I'm always a "binge and catch up" kind of guy after spending most of the spring/summer replaying nostalgic favorites or more often just indulging in MLB The Show beyond all reason so this is more of just what I've enjoyed so far, and I promise this postwill not be indulgent. Hold my hand.
1. Horizon: Forbidden West - I worry about saying this, because I'm not stoked to play a NG+. Many mistakes were made with this game, but ultimately it is still the Aloy vs. robot combat I put against MGS V as generationally definitive and looks ridiculous on a PS5. As long as you don't have some weird hangup about a game telling you what's interesting about it, it's also a beautiful world to explore.
2. Elden Ring - I can't say more about this game right now. I've said so much. It's the best game that sucks as much as it does I've ever played. I'm starting to think I might care about this game and what people think about it more than anything outside of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford. So in 6 more months, number one might not seem so absurd to me.
3. Gran Turismo 7 - I'm not a car guy, slightly more but still barely a car game guy. Last GT I bought/played was A-Spec on PS2. I bought that game to show my TV what the Emotion Engine could do and had all the same intentions for my 4K TV and the...x86 architecture...But damn! What a showcase for a TV! What a showcase for the DualSense (play this game using the controller as a steering wheel, please, if you ever do!) and what a showcase for how fucking awfully stupid a loot box system can be designed! I get why the community is up in arms about this game - it seems like it did the classic sports franchise thing of losing stuff people liked, emphasizing stuff they didn't while containing far too few of the enjoyable activities the game has to offer - but crap is fun to race cars in this game. If it weren't for the daily mileage reward that acts as a mental red light (and reminder upon accepting its reward that the game treats me like an absentee dad) this could've dominated my whole summer. As is, I've still played it more than Elden Ring, and I've got nearly 100 hours in Elden Ring, so...
4. Grand Theft Auto V (PS5) - Yep, wound up rambling again. Luckily not much to say here. The humor has aged even worse than the last time you or I played it, but boy is this just a fun world to zip around in and full of likable characters despite their mostly awful dialogue. I don't know what it is about this game, other than it feels weird to play it a decade later with minor bells and whistles appended to the other minor bells and whistles it got last generation and think...yea, in some ways, this is still a pinnacle.
5. Returnal - I turned a corner on Returnal in the New Year after weeks of being stuck on the 2nd or 3rd biome. Technically it appears I beat Hyperion at 6 AM on December 31st, 2021, but it lingered with me for months as one of the strongest video game experiences I'd had since I was an impressionable kid. Almost as baffling as the intensity and meticulous crafting of that whole level/experience is the fact that the only way to rediscover it is to watch a fan made Youtube video - there's not even a trace of her theme on the official soundtrack! No matter what aspect of Returnal doesn't speak to you, those with no plans to engage with it should at least look up a clean, audio emphasized run of the 4th biome (which might not even be possible, given Youtubers' needs to speak their piece and edit the heck out of stuff). It's a treat I think games will be struggling to equal for some time.
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