i think project zomboid is an outstanding game, and one of the best survival games out there. most survival games tend to err on the easier and more gamified side; food to refill a hunger bar, make sure you drink water, maybe a couple other things like keeping yourself warm or sheltered. i appreciate zomboid's dedication to simulating the complexity of trying to keep yourself alive.
it's not just about keeping yourself fed and hydrated; your character needs to stay clean. they'll get anxious and upset if they're covered in blood. you need to give them proper food. you can't survive just eating peanut butter cans or salads; foods actually have nutrition, calories, fats, that contribute to your character's ability to gain or lose weight. when the power goes out, you need to find a way to stay warm through the snowy winter. you can't fight for hours on end; your character will grow exhausted, swing slower, move slower.
zomboid is an arduous game about surviving the zombie apocalypse, and it's my favorite for so many reasons. there are plenty of zombie games and media about guns and guts and glory and comedy. project zomboid is the first one i've seen that delves into how truly challenging, difficult, and utterly isolating it would be to try to survive. maybe you can become a one-man army, hoarding weapons and resources, grinding your skills until you're practically a super-soldier - but realistically? you're more likely to die, over and over, in futile attempts to get food or water or a generator, because you didn't check all the corners, or you accidentally made a sound, or you didn't realize zombies were tailing you.
i've played many a game in my life, and plenty of them have outstanding stories and worlds to tell you about and show you through. but zomboid is different, and i love it; you don't so much play through the story someone else wrote as you do create your own story by virtue of surviving in knox county. the towns you clear of the dead, the places you board up and secure only to leave behind for better pastures, the burned buildings where you fumbled a daring feat. it's beautiful and lonely and i love it.
surroundead was actually recommended to me by a random barsufer one night! she suggested it to me after I had rambled about project zomboid, and it piqued my interest - for good reason, honestly. after loading into the game and messing around for a couple hours, it did very much give me a slightly similar vibe as zomboid - there's plenty of sandbox options when you start a new game, particularly!
all in all, it's a really fun game, even if you can feel the early-access jank of it. the models are nice and pretty simple, but it's a big step up from the graphics of, say, unturned. it does play very similarly to unturned with the way you have to play inventory tetris, but frankly, i feel like that adds to the experience! it is pretty fun to play with a system that demands your own organizational skills, rather than a nebulous weight limit.
surroundead basically plays to me like the lovechild of project zomboid and surroundead - it has the general interface and 3d low-poly style of unturned, but the demand to take care of your character and the mild jankiness of the cars remind me more of project zomboid. it's a very fun survival game with a pre-made map (not endlessly or uniquely generated!) that i've enjoyed a lot so far!
for all my praise, it is in early access - but the developer is very active, and makes consistent posts about what they plan on adding in the next updates, and how far along they are in development! it's a very playable and enjoyable game as-is, and it's only going to get better as time goes on.
i always say that i hate myself for the fact that fallout 4 is my favorite fallout game - practically any other (save for 76...) has writing that is far, far better than 4. but i am ever drawn to building and customizing features, and i do enjoy the quality of life improvements of 4 over the previous installments - improved graphics, the ability to sprint, and i have mixed feelings about 4's SPECIAL and perk system. i do enjoy it, i like being able to max out my stats, but in a way it does detract from the roleplay experience.
fallout 4 has plenty of flaws and shortcomings, especially when you take the time to actually turn over the story - there are so many things left unexplained and unanswered, and there are even NPCs whose stories feel incomplete and lackluster. by most measures, i really shouldn't like 4 as much as i do, but...
the world building of the Commonwealth is so deeply appealing to me; the inter-faction and inter-settlement conflicts, the beef between Hancock and McDonough, the paranoia-inducing presence of the institute... in all regards, i look at fallout 4, and i find plenty to talk about when it comes down to politics and writing alike.
i think fallout 4 does a rather pleasing job of depicting this post-nuclear cityscape; most of the other games are extremely sparse and lean heavily into the Wasteland aspect, and the density of Boston makes for some very fun exploring - and insight into the capitalist nature of pre-war America.
fallout 4 is one of the games that i can talk about for hours upon hours on end, from any faction to dlc to the criticism Bethesda deserves for the condition they released the game in. it's lackluster in a lot of ways, and i think a large part of it is Bethesda's hesitance to hardline any kind of political commentary.
the blackwell legacy is a slightly retro-style point and click detective game, where you play as a lady named rosa parks, who learns that she's a spirit medium connected to a ghost named joey mallone. on the surface it seems like a very silly and absurd game, and it has quite a few moments of quips and comedy, but the story develops over 5 games total - the blackwell legacy, blackwell unbound, the blackwell convergence, the blackwell deception, and the blackwell epiphany.
beyond the initial setting of the game, being a spirit medium, your job is actually to investigate the deaths of people in town. you get to interact with people, talk to them, search for evidence, and eventually uncover the truth of how these people died, and ultimately help them move on to the next life.
it's been quite a while since i played through the blackwell games myself, in all honesty, but the one thing that does stick out poingnantly in my mind is the finale of the games, all the way at the end of the blackwell epiphany. i won't divulge any spoilers - that feels like it defeats the purpose of a recommendation...! - but i will admit that it does, without fail, make me cry every time i've witnessed it. it's an incredible and heartbreaking crescendo to an excellent series that gives you plenty of time to grow fond of the characters you play as, and interact with.
i'm not usually a big movie guy, but i adore warm bodies. i have a soft spot for any zombie-oriented media, but i think warm bodies does an amazing and endearing job of breaking the mold of violence and infection. in all honesty, it's probably one of, if not my favorite movies of all time.
i think warm bodies does an amazing job of flipping the script by introducing you to the main zombie character before anyone else, and letting him give exposition on the world he's... not quite living in. it gives an excellent frame to look at the world and i think it gives you more sympathy and interest in the zombies beyond being some necessary evil that gets blasted away.
it feels like a pretty run of the mill romance movie, save for the zombie twist, but i think it's endearing in its own regard. it's less so about the main man trying to swoon the love interest and win her over; it's more about what r and julie's relationship could mean to the world, and quite literally, how it ends up changing the world.
all in all, warm bodies is a delightful, silly, and heartwarming movie. it's not a very long watch and it doesn't demand too much thought or analysis from the viewer - which is a wild thing for me to say, because my favorite aspect of anything is talking about the politics! it's a nice decompressor and delight to wrap up a day or a rough week.