Mostly YouTube Music - the recommendation features are much better than spotify's (and it has much better UX). Also regular YouTube suggestions, but I only get jazz and kexp recordings from there.
I used to have a shared playlist with a friend where we'd casually add any cool tracks we'd discover, which was a weird small motivator to discover new music on my own (so that I could show off). Sadly, that person is not a friend anymore, so the playlist is dead.
It's a rant, I'll add on with one of my own.
I absolutely, really, hate that this gets spun around as "keeping a cat inside is cruel" or "my kitty is innocent" or whatever.
"Don't let your cats outside because it's dangerous for them!!". No, it's really not. The cat IS the danger. The hedgehogs, the birds, the polecats, all other small to medium mammals are terrorized by your cat. The actual medium sized predators are forced out of their territories, because they actually have to live on the food they catch, and don't just hunt for fun.
I really don't care if it's cruel to the cat if it's kept from killing hundreds of animals over the course of its life. But it's always about the "cute little uwu kitties".
And the idea of a neighborhood cat is somehow normalized. It's normal to see a cat on the street for some reason. They're "cute", and every neighborhood has at least one. Awesome.
You might think I'm irrationally angry about this. But the fact is, that cats kill billions of birds [1] in the U.S yearly. Do you know how much a billion is? It's almost unimaginable.
But it's somehow normal. And I come across as a cat hater when I mention this to people who let their cats outside.
I wish I could like cats, and I did use to. But now, they're just a symbol of death for me.
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms2380 (I'm aware that ~70% are caused by un-owned cats, but how many cat ladies supporting them are in your neighborhood?)
Cats are an environmental disaster and if you let your cat roam outside or feed wild cats, you're just a bad person and directly responsible for hundreds of bird deaths.
Oh wow, I thought they were enby for the longest time.
Snarky Puppy's Lingus (from We like it here) for the initial impression because I know it by ear at this poitnt, some Master Boot Record to check the bass response, and some breakcore (probably "The Maid We Messed")
Devil Daggers has amazing sound design, and it has hrtf, so I could aim at some enemies blindly.
It's a small game though, and not for everyone.
I anti-second the controller - there's no benefit to it, and as the other commenter said, you're going to want to play with the d-pad anyway. Play with whatever you feel more comfortable with, there's no difference between the two.
I don't agree at all, I think it has to do everything with it being 3d.
For any game, I don't want to look at the thing I'm controlling often - I need to feel where I am, and not see where I am. Many 3rd person games break that for me - the camera-object distance is not fixed for various reasons (speed indication, avoiding a wall, motion smoothing), and that immediately breaks the feeling of control for me. Not to mention anything that takes control of the camera.
With 1st person controls you always get perfect motion controls, a camera that cannot accidentally clip into walls, and motion smoothing does not exist. If a game is 1st person,you don't need it to be desiged as a platforming game for its controls to be good for platforming - take a look at Minecraft or Counter Strike with their emergent gamemodes.
I might be biased from the hundreds of hours of cs surf though.
Having a quick look at how A Hat in a Time looks, I think I wouldn't enjoy its platforming as well, as it seems to suffer from the same problems.
3D 3rd person platforming. Any flavour of it. It consistently either sucks (souls games) or is just plain boring (the uncharted series). I'm sure there are some games where it's done reasonably well (probably some sonic or mario game), but I've never seen that.
Over the year I've finished Outer Wilds, Hades, PikuNiku, the second Ori game, and have been slowly getting through Elden Ring. Next is probably Tunic, but idk if it's worth my time after playing through the first 2 hours.
Nowadays I can't use any other controller than the deck, so I sometimes link it with the pc just for that - I just can't live without the gyro and the back buttons
Just like the other commenter, the Outer Wilds main motif (travelers) makes me emotional because of how good the game was. Disco Elysium also has had an amazing soundtrack, with the main BGM faintly using sounds from the final song, which made it really cathartic for me.
Ultrakill deserves a lot of praise, especially for the P-2 music (https://youtu.be/MG5L-1pI8bI). It works perfectly for how intense the level is, and it's absolutely nuts that the game still manages to up the ante after you've perfected every single other level. I've listened to this type of music quite often before, but I've never felt it in my blood and muscles before playing that level.
When judged on the music alone though, Hotline Miami (1) and Furi have to take the cake. Both soundtracks are just iconic, and easily stand out on their own.