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? Honorable mentions are also welcome, these would be other games that you enjoyed this past month, but not the one you spent the most time enjoying.
For March 2024 my game of the month is:
Populous - Top notch terrain sculpting, and pixel perfect visually stunning graphics make this a God Game that stands above the rest. Best played at 480p.
Just kidding ;) Happy April Fools Day!
Really my GOTM is:
Helldivers 2 - Spreading SuperEarth’s Managed Democracy to one and all! Just a fantastic game, has its hooks in me like Deep Rock Galactic did back in the day.
Honorable mentions:
Antihero - nearing 800 hours of play time, I’d recommend it for anyone on the fence. ;)
Bulwark: Falconeer Chronicles - Enjoying the chill/relaxed feel of this game, only a few hours in but I can see it being back on next months GOM list.
Dune: Spice Wars - lost 3 games so far, but I am still learning. :)
Horizon Zero Dawn - Finally finished the main story, overall a good game with too many robots to kill. :P
I still have the DLC to play which I do plan to tackle next, how long to beat tells me I have 6-12 hours of time needed for that.
What game defined March 2024 for you? What was your Game of the Month?
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - despite poor technical performance and some obtuse old-school conventions I’m really engaged by the exploration and combat. The game has a distinct character, much like the first one.
Other things that took up my time:
Old World - it can feel like every decision is about moving a slider up a resource track a bit, but there are just so many of them so cleverly intertwined that it’s kind of entrancing to explore.
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island - top-tier traditional rogue-like, where I feel like I’m too conservative in my item use to play well. I keep dying with a pack full of stuff that could have helped in hindsight, if only I’d not obsessed over saving it for later…
Unicorn Overlord - sumptuous Vanillaware production never fails to impress, and the tactical auto-battle gameplay is pretty interesting too. I need to go back to it.
Last Epoch took the crown for most hours spent. It’s a great time doing some hack’n’slash, a little light on loot-finding, but the forge system adds some variety. Builds are a multitude and I can imagine it being a big attraction to those that like to try out a variety; even two of the same class can be entirely different than each other.
Millennia is an only-slightly-different take on Civ, but it’s fresh enough to be a time-sink. It has some polishing to do, though. Fortunately, like many in this genre, it’s likely to stick around for a long while. Like Civ itself and Old World.
Regency Solitaire II revisits that good ole style I remember from the first, but lacks a bit in the story, unfortunately. Still easy to jump into for short stints when there’s not a lot of time.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader hit a wall with that awful Chapter 3 change-up and it’s been tough trying to get through with the games above taking up the rest of the time. It gets an honourable mention here as I’ve still played it more than the other three games combined.
System Shock - nearing completion now. Didn’t play the original. Shades of Prey in uncovering each level (the English muffin of nooks and crannies and maps!), puzzle solving, fps perspective is superb.
Honorable mention to Witcher 3 Blood and Wine DLC where I replayed the entire game to get to it. Looks and runs great on new pc and monitor in the lovely colorful land of Toussaint and the questing was well done.
Dave the Diver for me. Picked it up during the spring sale, and am absolutely loving it. The other sale pick up that has been taking up my time is Spellforce - Conquest of EO, I’ve restarted a number of times as I try and work out what I should be doing, but i am finally 9 weeks into a playthrough so I am commmited now.
Outcast: A New Beginning. The most enjoyable stuff was probably the traversal. Best ever terrain-following jetpack, best ever high-flying mount. Even if you skip those, the fast-travel points are cool, glowing Stargates that dot the landscape, often quite high up so you can glide down with your glider. You can also glide off your mount. Imagine my joy when I found the groundpound attack has higher strength versions from greater heights :)
DREDGE. You could say I spent most of my enjoyable time last month fishing.
Other than that, fuck March. Should have been great, held a lot of promising titles, and ended up a total and utter disappointment.
Particular dishonourable mentions to Capcom. Congratulations, you’re now permanently on my personal shitlist. Wallet stays shut, go slather yourselves in BBQ sauce and go play with a Deviljho.
I also blew through about 20 older titles of my backlog, and in retrospect wonder why I bought those in the first place. All in all, not my Month.
For me, March was a month of exploration into modern racing games. I got my cheap racing wheel out, hooked it up to my computer, and hit the Steam Spring Sale. This is what I bought:
Assetto Corsa Competizione (no idea if I spelled that right) was the first game I bought, since I had heard many things about it. It didn’t disappoint, delivering an amazing GT racing experience. Since it is focused on only one class of cars, the detail and especially sounds are top notch!
Automobilista 2 (again, no idea if I spelled it right) is another popular racing sim. Apparently it is built on the Project Cars 2 engine, though by a different, Brazilian developer. And boy, are there a lot of Brazilian cars and tracks in this game! I can see why racing sim fans like this game since it has a lot of content and pretty realistic physics. However, it is also missing a bit of polish, especially in its menus.
Le Mans Ultimate is the new official WEC game. It is is early access and currently crashes whenever I load into half of its tracks. The only time I tried playing online, the game bugged out during the formation lap and the race never started (lots of formation laps though). The actual racing is pretty good though, and reminds me to ACC.
