Calling DA2 serviceable is probably some of the highest praise it’s received. The game is steaming dookie. It took out every single thing that made Origins a masterpiece and gave us a dialogue wheel and an entire game made of 5 copy+pasted rooms. Also a nonsensical main plot with no real player agency and the most forgettable ending of all.

DAI is mid af but it looks like a God damn masterpiece next to DA2.

Shit I’ll take expansions over battle passes and what passes for “seasonal content” these days.

I think the one that did it for me was Xbox game pass. I’ve never been much of a fan of digital games, but Xbox game pass made me see what the future of games will be.

You will pay an ever increasing amount per month to play whatever Microsoft or whoever decides you can be allowed to play. You will own nothing you play and if you cancel your subscription, your console is worthless. Meanwhile the service will be crammed with ads, the games themselves crammed with ads, and your data harvested and sold for “personalized” ads.

I only buy physical games now.

Not headphones but the Samsung earbuds are pretty good and I picked them up for ~60$ on Amazon. I hadn’t used earbuds for years and had no idea how good the tech has gotten. Super comfortable, pretty good noise muffling, fancy wireless charging. Makes doing yard work go so fast.

We had an air fryer, loved the food but it was SO difficult to clean. The sides would shred our sponges. Eventually we stopped using It because timed save from cooking was lost twice over from cleaning it. And then it was recalled anyways

Collecting physical media is very valuable if you are a passionate gamer. Time has proven that the older a game gets, the harder it will be to legally obtain it. Yes, emulation is a thing but doesn’t quite beat the experience on the original hardware IMO. And of course emulation is under constant legal scrutiny to the point where it’s only a matter of time before enough money passes hands and emulation itself could be outlawed or heavily restricted.

Unless you have extraordinarily rare games, likely you will not see any financial benefit. If you do not want to play any of your games ever again, and you will never have kids or anyone you want to pass history onto, then likely the collection holds no value.

I don’t know what’s considered a “hidden gem” so I’m just going to shout out all the indie games that I think are at least 8/10 and recommend:

Rimworld

Dead Cells

Dredge

Inscryption

7 Days to Die

Mount and Blade: Warband

Factorio

Mordhau

FTL: Faster than Light

Raft

Gunfire Reborn

Into the Breach

Hollow Knight

Dome Keeper

DUSK

Golden Light

Vampire Survivors

Void Bastards