More Games I have been playing

Dead Rising 4

People who have played DR1 and 2 will remember a fun but incredibly hard game that tried to have loads of zombies on screen at once (somewhat hampered by the hardware of the day such that all the areas had to have loading splits) it's everything's a weapon game style, somewhat troubling photography mechanic that credited "erotic" shots, and punishingly tight timed rescue missions where you had to save a survivor then escort them to safety that at higher levels clashed so it was impossible to complete everything, the super tough mini boss battles.

Dead rising 3 relaxed the formula a bit made the time element more forgiving (it still had an overall deadline to escape in but scrapped the individually timed missions and even then the timer was fairly forgiving) it also took advantage of the new hardware had lots of big open areas hundreds of zombies on screen and added vehicles to plow through the hordes. It kept the use anything as a weapon and dress the character up in any clothes you can find fun of one and two and extended the weapon combo mechanic so you could combine already combined weapons for even more powerful versions. Mini bosses were still pretty tough.

Dead Rising 4 they've taken that further the timers are gone completely indeed the side rescue missions just happen at random you save the person or not and at the end they toddle off on their own there's no real penalty for them dying but saving them levels up your base areas unlocking various bonuses. The timer element is gone completely not even an overall timer. It brings back the camera mechanic where if you take a picture with lots of certain things happening you get bonus points but it adds a selfie mode it also gets used in some of the fairly simple investigation sections where you have to take pictures of stuff in an area to progress the story. Mini boss battles are there but they are quite a lot easier. The weapons and vehicle combining fun is still present and just as fun as before. They have also added the exo suit an iron man style suit you can use for a brief period of time which amplifies your strength and speed and has it's own set of special weapons and upgrades.

DR4 is fairly easy as a game the story is the usual DR craziness zombies parasites government conspiracy the sort of nutjobs that show up in a zombie apocalypse situation. It's somewhat secondary to the game's appeal which is putting together crazy weaponry and then slaughtering huge numbers of zombies. It's also christmas themed as fuck everything is christmas decorated there's snow on the ground get in a vehicle and it plays christmas songs a good number of the weapons are crazy christmassy derived instruments of death.

It's not a deep game and somewhat forgettable but I had a lot of fun just slaughtering swathes of the undead with stuff I found just lying around.

Astroneer
This has been mentioned elsewhere an early access minecraft a like set in a colourful space environment that supports 4 player coop and has a fairly harsh set of environments for it's happy friendly colour scheme and low poly graphics. Storms, poisonous plants, plants that fire spikes, sarlacc style death pits, as well as falls to your death and the classic suffocation due to lack of oxygen are all things that can and will kill you often. It has a fun base building resource collection play style and favours exploration of fairly resource rich environments caves filled with goodies. The tech slowly extends your reach going from teathers that allow you to draw out your oxygen and power range from your base to explore caves and such nearby to then vehicles that you can drive off further eventually to space craft to go off and explore the different planets nearby.

At the moment the progression eventually reaches a stopping point where there's not much to do beyond it something I hope they improve. It's also a little buggy but patches are coming thick and fast so hopefully that will soon be less of an issue.

People have compared it to no man sky which is accurate in some ways and inaccurate in others it's the same sort of resource gathering survival style game but it's clear the devs focused on getting it fun to play first rather than bulking out their environments and options.

Orcs Must Die Unchained
I love the first two orcs must die games a mix of tower defense and third person action and when I first heard they were doing another game I was excited to try it. But they'd decided for some reason to take it in a radically different direction rather than an essentially PvE mostly single player game (OMD2 had two player coop I believe) like the first two they decided to make a PvP competitive online game (siege mode as they called it) that had elements of the original OMD but also moved more in a league of legends sort of direction.

It was bloody awful

As it turn out this wasn't just my opinion and the devs found only a small number of players were playing their pvp modes. What's more they found it was actively putting new players off the game where people who played pvp were less likely to continue playing. So recently they refocused their efforts on the PvE game which is much more like the classic OMD (it's now a free to play game with all that microtransaction nonsense). I've been playing this quite a bit since they switched back to the original formula. I think I would still prefer a normal pay one off fee get all the content model of OMD and OMD2 but so far the microtransactions hasn't been too egregious I've not found things unplayable with just getting the free stuff.

Slain back from hell
Not had much time with this one but saw it on PA's first 15 and gave it a go and had a lot of fun. A 2d side scrolling action game with a bloody monster and demon filled world where you are a bloke with a sword smashing your way through. It has a pretty good sound track and wonderfully detailed pixel graphics with some impressive particle effects. It's one of the modern unforgiving side scrollers but it has fairly frequent save points I did find some of the harder battles meaning I repeated some sections over and over. It's a fun metal as hell action game.