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The latest expansion is Harad, I think, which is cool as it's an area of Middle-Earth we've only heard vague descriptions of in the books (and nothing at all in the movies). Of course I'm nowhere near that far yet, only just finished basically everything in Ered Luin and now doing stuff in Bree and the Shire. My character is a Dwarf Hunter.

Putting some more missions into Menace. They've added heavy tanks, and it remains a delightful squad based tactical game.

I basically beat my game of hearts of iron 4 a while ago. I only got up to some time in 1947 but the only other significant faction left i could fight is Axis and i don't think my japan is strong enough for that. Oddly i fought and beat china some time in 1944 which took a while.

After that i fought the soviets a bit to help capitulate them without having fought Allies yet.

Then i fought Allies (basically british commonwealth super-friends) and almost capitulated india but the uk got invaded and taken. In that particular peace conference i got some rubber from malaysia or dutch east indies, i think i took australia and i grabbed canada which ended up being extremely valuable.

Then i prepared for war with the USA coalition. I basically sent all my armies to border the U.S.-Canada border (i owned most of canada) and had some border alaska, i then used a crap load of airplanes to attach to my armies, had a lot of max tier radar, decent supply and massive air bases bordering the usa. After War Goals were declared and finished i fought the USA. I was doing really well on the West Coast but had some issues with the East Coast esp. as germany fighting usa and losing in certain areas put me in a bad spot. I did manage to make a couple supply depots there which once again turned the tide on the Eastern front of usa-canada. I then managed to take all of the usa except maybe florida by myself (i think germany took that). However in the Peace Conference i took the entire enemy coalition's territory which is rather good.

Gotta say i've really done a good job from 1944-1947 but the china war i did kind of badly. I was unsure if i should play more since it's maybe mid-year 1947 and i don't know if i can really do much to change the outcome of my war score. The only things i can do now is fight many extremely weaker countries and take their resources and factories (mostly just the remainder of latin america) or i can fight Axis which is so ridiculously powerful now it'd be practically suicide. I don't know how i could win that fight. I never built strategic bombers and my tech for that is terrible and that's probably the only thing that could ruin their infrastructure and win the fights for me. Germany alone could likely beat me so maybe i'd try taking as much of latin america first.

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Other than that i've been playing command and conquer 3 lately and wh40k: dawn of war 1 definitive edition.

Picked up Starminer on Steam. Nice slow pace, flight in 6 degrees of freedom, lovely graphics. It’s slow but I find it quite compelling. Except for that bit in the tutorial when my ship started to spin uncontrollably and I couldn’t work out what had cause it before my ship came apart through spin damage alone.

I just finished Mechanicus. Cute game, I love the immersion and vibes, but the gameplay loop gets stale quickly.

I finished the game much faster than felt "intended" (four of the six lieutenant bosses were still alive, and joined the endboss fight) but I did not feel particularly challenged after the early game.

Picked up Mina the Hollower. It's great. The GameBoy Color is a weird style to emulate, but Link's Awakening with a Dark Souls structure is a winning combination and absolutely worth your time. Like most of the Soulslike, the opening hours are a little rough while you get your bearings, get a feel for the world and game flow and build up your base stats, but by the time you start figuring out how it works it definitely clicks in all the right ways.

My one gripe is the healing system, which is wildly overcomplicated and often just can't be used when needed most. Other than that, its an incredible mix of gaming greats blended to create something full of surprises. Absolutely worth a play.

 Ashiraya wrote:
...but I did not feel particularly challenged after the early game.

As I recall by mid to late-game you could complete almost all missions in zero game time through a combination of smashing consoles, generating vast numbers of cog points, and stacking damage onto AoE effects.

Each room its own little puzzle - 'how do I scan and destroy everything in under one turn'.

Chipping away at Helldivers 2, doing the odd daily task to save up medals and collect the other stuff for when the 40k bond drops.

