Video game talk, anyone?

That's wild! If you play part 2 at that pace it'd take like 80 hours probably.

I always try to start out the encounters stealthy but it's pretty fun to let things get out of control and be chucking molotovs and shotgun shells everywhere too.

As long as you're playing on normal difficulty resources aren't quite as rare as they seem either.

Ellie got killed by Daniel quite a lot. Joel got killed by the Bloater in the hotel basement (you know, the one by the generator) many, many times, and it was only much later I realised that as I already had the key card I could've just run away instead. 

Insomniac's Resistance series deserves a comeback, though honestly I'd probably rather play remasters / remakes of 1 and 2 than an all new game. Resistance 3 didn't really hit me the same. But 1 and 2 were really underrated and tapped into that Half-Life / Bioshock feel that far too few shooters do anymore.

I've been looking for Stardew clones, but a lot of the ones I found that looked interesting to me were in Early Access and I'm hesitant to do that in general, but especially with that kind of game: I tend to play intensely for a couple weeks and then be done with it, and why do that with an unfinished product? I did enjoy Littlewood a lot and I've got Graveyard Keeper on my Steam list. The romanceables in Coral Island were so adorable that I bit the bullet and am playing that Early Access. Figure I'll build up an insane supply of useful items, then wait for the full release.

Persona 3 and Persona 4 console editions are dropping tomorrow and I'm counting the minutes--both because I've never played P3P before and I'm eager for C to experience P4 (I played it on Steam, but she wasn't willing to try it until she could play it on a console). In the meantime, my in-laws gave me the new Mario+Rabbids game for Christmas and it's...actually quite fun! I enjoyed the tactical combat stuff in the original, but the game insisted on making you wander through tedious overworld sections between battles. Traversal was so boring and crummy-feeling that I gave up maybe a quarter of the way through. The sequel...still makes you do that, but the overworld design is much better and more visually appealing. It's not Mario Odyssey or anything--and a Mario game in which you can't, you know, jump, still feels like a travesty--but it's at least nodding in that direction. The combat itself is improved by loosening up the action economy and giving you near-complete freedom of movement until firing a weapon locks you in place, which adds a surprising amount of depth.

You know what's a good game? Freecell.

Going to make a soulslike called "Free Souls", where the combat mechanic is based on various types of solitaire.

I was going to reply to this, then got busy and forgot. Anyway I played through these (replayed the first one) about four years ago. Really enjoyed Resistance, which was old-fashioned even at the time it was released (med packs! victory through stafe firing! carrying a dozen massive guns all at once!) but had the added bonus of fighting through recognisable UK landmarks like Covent Garden market. 

Interesting that you preferred 2 to 3 though. I didn't think that much of 2; it gave up the retro charms of the first one to try to be CoD: 1950s Alien Invasion without being as good as that sounds. I remember it having a really annoying thing of delivering exposition in-game, usually while I was distracted by being shot at. I did like its abrupt "what the fuck just happened" ending though. I actually thought 3 was the best in the series, in that it was the tensest and best put together. The change of style from military shooter to survival horror really worked for me, especially as they also brought back health packs (they're even called "health packs" in game) and the weapon wheel. I thought it was a neat touch to mirror the different factions of human survivors fighting each other with the military type Chimera fighting the space monster type Chimera. Also, I liked that it at least tried to tell a personal story about its guilt-driven protagonist going on a personal journey to achieve some sense of peace with himself, even if it didn't really hold together or have that much of a character arc (he pretty much just goes a bunch of places, meets some people, kills some other people and a whole bunch of aliens, gets depressed, pulls through, wins and goes home).


 

I was joking at the time, but now I've finally got round to it.

