What has been your primary game this past month? It could have been a recent title, a new discovery, or something from your backlog. Or perhaps an old favorite you returned to years later?
For me it was Frostpunk. I’ve failed and been either banished or executed quite a few times, but almost have the main story beat on my most recent attempt, they really made a fantastic setting that feels gritty and depressing. I’ll move on to the scenarios soon.
Honorable mentions for Friday the 13th Killer Puzzle and Remember Me.
What game defined April 2018 for you? What was your Game of the Month?
Strangely, it was the aging Lost Portal CCG on iOS for me, which saved my sanity while moving around in this weird month. The second half of the game is ridiculous, with most adversaries holding decks designed to troll the player, but it is a pleasant timewaster.
In the same vein, it was Mahjong Kakuto Kurabu for hours at night with my wife through the internet wonder. It’s a mobile F2P farm of hell, but ironically, if you play friendly games with people you know, it is absolutely free — I am guessing only the most traitorous minority of weirdos must play games with people they know in Japan, or the thing would have shut down by then.
Before that, I spent a lot of time on Slay the Spire, which is a huge time consuming beast. I am looking forward to getting back to it.
Same with 3030 Deathwar Redux, a game that gave me vibes I hadn’t felt playing a space game since the early 90s. Really looking forward to spending more time with it. Straimium Immortaly is a nice little shooting roguelites whose deeper secrets I have yet to dig into.
Slay The Spire: I think this is the 2nd month this is in my top games of the month. I’ve got over 50 hours in this. After winning with the 2 classes I started doing the occasional daily and the ascension mode.
Bloodborne: I’ve been binge playing Bloodborne. Liking it quite a bit but some of the bosses gave me a ton of trouble, like Rom the f*&^**@ head. Rom almost made me quit the game not because it was hard (which it was), but because it was so horribly boring too. I prefer Dark Souls, which lets me use a shield - but this is still good.
Northgard: Really good RTS with limited units. Not super clicky, but you do need to be efficient with your time.
Railway Empire: I was cautious with keeping my hopes in check since this is published by Kalypso, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised. The scenario goals can provide a decent challenge. Fun moving goods around.
Assassin’s Creed: Origins: Good for an Assassin’s Creed game. The world was beautiful. The characters and story was descent. Action was OK. RPG leveling sometimes made the game take longer than I’d like since I’d sometimes have to grind for some levels to become in the ‘proper’ range level to be able to do damage to the enemy.
The Settlers 7: Northgard reminds me of The Settlers 7, more as it is inspired by than really like it. So, I figured I’d play it again since it has probably been years. Doing the campaign to relearn the ropes, even though it is kind of a dumb campaign from a story perspective. It does gradually introduce mechanics nicely.
Agents of Mayhem: Needing to switch characters or weapons in games frequently isn’t really my thing, so I just generally play one character until they are about to die, then switch to another. Not nearly as much humor as Saints Row 3 and 4. It’s not bad, but I’ve put it on the back burner for now.
I played two games mostly. Jydge, which got its hooks into me deeper than I expected it to, and… Baldurs Gate! I know, super late to the party, right? I remember trying it out back in the early 2000’s and tiring quickly of the CD disc swap. Thanks to the efforts of the people behind the enhanced edition, I get to enjoy it now without the physical media hassle and with tons of improvements.
Forza Horizon 3. Playing the unmitigated hell out of this. It’s a great game for just cruising around in wide open places, just ramping sand dunes and hills to unwind. Went from level 3 to 260ish this month, still don’t tune worth a shit.
Wolfenstein: The New Order. I’ve been playing this off and on for years. I finished Old Blood a couple years ago, but New Order just draaaaaaaaaaaaaaags because of all the unnecessary story shit they’re using to pad and bookend missions. It really shits on the experience, but I have a feeling I’m getting close to wrapping things up.
Hearthstone expansion released a couple weeks ago, but the meta is shit because all it did was make a couple oppressive decks more oppressive. Hard to play ladder right now and have fun.
All the Far Cry 5 hype made me want to dive back into a Far Cry game, so I grabbed Far Cry Primal on sale and spent most of April tooling around in its survival mode until it stopped being a challenge. Then I jumped ship midgame in an attempt to scrape away at my backlog, to finally get around to Dishonored 2 Death of the Outsider, which was short and sweet and really made me wish for more games set in Arkane’s incredible world. Honorable mention (???) goes to 3030 Deathwar Redux which I fired up and immediately bounced off of hard as it seemed like as soon as you start to learn some things, everything gets taken away from you to begin your story. Maybe someone can point me to a starters guide or something to get me going.
Ah, the game is very unfriendly in the beginning: the tutorial messages were all but confusing to me, and this isn’t helped by the complex controls. I ended up using a mix of gamepad and keyboard and mouse, which is quite awesome in a Steel Battalion/Tekki-wannabe way, but also not simple.
The game won’t let you mess up (if you do, you are merely one reload away, and the game autosaves very often in case you forget to do it) and you’ll end up accumulating money quite shortly: you just have to take half a dozen missions in the local system to be able to get something better than your shuttle, and from there it is the classic Escape Velocity rise to power vibe.
Tons of stuff is happening everywhere all the time, but don’t worry: the game doesn’t want you to suffer, it is just making stuff messy to create a mood (at least, that is my opinion).
You have to pay attention to the dialogues and what is being said to you by the characters though, as they offer a lot of hints (and are generally not annoying to read, unlike in many games!).
I have only 3 hours clocked or something, so I am not the most reliable source, but passed the very rough first contact and sentiment of being lost —which you could say is very appropriate, given the main character’s situation —, I totally was on board.
Edit: ah yes, a little hint if some jerks are trying to kill you, seek refuge near a space station, and not only will the station come in, but others may come to help as well. Using weapons in crowded space can be quite tricky otherwise.
Yakuza Kiwami It’s not quite as good as 0, but it’s still a great time, and now I’m all in on this wonderful series. I’m so in on it I’m going to hold off on Yakuza 6 so I can play Kiwami 2 first. Because seeing as much as possible play out in order is important to me now.
Detention
It didn’t take up much actual playing time - I got 100% of the achievements in ~3 hours, but I did spend a lot of time thinking about it afterwards and then going on a horror movie binge. I think a revisit of the Silent Hill series, which this takes a lot of cues from, is in order soon too.
It’s genuinely good horror that reminded me of why I like the genre so much.
Oh, and I might have, uh, played 40 hours of Battletech since it released.
At the beginning of April I was still knee deep in my Grim Dawn addiction. More specifically my attempt to get a hardcore character through the game. Sadly, when my tendency to try insanely hard areas kept me from my goal for the upteenth time, I finally was able to break free.
I’d say my game of the month was the Old Hunters DLC for Bloodborne. It’s a really good expansion that is still clearly part of Bloodborne, but it feels like a unique experience, and one of the best Souls-style experiences out there.
