Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - 20 years later there’s still nothing like the vertiginous scope of those levels. Age of Empires II: What the fuck? Even with an 18 minute castle time I’m getting stomped by a single AI on ‘moderate.’ I used to be halfway decent at this game. Hex: Shards of Fate: Briefly dipped back into it, did a couple campaign battles. Still a fun game but not enough SP content to keep me around forever. Also I lack the patience for deck-twiddling at the moment. Checkers: Because I’m repeatedly playtesting the checkers game I’m writing in Python. Probably haven’t played Checkers in 30 years. It’s not quite as simplistic as I assumed it was.
Still Breath of the Wild by a large margin. 3 divine beasts and 75 shrines done, just wandering around finding points of interest before progressing further.
I played a lot of games this month.
I really enjoyed Mr. Shifty (thanks, @marquac!), a great arcade game paying homage esthetically to Mr. Exit, with a simple mechanic: you can teleport from a limited range at will and look damn good doing it.
I enjoyed Hollow Knight (thanks, @Chappers!) tremendously. I won’t compare it to Dark Souls, despite some borrowed concepts, simply because Dark Souls is the best game ever and the link that game and I share goes beyond words and our children could have been beautiful, but the smartness of Hollow Knight’s design sure evokes it to me — at least evokes it a lot more than any other so-called clones that fail to see the point of what they are trying to copy. In particular, the seemingly simple combat system really is smarter than it first appears, and once one starts to get the hang of it, and with the knowledge of the adversaries, it makes for a very rewarding progression of the player’s own skills.
I have been stuck on some silly platforming, not because they are hard, but because they are not easy enough for old men like me.
My game of the month would probably be Combat Mission: it has been such a revelation. Despite the horrible camera and graphics, and the lack of post-scenario replay, it provides such an incredible war-themed story-generator. I also love its emphasis on the use of terrain as the dermining factor of those firefights.
Gears of War 4. Didn’t expect this to be my game of the month. I would’ve given up on it early if it hadn’t taken me 5 days to download. Enjoyed it much more after the first act. I was really impressed by the visuals & how well they disguised the loading screens.
Also enjoyed Magic 2015, Fable 3, Ryse, Zoo Tycoon Ultimate and Garden Warfare 2’s fun events. We had at least five hours of fun with last week’s speedy peas vs soldiers one hit kill explosion fest.
Played a crap ton of Metal Gear Solid 5 TPP. It bounced off me once because stealth is painful and it is easy to just murder your way in. But because I’m a maschoist/completionist I gave it a second try. And it finally sunk its hooks on me. It is kind of slow burning because a lot of freedom is locked away until you gain access to the full functionality of your base. It took a while to get there, maybe 10-20 hours in to mod my tranq rifle to have a silencer, which is pretty ridiculous for a stealth game.
The story of course is shite. Quiet’s story is the worst excuse for gratitious T&A. It is like a street fighter game: all the meaty gameplay is wrapped around a crap story.
Grim Dawn with a controller for me. I bounced off this game multiple times, but it really stuck with me this time, I think it’s the best ARPG ever made. The class combination system is an alt lovers dream, there are just so many things to try. Once you get the mechanics of the game, and get used to the graphics (I didn’t care for them at all), it’s fantastic. Great game, and well worth playing, and plays great with a controller.
I hear you: no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to run in Wine. Truth be told, it was quite troublesome to get it to work in Windows as well: that resolution autodetection code is noxious.
The old game that I finally got around to playing and totally loved: Sleeping Dogs
My goto game for short breaks: Solar Settlers, although after 25 hours I’m beginning to get a bit tired of it. Maybe I’ll mix it up with Age of Rivals from now on.
The game that would be my game of the month but I had the self control not buy it yet: Dominions 5
Sorry, deleted my post by accident last time and forgot to repost one way or another. I was distracted. My games of the month were Pillars of Eternity and Fire Emblem: Awakening. It was nice to resume an old save file. In the latter, I started a new game.
With a growing backlog that plays on my mind and at times a reluctance to dive in and try new games that I’ve bought, I decided this year I’d go for setting small goals each month.
January then, my first goal was to start the year with a bang with Just Cause 2. Yep, one of the finest open world shooters out there. Sometime back in 2012 or 2013, I started a second run through of the game on the hardest difficulty with the intention of finishing it 100% Over the years, I plinked away for brief moments, but never really got into the game. This month though, I readjusted my goal and told myself to 100% the achievements. As a result, JC2 is the 4th game now that I have managed to 100% achievement run in, having managed to clear over 75% of the map. I’m happy and can finally put that game to the side now.
My second game of the month was the tabletop version of the Pathfinder Adventure Card Game (Rise of the Runelords). This campaign has been going since mid October when I decided to roll new characters. I was tired of managing 4 by myself, so I scaled back to 3, starting afresh with the Wizard (Ezren), Paladin (Seelah) and Ranger (Harsk). I’ve nearly completed the third adventure path, and look forward to diving into the fourth.
Final game of the month that I used post Just Cause 2 was Civilization VI. The single game I completed did engage me. Don’t get me wrong, it has issues, and future playthroughs I know I’ll have to bump the difficulty up past Prince given how easily I squashed the AI in that game. I played as Alexander of Macedon and set out on a world conquest. I only began said conquest once I had muskets and cannons, and that sadly meant I was rolling through cities and armies that were still using classical era weapons. By end game, I was 15 techs ahead of the next AI player and met no resistance despite the whole world hating me. It was stupidly enjoyable.
