Command and Conquer perhaps? CC Tiberium Wars came out around 2007. Starcraft is also a similar RTS; Starcraft 2 came out in 2010

These come to mind where you can kill enemies, be a girl, and are or are similar to an rpg:

Middle Earth: Shadow of War: main character is a guy but in one of the expansions you can play the story as Galadriel. Killing monsters and game mechanics are peak

Skyrim Mods: ik you mentioned Skyrim, but The Wheels of Lull, The Tools of Kagrenac, and The Forgotten City are game sized mods in of themselves and are very good

Elder Scrolls III Morrowind and IV Oblivion: both as good as Skyrim, but in different ways. Go in with an open mind and you will be amazed

Star Wars KOTOR I & II: my favorite games of all time, very much games where you can choose how your character acts and who they become. Great story too, as a fan of star wars or not

And of course! Thank you for quality news and tips

Nightfire is such a great game, you’ll have a lot of fun with it. All the James Bond games are pretty slept on imo (except goldeneye, which everyone knows already).

I know Sonic Unleashed had an unofficial PC port, but I didn’t know Midnight Club 3 had one, is there a PC version or are you talking about emulation on pc?

PS2/Xbox/Gamecube is my favorite era of gaming; there were so many good titles released. Here are some hidden gems some might like:

007 Nightfire: best Bond game imo aside from Goldeneye, spy themed fps, great splitscreen multiplayer

Marvel Ultimate Alliance: beat em up featuring a sizeable amount of marvel heroes (deadpool!)

Midnight Club 3: way ahead of its time; open world racing develeoped by rockstar. Basically GTA but just the car part

Sonic Unleashed: very slept-on sonic title, has the usual fast paced running but you can also become a werewolf sonic and it becomes more hack n slash / 3d platformer

SoulCalibur 2&3: SoulCalibur is my favorite fighting franchise, and SC2 is the best in that series. I like SC2 better on Gamecube because of Link, but SC3 was only released on Playstation 2

Star Trek Conquest: an RTS but for console? A decent Star Trek game? It’s actually a lot of fun and challenging with certain civilizations. Winning as the Federation is HARD

Test Drive Off Road Wide Open: a racing game I used to play all the time, had an open world setting that I would just drive around in for hours. Fun, fast paced, and features Metallica!

Star Wars the Clone Wars: vehicular combat game with a surprisingly fun campaign. Flying around in a clone dropship is so much fun and the splitscreen multiplayer is a lot of fun too

I tend to agree, open world is becoming just a box to tick off for AAA developers, which means it just gets put in as filler basically. Halo Infinite is the worst example I can think of. However I do think there are 2 ways open world can be justified: if the world is just packed so full of interesting stuff that the game just gets huge, or if the way of traversing that world is fun.

Category 1 would be games like Morrowind, Skyrim , Fallout 4, or even Mass Effect on a smaller scale. There’s just so much to do that it becomes an open world on its own. Category 2 would be games like the Arkham series , Assassins Creed, or Forza Horizon, where getting from point A to point B is fun on its own.

Open world is great when it’s done right, but since when has Ubisoft or EA made a good game in the past 10 years?

Steam Deck adhesive is unironically one of my favorite smells ngl. Guilty as charged

I did a deep dive into frontends because I love organizing stuff in general. I use different frontends for each device I have because they all have different pros, but overall my favorite is Playnite because of its metadata and sorting features. For Windows I use Playnite, on Linux I use Pegasus, on Steam Deck I use RetroDeck/EmulationStation, and on handhelds I use Knulli Firefly.

Playnite is imo the king, because it has really beautiful themes with custom cover art and can sort games in basically any way possible: by system, rating, genre, name, release date, you name it. The only con is that it’s Windows exclusive (for the near future) and is janky in Wine/Lutris.

Pegasus is spectacular for its fine grained control, and can be configured to do basically anything. Its like the Arch Linux of the frontend world; start with the basics and build from the ground up. With tinkering, it works great on almost any platform.

RetroDeck is great because it’s plug n play. I love to tinker, but I also wanted a platform to just play my games without hastle or messing around. I find myself actually playing my games on the deck instead of tinkering with the frontend.

Knulli Firefly is great for smaller screen handhelds for a similar reason. It’s very customizable, but also works straight away with little to no hastle. It’s also better than most stock OSes that ship with emulation devices

I second this, I greatly prefer news from real people with their own style, especially when there’s so much ai stuff and corporate boringness elsewhere. I’d love to see a part 5, good job!

Edit: Part 5!

One area of The Talos Principle is set in Greco-Roman ruins. It captues a very specific tone. The puzzles are fun too

It’s unofficial, but you can play it via browser at shin.itch.io/elden-ring-gb, or download it and play via emulator

Legend of Zelda: Minish Cap for GBA is my all time favorite from the series. It was made late in the gameboy development cycle, and feels miles ahead of other gba titles. Imo it’s the pinnacle of 2d Zelda.

Another great title is Fire Emblem. It’s not the first one, but a lot of them can be played out of order, and it’s tons of fun if you like turn based strategy.

Other mentions: Pokemon FireRed/LeafGreen, Pokemon Yellow/Blue, Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, Legend of Zelda Oracle of Seasons/Ages, Link’s Awakening, Fire Emblem Sacred Stones, Final Fight One, and the Elden Ring demake

My favorite console has got to be the original Xbox. I would play it all day when I was younger and to this day I still use it because emulation is iffy for a lot of titles. Games from that era from like 1999 to 2006 hit home for me and I love replaying the greats like Knights of the Old Republic, Halo 2, and 007 Nightfire.

For everything else I do a lot of steam gaming and emulating on my linux pc, steam deck, and mobile. I use mobile for casual, quick, or pauseable games, steam deck for games that “feel” right like racing games and old adventure games, and pc for longer gaming sessions, or mouse and keyboard games like Starcraft and Age of Empires.

It’s hard to beat pc because it can litterally do everything better (except maybe portability) and you can customize it into anything, so it’s definitely the objective winner, but og Xbox is still my biased favorite.

I switched my daily driver to Linux Mint Debian Edition recently and it definitely does combine the best of both. It’s easy to use and coming from plain debian has everything that I’m used to. Been loving it so far.

I got to level 20, RIP Paul 🥚🪦