Just started playing Darktide again with some pals. Forgot how fun it is although my poor old PC is wheezing along..

Do we know what's in the 40k Helldivers warbond or not yet? I'm assuming it's going to be Guard - likely Kriegers?

 Olthannon wrote:
Do we know what's in the 40k Helldivers warbond or not yet? I'm assuming it's going to be Guard - likely Kriegers?

The trailer showed the devs working on Kasrkin models, so chances are that it will be Cadians. I doubt we'll get Krieg as there's already a trench-themed warbond, complete with shovel melee weapon.

HoIV OWB.
Kronos Aifroce run, and yet i constantly get interupted. Need to put mormons in their place.

Not Online!!! wrote:
HoIV OWB.
Kronos Aifroce run, and yet i constantly get interupted. Need to put mormons in their place.

You mean make them go to heaven....but forcefully?

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

You mean make them go to heaven....but forcefully?

i mean, i kinda back capped them with special forces so, i rekon i forcefully integrated them in my raider realm.

They now produce planes. So in a way i brought them certainly closer.

A.T. wrote:

 Ashiraya wrote:
...but I did not feel particularly challenged after the early game.

As I recall by mid to late-game you could complete almost all missions in zero game time through a combination of smashing consoles, generating vast numbers of cog points, and stacking damage onto AoE effects.

Each room its own little puzzle - 'how do I scan and destroy everything in under one turn'.

Yeah it sounds about right. You start killing bosses before they get a turn, etc. I am starting to feel really bad for the Necrons. They're cool but they don't deserve to be treated like this.

I enjoyed Rogue Trader much more.

Not Online!!! wrote:

 flamingkillamajig wrote:

You mean make them go to heaven....but forcefully?

i mean, i kinda back capped them with special forces so, i rekon i forcefully integrated them in my raider realm.

They now produce planes. So in a way i brought them certainly closer.

I finished c&c 3 with the nod campaign and did maybe one or so missions with kane's wrath. I'm unsure if i should finish up my 1947 japan game i saved from a couple weeks or more back (only latin america, axis and asian co prosperity sphere left) or if i should play more kane's wrath. While i love playing as Nod the kane's wrath expansion doesn't give vanilla nod too much and often you play as the Black Hand which i find to be mostly the lamest nod faction (no stealth and i think no aircraft) with the exception of decent infantry and hardcore anti-urban warfare with flamers.

To give an idea of what i left behind in Hearts of Iron 4.

Bouncing between Retail and Classic (Pandoria) WoW, with a Warrior in both versions and a Death Knight on Retail, though I am mighty tempted to make one of those in Classic too, we'll see.

So bad news. In my game of HoI4 i eventually fought axis and for a while it was going well enough but then they sank a lot of my convoys so i was going through resource issues and the big issue is i ended up facing a whole large group in axis. I ended up losing most of asia including korea but i held my own in south america and still had north america, australia and some other small areas. Game went to 1955 so i just called it quits since the lines sort of ended in a stalemate and the game already went on for that long.

I'm playing some c&c 3 kane's wrath campaign now and it's pretty fun.

Just finished Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus, and now I'm addicted to this :

https://tacticusgame.com/

Picked up Nioh 3 at last. I was a massive, massive fan of Nioh 2, but saw concerning reviews about performance, so I waited a bit. Now it was on sale so I went for it.

It's very similar to 2. Almost too similar in some ways, though that makes it comfy. On the other hand some key changes really mess up my muscle memory (can't ki pulse by re-entering the stance you were already in, even with Flux, ouch). The samurai deflect is very fun, as a Sekiro fan I approve, it's a shame the deflects on the ninja weapons don't work on yokai and therefore are questionable.

The game going open world feels WEIRD. I don't hate it, I think, but it feels weird. Not Nioh at all. Very Ubisoft. At least, like Elden Ring, it has "legacy dungeons" around that leverages the strengths of enclosed environments, like clever layouts with shortcuts.