My games are AER: Memories of Old (whichIreviewedonmyYouTubechannelcheckitout!) followed by more freaking LOGistICAL. I’ve finished 72% of Australia!
Amazing!
Dragon Quest XI, without a doubt. Honorable mentions go to CrossCode (likely my game of the month for October) and (surprisingly) Middle Earth: Shadow of War.
Ha ha – me too. The funny thing is you can’t get rickrolled the way you used to get rickrolled. Instead I saw an ad for a company selling wool products, with a bunch of animated sheep singing “Wooly Bully”. It was kind of fun. I sat through that before the rickrolling began.
It felt really cool and almost old timey to set that up. Kinda made my day.
Yeah, I knew it was coming as the ad played, but I didn’t care. Been quite awhile since I heard that!
Gonna be honest, the game I’ve spent the single most time with this month is a silly freemium mobile game. Yup, still stuck on Shin Megami Tensei Liberation: Devil Downloader. Sure, a lot of that time has been energy-gated automated grinding for experience or the crystals you use to Awaken your demons or occasionally other things. But I’m also building out my available high end demon list, customizing teams for particular challenges, etc. I’ve beaten all the current story quests - but not all on Hard or Hell difficulties, which have separate rewards and are tuned much higher. I’ve delved fairly deep into the Aura Gate 3D dungeon, but now in the late floors of the 30-40 stretch (it goes down to 50) I’m routinely encountering bosses that can do 400+ damage in a single attack (of which they get 2-3 a turn) and ignore my resistances, which continues to challenge even my high end teams. Nor can I farm the highest missions in the Demon Buster regions yet. And there’s the Hell Park, which I’ve only mildly explored. And PvP. And the monthly Eclipse missions, and now a super-challenge mission for only the most elite teams. So yeah, I’m still hooked.
The other mainstay has been Elder Scrolls Online, but I am tending to binge that for hours and then go on standby, only logging in for login rewards, for most of the rest of the week.
Dragon Quest XI
Destiny 2 Forsaken
Pathfinder Kingmaker
A late entry for the month but I’ve been pretty much playing it exclusively since it came out. It suffers from some of the same things all RTwP RPGs do, but so far the positive far outweigh the negatives.
Civ IV
It’s been many years since I’ve played this and I can no longer win on on king. I must have tried a dozen times and only managed 1 win where I rode the coattails of Rome, who I made a permanent alliance with after building up our relationship. Still the best Civ. When I’ve had my fill of IV I’ll probably try V again, maybe with the mod people seem to love.
Slay the Spire
I have played a ton of this over the last 3 months, but I think I’m finally winding down. Still great.
Darkest Dungeon
Started fresh since I bought the DLC. Didn’t make it too far. It’s good, but I think I like the idea of it more than the actual game.
Kingdoms and Castles
It was fun for a play through, but i don’t know if I’ll revisit it anytime soon. My biggest obstacle now has been chopping trees to clear the way for more buildings. I’ve been repelling the attacks.
PUBG
I’m still playing this… a lot. Sure, the lows in this game are low, like landing at a spot, finding no weapons and getting shot by a dude landing after you who of course found a weapon at once. But the highs are so much higher than other games, that it’s hard to describe to the uninitiated. First of all, playing against a lot of humans (96-99 others) makes it incredible more satisfying when you win than in other mp games where you win all the time. And it’s also so insanely more satisfying winning against humans than defeating any AI boss/monster/horde/whatever.
Insurgency: Sandstorm
Speaking of AI, even with what I wrote above, I actually love the co-op mode in this game. I think it’s the mixture of weapon classes and loadouts (supply point system), gameplay (attack and defend), graphics and map design, incredible war ambiance (chatter, gun sounds, explosions, choppers, etc.) as well as the slow tactical maneuvers you have to do in order to succeed.
This is going to be a rough month to pick a favorite. I’m currently playing and enjoying Pathfinder so much, but at this point it will almost be an October game, so my actual vote goes to Dragon Quest XI - probably that’s my favorite game this entire year, honestly. So freaking good.
I also feel bad because I was like a minute into Spider-man when Pathfinder grabbed me so much harder than even I anticipated, and I haven’t touched it in almost a week. But it’s also incredible, so far.
Monster Hunter World - literally haven’t played anything else.
Bards Tale IV, it’s super rough round the edges but I really like the core gameplay. Something I can dip into and out of quite easily. Hopefully a few more quality of life improvements still to come. I dabbled with Pathfinder Kingmaker but will likely put that aside whilst I play through BT. I really like the world and presentation but it’s very fiddly and I struggle with combat in this style of game.
Earlier in the month I had an absolute blast with Battletech and look forward to going back to that at some point.
A Hat In Time for me. It’s so spirited and consistently amusing and surprising. I was apprehensive at first but it eventually sunk its claws into me more than Mario Odyssey did. I’m just finishing off the Seal the Deal DLC whose Story Rifts are kicking my arse. Love the cruise ship environment though. Death Wish can take a hike.
Overcooked 2 has been great with some welcome additions, including online multiplayer and throwing food (which doesn’t sound like much but adds another mechanic to help you crack levels). It’s not as good as the original because I prefer the themed zones, simpler overworld and the more consistently tougher levels, but it’s still a cracking coop game.
Same thing happened on Tom’s stream! (at least as far as I am concerned)
Yeah, I was never that wild about Mafia Town, the opening area. It was the second and third zones that really excited me. Once it opened up I started enjoying it a lot more.
Well, it turns out Crosscode won’t be my October’s GOTM either!
After 12 hours, the game started to favorize timed puzzles relying on bubbles instead of the standard and inspired ones seen previously. Those puzzles can be kind of annoying, but they were still fine with me. Now that I have reached the 20 hours mark, what isn’t fine anymore is the combat: there are more and more terrain hazards that the inadequate dodge can’t bypass (so that if you try to dodge an enemy attack, you end up in the said hazard. Not fun). A lot of attacks are unavoidable anyway and should be parried, but the dodge and shield button being the same, untimely death because of my controller fumblings have been aplenty.
It’s a shame, because I really liked the game, but it seems to be overstretching.
Those first 12 hours were awesome, still.
Dragon Quest XI