Another quarter is in the books, another chunk of games finished on my Steam Deck OLED. Definitely a little lighter this quarter, but it’s been a busy few months. Especially being stuck inside with things to do around the house, it’s just a classic winter here. I still managed to finish 9 games along while winning a few Stanley Cups with my expansion team, the Newark North Stars in NHL 25. I’ve been streaming a few more casual sports titles from my PlayStation 5 this quarter and it’s been a lot of fun. I gotta say, it’s been another period of variety in what I’ve been playing which helps to keep my gaming experience fresh.
I kicked off the quarter with Metal Gear Solid. I bought the Master Collection on Steam through a sale at Fanatical which was at a decent discount, it’s still sitting at 25% off which at that price it’s definitely worth your time. I started with the original but I actually moved across to the GameCube version ‘The Twin Snakes’ and it plays perfectly emulated with Dolphin. It does go a bit over the top with the cutscenes and character interactions but otherwise it’s a really good play as a pseudo-remake. Moving onto Metal Gear Solid 2, I thoroughly enjoyed the second game in the series. I finished it once before on the original Xbox back in my family’s lounge room. While it’s a top tier game, the mechanics aren’t anything mind blowing. But I think I really appreciated the storytelling this time around. Before diving into Metal Gear Solid 3, I took a brief detour to the original Metal Gear. It’s only runs about 5 hours or so, I figured why not revisit the roots of the series? Yeah, I just could not get into the original Metal Gear. I wrote a review after finishing it and I kinda wish I got my 5 hours back. Eh, I’d probably just waste them.. After the hell that was Metal Gear, it was onto Metal Gear Solid 3. I enjoyed MGS3, I did, but I’m just not sure I found it to be quite the masterpiece it’s hyped up to be. It’s a great game, don’t get me wrong. The story is good, but I didn’t find it to be anything too outrageous. It also felt there were a lot of features forcibly shoved into it, I’m looking at you: survival mechanics! You’re in the jungle and I guess it’s pretty relevant, I get it, but I think it really should have been something you could toggle on or off before you start the game.
There is a common theme here on Dad with a Deck. That theme is: adventure games are unreal. I’m slowly working my way through the King’s Quest series again through this year and I’m keeping track of my progress and general thoughts in a series of posts. Here is Quest for the Crown and this quarter I finished King’s Quest 2: Romancing the Stones. The remakes are clearly the better play than the quite bland originals. Romancing the Stones features heavy changes to both the story and the engine, both of which are thorough improvements on what Sierra originally produced. The story changes in the King’s Quest 2 remake really beef it up and make it much more engaging than the slightly updated fetch and carry text-parser it originally was. The original release was basically the first game with some extra rooms and items, let’s be real. I always have a great time playing the King’s Quest games, it’s still one of the best adventure game series available. Speaking of best adventure games, Went2Play is working on a remaster of sorts for one of the best adventure games of all time, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis. I posted my thoughts on their recently available demo and overall I thought it was pretty decent. There’s definitely some work ahead, but it absolutely feels like a more modern version of a classic. You can check out their recent post on the game on the blog they’ve setup for the game.
Another quarter of gaming is just not complete without first-person shooters. I tried returning to the original Far Cry earlier in the year and I think it’s more than safe to say you can bypass that and go straight into Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. It’s straight out of the 70s and presents itself like a bad movie blended with a comic book. I’m absolutely here for it. I recommend checking it out if you haven’t already, it is easily my favourite Far Cry game. Granted I have only played Blood Dragon, the original, a very small part of Far Cry 2 and maybe 5-10 minutes of Far Cry 3 so I would hardly call myself an expert on the series. I then returned to yet another classic and one of my favourite shooters of all-time, but this time Remastered, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Modern Warfare is my favourite Call of Duty game of all time and the remaster just gives us the same game with better graphics. I’ve probably only finished it a handful of times, but it had a meaningful impact and I will follow this up with the sequel which has also been remastered. Following this, I tried something a little different for a handheld and installed Warcraft 3. Not to play the original campaigns, I’ve played them to death over the years, but to play a fan-made campaign Rise of the Blood Elves which I thoroughly enjoyed and even reviewed afterwards. You’ll need to install Battle.Net first, provided you’re playing Warcraft 3 legitimately. I played the Reforged version and actually had a pretty nice time, even though I’ve heard some bad things. The menu is still a little slow and buggy, but otherwise it runs fine.
I streamed my PlayStation 5 quite a bit more over these few months. I had a bit of a crack at Deadside as it was on sale for about 10 bucks, it reminds me of DayZ minus the zombies mixed with Rust but a lot more forgiving. It’s been a pretty fun time, I treat it much more like a casual game and jump in to raid some areas from time to time. I’m also a pretty big sports fan and I’ve added NHL 25, AFL 26 and NBA 2K25 to my library. NBA 2K25 just recently landed on PlayStation Plus and I’ve been putting up some big numbers at the five-spot for the Dallas Mavericks every so often. AFL 26 I’m making some noise in the midfield for the Geelong Cats, inching my way to finals one game at a time. NHL 25, I’ve definitely sunk some time into. I’m a pretty big New Jersey Devils fan and I’ve pushed the Devils to win the cup a couple years running. I then opted for a bit of a challenge and created an expansion team where it was all glory with Steven Stamkos leading the mighty Newark North Stars to a Stanley Cup in their inaugural year. It then took a couple years to get back to playoffs, but when we did it was back to back cups to see out Stammer’s retirement. It’s probably the best an NHL video game has felt in 10 or so years.
I must admit I was a little light on this quarter compared with recent times, it was definitely a lower finish count than last quarter but still pretty successful and very enjoyable as expected. I’m really just happy to be able to play so many games in what little spare time I have. Quarter 3 coincides with the Steam Summer Sale, I’ve already spent too much but I’m really keen to get cracking on Telltale’s Walking Dead series. I’m a few chapters through the first season and so far it’s been amazing storytelling coupled with meaningful decision making. Well, that’s another quarter done, onto the next.
Dad with a Deck 
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