Patient Gamers

I'm playing Halo 3 on PC. I've played it a lot on xbox360 back in the day, and it really is a treat. Bringing back lots of happy memories of coop and a time when I had time for online matchmaking.

Sniper elite 4 for $6 (5 is good too, and $20) is everything I wanted MGSV to be. It's its own game so the stealth mechanics are different (sound is a major factor), and the gunplay is much more reliant on sniper rifles (though I use a silenced pistol a lot too, plus melee takedowns), but it's every bit comparable in terms of an excellent stealth engine with responsive, engaging AI. Where it shines is that unlike metal gear, which was forced out before it was populated, the mission areas are huge and jam packed with enemy action. If the ground zeroes map was a little bigger and built out into a full game, that's how Sniper Elite feels.

Also, because they can, you can snipe grenades off of enemies to explode them, and they'll chain to other environmental explosives (I haven't seen this in 5; not sure if they removed it or I just haven't noticed an enemy with a grenade on them), and the sniping is extremely satisfying with slow-motion x-rays of the body parts hit (also can be turned off) and good physics based on bullet drop, wind, velocity, etc.

Xenoblade chronicles X. I picked it up again recently after leaving it untouched since forever ago. The game was just a perfect storm of being impossible for me to play when i first got it on pre-order, both because it has really complex systems I didn't get, and because I had extremely limited time on the sole TV in the house by nature of other people not wanting to watch jrpg side questing for hours on end.

I recently got a new phone and was looking for some new games, out of the handful I downloaded that looked interesting* I got in to Alto's Odyssey the most, and have been playing that more than any of my other games this week. I actually just had my best run so far!

*Was looking for something similar to Sky: Children of the Light, which I really really loved (and I generally hate having other real players in my game unless it's like a board game, but strangers just helping each other out was nice) until I started getting chased by dragons and drowning and shit and it wasn't fun anymore. If anyone has suggestions for anything that feels as chill and friendly as that game, that's a beautiful world to explore with some goals (so not like Wilderless, which is nice but gets old quick) but nothing too competitive or stressful (and just for android, my pc is in need of an upgrade and couldn't handle much lol), let me know!