I’ve been playing a huge amount of Magic: The Gathering Arena which is the best implementation of Magic that I’ve played. Despite my love of tabletop gaming, Magic is one of the very few games that I’m actually good at, and I may have a streak of masochism with my constant playing of it because, like many things we’re good at (or at least think we are), I find repeated plays end up becoming frustrating. At the start of each month I rapidly graviate through the leagues until I’m at a level where I am roughly winning and losing in equal measure (which for me is high Platinum/ low Diamond level) because, well that’s how the matchmaking system works, and the curse of Magic is that when everyone is very good, many games come down to luck. Did I draw that perfect hand where my deck performs exactly as I want it to, while my opponent just gets land or is slightly behind, or is it me that’s mana screwed/ flooded this time? The longer epic games that could go either way are few and far between (although when they happen, they’re great). Fortunately I’m shallow enough to still thoroughly enjoy drubbing my opponent even if it’s because they had to mulligan down to 5 cards and still got a crap draw. I am a deeply flawed human.
As mentioned here, I’ve also got myself an Oculus Quest 2 recently and been trying a few games on it. Subnautica is astonishing but very nausea-inducing if I’m not careful. Superhot VR and The Room VR are both wonderful and immersive in very different ways, but the VR game I’ve mostly sunk into is Elite: Dangerous. It turns out the least disorientating VR games are ones where you’re sitting in a cockpit, and E:D brings back my childhood memories of pretending I actually owned a Cobra Mk III, and the cockpit was my bedroom. VR is a much much higher fidelity version of the same fantasy, and I’m having immense fun trucking pretend space shipments to other worlds and accidentaly falling into stars. I also fully intend to get Half Life: Alyx the next time it’s on sale.
Outside of my virtual worlds and Magic addiction, I’ve been playing Pathfinder: Kingmaker and have also been greatly enjoying it. I don’t especially enjoy the fiddliness of Pathfinder at the tabletop (although I don’t hate it) but the crunchiness is just perfect for a cRPG and I’ve also been having a really fun time with it. It’s tough and unforgiving but only in the way that cRPGs were when I grew up - the difficulty is actually hitting me right in my nostalgia nugget (my nugget seems to get bigger every year, but it’s possible I should see a doctor about that rather than posting on a forum about it).
I really, really want to get into The Outer Wilds because everyone tells me how wonderful it is, but every time I try I bounce off the fiddly control system. I promise I’ll try harder soon. Also I bought Dyson Sphere Program in a recent Steam sale because it looks ace and @yashima recommended it too me. Now it sits in my library, gazing at me hopefully every time I turn on my computer. Soon, I promise, little megastructure simulator! Soon!