Game of the Month - November 2019

Age of Empires 2: Definitive Edition

By hours played it’ll definitely have to be AI: The Somnium files.

This is the latest game by Uchikoshi - who also developed Zero Escape and the Infinity series. I haven’t finished all the story routes yet but it’s a solid B+ effort. The core story is really interesting but the pacing feels a bit off.

The Outer Worlds here.

Yeah, that would probably be my game of the month, I suppose. I also played some Tracks, which is a fun little low-key toy train building simulation, and over the weekend played a little Minit, which is not low-key but kind of fun. Also been working on Bridge Constructor Portal, and I’m not sure yet if I like it or not.

Command: Modern Operations . This is probably one of the best examples of a clean, clear UI making a game better. Little things like having your ships and planes look like ships and planes, not abstract shapes, makes an enormous difference. So does the upgraded map that looks like what you’re used to seeing in Google maps. All up it makes it feel like you are commanding military assets in a real theatre. I posted this pic in the Command thread that shows the difference between the two games could not be more stark.

Yup same for me. I’m determined to get based a couple hundred cycles before moving on to RDR2.

Still stuck back into WoW, got Loq on my hunter, which was incredibly lucky.

Haven’t been playing many games lately, but I did finish up S-ranking the entirety of Ace Combat 7 on Ace difficulty now that all the DLC missions are out.

Destiny 2, mainly. I’ve spent a little bit of time with W40K: Inquisitor Martyr and Disco Elysium, as of this weekend, but those are likely to occupy more of next month. But Destiny. Man, New Light and Shadowkeep really got me back into the game pretty hard. 94 hours on Steam since then, and that’s with 2 weeks out of town. The best part, though, is that I’ve been able to raid. Before New Light, I never managed to hit a power level that was raid-capable, let alone that made me confident I could execute what was needed. Or, well, maybe I could have swung Leviathan, but that was old news by then. But with New Light, everything is theoretically open to a player virtually out of the gate (expansions permitting, of course) except for the Garden of Salvation, and by the time you’re farming Powerful Gear, your gear is probably capped for the raids. But they’re still relevant in a way they weren’t before. And my goodness, are they a ride.

Just did Last Wish this weekend (and One Thousand Voices dropped for me!). Prestige Leviathan not too long before that. And have the shiny new Steam achievements to prove it.

AI War II

AI War 2 for me, too. Still obsessed with it.

Edit: Well, are we allowed to count old games? Star Trader: Frontiers also has me obsessed.

I didn’t play much in November, and the games I should be playing (The Outer Worlds, Disco Elysium) I didn’t play enough to qualify for this “award”. So I’ll go with Grim Dawn because that’s probably the game I played the most, with No Man’s Sky as runner-up.

I hope so; otherwise, I’d never be able to post in this thread.

Star Wars: Jedi - Fallen Order was tops for me in November. I’m not done with it yet, but it’s been a great experience so far.

One tell-tale sign when I’m enamored with a game: When the EA logo comes on the screen, I reach over to my amplifier and turn up the volume knob. The violin strings hit me just right, and it transitions into that wonderful flute as the Lucasfilm logo sparks on the screen, and I wait with anticipation each and every time for the next note: A nice deep bass percussion hits right as the Jedi Fallen Order hits the screen.

Aaaaaaaah. God, I love a well crafted single player experience.

Disco Elysium is my clear number one. I’m loving this game so much and I can’t wait to start over again with a different build once I’m done.

Outer Wilds is also earning high marks from me. I would have jumped on this much sooner had I known the similarities to The Witness.

(Never mind that those were also the only two games I played during November. Pretty sure they’ll both land high up on my Top 10 list for the year.)

Didn’t game much in November. What little time I did was spent playing The Outer Worlds and Diablo III. Need to get back to for former as I’m still in the first area but feeling kind of ambivalent thus far.

Killing stuff in Diablo 3 is still a good time.

I’ve mainly been playing The Outer Worlds. It bogged down a bit in the mid-game, in which you can gather a slew of side quests that all happen on the same planet. My least favorite part of the game is all the loading. Even on an XBox One X, the load times are pretty long, and you can encounter a lot of them just working on one quest. I also wish they’d had the time/budget/ambition to make a more fleshed out and cohesive loot system. I stopped bothering with consumables about two hours in, and discovered the limits of weapon variety shortly thereafter.

Having said all that, I’m headed toward the endgame, and I’m still interested in completing the companion quests and side quests, so obviously there’s something here that I like.

Second place in terms of active engagement (but the runaway winner in terms of hour count) is the Perfect Team mode in OOTP 20. That one sort of plays itself, as it simulates every 30 minutes between 8am and midnight. I’ve just been watching the results and upgrading my team as I earn enough points. I lucked into probably the best pitcher in the game from an early random pack, and he’s helped earn enough currency to finance steady incremental improvement without a real-world investment. I should really get into the meat of the actual baseball sim outside this mode, but the sheer breadth is a little intimidating.

Gears 5 for me, with a little of Outer Worlds and Pillars of Eternity.