Stellaris
In short, disappointing.
To be fair, I went in with high expectations. I've enjoyed space 4X games for decades - from Spaceward Ho, Master of Orion and Pax Imperia to Birth of the Federation and Galactic Civilizations, to Endless Space. Having a game of that genre made by Paradox, renowed for its grand strategy, seemed a perfect fit.
Unfortunately, the result is a bland, dull game.
The main culprit is the passive and dumb AI. Let me illustrate with a tale from my first game.
It started out promisingly, with the ever-appealing discovery and expansion. Soon, however, the game ground to a halt. My special missions were stuck behind enemy borders, my colonies were at the arbitrary limit (even with a few sacrificed to the dubious sector mechanic) and - despite having not built a single military ship since the beginning of the game - I faced no military threats. The static border mechanics (in contrast to, for instance, Gal Civ's influence system) take away a lot of the mid-game interest.
A tedious cycle of researching upgrades and upgrading a bunch of buildings went for hours. Messages about factions and presidents came and went without any noticable impact. I started churning out a bunch of ships just to use up some of the resources which were piling up to capacity.
Eventually, I wound up embroiled in a war thanks to a tangled series of treaties involving a Federation I had joined. Action at last! The enemy promptly came in with a fleet five times the power of my lone, ramshackle fleet orbting Sol.
Surely I was doomed?
Well, no, they just slowly picked off a few stations and planets on the outskirts of my empire, while I churned out ships at Sol.
No doubt the slow pace of the attack would give my Federation allies time to come in and help, especially as the enemy was focusing solely on me?
Nope, they just went about their own business. The Federation fleet carried on its routine patrol. There was no diplomatic option to seek their assistance; if I wanted to engage the might of my Federation - the Federation which had embroiled me in this war - I'd have to wait for the scheduled rotation when we had control of the fleet.
Since my enemy didn't bother to leave behind a fleet or station to defend their conquered worlds, I sent along a handful of ships to pummel the defences of one, then sent in the ground troops who were met with resistance from...human militia. What? Apparently a few months of occupation had turned them against their own race, or perhaps the game just doesn't implement a proper occupation force mechanic (something games in this genre were doing 20 years ago).
I gave the game a second chance with a fresh game, but another tedious mid-game slog was enough for me.
With poor AI, a lack of visual style and a dead mid-game, Stellaris falls far short of not just its peers, but its ancestors.
HunieCam Studio
A moderately entertaining time management, though it's all pretty simple once you figure out the mechanics.
A Story About My Uncle
I'm dreadful at platformers, so it's a good sign that I managed to get fairly close to the end before rage-uninstalling. It looks quite pretty and the gameplay is fairly interesting, but there are a few difficult and unclear patches.