Battletech is free for the weekend.

I encourage anyone who likes XCom style games to give it a try. Familiar turn-based style combat, but what sets the game apart from the rest is the diversity of customized mechs, weapons, environments, and the ability to focus fire on specific body parts which make battles much more tactically interesting than flanking the same 5 alien types every mission.

I know how the game works and evolves. Learning how the game works is the challenge. Smashing my face into RNG for 50-80 hours with nothing more to "learn" isn't fun for me. I think if dragging new characters through dungeons with higher level characters was possible, it would alleviate a lot of the sluggish forced grind. (and yes, I know the twists and turns in the later parts of the game and I'm glad I didn't personally experience the big middle finger because it let me appreciate the "oh wow" moment or two without the feeling of personal loss, and yes, I get that THAT's the point. I'm glad you enjoy the grind for the sake of grind. I do not.)

Maybe the expansions made it better. I don't know. I played it before the new classes were added, so my view may be tainted.

Any opinions on Academia: School Simulator?

My kid is interested, but its showing Mixed reviews, has been out since 2017 with only 458 Stream reviews and is in Early Access.

How old is your kid? Prison architect is the same game but way better. Some moderate sprite based violence though so no good for a very young kid.

Hes 11 so im fine with PA which we have. Of we already have it no real reason to get it for the skin chsnge to a school right?

Thimbleweed Park is free on Epic.

Epic has so many free games I followed them on twitter just so I don't forget after it is posted on here.

I compiled a list of platforms I have games on for PC, and think I got up to 6 or 7.
gog
Epic
Steam
Ubisoft
Twitch
Origin

Pretty sure I am missing one.

I have GOG, Uplay, Origin, Battle.net and Steam. Besides Steam which runs 24/7 the others are used never to very rarely.

Besides Epic, Bethesda also has their own client.

Love this game on Switch!

Snake Pass among the games free with Twitch Prime this month.

Last month for me with Prime , wife doesnt think the value is there anymore after they increased the price and I have played exactly 0 of the 90+ games I've gotten from it anyways, so not like I need it.

Amazon is the 2000s Walmart. Sooner you get out the better. JMO.

Has anyone played XING? It's billed as a puzzle adventure. I like puzzles! I like adventure! Also supports VR.

XING: The Land Beyond $20 on Steam

Thoughts on the Division 2 beta?

I think they somehow made the game even more bullet-spongey than the original. Nothing more annoying than emptying a 30 round clip into a charging enemy and having them react to it like a mosquito bite and keep charging at you THROUGH FIRE and they still don't die.

Had a rare marksman rifle that even on head shots only did 75% damage to red enemies. Both my character and gun were level 5 and the enemy was level 5 as well

Banner Saga 3 has been out since July? Did they do absolutely no advertising or something? Apparently I'm not the only one out of the loop because stream spy has it in the 20k-50k sold section.

I loved the first 2, cant wait to finish the series.

They said they reduced bullet-sponginess from the first game. Just from what I felt it seemed red enemies were generally the same while purple and yellow enemies went down faster. At level 30 I was 1 or 2-shotting enemies as the marksmen specialization.

It also felt like they removed some of the bullet sponge from your char in 2. I was getting killed a lot faster against purple/yellow in 2 than I was in 1.

Yeah you definitely have to use cover more. Not having a burst heal also means you spend more time in cover. One thing I didn't try in the beta was the Darkzone but apparently gear is normalized in the DZ and ttk on players is lower, so you might still get ganked but you can then go find that group of 2 or 3 and actually have a chance.

I found I never had to use more then a clip on purple enemies and yellow enemies didn't seem too bad. We will have to see how it works out at endgame, although the one endgame mission they had in the beta felt fine as the sniper specialization.

In The Division 1 you went from having to kite yellow enemies while leveling to walking up to their face and bursting them down in one clip when you were geared out in endgame.

Is the new Toejam and Earl game, Game of the Year or what?

So generic and flat. Deleted it after 2 hours.
I played the division 1 not so much, but i kinda liked it for a few hours sometimes because of the amazing winter/snow new york setting. Now its just.. meh.

It also looks pretty bad on regular xbox one on a non 4k tv. But im probably the only one that still games like that.

Slime Rancher free on Epic

Anyone played it before? What is it like (besides Total War)?

My son played it a lot. Pretty standard kid fare. Never really interested me much

The next free game looks much more interesting (Oxenfree).

Slime Rancher looks interesting but actually playing it is extremely tedious.

Oxenfree is pretty cool, unfortunately I put it down for a while and couldn’t remember the next thing i was supposed to do so I never finished it. It’s basically a spooky interactive fiction story where you spend too much time having to move your character from point to point to advance the story.