180 Lunches

Category: Gaming

  • 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

  • Sep 2025: Media Log

    The second monthly media log is a go. September started off slow with a trip to Spain and airplane movies.

  • Aug 2025 Media Log

    I experimented with a monthly media log on the last iteration of this site and still like the idea. Starting this month I’ve kept a running tab of all of the media I’ve consumed. Minus YouTube, music and podcast, as they’re too numerous and fluid. Let’s see if it sticks.

  • Grounded 2 – Early Access

    After a summer gaming lull, the kids and I were eagerly awaiting Grounded 2. I played the first one sometime between 2020 and 2022 when it went from early access to full release. I went in solo and it was fun, but that lacked the punch of a full co-op run.

    A few weeks back the sequel dropped in early access and the three of us jumped in. The novelty of getting honey I shrunk the kids-ed is still incredibly strong. Things are early, but the map feels big and there is lots to do. Riding ants introduces a new level of mobility and makes some of the death runs from the punishing difficulty a little less painful.

    The survival and tech tree loop are already there too. There will need to be balance changes and an evolution of the late game, but the foundation they’ve built is solid. There’s a long term roadmap too that is fun to day dream about “what if” and “when”.

    Last thought and a warning combined. It is buggy and sometimes buggy as hell. It is the first few weeks of early access so that is to be expected. But we had a few crashes and even more things that just bugged out. From missions, to disappearing mounts, to straight up base functionality just stopping. All of it is worth trying though, especially if you already have Game Pass. Really excited to keep an eye on this as it progresses.

  • Videogame Wilderness: Summer 2025 edition

    V Rising v1.1 was the last game to make the best 50 list back in May. Ever since I’ve been playing games, but nothing that sticks to the ribs.

    Death Stranding 2

    I played a grand total of 2.5 hours of the first game before deciding it was not for me. So how did I get tricked into spending $70 on the sequel? I am over 30 hours played and I can’t quit it. I don’t know that it is good or that I’d recommend it, but it’s hooks are in me. There is something meditative about delivery missions and completing new roads. It’s combat is not great, but it’s story is bonkers, entertaining, and confusing. Highs and lows.

    Cauldron

    There is a steep bar for me with “clickers” and I’ve never played an auto battler before this. this little ear worm sneaked in via the Besties. I had a fun weekend playing it on the Steam Deck in a hotel room and never went back to it. You play mini games to get high scores, that make the automatic numbers go up, so you can upgrade your abilities in the mini games to get new high scores.

    Rematch

    Rocket League, but players not cars. Yes, that is the reverse devolved pitch for Rocket League. This a soccer game by the Sifu development team. It shows in it’s art, fast pace, and hard to master controls. This could be a top 50 pick once it gets cross-play. They seem to be crushing it right now, so hopefully that community sticks around.

    Terraria

    I have a teenager who loves a survival crafting game. I am always up for trying a new game with him, but he is the fuel in the engine. Terraria looks bad, and that is not a knock against pixel art, there are better looking pixel art games from the same era. It also has an overwhelming catalog of materials, and simplistic combat that is just wild clicking. Despite those shortcomings it’s progression loop is fun and made even better playing it with my kid.

    Wheel World

    Open world chill cycling and racing are right up my alley. The cell shaded graphics evoke good times with Jet Set Radio and Wind Waker. So why didn’t this make the cut? The difficultly feels out of tune. The first three hours offered little to no challenge, making the rewards of upgraded bike parts an empty loop. The performance got bad to unplayable as the number of buildings and objects on the screen increased. I run a 4080 and was getting big frame drops in a game that could have run on a Dreamcast in 2000.

  • Sunderfolk

    This not an entry into the Best Games of the 2020’s and that is not a poor reflection of what Sunderfolk has to offer.

    Calling it a video game is probably disingenuous, it has more in common with Gloomhaven than it does with any of the games I’ve played this year. And that is a good thing. A hybrid video game/board game, voardgame? that you play couch co-op style. Each player managing their character from their phone. You are deck building when you level up and coordinating attacks on the board with your friends.

    It doesn’t make the list however because of it’s pace. It all starts very slowly and a two hour session might not net you very much progress. Nor challenge, it feels like it requires a lot of tutorial before it lets you loose or challenges your group. Neither of the two groups I tried it with were willing to invest in peeling it’s rind to get to it’s theoretical juice.

  • 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…