STG's

 Just got Marvel Spider-Man Remastered, which I understand is originally pretty old. This follows the open world game recipe book pretty well. It really reminds me of Just Cause 4, even the tower unlocks to scan a region is similar (Just Cause did it a lot better - the wavelength mini-game is pretty silly, and I am pretty sure I have seen it a bunch of times since at least the 90s, if not the 80s). Graphics are pretty good. I have to mention the start-up time, which was VERY surprising. It is not only really fast, but you can even skip all the logos. Combat is nice enough, there is an ok stealth component, plenty of gadgets, skills, suits, and suit add-ons. I also like that the suit powers are choosable, as opposed to locked in a suit. Also plenty of activities. The research stations missions can be a little annoying, though. Overall, very nice, I really like it so far.

 A Desolation called peace, by Arkady Martine, is the sequel to "A Memory called Empire" (which I read, and liked, but forgot to review). Here we have the consequences of the last book - the empire is fighting the big bad aliens. Three Seagrass and Mahit, the main characters from the first book, manage to get themselves inserted in the action as negotiators. A good part of this one moved quite slowly. There are a few parallels with Ender's Game, ********SPOILERS******* since both have aliens with "magic" communication, although I don't recall if the ants had a sense of self. They also fight because they didn't think their enemies had any importance (only queens mattered in Ender's game, on Desolation conscience is apparently distributed and anyone not connected was not considered a person. /********SPOILERS******* Overall, this one was OK but I liked A Memory called Empire a lot more.