Remember that a huge number of Steam accounts exclusively play Free to Play games and spend no money at all. 6 of the Top 10 Most Played on Steam right now are F2P games and only one is from this year.

Going to second Midnight Suns. I’m a big XCOM fan, and while there were a lot of differences, it still scratched that same multi-genre itch.

I also played (in no specific order):

Hitman - World of Assassination - A whole hell of a lot of game in one package. Definitely the highlight of the series if it is your type of game.

Horizon Burning Shores - A worthwhile reason to go back to Horizon Forbidden West, though it was over sooner than I’d like. I’d feel better about the length if it was easier to miss the story, but anyone who goes from Forbidden West to the next game without playing Burning Shores might be caught off guard by the new character. (And I’mma be mad if they don’t bring back the new character!)

Death Stranding: Director’s Cut - Another YMMV game that will suck you in if you like good progression mechanics and don’t mind a slightly slower pace. And Hideo Kojima being Hideo Kojima.

Crisis Core - FFVII Reunion - You know the old school parenting style of making your kid smoke a pack of cigarettes so they want to wretch every time they catch a whiff of them? I accidentally did that to myself with JRPGs during the PS1 era. I thought maybe Crisis Core could coast by on nostalgia factor because I was able to enjoy FFVII Remake. Crisis Core was a big stinker though. The story hits every bad JRPG/anime trope you can think of (fucking Genesis… WOOF), and the quest design seems designed to embrace pointless backtracking and tedium.

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty - I will argue until I’m blue in the face that while the PS4 and Xbox Series Whatever was a shitshow, the PC launch of CP2077 in 2020 was only a bit rocky. All the praises that people have been singing about the game since 2.0 and Phantom Liberty? They’re praising the same elements that have made the game great since Day 1. It’s just not sandwiched between T-poses and occasional CTDs any more. PC veterans who lived through rough launches of great games (like Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines or, hell, Witcher 3!) were right at home. The Phantom Liberty Expansion was a great excuse to revisit Night City and remember why I fell in love with the game three years ago.

Slay the Spire - Because I’m going to hit A20 and kill the Heart with Silent eventually, goddammit.

Baldur’s Gate 3 - Because best $50 I spent in 2020.

No Man’s Sky - I waited until this year to pick up NMS and this was another one that sucked me in for a solid couple months. Hello Games has sunk years into making this game a great bang for your buck if you like exploration and building.

I played the balls out of the Dead Rising series through the third game. Definitely check out 2 if you like the first one. Off the Record is a fun retread of the second game if you take a break before playing it. 3 was a bit poorer received at launch, but on an SSD, it’s still a damn fun game.

Never got around to the 4th game. It sounded pretty soulless from the reviews

He will not be the first. Here is a good run down. Ironically, Ali isn’t even the first Luke Cage villain to get a second role. Alfre Woodard played the grieving mother who convinced Tony to kick off the events of Civil War.

Gemma Chan was arguably highest profile in terms of plot importance if you don’t count Agents of Shield and the Netflix shows… She played a named bad guy in Captain Marvel, then Sersi in Eternals. You’ve also Michelle Yeoh who played a Ravager in Guardians 2, and Shang Chi’s aunt. A bunch more had voice/CGI roles for their second appearance, like Linda Cardellini or Benedict Cumberbatch.

Well, half-elf. But yeah, pointy ears are a bit more appealing than green skin and short noses or red skin and horns, I guess. People are boring.

Why fuck yeah? Credit Unions aren’t banks. They are owned by the members who keep their money there. This isn’t, “Big bad corpo gets a black eye.” This is “People trying to have a bit more control over their money get fucked over once again.”

Death Stranding Director’s Cut via PlayStation Plus membership. I had a healthy amount of skepticism about it at launch, but it got its hooks in me deep. I’ve got 80 hours so far and I’m planning to Platinum it before moving on.

It’s one of those games that will either bore you to tears or suck you in. Half of my gaming sessions are just spent building infrastructure. The game progression is on point.

It’s 0 to 200 miles in 15 minutes in ideal conditions. Really good, but no reason to set unreasonable expectations.

In my experience, it’s closer to 45 minutes to go from 15-20% to 90% in my Model 3. The supercharger’s fastest charge is when the battery is less than half full. After that, it slows down to protect the life of the battery pack. If all you need is enough charge to get home to your own charger, it’s entirely possible that you can be in and out in 10-15 minutes.

Yeah, unfortunately, it is hard for me to hurt their bottom line because I checked out of the series after Origins.

That said, I’ve never sought a refund on a digital copy of a game, but I wouldn’t hesitate if I paid full price for a game only to find out there were in game ads

Karlach deserves a bit of planning/effort/investment/sacrifice

I’d say Hitman III (now called World of Assassins) or No Man’s Sky. Both are really great values for their price.

I think I’m mostly done with the Hitman franchise for now, but I’ll probably come back to NMS next time Starfield has some big update and I need to scratch that exploration itch.

Who knew Larry the Bird was an albatross the entire time

I have Max included with my home internet plan. I use it so little that if I was paying $16/month for it, I could probably drop it and just buy Blu-Rays for any movies or shows that I would watch on there and still be ahead at the end of the year. Plus then I’d have media to keep for when they inevitably delist it on the streaming catalog to save syndication fees.

I’ve played everything in the bundle outside of Gotham Knights. I get it if you don’t like fighting games, but I had fun with every one of them (besides GK, as mentioned). They are all solid games, even Mad Max.

In other words… that’s just, like, your opinion, person.

I remember seeing a Lemmy feature request for hierarchical community tags. I love the idea of being able to, say, allow Game communities but block anything created under the Game -> Racing tag because I am very unlikely to have interest in it. Or in this case, block Sports altogether, that way if someone creates Sports -> American Football -> Carolina Panthers -> Panthers Memes it’s already out of my view and I’m none the wiser.

For me, it was the game Dead Island

Pickle

Oftentimes they’ll have a Print button as well which reduces the page down to just the ingredients and steps.