Civilization II

Carthaginians, Emperor level, medium sized world, 7 civs, raging hordes

Last time, I played a peace-loving space exploring Persian civilisation (not an empire - they never set foot off their own little island except for trade and diplomacy). So this time I went full conquistador. Basically, the tactics here are to make a beeline for feudalism, so I can build Sun Tzu's War Academy and automatically produce veteran units, and monotheism, so I can build Michelangelo's Chapel and then (with the War Academy) produce vast numbers of veteran crusader units. Pretty much the only city improvements I ever build are temples. No aqueducts, so none of my cities ever get above size 8, which means that civil disorder is manageable with a temple in each city (especially with Oracle doubling their effectiveness), a defensive military unit and Mike's chapel. Then basically swarm the other civ's cities with crusaders. Magellan's Expedition adds two additional moves to each naval unit, helping get my crusaders where they need to go. Once other civs get musketeers I use a flood of diplomats to destroy their city improvements until eventually they get the city walls, then send in the crusaders. Captured cities build more crusaders. Life expectancy for crusaders is pretty short, but it's a small price to pay for the greater glory of Ba'al Hammon. 

Anyway, highlights of Carthaginian history include:

1050BC - became a Monarchy
160 AD (in signs that it's from the 90s, it's AD rather than CE in the game) - met, declared war on the Germans
280 - built the Oracle. Which promptly informed the Carthaginians of the key importance of sacrificing infants to the gods. (Yeah I know the whole infant sacrificing thing might just be Roman propaganda, but so many classical Mediterranean civilisations making the same accusation, and archeologists finding a suspicious quantity of cremated baby bones in clay urns does rather suggest a certain amount of truth to it).
540 - built Sun Tzu's War Academy
960 - built Michelangelo's Chapel, the beautiful ceiling of which shows Ba'al Hammon commanding Dido, the mythological Queen of Carthage, to go forth and conquer the world / sacrifice more infants. At this point, got my cities constantly producing crusader units.
1120 - contact with the Indians, who bribed me into not declaring war on them. Then they bribed me some more to declare war on the Egyptians. And that's the story of how Carthage declared war on a civilisation it hadn't even met yet.
1460 - Carthaginian crusaders captured the Great Pyramids of Berlin. Also met and promptly declared war on the Japanese. Busy year.
1500 - destroyed the German civilisation in the Battle of Leipzig. Started war on Persia.
1530 - defeated the Persians at Susa.
1550 - and crushed them again! At the Battle of Aaaaaaaaaaarbela! 
1580 - destroyed the Persian civilisation at Pasargadae.
1730 - Magellan's expedition.
1760 - India betrayed and sneak attacked me. An error which was as egregious as it was short-lived.
1776 - built Leonardo's workshop. Which is inessential, but just very helpful in automatically upgrading units instead of recalling them and disbanding in favour of new ones.
1782 - war with, appropriately enough, the Romans.
1788 - destroyed the Indian civilisation at Madras.
1818 - captured Antium and the Statue of Liberty.
1820 - now, the Statue of Liberty makes all forms of government available even if you haven't discovered the necessary tech yet. Which posed the key question of which one to change to from Monarchy. Now obviously it would be highly amusing to conquer the rest of the world under Communism (it's just like Monarchy, but with more central control of the economy and units that are twice as effective at suppressing civil dissent!) But, I felt at this point I was really committed to the whole Ba'alist crusader bit, so I went with Fundamentalism instead.
1836 - captured Kyoto, and with it the Colossus and the Lighthouse (a rather poor bit of AI strategy, as every single Japanese city in this game was landlocked). Interesting also how their diplomatic attitude on having their capital captured immediately went from "enraged" to "receptive".
1838 - captured Rome and the Great Library.
1840 - destroyed the Roman civilisation at Pisae.
1857 - the Japanese (a democracy, ha!) offered me all their money to accept a cease fire, which I graciously accepted.
1858 - destroyed the Japanese civilisation at Nara. Leaving it just Carthage and Egypt at that point. 
1860 - at great expense, bribed the people of Heliopolis to switch sides. Then immediately moved in several galleons full of crusaders, musketeers and diplomats, who promptly occupied the various fortresses outside Thebes (which, typical for the AI in this game, it had built all over its territory then not bothered to stick any units in). The Egyptians then offered me cease fire which... sure, why not? 
1866 - curse my sudden but inevitable betrayal. Captured Thebes, with its Hanging Gardens and Great Wall.
1867 - captured Pi-Ramesses and Shakespeare's Theatre. Which, being fundamentalists, we had no use for and would have burnt to the ground if the game gave an option to do so.
1870 - somewhat bathetically, destroyed the Egyptian civilisation at Lisht, a tiny size 3 city which I'd besieged with over 20 crusader units.  

