Game of the Month - April 2017

Spies Like Us?

Obl.

The Hot Rock

Sorry for the derail.

I’m not sorry! whoop whoop whoop

Played a little War Thunder but the bulk of my time was with a weird tower defense called Last Hope. Zombies and Native Americans themed. The game was pretty standard TD, nothing spectacular and rather grindy but it’s only the second perfect game (completed all achievements) I got on on Steam.

Tooled around with “12 are Better than 6”, an interesting top down western themed shooter that was one of those cheapie Bundle Stars deals. It’s neat but I found the controls too unwieldy to get very far in.

In the last couple days I’ve been playing with Titan Quest. I totally missed this the first time around. Quite playable thanks to the folks that have kept it updated for modern systems. Grindy, but when it debuted it would have been considered an attractive game visually and still is. Nice music too. The anniversary edition apparently includes the expansion, so it appears to be a long game. Not sure how long I’ll stick with it.

Work, school, and family kept me from getting much game time this month, but I did manage to get through route A of NieR: Automata. Excellent so far, and I can’t wait to see the rest.

Monster Slayers, though I also played a fair amount of Missile Cards and Cities: Skylines.

Hex: Shards of Fate - this is seriously still the best digital card game on the market for my money and just keeps getting better. I’m 220-odd hours in by now, mostly spent in singleplayer (though I rare-draft every week just for the cards since I have that particular perk) and there’s still plenty of decks to try, mercenaries to upgrade, campaign cards to farm and so on. Even a few challenge encounters I’ve never beaten in AZ2, like the Old Man of the Sea, and the Succubus. The past month saw another round of their Feast of Abundance holiday so I spent serious time in dungeons farming the adorable holiday Egg Hunt card as well as earning myself the Jank Bot mercenary Clatterclank, upgrading a couple more mercenaries to even more ridiculous heights, and even dropping 30k gold on my first Kismet’s Reserve pack, scoring a fun little legendary raven card. I expect I’ll be doing more of that soon because they’ve hinted those packs will be rotating soon and I would rather get a few more of its contents (maybe even the nontradable sleeve?) before I have to resort to the auction house. I get some podcast time in while farming gold, too, which helps make up for the many hours I’ve been listening to the Adventure Zone at work instead of my regular weekly rotation.

Honorable Mentions:
Mass Effect Andromeda - still a big fan of what they’re doing here although I think I’m done with any completionist impulse. There’s more good content in the open world than many people are giving them credit for, but I’m not going to bother with checklists of SAM sites or whatever that aren’t marked on the map. They’re logical things to take care of, but there’s not enough meat there to warrant the effort. And if I’m spending time on that stuff I’m not doing story missions, which are really good.

Monster Slayers - like several other folks here I’ve played a bunch of this neat little roguelike over the past month and even gotten a handful of wins. I fully intend to spend more time with it this month, hopefully unlock more of those advanced classes.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective - I’ve heard so many good things about this little number from the Ace Attorney creator but somehow never got around to it until this past weekend on my iPad. It’s one of maybe two games I can recall ever playing on my iPad where I didn’t instantly hate the touchscreen interface for gaming with and it’s colorful, entertainingly written and very novel. And Missile is great.

That’s a great little game, played it on DS.

Monster Slayers, like everybody else. Metal Gear Solid V, like everybody else, probably… two years ago…
And restarting my empire repeatedly in Distant Worlds Universe as I was noticing something I had messed up or some automation I had forgotten to turn off!

For me it’s actually a tie between Persona 5 and Starsector. The former because it is a really, really good JRPG (with emphasis on the J there), the latter because it’s finally shaping up to be the best space sandbox game ever made.

Honorable mentions go to Anno 2205 (with all DLC) and No Man’s Sky.

1846 – The first 18xx game I’ve played, and certainly not the last. This game is a very difficult sell for many gamers – 4-6 hours long, spartan artwork, calculators almost required, etc-- but it is just so much fun. Investing in and running 19th century train companies may sound boring or overdone (in board games anyway), but it is just so rewarding. After playing this, it was all I could think about for the following week. Really hope we can get another play in soon!

For video games, I think my nod this month goes to Thimbleweed Park. Perfect example of a classic genre re-done correctly. Really hope Ron Gilbert keeps on making these!

Torment - Tides of Numenara. Had an absolute blast with the first act before running into a bug that is preventing me from completing what I think is the final quest before moving on. Supposedly it’s being fixed in a patch, so I am waiting on that before proceeding. Shame as I was really getting into it.

American Truck Simulator. First time I have played this since they re-did the map. It’s so zen. Very enjoyable to just do a one hour trip with some music or a podcast on. I foresee more of this in May.

Fairly quiet month otherwise, although I’ve enjoyed the first two parts of goofy hidden object serial Adam Wolfe. It’s endearingly daft.

Your son has good taste! (edit: haha, and you too!)

That’s a real bummer. Here’s hoping it’s fixed soon.

My game of the month is easy: Steamworld Heist. Steamworld Dig was polished and enjoyable but nothing particularly special. Heist, however, is unique and brimming with smarts. The story and dialogue are very light but that’s fine because everything else just pops. As I said over on the main thread: I think it’s nigh on perfect.

One of my favourite games of all time. Apparently, not-discussed-on-here-for some-reason The Sexy Brutale, is quite similar and nearly as good. I plan on playing it tonight.

As a fan of Missile and pomeranians, I was remembered I have had that Sexy Brutale wishlisted, practically out of nowhere (maybe a comment, somewhere?) as I am unsure what it is, actually! I hope you will elaborate on that daring comparison.

It’s not my comparison. The Cool Ghosts/Daft Souls people made it. Well, one of them (Quinns I think). The other hadn’t played Ghost Trick.

What the hell is that? Looks amazing.

I had not heard the comparison being made between this and Ghost Trick, and also didn’t know it had a creator in common. I was already considering picking it up, but I think you may have bumped it up ahead of Thimbleweed Park.

You need to get yourself over to the TD thread & give you impressions. People are always on the lookout for new TD games! I looked at it on steam & very positive reviews.