180 Lunches

Category: 50Best

  • Best Games: Arc Raiders

    Best Games of the 2020’s is back with the ninth game in 2025. Sadly, the fifth entry in a racing franchise, that I hope gets a sixth, is off the list.

    Arc Raiders (2025) goes on at #??

    This game garnered positive and very loud buzz every time it had a public playtest. My radar is generally not tuned into this genre, but it was hard to ignore. Extraction shooters were the rage or are the rage? Escape from Tarkov seemed to be the best in class, but it felt too harsh for my delicate and old gaming sensibilities.

    Arc Raiders has sanded off those edges a bit. Starting as a PVE^ game and then eventually adding in PVP^^, when per the developers just PVE lacked some punch and staying power. That origin is apparent the moment you load into your first game. The maps look fantastic, lived in, and a hidden back story in every room. The combat feels great, reminds me a bit of Last of Us.

    You’ll likely encounter a robot or “arc” first and they will push you, maybe even kill you. They are tough and in groups they can quickly end your round. Eventually you will get better gear and better strategies for tangling with them and maybe even bored. In step the players. The opportunity to tussle with strangers is a endless thread to pull on. Do you have a friendly chat and pair up? Is their salutation a grenade at your feet? Can you deescalate a situation? How long can you trust your fellow man when there is shiny loot on the line?

    It is a gem of a game, facets on top of facets. Entertaining and unpredictable. I want to be playing it right now. Just one more solo run to stock up or jumping on with friends to see what trouble we can get into.

    Forza Horizon 5 (2021) is an excellent racing game, but it was too similar to Horizon 4 which grabbed a hold of me and kept me racing for a solid 2 months in 2018. On top of that the progression was poorly balanced. If they give you all the things in the first 3 hours, what is there to play for? Said my broken brain.

    ^PVE: Player vs. Environment or take on AI enemies

    ^^PVP: Player vs. Player or take on other people

  • Best Games: Blue Prince

    Another great game enters the Best Games of the 2020’s today, and we bid farewell to a modern throw back to the arcade beat’em up.

    Blue Prince (2025) goes on as #13

    I love a good escape room and a good board game. What about both? This game took our house by storm. The rare game that I pitched my wife on and she stuck around for. She stuck around for the combination of strategically managing probabilities, testing theories, and pulling every thread till we could solve it’s core puzzle.

    What pushes me away from most puzzle games is either my dumb brain or single dependencies for progress. See The Witness or Outer Wilds. Blue Prince is the perfect balance of learning something new, setting it aside, and progressing toward the next bit. Stumped by a puzzle, don’t give up, move on to learn more. That puzzle might make sense in three hours. If you wrote it down in your notebook of course.

    TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge (2022) is off the list. My wife, youngest, and I had a blast with this game playing couch co-op. It was a fun and well crafted homage to the 90’s arcade games of my youth.

  • Best Games: Kingdom Come Deliverance 2

    I’m continuing to prime the pump with new ideas here. Similar to the Best of Richmond, the Best Games of the 2020’s series will be a continuous list of, you guessed it, the best games I’ve played in the 2020s. The list is mostly complete through 2024, though there are some older games that are on my backlog that will surely make an appearance. Post-wise, as I play games that unseat top 50 incumbents on the list, they will come off and new games will go on. Today’s inaugural entry…

    Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 goes on as #25

    The game I’ve easily put the most time into in 2025. Not only because it requires it, as a highly immersive, open world, role playing game, but because it’s hooks got in deep. It is essentially a medieval times game with systems on top of systems. Every action you take, be it conversation, a fight you pick, an item you steal, seems to have some form of consequence or impact on the world. Fight bandits in the woods and get covered in mud and blood. You better wash up and change clothes before talking to a merchant if you don’t want to pay higher prices.

    That is one silly example, but it is just a foothold into the matrix of systems that underlie a game with great story, writing, world building, relationships, factions, and more. And it is all built in the CryEngine, as in Crysis and Far Cry. All that means is that it plops you down in a beautiful and detailed landscape. Roaming from town to town on horse back reminds me tons of Red Dead. In fact, it is easiest to sum it up as “Red Dead 2, but 14th century Europe”. From top to bottom a great game.

    Valheim (2021) is off list. Still a great game, but it’s early access 15 minutes of fame didn’t stand the test of time when I went back in 2024 to play it with my kids. The progression felt punishing the second time through, and the mystery that sustained that

    Coming soon…