So, there it is. Total conquest completed by Carthage in 1870 and the world (apart from all the barbarians - so, so many barbarians) ruled over by a fundamentalist government. Technology progressed no further than the early renaissance. No civic amenities in my filthy, disease-ridden cities other than temples to Ba'al (ok, also a couple of harbours where they were really necessary). Demographics show life expectancy in the mid-40s, with 7 years of compulsory military service (would be higher but all those crusaders killed in battle really bring the average down). Fun all round, though as is typical with Civ 2, the endgame (pretty much from the point I'd defeated the Indians, certainly from the point I switched to fundamentalism) was interminable, with every turn taking at least ten minutes. 

I'm reading about the history of Southeast Asia and the incredibly prominent place of maritime trade to its political history and can't help thinking this would actually be a great setting for an Elite-style game, except instead of outer space you're sailing on the waters of the Indian ocean and the South China Sea.

You'd travel back and forth selling peppers, nutmeg, and sandalwood from Java to entrepots on the Malay Peninsula, or if you're willing to travel further you can sell directly to the Chinese and the Indians, but you run the risk of storms and pirates. Or when times are tough you can turn to piracy and slave raids yourself, but even if you don't you have to build up the defenses of your home base against attacks. And from the other side of things, maybe you join in when the rajah of someplace is getting some guys together for a big raid on his rivals.

You'd play as part of a merchant clan throughout the centuries, starting from when Buddhist and Hindu city-states were all over the place, then over the centuries historical events shake things up - the Mongol invasion of Java and introduction of gunpowder weapons, the spread of Islam, the Ming ban of overseas trade and the resultant rise of the Chinese and Japanese pirates, the violent entry of the Portuguese and Spanish and their crusade against the Muslims of the region, and so on.

And like in Elite, you'd agonize about upgrading stuff and the resultant trade-offs. You'd want bigger ships to carry more cargo, though smaller ships would be faster and could travel over coral reefs better, then you'd wonder if you should stick with a really big canoe, go for a catamaran, or splurge and get a junk. Then you'd worry about how many swivel guns you need to install and whether you can afford to stick with Javanese arquebuses or if you should switch to tanegashima from Japan.

You'd also worry about your supernatural resources - should you stick with your local animist gods or go with one of the larger religions that are more portable and have super-magic stuff like holy books and exotic languages? And which one? Maybe your family wants to convert to Islam since Arab traders are wealthy and therefore obviously have superior sorcery, but you've heard that the Moghul in India are getting their asses kicked at sea by these weird people from Portugal.

And since unlike in Europe or Japan, feudalism wasn't as much of a thing and aristocrats didn't get passive income from rent but instead had to actively engage in trade, then at some point if you get big enough you might become sultan of a city you and your merchant clan founds. Then you really have to worry about foreign attacks and might need to consider swearing fealty to the Ottomans to get some of their artillery engineers building cannons and bombards for you.

End game I think would be the equivalent of the Portuguese conquest of Malacca. If you drive them off, then congratulations, you've changed world history and kept the Europeans from screwing around in the area and also China and Japan for another century or two.

Anyway, this is obviously never going to get made but if any game developer somehow stumbles on this dying message board, hit me up as a consultant.

Oh hey, they remastered Metroid: Prime for the Switch.

Games don't have "boss keys" anymore, probably because if your playing games at work you're likely doing it on your phone. But what have we lost?

If Sea of Stars looks good then Chained Echoes might be up your alley as well. 

Haven't played it yet, but it's been making waves.