Repetendium is a competent-enough bullet heaven game with a side of mining. You pick a character (auto aim or not, mainly) and a weapon from the usual varieties of shotguns, grenade launchers and lasers at the start. The upgrades you get during a run are mostly stand fare and a bit limited right now, so two runs with the same weapon end up feeling very same-y. It's in early access, so I may check back in after some updates and more content is added. It does have a co-op mode, so I may check that out at some point as well.

I got Katamari Damacy Reroll in some Bandai Namco Bundle last year. I honestly didn't have much interest in it -- I'd tried the original 20 years ago at a friends house and thought the controls were horrible and why would I even want to roll things up anyway?

Well, last week, I couldn't decide what to play and a friend told me to play a game that starts with K. Katamari Damacy fit the bill, so why not give it another shot?

Turns out, rolling things up is fun and the controls are just fine after about 10 minutes of getting used to them. The sense of progression from going to a tiny katamari, carefully navigating a park while dodging cats, dogs, and pineapples, to outright rolling up entire cities is great. It's so cathartic to go back to an area you were getting bounced around in a bunch and just steamroll the entire place.

The wacky, funky sound track is absolutely perfect. I honestly couldn't imagine a more perfect accompaniment to the game. The bizarre cutscenes were also a joy, particularly the ending.

I only have a couple of minor complaints here. There were a few objects that seemed to require a way bigger katamari than I'd expect to pick up. Not a big deal, but slightly annoying. I also didn't care for the challenge levels that were about rolling up a single item or guesstimating the katamari's size, but you only have to show up to complete those levels if you're not going for a high score.

Overall, a fun, chill time. It's just about the perfect game to pop into for 15-30 minutes and come out smiling.

Geneforge 2: Infestation is, unsurprisingly, a direct sequel to Geneforge 1: Mutagen. All of the things I liked about that game hold true here as well: great exploration, world building, factions, choice and consequence, and so on. It nails the core RPG experience. My review for the first game describes the setting and why I like it so much, so I'll skip writing that out again.

In Geneforge 1, I burned out because there was just too much meaningless combat, and quit 30 hours in. That didn't happen this time around. Geneforge 2 simply makes combat more rewarding. There were more useful equipment upgrades to find. Most spells and abilities in from the first game received some tweaks, resulting in more viable combat options. There is also a whole extra tier of creations and spells to unlock late game. This helped keep things a bit more varied. I still did hit the point where I was ready to finish, but, luckily, I was just a few hours away from being able to complete the main quest at that time. I did leave a whole heap of sidequests unfinished, but that's perfectly fine.

The ending itself was very satisfying. I'm glad I was able to stick it through this time. Great game.