other than them taking the noise cue away from lockpicking!

Noooo! I loved Oblivion’s lockpicking system. Got so good at it that one time I tried doing it with my eyes closed and was able to lockpick purely using the sounds. It was so fun and intuitive. Haven’t played the remaster yet but am sad to hear that they took those sounds away, lol.

I finished season 2 of Severance as well as the movie Society of the Snow. Both were great and featured some incredible cinematography!

Thanks for the recommendation!

Another favorite of mine is Hexcells, which is also 100% solvable.

the CTR remake did have all the Nitro Kart levels in it

:O I did not know that! Will check it out, thanks!

Great comment, lots of examples! I agree with pretty much everything you listed.

Regarding CTR, have you tried Crash Nitro Kart? I always loved that one more than the original. It had a few improvements over the first game, so I wonder if it aged a bit better.

A lot of strategy games fit this bill to me. Mainly the Paradox ones like Europa Universalis or Crusader Kings. I’d much rather play the most recent version (EU4 and CK3). However, it’s interesting that I feel the exact opposite about the Total War and Civilization Series, where I’ll prefer the original Rome Total War and Shogun 2 Total War over many of the more-recent games, as well as Civ V over VI and VII (though I haven’t played VII yet, to be fair).

The Football Manager series also comes to mind. There’s little tweaks and improvements each year (this year being an exception where they are redesigning the entire engine) so I prefer playing the most recent one (even if I still boot up a few of the older games for some nostalgia every now and then).

Thanks for the recommendation! Just watched a couple of his vids and ended up adding like ten games to my wishlist.

First off, that’s a great gift! Funny yet super wholesome.

Secondly, holy crap you have a lot of cousins!