I'm playing the Quest for Glory series. I would get a ton of "hits" if I wrote about it but it's surprisingly hard to without being all "oh man I remember playing this when I was a kid!" and since I'm not a videogame critic, I don't like to do writing that has no analysis or external appeal to it.
Just tried Europa Concept on the recommendation of Adrian Chmielarz and freeindiegame.es (I'd had it downloaded for a while but the download was corrupt, I guess?) What a useless fucking waste of an hour. The reviews are all "ooh, atmospheric exploration" but it's actually "wander around in a narrow landscape picking up random shit and hoping you can find the four magic MacGuffins, and we're not going to make the random shit disappear when you pick it up because that would deprive you of the pleasure of seeing something in the distance and not knowing if you've looked at it, and if you actually decide to do some exploring before you find your MacGuffins there's something to see but it will kill you with no weapon. Get back to the initial location and click on everything! Now! Everything! No, you can't see where it is! It's a gray thing against a gray background! Look at the ground some more! No save function for you!" People complain about interactive fiction, Jesus fucking Christ.
There are only a few games I would recommend that you guys might not have heard about. Recently, I've mostly been playing Civ IV, Road Trip Adventure, Animal Crossing New Leaf and Saint's Row the Third.
Civ IV is awesome. In the Civ series, I've played the original, II, Revolution, and Alpha Centauri. The original's pretty good, considering it's the first. Revolution is basically baby's first Civ, but I still found it enjoyable, and it's nice to have a Civ game I can take with me. I couldn't get into II, don't ask me why, I have no idea. Alpha Centauri is amazing, get it, like, right fucking now. IV and Alpha Centauri are both my favorites.
Road Trip Adventure is the second game I tried on my PS2 emulator, and it's playable, but there's a lot of slowdown, which is sad, because this game holds a lot of nostalgia for me - I used to play it with my cousins all the time. It's a fun, charming little game.
Saint's Row the Third is a lot of fun. It's not my favorite third person blow shit up simulator, that would be either Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction or Just Cause 2, but it's a fine game. I did what I always do on character creation, make the face as hideous as possible, and then stripped the character nude. I then proceeded to give my (male) character the Russian female voice. My favorite thing to do is get out the dildo sword and run at my enemies, my huge penis flapping in the wind, and then beat them to death. With my giant dildo. Fuck yeah.
I doubt any of you have a 3DS, so I won't even talk about AC:NL.
As for other games...
One game I'll be playing a lot more of once I get my mouse (hopefully today) is World in Conflict. I absolutely refuse to play most games with this trackpad, and World in Conflict is no exception. The story is some right-wing wankery about how the Soviets invaded America, though it does have its moments. However, it's shaping up to be my favorite RTS game. If you like that sort of thing, go ahead and pick it up.
Speaking of strategy games, something really obscure I recommend is Mud and Blood 2. It's nice, and it's also free.
Something else obscure that I quite enjoy is ASCII Sector. If you like Wing Commander: Privateer, well, this game is based on that. In fact it basically is Privateer if Privateer were done with ASCII graphics.
I can't finish this post without mentioning my first video game, Banjo-Kazooie for the Nintendo 64. Both it and the sequel, Banjo-Tooie, are probably why I have such a fondness for the strange. Seriously, play them, they're really good.
WORLD IN CONFLICT. Lemme play with you please! It's awesome! I'm super pro mlg 420 with armor, but I can fill any of the other roles just fine.
Mud 'n Blood, I can honestly say, is an interesting game. Though... I'd say it's got too much of a difficulty gap between surviving five waves and a hundred; I'd rather spend that sort of effort training for a different kind of game.
I like Fate Stay Night. Though, to be fair, I like it a lot more because I've watched the Monogatari Series which feels like a direct response to Fate Stay Night. Though, I'm sure HM would go "bleh" at the amateur translation.
I'm playing Fallen London again. Wish it wasn't a browser game. Will get Sunless Sea at some point.
Played a bit of XCOM. It's better than I thought it would be, but the lack of freedom does irritate me. Had to restart 14 hours in when I was losing countries because I hadn't realized how badly designed the satellite system is. Finding it a bit hard to do everything again.
Played Kingdom Rush. Yes, the tower defense game. It's quite polished, but the design is frustrating. Too little strategy, but you can't grind either.
Need to go back to STALKER. Stopped right before Pripyat, mostly because I was depressed (by Germany, not the game).
I felt the same about Fallen London--which is weird because I write browser based games after all...partially it's because it's largely unplayable on an iPhone and my setup on my PC isn't comfortable for browsing but that might be an excuse.
Did someone say "might"? Why, it seems I'm knee deep in Might and Magic 4-5 as well, and hot damn it's fun!
Cartoon Network made an (entirely) free to play Adventure Time moba. It's very simplified, but in ways that are entirely justified. And, well, I'd be happy to jump in a match with anyone here.
I've been on an English Country Tune binge after finishing only three worlds or so the first time I played it. It's good! (Broadly speaking it's a geometric puzzle game, the first levels are pretty much Sokoban but there are a huge number of other play modes.) Sometimes though I feel a bit annoyed that I can't control the camera, as though the game is making me pay for figuring out and reviewing the level layout when I should get that for free. Anyway, it's still good. There was this level that was apparently stumping a lot of people (the U-shaped level on L&W, which I say precisely because it doesn't tell you anything) where I came up with a clever intricate solution and was pretty damn proud of myself and then a week later I realized that two-thirds of my solution wasn't doing anything. Humble Bundle 8 was totally the best one, well since 4.
Speaking of which Threes is on a mobile bundle so hopefully that'll do them some good. Also I went back to Crayon Physics and still found it kind of annoying.