I mostly play simulation games, RPGs, MMOs, and some indie stuff when it goes on sale. I'm not really an MMO player anymore and I'd honestly consider myself a recovering addict (BDO will not be mentioned here), but it's hard to talk about games I like without at least mentioning them. You can see my favorite titles below.

Cyberpunk 2077

I'm into computer security so obviously I'm biased towards the genre. The world is really cool with lots of lore to explore but what I like most is how V is a real character with a distinct personality rather than a catatonic self insert. I also appreciate how there's no truly good ending, there's always something gained and lost... it just depends who and what you're willing to give up. DLC was also great and it's definitely worth buying if you're on the fence. Shit bro we left percs in pacifica!

Armored Core 6

BOOM BLAM KABOOM CRAZY ROBOT GAME OH YEAH BABY. The story is nothing special but it doesn't need to be. Just an awesome crazy action game where you can build a custom robot and load it up with four different weapons, each controlled by a bumper and trigger. The combat is really well designed and robot customization gives you a good deal of freedom over how you want to approach each stage. I opted for a fast robot on my first playthrough, and then went with a medium/heavy bruiser when I did NG+ and NG++. Definitely a super underrated Fromsoft title. FORGED IN ASH WE STAND AS ONE. CORAL ABIDE WITH RUBICON.

Phantasy Star Online 2

Idk if you've seen the video of the guy injecting fent directly into his brain but that's how this game is to me. I'm a big phantasy star fan (i got a dreamcast just to play PSO and then beat all of the PSP games) and I finally started playing this on the JP servers when I was a freshman in college (2018). I'd wanted to play it for so long and was soyjaking when i discovered you could play on their servers with a hacky client. The character customization, art, and combat are all amazing and the community is friendly. In my opinion these are the things that really matter about an MMO, story doesn't actually matter that much because if it did you'd probably just be playing an offline RPG. The PSO2 story blows btw.

The character customization is perfect because it isn't too simple or complex, it's just right. Nothing like BDO where you can adjust every bone in your face, and there aren't just 5 preset faces. There's a perfect amount of sliders and then more cosmetic items than you'll ever be able to try out. The action combat is similar where it's not a quasi fighting game like BDO and it's not a clicking similator. Everything just feels perfectly tuned.

When this finally came out with NA servers I sunk over 1K hours in during COVID. I have so many good memories from this game, way too many to count, but my favorites are:

• That time a furry guy from my JP guild babysat me after I came back from a Deadmau5 concert blackout drunk. This was definitely the start of my warming up to furries after years of being an edgy meme kid.

• Getting yelled at by JP players for being bad when i first started as a HuFi, not knowing what they were saying, and trying to communicate with pictures.

• Joining my first guild and getting decked out with cool ass cosmetics for my goth mommy character (i had a phase also thank you cera and the phantom knights)

• Getting into the top NA guild and immediately leaving after they gave me a fucking weekly schedule for quests I had to run. Holy shit that was so lame.

• Spending entire days trading cosmetics on the marketplace and then flexxing my expensive cosmetics in the lobby. I'm the wolf of the visiphone.

You may now know this game as NGS or New Genesis which I won't talk about. Being a SEGA fan is like going out to your favorite restaurant and then as soon as you arrive some little guy walks up to you and kicks you in the balls. Their old stuff is great and they love getting you really excited for something new... just to disappoint you. The game blows now and nobody plays it anymore, including myself. It was really fun while it lasted and I can't wait for the day when private servers start popping up. Please I need this to happen. It's just a super solid sci-fi anime MMO with great action combat. If AGI takes my job I'll just play this all day and have it make new expansions and maybe a better story.

One of my old screenshots of my NA character. Yes that's a red combat jacket. I actually have three different colors. Try being less broke next time. I'll post some of these to the blog maybe.

Kerbal Space Program

Oh yeah now we're talking. This is actually one of the most educational games I've ever played. It taught me things like orbital dynamics, engineering, laws of physics, and that I'm probably on the spectrum. Not a crazy amount to say about this since it's so famous, but I did actually mention it during my interviews at a certain private space company. I remember I stopped caring about space travel and eventually just spent hours making replicas of fighter jets in the spaceplane hangar. I really wish I still had my VTOL Harrier from when I was 14. My friends and I would use the weapon mod as well as dark multiplayer to do dogfights and I can assure you it was "cray cray".

Mindustry

Really good factory game. I actually don't like Factorio but mindustry really hit the spot. I think it's because it has more RTS elements and the game progresses through stages rather than one constant open world. You don't need to do much rebuilding, each level is a fresh start. In each level you have to build up a factory to both produce units and defend your core, progressing through waves or destroying an enemy base. Great mix of factory and RTS elements. Imagine if starcraft required you to build a factory that was able to sustain your zerg rush rather than just sicking drones on each resource node. It's also DIRT CHEAP and you can just open it and play for 30 minutes during a break from some work. This is probably the factory game to start out with if you're new to the genre, not Factorio.

Kenshi

Fuck my shitty skeleton life.