Kinda want to say Nitronic Rush, but there weren’t any other cars in that.

Oh man, I hate that ““review”” format

Are you thinking of WordPad? Until Windows 11, Notepad has always been plain text.

I have had many thoughts along the lines of “how can I fully optimise my cellar” and “dino eggs are worth more money than dino mayo” and it just sucks all the wonder out of the game

I’m not sure I do, please can you explain?

You mean Mars Effect?

Blacklight Retribution was pretty great. I played quite early in its lifespan, during an event which gave me a special nameplate - nothing more than a participation trophy, and at the time, loads of people used it.

Signed in a few years later to.play a few rounds, and some guy begged me to let them use my account because of that now-rare nameplate.

(I also had an extremely cool helmet and some seriously powerful guns I got for free in that game’s equivalent of a lootbox)

Civ 4 at least has an “Aggressive AI” setting, where all rival nations will be a bit more… well, aggressive and warmonger-y.

I like Anno 2070, a game which takes place in a world where the sea levels have risen to a barely-sustainable level. But it’s okay, because you can repopulate with the power of solarpunk machinery!

X-COM 2 is fully playable with just the mouse.

If you’re looking for something a bit lighter, there’s The Enchanted Cave 2, a nice little roguelite with an interesting loot system.

From memory, Fallout and Fallout 2 are fully mouse-playable too.

There’s also the one in the very first map, where you have to run for several minutes out into the desert behind you. You find a rocket launcher and a health powerup… which immediately spawns a whole bunch of monsters

Fun times!

I hope this doesn’t awaken anything in me.

It was pretty big, and I believe it was Nintendo’s main competitor for a while. Just didn’t quite break out to the rest of the world, and it never got a proper followup

They’re actually really nice, well-made X-COM lites. Great if you don’t want to immediately throw your kids to the Chryssalids.

Rabbids still kinda suck as a concept, but the games are good enough that I can look past it

My votes go for the Amiga and the PC Engine.

The Amiga was tricky to develop for, particularly if you wanted to use all its custom chips to their full potential. So many Amiga games are just questionable ports of Atari ST or even 8-bit home micro games.

The PC Engine was really ahead of its time, but it’s now kind of an obscure little thing, and a bit quaint when put up against the SNES and Mega Drive.

After all, we’re only ordinary men

As someone who was around when it was current, yes, everyone called it PSX.

Nah, we’re all actually talking about the PSX.

The 8bitdo Ultimate 2C is very cheap as controllers go, and is also one of my favourites. Certainly my go-to for general purpose

In that case, I expect him to drink more booze