One month down and eleven more to go! What did you enjoy most in January?
My game of the month turned out to be an early access title, a super fantastic game called Antihero. I have almost 20 hrs played according to the itch app, and its been some of the most enjoyable time I’ve spent gaming so far this year. It is being played for funsies and also Qt3 league glory, right here on Qt3 by quite a few of us forum members. It is really good, so damn good I am even posting a picture and link to the game’s site! It is without a doubt going to be in my top 5 games this year. GO GET IT!
Well, besides Hungry Cat Picross (my 3rd run…), I played a bunch of N++, thanks to the Macintosh version arriving just in time when my PC died. A bit over 20 hours in, and I am starting to collect all the medals on some levels!
But the real game of the month (and probably of the year, at the pace this is going) was Twilight Struggle for me. I jumped into it mid December, and the game has been possessing me since then.
Either Dishonored 2 or Mass Effect 3, with a late surge by Hitman TRADEMARK. I really need to pick a game and settle on it in February as now I am a few hours into 3 different things and will not get the full experience by dipping in and out of them…
I concur with @lordkosc about Antihero! It’s a marvellous bite-sized turn-based strategy game involving all kinds of underhanded sneakery, backstabbery and skullduggery. The async multiplayer games here on Qt3 have been a joy so if anyone else is interested in joining us, for funsies or for the league (which is also fun y’know), then drop by.
For the rest of the month I’ve been dabbling with DEADBOLT by the Risk of Rain devs, which is like a mash-up of Hotline Miami and Gunpoint. Brutal but satisfying. Not sure how long my enthusiasm will last for it though.
I’ve also returned to Vermintide and the excellent Dungeon the Endless.
Edit: oh and Titanfall 2 is still swallowing hours every week. So good.
For me, my game of January was Paladins. So far I’ve had a blast playing it, and hope that it continues to live on. Highly recommend buying the $20 founders pack if you have the least bit of interest in it, as it opens the game up much more than the standard f2p game.
As far tabletop games, I’ve still really enjoying Age of Sigmar. I thought Warmachine was too complicated and 40k too unbalanced, and this solves both those problems. Plus, playing a 1000pt game only takes 60-90 mins, so I don’t have to set aside an entire afternoon to play it.
I finally beat Doom and really shocked at how much I enjoyed that game. I played a few games of Stars in Shadow and splitting time between that and Darkest Dungeon - basically all games that’s been on my backlog for at least 6 months :)
In January I was mostly playing: Dark Souls 2: Scholar of the First Sin, Yoshi’s Wooly World, LEGO Dimensions, Stephen’s Sausage Roll, Super Mario 3D World, Diablo 3, Astroneer, Total War: Warhammer, State of Decay YOSE, and Shenzhen I/O.
Holy heck, I played a lot of games this month.
Anyway, the best one was Stephen’s Sausage Roll, although Warhammer was a surprising second.
My game of the month is easily Forza Horizon 3. I get so caught up trying to get the best time on each track and each car class out of my friends and club members. I was getting so obsessed I had to put it down for over a week. Yesterday I dipped my toe back into it for a little bit - just enough to reclaim a couple tracks. I haven’t done all of the different activities, but I’ve done enough to level up each of the hub locations to the max.
After playing Unravel with my son several months ago by passing the controller, I finished up the 2nd half by myself because he grew bored by the pacing, and at 10 years old he just didn’t appreciate how beautiful the game is. The game play is OK - but the locations and Yarni are charming.
It took several missions into the campaign, but I also enjoyed 20 hours or so of Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation. I gave up once I hit a crash but that halted my progress on one of the later scenarios. Other then the fact that the game wouldn’t let me continue, my biggest gripe is that I just have a hard time differentiating the different ships in a battle and knowing what they are capable of.
I also played through Deux Ex: Mankind Divided and wasn’t that enamored with it. I don’t like the characters very much and it just feel a little clunky. I enjoyed Human Revolution more for sure.
I haven’t played FF XII, only FF X. I like XIII-2 a lot more than I liked X, BTW. The combat is ATB-ish, a weird mix of real-time and turn-based that feels mostly real-time. It’s very interesting in its own way, and I find it more exciting and interesting than the combat in X.
Also, storywise - if you liked the story and character development in X, there’s a good chance you’ll like XIII-2, because they have some common themes.
I would say yes. Or you should at least watch a complete “movie” of FF XIII on Youtube (I can give you a link if you want), because XIII-2 depends a lot on what happened in XIII, and on the relationships between the characters, to build a proper setting. XIII-2 won’t have nearly the same impact (in terms of story and even gameplay) without you knowing XIII well.
Bioshock and Bioshock 2 on XB1. It was nice to have an excuse to replay these and have enough time away from them to have some perspective. I hadn’t realized the Challenge Rooms weren’t part of the original Bioshock release on the 360, so those were interesting diversions that I would not have otherwise played.
I know that Bioshock 2 often gets waved off as a weak sequel, but the gameplay and level design were rock-solid and held up to the original when I played them back to back. The story was admittedly weaker (what’s the opposite of an objectivist? Let’s do that), but the gameplay tweaks from the original (playing as a big daddy & doing adam gathers, hacking, lower health and eve caps, new plasmids & weapons, research camera changes) worked well. I think that as a game, B2 is the better of the two, despite lagging in originality and story. It surprised me how many of what I considered to be “Bioshock memories” were actually Bioshock 2 memories. Pauper’s Drop and Siren Alley were both particularly well-designed.
