Asklemmy

Shop Titans (played on PC). It's just predatorial and I got caught in its addictive gameplay loop for every waking hour of 2 days. I'm lucky that it was only 48 hours (compared to other people) and that I hate playing on mobile unless it's short sessions of non-mechanical stuff because it seems mobile is full of games like this.

Mobile Legends Bang Bang, a mobile-based LoL ripoff thats very popular in South East Asia. It is very catered to newbie and low skilled players, most items sold as gatchas, and has severe skill-imbalance in matchmaking (many suspect they will pair you with low-skilled low-winrate players if you win too much, giving birth to many grievance from good solo players).
Alas, with my rl responsibilities, I can't play more serious moba like Dota2 anymore. The only way to satisfy my crave for moba is by playing MLBB as most matches only take 12 to 20 minutes to finish. I can cram it to my commute time or break time.

Dragon Ball: Legends

Good mobile game with awful gatcha mechanics. After multiple attempts to quit it's like a bad relationship. I just keep coming back. I love to hate this game sometimes lmao.

Recently, project zomboid. I feel like my ratio of exploring vs inventory management is super low. And then I have one misclick against a horde and have to spend the better part of an hour to get back to what I was doing with a buddy. Still get sucked into it though regardless.

I'm always torn about Elite Dangerous, similar to Eve's grind I beleive. It's a space game that requires hundreds of hours and 3rd party databases to have any sense of efficiency. There's no true interplayer economy so you're still free to operate solo (except that one time people with fleet carriers kidnapped noobs to slave mine). I have 900+ hours in 3 years and still don't feel like I can do anything I want. I enjoy the sights, but they're really repetitive. I relax while mining, but the payout just isn't on the same level as some gaming methods. There's no campaign and the lore is just small journal entries, so progress is only measured by purchases. You're free to write your own story, but eventually you grow tired of the sandbox. The alien invasion events spiced things up about 9 years into the game's life, but even that has become a little stale. Build the meta ship, work the events methodically, go home. The real world time sunk into travel for necessary upgrades is tiring.

But then, every once in a while, I'll use my laptop on the big screen with great sound quality and I remember what makes this game so special.

Star Trek Online. I love the Star Trek franchise. I've spent so much time and money on it. It's got some old ass engine that the current team can barely maintain, it's super buggy, and there isn't enough actual content. They keep players in a cycle of perpetual events to keep FOMO up and the events are usually the same for each time of year, with different rewards.

It's F2P but all the desirable items are paywalled and many of those are behind gamble boxes. A single cheap ship that's decent runs $20 USD from their store. But one can realistically easily pay hundreds for a single ship with gambling. They sell ship bundles for hundreds of dollars as well.

Graphics are ridiculously dated. End game is a selection of instances that get repetitive, playing the game is intentionally grindy to encourage spending real money (you can buyout virtually anything you can grind out). Or running a specific instance over and over to clock your DPS and try to make a leader board only visible on a 3rd party application.

The community isn't particularly toxic but there's very little player engagement, chat zones are usually maybe 2 different places in the game and if the conversations aren't game related they are almost always political arguments/discussions. PVP is almost nonexistent due to limited maps for it and a lack of people queuing because they would be instantly murdered by money whales who minmax DPS.

The UI can be really confusing and there's a lame tutorial at the start that teaches you very little about the game. You will be doing endless internet searches for what should be intuitive and basic. There's probably more to removed about I'm forgetting right now.