Just started to dabble with Sea of Thieves. I know the graphics are done in a cartoon type style but the sea is really well done. Probably the best I've seen. I love just sailing around.

I'm a solo player so I got my work cut out.

That looks quite interesting! How polished is it?

Van Halen, Sammy Hagar made them what they are. Some of the best 80`s tunes ever. 5150 is Awesome.

I like it, there are many mods to "tune it" according to your tastes. I've been way from it for a few weeks now but I've played the mod much more than the base game.

Its fantastic actually. The only problem is that every time they update GTA:V, which is like every other day, it breaks something, which then needs to be addressed, but once you get used to it its easy to do. I actually reskinned my vehicles to look like local police around here. There are a million mods for the mod. It really is great. There's nothing quite like walking up to a car on a traffic stop for running a stop sign which 99% of the time is completely uneventful (run the plate and the driver, no warrants, issue a warning or a ticket), and having the occupant jump out and try to shoot you. Then have all the gang rats from the neighbourhood start shooting at you as well. Hitting the "back up" a bunch of times and trying to hold them off until your backup arrives.

Or... having the random person on a traffic stop, with no wants or warrants suddenly drive off, starting a long pursuit.

I figured out where the Korean Mafi hangs out, I can go provoke a shootout anytime the mood strikes

I just finished my 2nd playthrough of the infamous The Last of Us 2, after being pressured to play it or else receive no more free games from my gaming industry relative.

Anyway, it's a decidedly mixed bag, with beautiful and detailed environments and greatly improved combat mechanics on one hand, but it was let down by a stupid story, wonky pacing and an excessive amount of cutscenes and scripted sequences, enough that you hardly felt in control of your character.

There is also the controversial content that I won't get into here.

Overall I don't think it was completely horrible, but its sales are bombing hard enough that it might kill what should have been a successful franchise.

I'm really disappointed about what they did to TLOU2. I'll likely not ever play it unless someday second hand. Naughty Dog needs new owners/creative leads or what have you. I won't mention their names but "they" need to go. Save for about two major objections I had with the first game I loved The Last of Us and played it three times. Wrong people with wrong agendas have hijacked and poisoned ND who then obviously have also had Sony's support to facilitate these agendas.

It a shame. Like you mentioned Crane I love the world and environments from TLOU and the combat which I imagine is even better the second time around but they have abused and misused the most important thing and that is the story telling. Even Uncharted started to take a subtle yet downward turn in my opinion especially Lost Legacy which is my least favorite. TLOU though took a spectacular turn for the worse. Lost Legacy wasn't terrible but you can definitely tell "whose" hands were on the story telling. Uncharted 4 turned out okay but likewise you can see signs of the change when they turned Amy Hennig loose.

Kind of off topic but not totally, I have found it quite interesting the number of friends I have on Steam who I see playing games all the time ever since the pandemic started but whom I rarely ever saw playing before the pandemic.

Madden football. Look I beat the Patriots!

Hmm, I stumbled across this mod today for Battletech:

https://www.nexusmods.com/battletech/mods/452?tab=description

Contemplating giving it a try.

Just bought Serious Sam 4 from Steam today. If you are a fan of the Serious Sam games I suggest you get it! It's only 40 bucks.

Normally my gaming MO is to latch on to a certain title I like, then play it at high intensity until completion or burnout, whichever comes first. I tend not to shuffle through various titles, and instead focus on my game of the moment, but over the past few months I have kept mixing it up. These are the games I've been playing over that time.

Metro Exodus -- Bought it back in the early days of the Epic release, advancing to the Volga level and then becoming frustrated over the QTE stuff (I've since learned I could change the QTE method), and shelved it for a while. I actually purchased a second copy on Steam (Gold Edition) when it was on sale recently and gave it another go. Very much enjoying the game, as Metro is one of my favorite franchises. It's not without its flaws, but overall it's quite good. I've run in to some hard lock/freeze problems near the lighthouse, but read of some things to try and get past it today which I'll try tonight. Seems a fairly common issue so hopefully I can work it out and continue. Technical troubles aside I'm having a good time with Exodus.

