy looking at it.
I had hit a boss fight like that too, decided to cheat and look up a play through, which mentioned a bunch of capabilities I didn’t have yet… got too focused on the main missions.
I don’t mind the aesthetic, but between dead enemies ghosting away, all the flashing of the spectral weapons, and the screen reddening when I take damage, there are times where I can’t see fuck all and then, of course, I die. I just found a blog post on advice from experienced players on Steam… Definitely have some room for improvement in my playing. 
Looking back at the Control thread, my reaction at the time was that the atmosphere was very cool, but I liked the gameplay in the Borderlands series much, much better.
I downloaded and played Elder Scrolls Online last night, and apparently my settings were saved somewhere because I started back with my level 7 character. I quickly ran into why I quit a few years ago: I got killed within a few minutes due to my unfamiliarity with the controls and inability to find a guide online.
I revived and made it out of the scrap that killed me first go round, and I ran around trying to fill a quest that I had left unfinished in 2020. I couldn’t do it, couldn’t sell anything to get more gold, and broke my one lockpick trying to open an [easy] chest.
I’d probably get back into it because the game is pretty, and I think it may be fun, but I can’t seem to find a beginner’s guide that addresses my core issues, and I really don’t feel like trial and error with it right now. I’m willing to try it again sometime. It may be better if I just started over and see if there are any tutorials in-game with a new character; I don’t remember how it was starting out.
I’ll check out the Bloons series and PixelJunk Monsters 2, thanks much for the recommendations. Not a huge fan of cartoony visuals, but if it’s good I can look past that.
As for Control, on my playthrough I didn’t notice any particularly difficult sections except for maybe the very end fight. But in fairness, thanks to the wiki I got unlimited ammo on the pistol pretty much as soon as it became available in the story. If I recall correctly, the way it works is if you hit something it doesn’t spend a bullet, so for anything stationary I could just unload on it until it died. Super satisfying.
I basically just used the unlimited pistol and telekinesis to face roll pretty much everything. Was super fun all the way through.
Of possible relevance is that I just played the free version from epic, which does not include either of the DLCs. From what I read, the DLC content was much more difficult than the base game content, and you can go to it pretty much any time. As in you don’t have to finish the base game first. So if you unknowingly stumbled into a DLC section I can imagine the difficulty would be quite frustrating.
I believe I used the difficulty settings in that game just to make it through. I lowered them way down when needed just to get through.
Nice game and there is one amazing sequence that is an all-time great video game moment for me. The one where even the character at the end says, “That was awesome.”
The ashtray maze was definitely memorable, yes.
I was somewhat annoyed by attacks that removed 80% of my health bar. That, and the boss fight where I kept falling through the floor.
With the release of Starfield, I started replaying Fallout 4. I still think it’s my favourite of the modern Fallout games (and I still don’t get the reverence for Fallout: New Vegas), even with the bugs and crashing issues. So far I have had one deathclaw go flying into the sky after getting hit by a switchblade. Good riddance!
I’m not playing it on Survival mode, though; once was enough for me.
New Vegas is beloved mostly for its world class worldbuilding.
Unlike the Bethesda games, New Vegas’ world actually feels like one where the bombs dropped hundreds of years ago rather than last Wednesday.
I don’t usually like tower defense, but I played the crap out of Defense Grid: The Awakening. Including all of the expansions that were out at the time (several years ago). So I would highly recommend taking a look at it! So good.
Also along the lines of tower defense, I ran across an absolute jewel of a similar style game a long time ago called Atom Zombie Smasher. It’s probably more in the strategy genre, but there are aspects that are TD-like. And the scenarios play out in a few minutes or so. Would recommend to anybody.
Excellent, both of those recommendations sound like winners. Thanks much!
The way you describe Atom Zombie Smasher reminds me of They Are Billions, which is currently my most coveted title in my steam wish list. (Now that I already bought God of War.)
Picked up Super Mega Baseball 4 on sale and spent the better part of today making parody MLB teams and logos.
Been playing the crap out of Conan exiles lately with my friends. A survival game with a huge pretty map and interesting lore. My friend rented a private server so it’s just 6 or 7 of us on the map, building a huge base. And it’s just PvE for us. But there are public servers that are PvP if that’s more your thing. I might be tempted to try one soon now that I have combat basics down.
I just picked up the Resident Evil 4 remake. I’m not very far into the game but the graphics are so much better than the original. And they’ve changed enough of the game that, even though I went through it multiple times many years ago, it still feels fresh. If you are a fan of the original, you might enjoy it. And it happens to be on sale on Steam right now.
This looks like a winner. I watched the steam promo videos for PixelJunk Monsters 2, Bloons 6, and Atom Zombie Smasher but none of those three clicked for me. But man oh man, Defense Grid: The Awakening looks fantastic. Unfortunately I already blew my September gaming budget on God of War, so I’ll pick up DG: TA in October. I probably still have a couple solid weeks of Defense Zone 3 to go anyway.