SnowRunner for me.
But honourable mention to a few hours spent in Half Life Alyx on the Meta Quest 3. Holy VR shitballs Batman!
Remnant 2 for me.
I just started playing this a week ago, and it is loads of fun. I may go back and buy Remnant 1 at some point. It is really a well done game. Not as hard or as big as Elden Ring though.
Pokemon Violet - (Switch)
My 7-year-old finally got into Pokemon Scarlet, which was a Christmas gift from last year, so I picked up the companion game to do some co-op with him (and do some grinding to get him over some non-obvious humps.) It might be my favorite Pokemon game. Detailed battle animations, slick menu design, an open-world structure that lets you take on a variety of challenges in any order you like, and fast-travel and traversal powers that make navigating it painless. Everything about it makes the main story progression more manageable and less frustrating than any other entry in the series.
But there is one hilariously awful issue: the graphics quality and performance when navigating the open world are shockingly bad. I really feel for the team that made this because everything is polished to a mirror shine except for the unresolved issues meeting the technical constraints of an underpowered system. The next one will be out of this world good.
Runners up:
- Astral Ascent - (Switch) - Holy cow, it’s a truly great sidescrolling Hades. 10/10.
- Risk of Rain Returns - (Switch) - It’s a great remaster of the original sidescrolling Risk of Rain, and I’m really bad at it, but it’s a blast.
- Fights in Tight Spaces - (Switch) - It plays like a mini roguelite version of Marvel’s Midnight Suns and I’m here for it.
Started off December with Deus Ex: Human Revolution This felt like a win for the backlog - I remember purchasing years ago, got as far as free roaming around Detroit multiple times then would put the game down and move on. This time I pushed myself to completing it, and I’m glad I did. This was on the Directors Cut version that included the Missing Link DLC. Wasn’t really keen on that bit.
My follow up PC game was then Red Faction: Guerilla Re-mars-tered. I played (and finished) RF:G on the very old GFWL service years ago on release, on a gaming laptop. Revisiting this game and its destruction orientated gameplay was fun. Smooth FPS, destruction aplenty, looked great. It also made me appreciate just how good Just Cause 2 was as a game that was released not long after because in terms of Open World gameplay, there are elements of RF:G that annoyed me.
On Switch, I played a bit of Kirby and the Forgotten Land. Absolutely charming and still diving into that through this month.
I also had a look on the eshop and picked up Picto Quest. It is a Picrosse game with very lite RPG elements. This game I don’t really recommend though, mostly for the fact there are levels that employ an abstracct timer to complete (ie: monsters hitting you if you don’t reveal the squares quickly). Thankfully I see that the 3DS Picrosse games have made their way to the switch, so I have that option for the future!
Boardgaming, I’ve had Uprising: Curse of the Last Emperor on the table. Unfortunately, I haven’t felt like boardgaming much this month, and settling for mindless games as the games I’ve talked about above tend to illustrate what with how hectic life has been this time of year.
Most of my time went to Subnautica: Below Zero.
It has a smaller map, but still as enjoyable as the first part.
The announcement for the new Monster Hunter game got me to go back to Monster Hunter Rise with the Sunbreak expansion. The Monster Hunter formula is like crack to me, couldn’t stop playing. Pretty much done with most of it I think, really loved Rise overall playing Gunlance exclusively.