Game of the Month - February 2023

Fallout 76.

Vampire Survivors

Just a little
Cosmoteer
Infraspace

I mostly read the month of February

Xcom Enemy Within
Dead State
Master of Magic (remake)

Spellforce Conquest of Eo with a little EU4 and Vicky 3 sprinkled in.

I’ve been working through my backlog, and February was the month of Subnautica. Yes, the 2014 released underwater survival game. There was a big patch in December that patched in a ton of quality of life from the follow-on title Subnautica: Below Zero, along with a huge number of bug fixes. Lucky for me, those bug fixes took care of a bug that was more or less game breaking for me (vehicle beacons not working, so I couldn’t find my seamoth after I’d hop out of it, ug!)

I’m almost done with it, I think, so I may wrap it up later on today. [Edit: Finished! Probably my record for oldest game I’ve put down multiple times and finally picked back up and played all the way through.]

Your backlog is something you can conquer, or at least go back to and polish off a few of the better titles!

On the side (literally, on the 2nd monitor), I’ve been playing the incremental game Unnamed Space Idle, which has actually been quite good, and is in activate development with a lot of content. If you like incremental games and space ships pew-pewing each other, you might like it. Lots of interesting systems to balance, decisions on how to build your ship to get through the next set of challenges, etc.

100 Hidden Turtles and Patterned. This was a nice, chill month for gaming.

Bonus stars to Sonic Forces Speed Battle, Gear Club Stradale and Immortality. Half a bonus star to Mario Kart Tour. The new Piranha Plant Temple underwater course was pretty cool.

Spellforce: Conquest of Eo

Best 4X game in 20 years. Maybe more.

Wow, others agree with that? that’s high praise indeed

There’s a dedicated thread that is very busy.

I’d not heard of Spellforce: Conquest of Eo until this thread so will investigate that further!

February was month of the Space Ladies with Jett: The Far Shore and Returnal being my favourite games. I’m still playing through Returnal and still have the expansion to play on Jett but I expect the Space Ladies theme to continue in March with the Metroid: Prime remaster :)

Woah. I’m about 500 posts behind in that thread, so I appreciate this insider’s scoop!

Still Distant Worlds 2. It keeps getting better with each new beta.

And, still shaving off an hour of Cyberpunk here and there. I think I’ll probably finish this in March - I’ve enjoyed all my time with it (so far), but also look forward to something different for my “story” focused game that I turn to when burnt out on whatever strategy or builder game I’m hooked on.

Modding Morrowind. I’ve hit the 500 mod mark.

Wild Hearts, and it’s not close.

I don’t normally post in this thread, but I wanted to call out some specific stuff this month.

First off, I participated in Music Games Everyday February, an annual Twitter event in which participants elect to play at least 30 minutes of rhythm games every day. I played a variety of different games throughout the month, but my focus ended up being Sound Voltex, a modern arcade rhythm game played on a panel that looks like this:

(This picture is of one of the many third-party home controllers, for use with simulators and the official PC version, which is what I usually play.)

People in Discord have seen me talk about it a bit, and I even stream the game sometimes over on Twitch, but I went in extra hard in February and made some significant pushes for improvement. I love the game enough to have bought a $200 home controller for it, and to do ninety-minute drives to an upstate arcade that has the game.

Second, I played a whole lot of Terraria, digging into mods. There are loads of really cool quality-of-life mods (shoutout to the one that adds Borderlands-style beams of light on loot!) and content packs, including new difficulty modes, resources, NPCs, and equipment. Of course, the game itself is still really good!

It seems those who like it really like it. I still wouldn’t call it a 4x game. But given the strong one-more-turn-addictiveness and the exciting ways to play I am somehow sympathetic towards that statement.

The store page gives the impression it is an Heroes of Might and Magic take.

It’s a very innovative blend of 4X, RPG and a few other things. People say it’s like HoMM or it’s like AoW or it’s like Thea or it’s like Sorcerer King but they’re just grasping to describe something new. Something that has elements of all of those games but blended into something new and not seen before.

Some people may not agree that it’s the best 4X in the last 20 years but it’s certainly the most innovative. It really is greater than the sum of it’s parts. I really enjoy how the late 4X game slog has been alleviated and how fun exploration remains throughout the game. There are people out there that complain that it doesn’t play like they think a 4X game should but, imo, that’s strength and not a weakness. The 4X genre has been badly in need of a shakeup for a long time and this is it. I expect a lot of games in the future will borrow quite a lot from Spellforce: Conquest of Eo.

What an awesome teaser :0
I don’t know if I have it in me to try and learn such a complex game in the near future, but I am going to check your impressions in the game thread, that I can promise!

It was supposed to be Second Front, which I’m really enjoying but making slow progress with.

However I came across Misguided’s Slice and Dice thread and that blew February out of the water. What a game!

I only managed to beat it on Easy, Medium and Hard before I had to take a break, but had a whale of a time and am thankful for the recommendation . Thanks @Misguided :)