Lastly, I am still playing EA Sports WRC. I ended up buying another copy to play on my PC so I can use my wheel and it has been an interesting experience. I really enjoy it with the wheel, but it definitely runs much worse than the other games. On some stages I am lucky to have 30 fps and the lighting seems more washed out than on my Xbox. Still, it is a fantastic game and everyone who enjoys racing/driving games should buy a copy and join the QT3 Club!
Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice league. What an amazing game. Anyone that likes borderlands should play this (I like it better than borderlands, personally).
Honorable mention to Slice and Dice, which finally released on steam. That will most certainly be my goty, but I’m taking my time with diving in.
FFXIV…again. Got back into FFXIV after I had upgraded my gaming rig. Soooo, gorgeous and enjoyable. I usually hit a wall about a month in and then put it up for a while, but I’ve started a couple of new jobs to try and trick things up.
For me, the beginning of March was all about Last Epoch. It was actually good enough to get me to go back to PC gaming from the PS5! My first time gaming on a PC in any kind of significant way in years. I’d gotten bored with Diablo IV and it scratched that levelling up in an ARPG power fantasy itch very nicely.
The second half of the month has seen me return to the PS5 for some sweet diving into hell to spread Managed Democracy throughout the galaxy. Yes, Helldivers 2, which is the first multiplayer FPS I’ve played since… um, Team Fortress? I think. Yeah. Probably Team Fortress. It’s got its hooks into me, though I suck. Kudos to the various Qt3ers who have been patient with me while I muddle my way through.
I thought about getting to some new stuff I bought during the last sale, but haven’t quite yet managed it. Not like they’re going anywhere. ;)
Played 3 MP games of Old World. Didn’t win any of them! One of the other two humans got the win and the AI stomped us in one of them.
And played another game of Imperiums: Greek Wars, the DLC for Caesar in Gaul, this time as the Averni. Flipped the script from my AAR and this time kicked the Romans back into the med. It was nice getting to use diplomacy to unite the Gauls and scale the army and resources.
Very disappointed in Blasphemous 2. I liked the first one a lot, and figured I’d like this. But I keep feeling like the controls aren’t giving me the precision that the levels are requiring. Maybe I’ll come back to it.
But Prince of Persia is, by contrast, freaking SOLID. A great metroidvania.
Been looking forward to Circuit Superstars for a long time and finally got it on sale. I love top-down racers. But like a lot of racing games, I find the low difficulty too easy, and the medium difficulty seemingly impossible.
Month of replays of classics for me: Midnight Suns- Most of the month was filled replaying this classic along with listening to the audiobook that serves as its prequel. Both were excellent! Alpha Protocol- gog saved the day. Couldnt replay it since getting a Wide screen, but the gog version allowed me to end up knocking the remaining days of March playing pure Nolstagia, and still marveling at how my choices were weaved into the game so well.
Balatro
I have played so much Balatro it became an obsession. I have a couple of unlocks left that I just can’t get, making it to ante 12, and getting 100,000,000 in a hand.
Prince of Persia The Lost Crown
I’ve only played this one a couple of hours, but it’s really good. The action is smooth, the game looks great.
Millennia
I find this has enough different from the Civ formula to make it feel like a pretty fresh take on the Civ formula. I think they need to improve some aspects of it for me to want to jump in and play it a lot. The resources are a good idea, but didn’t require much interaction with them on the default difficulty, and it is a little cumbersome to import / export them. There needs to be a bit more payoff to be worth it. Using improvement points instead of workers is a pretty neat idea. And of course the Ages, with their own set of techs.
Old World
The game I keep wanting to love but just can’t. I have a love / annoyance relationship with it. I love the economy , how good the AI is and some other things, but too much emphasis on characters and events. I still need to try a game with some of the features turned off.
Aliens: Dark Descent
I liked the first area a lot, but then felt like it was getting too repetitive after I moved on from that, so I stopped playing. I’m not an Aliens franchise fan so it didn’t have that to use for extra motivation for me to stay.
My list is really similar to @Profanicus this month:
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - (PS5) - I really, really liked this one. It felt like an improvement over the original in every way and kept me engaged for the entirety of its relatively short (for an open-ish world fantasy ARPG) playtime.
Runners up:
Shiren the Wanderer: Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island - (Switch) - This is a really good Shiren game. I’ve only beaten a handful of dungeons, but will certainly be returning to it for a long time.
Unicorn Overlord - (Switch) - The art is great, but I’m not sure how much time I’ll end up spending on this. The story didn’t grab me and the battles have been fairly rote. Maybe increasing the difficulty level will make a difference.
Vault of the Void - (PC) - After trying a bunch of different roguelite deckbuilders lately, this one has stuck because it fits the way I enjoy playing those games perfectly.
March came in like LAST EPOCH and went out like DRAGON’S DOGMA 2.
Last Epoch - For me, very well done Diablo-like. Love the loot and the crafting systems to pieces. Tried every starting class, every build was fun and viable (at least to 70 or so).
Dragon’s Dogma 2 - Bit of a rough start for me, spent first several hours wondering if I’d made a mistake. When it kicked in, it really kicked in; I’m fully invested now. The feel of exploration and adventure even though it’s only a quasi-open world is top notch and the mechanics like having to find a camp spot add to it for me. I’ve been dabbling in different vocations and all have merit but for me, Mystic Spearhand and Sorcerer are top tier. The boss battles are pretty special. They can be very chaotic but the pawns all seem to make a good account of themselves and some of the combat techniques are spectacular.