Football Manager -- Bought FM20 and played a Derby County save for eight seasons, winning two league titles (one Championship, one Premiership), four league cups, one FA Cup and one Europa League with the Rams. But I eventually was overcome by frustration with the match engine. It's mostly good, but there are a few things that drive me batty about it. Decided to go retro and am now managing Leeds in FM13.

Divinity Original Sin -- Played through DOS 2 for the third time I think, on Tactician, and then DOS1 for the fourth or fifth time. Great games if you're in to this sort of stuff. Very much looking forward to Larian's take on Baldur's Gate.

Prey -- Played it through a second time. This is a title that seems to divide opinion. Folks either love it or hate it. For me, one of my favorite shooters of the past few years.

Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun -- Strategy and tactical games are my jam, but this one doesn't quite click with me. It's neat, and has tidy mechanics, but it's a bit frustrating and at the same time a little too simple or something. Can't quite put my finger on it. I've tried to get in to it twice now, but didn't get past more than a few levels before shelving it.

Greedfall -- Has failed to grab me, but I'll return to it. Have yet to give it a proper shake.

PGA Tour 2K21 -- I love golf games, and this is a good one, but I am finding it difficult to find the right settings for me. I'm either shooting 60 every round (with swing timing off) or shanking the odd one out of bounds (with swing timing on). I'd really like to find the middle ground because it's a good golf simulation. Putting is either too easy (with put preview on) or too hard without it. The green slope grid is too coarse for me to get a good read without the preview.

Europa Universalis IV -- What can I say? This is my most-played Steam game ever (3,400 hours over six years). It's fantastic, and during a recent sale I grabbed the expansions I had railed against. I'm no fan of Paradox's DLC policy, but I like their strategy games. Always on ironman mode hunting the achievements.

I absolutely loved Metro Exodus and played it through twice. I highly recommend you get the two DLC's "The Two Colonels" and "Sam's Story" if you don't have them already. I never had the issue with the hard locks near the lighthouse.

As for Prey, my personal opinion is that it's like a David Lynch film. You either "get it" or you don't. Prey is most certainly not for everyone and I can perfectly understand why it only had a niche appeal.

Yep PM, those Exodus DLCs are what makes it the Gold Edition. Got 'em and will play them after the main campaign.

im taking care of my mom after surgery so i dont have much time for games, so im only doing quick sessions of r6 siege and cod, when i go at little more time in the weekend im trying out horizon zero dawn....im enjoying so far, while as pc gamer i dont find the game aaaaall that, i have to apreciate all the details they managed to include into base ps4 early on gen, they really extracted milk out of rocks

Lately, I've been playing Total War: Warhammer. It's fun and I like the difference between the factions, but that end game chaos and beastmen spamming is absurd.
Mafia the definitive edition released yesterday, I'll give that a go over the weekend. The original was one of my favorite PC games.

DCS / IL2

Occasional KSP

And a sprinkling of GTAV LSPDFR

Same here. I’ve come to the conclusion that the vast majority of people who play IL-2 play it in single player mode only. Even at peak times such as a Saturday afternoon I will see at most 3-4 Cooperative servers and about 10 dogfight servers. Several of these servers will also be empty or nearly empty.

Mortal Empires? Yeah the Chaos waves are not fun. Depends on where you are whether you get repeated invasions or hardly ever see them. In Vortex I find it manageable as it ramps up along with your faction. Otherwise a great game. We have a Warhammer thread in the RTS/Historical Strategy subforum if you ever care to share which factions you are playing or any other thoughts you have. One of my favorite games, Warhammer 2.

For what it's worth I was able to get past the Metro Exodus hard locks by disabling "Full Screen Optimization". All's good and progressing once again.