Zoeti and Zero Hour

Two games starting with "Z"?

Zoeti

This well illustrated single player fantasy game is a card battler at its core. Your character has a deck of combat cards which you can add to or improve using after combat currency and... that's it. It's not as dark as Darkest Dungeon nor as co-operative / multiplayer as Across the Obelisk which kinda puts it behind BOTH those games for me. Not recommended, despite the pretty art. 

Zero Hour

This tactical FPS has you play as a form of special armed force of the law to take down hostile folk, rescue VIPs, disable bombs and everything else in that wheelhouse all while moving awkwardly. This includes trying to arrest people (by calling out) and then getting penalized when they actually do surrender (1 in 10) but raise their weapon to do so (so I shoot them right?). Sigh. 

Good graphics and decent AI, including AI buddies if you have no co-op buddies to play with. It's very "realistic" with damage though so expect to be one shot by some random guy hiding under a bed with an AK47... through a window. If this sounds like your jam and you don't mind long loading times, you should also look up SWAT 4 (20 year old game which should be cheaper now) which has many similar concepts to this and in some respects might be better (except for said loading times).

The Contractor and One Battle After Another

Two action films.

The Contractor 

James (played by Chris Pine) is a spec-op level operator who gets fired from the military and needs to do some contract work to keep his bank balance in the green. Things go sideways and adversaries who can't shoot straight or take cover properly arrive on the scene. I didn't mind the predictable story in this one and the pacing felt just right - but the action bits could sadly have used some work. The plot armor on the protagonist is almost visible in some of them! Still an OK movie to have running in the background while doing something else.

One Battle After Another

This movie is mostly about Bob (played by Leonardo DiCaprio), who joins a bunch of revolutionaries and then has to live with the consequences of this decision for many years after. There are some funny parts but very few decent action scenes. It's also a needlessly long movie, with the first 1/4th to 1/3rd being able to be cut altogether and had me rooting for the "villain" most of the time. There's a whole segment towards the end that can be cut as well but they decided to bring one character back to life just to kill them again later? This is a garbage flick and not recommended at all.

Skald: Against the Black Priory and Blood West

Two more horror themed games.

Skald: Against the Black Priory

This old school pixel fantasy RPG tasks you with rescuing a lady from some distant islands (the Lovecraftian "outer isles") and rather quite immediately, bad stuff starts to happen. While the writing is solid and really gets you immersed in the world right away, the combat can get a bit tiresome especially in the narrower zones where some of your party of six will find themselves with nothing to do. Protip: get everyone bows and arrows when you are able. Still a fun ride, but as it is with most Lovecraftian tales don't expect a happy ending.

Blood West

This FPS western has you play an undead cowboy in a desert already crawling with undead. The pixely graphics belie a pretty decent game though, which includes skill upgrades, stealth, rewards for being a good shot and full inventory management (the kind that is annoying at times as you can't tetris all the loot into your pack to sell later). While the quests have some interesting stories attached to them, the respawning bad guys when you rest bit does suck as there's limited fast travel. Not one I finished due to these gripes, but at least it had a strong start?

Bendy and the Ink Machine

Run and hide from a demonic "Mickey Mouse".

When visiting an old timey Mickey Mouse style animation studio, normal people might leave immediately upon finding some supernatural ink leaking from the ceiling and walls - but not our protagonist! No, he just has to stick his nose in there for some first person scares as the comical characters are brought to life in demonic form and he has to hide from them! While you can fight a little against lesser baddies (who just spawn from the floor), the controls for that aren't great and are more about managing distance and timing. 

Against the big bads though? You've got to hide. And its kind of funny that you need to use the water closets (toilets) to do so, but also really annoying because there's not much you can do while waiting for one to pass so just have a book handy I guess? Expect to be doing a lot of back tracking and fetch quests because there's nothing scarier than those apparently.

Pathfinder: The Flying Giant

[Part of the Party Time journal]

Past the hounds is a door that opens to what must be "the boss chamber" but in its center is just a half naked giant female cook who throws things (like the kitchen sink) at the party and is easily brought down. The enraged giant boss Mokmurian (who I guess was having a thing with the cook) then appears, flying from up above and shielded up to the wazzoo with anti-fire/anti-magic missile and damage reduction spells while tossing out a huge variety of magic himself, my favorite being he inverts gravity and those who don't save take "fall damage". WTF?

This turns out to be a super long fight with Mokmurian enjoying the "untouchability" Valeros had before. Only Ezren can regularly damage the flying creep while he himself is almost disintegrated and briefly turned into stone. Kyra undoes that and keeps everyone alive to simply endure all of the giant's spells until he runs out of them and comes down into melee with his club. That proves to be his undoing and he is quickly put down when he does so.

His master "Karzoug" then uses the dead giant as a puppet to insult the heroes briefly, but they're kinda too tired to listen so they just go about looting the place and going to that off limits library which they find the key to. It's full of magically preserved ancient tomes and a helpful librarian bot who will no doubt throw the next quest hook at us... in the next chapter. :P

Pathfinder: Can't Touch This

[Part of the Party Time journal]

A pair of frost giants and the lap running mammoth from earlier confront the party as they leave the Black Tower, but are no match for the heroes. Even the pair of rocs nesting in the tower who were attracted by the sounds of battle only get themselves dead or wounded, with the last remaining giant bird retreating back to its high up nest.

Proceeding below the party then uses the passphrase they found to get through the shining door into the lower basement where a strangely constructed room has Valeros shrink to half his size! While this makes his attacks weaker it also makes him harder to hit so he intentionally stays small for now.

Everyone else is protected from the shrinking magic by Ezren's shield, and they go on to beat another runeslave giant, smash a cauldron bearing golem (mostly Razmus with Shoanti blessings and then Kyra sanctified the cauldron), and fireball nuke the hell out of a zombie statue room. "Undead Giants" are the key words for things this team excels at murdering. An annoying wall demon keeps popping in and out of the walls spewing fire at them though, and it is with great relief when they finally catch that beast (a scanderig apparently) and slay it in its silo.

Advancing to the next large hall they are ambushed by five giant maidens who luckily can't hit the shrunken Valeros who pins them while the rest of the group takes them down. Resting up back in the zombie room, Merisiel soon spots a sneaky group of five dire bears and five halberd ogres stalking them and once again, Valeros blocks their progress and is untouchable as the enemies are destroyed.

The next little chamber has three hounds of Tindalos (apparently they can jump games too) get the drop on the party but are easy prey as again, they can't hit Valeros while his blind fighting and the high perception of everyone else makes their "hiding" kinda useless.

Menara

Cooperative temple building.

This simple cooperative dexterity game has players rebuilding an ancient temple. To start, put three random temple floors (cardboards in strange shapes) as the "base" with each piece only touching another with one point - load up some random pillars (pulled from a bag) for the camp space, and every player gets a handful of pillars too. Then, on your turn you can trade your in hand pillars with the camp ones if you want, then pick what "difficulty" card you want to try complete and then do what it says. 

Usually its just put x pillars which is just placing pillars on spaces that match their color. Afterwards draw random pillars back to your hand and that ends your turn. If you run out of places to put pillars, get the next "temple floor" and balance it on top to go one floor up! If this reaches your floor quota (which starts at 3/4/5 for easy/medium/hard) that's it, the players win!

If you can't put x number of pillars because you don't have the colors or just can't do what the your chosen difficulty card says, the required floor quota increases by one. And if the temple collapses at any time its game over! So yes, its a little bit like reverse Jenga and its easy to teach, easy to setup and has a fun amount of tension while playing. Definitely recommended!