Game of the Month - September 2019

Games
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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 September my game of the month is:

  • Watch Dogs 2 , Fantastic world design and fun missions with optional combat, the drone and rc car stuff is amazing. And it has good climbing/navigation puzzles. Also the ScoutX location thing is wonderful for seeing interesting sights in the city. I am only 40% through the campaign and can’t wait to see where it goes. Thanks to @Jason_McMaster for pointing me in this direction over other choices I had available. Overall the improvements from WD1 to WD2 make me super excited for next years WD3 (Legion).

Honorable mentions for :

  • Natural Selection 2 , I revisited this gem from my backlog and spent a few hours with the new map and familier enjoyable gameplay. Nothing really like this out there, and well worth a try if you have never played, there is still a decent friendly active community all these years later.

  • Siege of Centauri , a decent tower defense from Stardock that really focuses on massive waves of enemies, it could be better in a few ways but overall worth a playthrough when it hits a sale price of your liking.

  • Borderlands 2 : Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep , a great dlc for this classic game, glad I finally got around to finishing it.

Other games I wanted to play moar of this month, but didn’t get to: Hitman 2 and My Memory of Us. #notimetoplayeverythingsadness

What game defined September 2019 for you? What was your Game of the Month?

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My Game of the Month just arrived not even a week ago, but took the throne. Code Vein is a very interesting take at the “souls-like” genre that is a lot of fun. It is probably the “chillest” Souls game there and, if it keeps getting better, I can see it becoming my personal favorite. In a couple of days I’ve played 7 hours already, and I’m at work thinking about playing more. I guess that’s the highest praise I can give.

Runner-up is another “souls-like”: The Surge 2. It’s a pretty interesting game that, like Code Vein, stands on its own shoulders, but in a completely different way.

Honorable mentions go to Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana, Greedfall, Cat Quest, and Shards of Infinity.

As for October, I hope to mention Astral Chain, Disco Elysium, and John Wick Hex. But we’ll see.

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I spent Sept playing Age of Wonders: Planetfall co-op and wandering the galaxy aimlessly in StarSector (no idea yet what I’m doing and can’t stop playing).

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Definitely Link’s Awakening, what an awesome experience. But once I wrapped it up I thought it would be fun to replay The Last of Us (which I never played on my Pro/HDR before) and holy crap I’m right back in it and having just as much, if not more, fun than years back when I played it (in 2013 on the PS3, I guess it would have been). Such a fun game!

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I have a few - really enjoyed playing Yoku’s Delivery Service on my Xbox, still working my way through the remastered Bard’s Tale Trilogy on my PC, and going through the co-op campaign with some buddies in Gears 5. Good month.

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World of Warcraft Classic.

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September was a busy month for me both at work and at home, so there wasn’t a lot of time to spend gaming. At the start of the month Lord of the Rings Online was still my go to game, as I’ve been making steady progress post-Moria in both Lothlorien and Mirkwood.

The last week or so though my game of choice, and my game of the month for September, has been Ember. This is a backlog game, it sat on my wishlist for a long time and ended up being part of a bundle purchase awhile back. I’ve been wanting to start a new RPG, and was on the brink of installing Divinity : Original Sin, but I knew this month was going to be crazy busy, so I went with something a little lighter.

I’m glad I did, as Ember has been very entertaining thus far. It has very good production quality, the graphics are nice but retain a familiar “old-school” feel, the musical score is excellent, the little voice acting there is is passable (which is high praise for most RPGs) and the UI and gameplay are good. The writing is also quite good, from the story of the Lightbringers (which drives the entire game) down to the side quests and the myriad of little 6-10 page books you find everywhere (they remind me of Elder Scrolls games) and the stories they contain. Combat is challenging, but not frequent enough to become tiresome, and many of the quests can be solved without any combat at all, which is nice. I’m about a third of the way through the game at this point, and I would rate Ember as a solid entry into the indie RPG space, very enjoyable for anyone looking for a modern RPG game with an old-school feel that you can play in small 30-60 minute chunks and still feel as if you’re accomplishing things.

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Greedfall. A plot based on a faux 17th Century throws up much more interesting context than the usual D&D blah. Some B list execution is not too high a price, renaigse.

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Finished Rebel Galaxy Outlaw but will need to spool it up again after the patch with the new ships.

Also started Dungeon Warfare 2 and it’s tougher than the first one.

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Noita is taking the majority of my time followed closely by RGO.

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I haven’t had much time to play games over the last month. When I have played, it’s either been the delightfull Cat Quest or its sequel for a short break, or Rebellion’s brilliant Strange Brigade with a friend.

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Noita just amazing early access pixely spelunking goodness!

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My game of the month is one I have fought to not play and I only spent a few hours with. But it is so brilliant, so refreshing, it made everything that much less brighter. I figured I’d have to finish the other games I had begun first, or I wouldn’t ever.

Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is my trusty fellow. It’s an amazing game, be it to be thrilled experiencing the hunt of a new dragon, to chill out gathering some ingredients or running around as a bipedal cat, or to feel awesome fighting a monster that you now know like an old friend. I wonder if I’ll ever put it down.

I spent an innordinate amount of time on Langrisser Mobile this month too, but I think I am done with it now. A nice game if you don’t read a word of the profanatory Engrish spoken there, and an incredible “value”, if that is your thing ;)

Untitled Goose Game is even better than I hoped it’d be. It’s more of a toy than a game maybe.

I jumped back into Kero Blaster, the nifty simple platformer and shooting game Pixel released a few years ago. For such a small and simple game, I love the world depicted in it.

I got since last week the Apple Arcade. I played quite a bit of What the Golf and Dear Reader. The first is an absurd hommage to videogaming and bad puns. The second a wonderful introduction to English litterature and the love of its words, if you are new to it like I am.

In the not so great category, I have tried to keep playing Fire Emblem on the Switch. But the lack of difficulty, even underleveled, is disheartening: there is no challenge, so it feels almost like I am playing one of those Japanese adventure games with fake choices. It’s even more of a shame because setting up those troops is cool. And my game of the month didn’t help in regard to the immaturity of the writing and the inanity of the cast of characters.

Ah yes, my game of the month is Divinity Original Sin 2.

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Astral Chain.
In other unsurprising news, I also played a lot of No Man’s Sky Beyond

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Gears 5 was definitely my game of the month, but I played a lot of Grindstone the last few days of the month.

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Monster Hunter World by a mile. It’s endlessly satisfying to suss out the nuances of each weapon and apply them against all the different monsters. And the chipper tone (lush wilderness, friendly cat chef, no villain or overarching threat) is quite refreshing.

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For me, it’s gonna be EF2000. Once I finally found how to install it on Win10 (this is the method that worked for me) and installed the EF2000 Reloaded DOSBox wrapper, I’ve read the entire manual, done many of the training missions, and have even done a few successful campaign missions (on rookie difficulty level, but still). It really still, is, I feel, the pinnacle of the pilot sim, giving you a plane and an amazing dynamic world to react to. I just love it.

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Astral Chain (Switch)

This was my most played game. I finished the main campaign, but then dropped it like a hot rock instead of trying to 100% the rest of it. My backlog was putting pressure on me to finish as much of it as I can so I can start buying new games again after my self-imposed moratorium on new purchases. I’ve got a ways to go.

Honorable mentions:

Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror (Steam)

22 hours played time so far. Now that the newness has worn off, I tend to play this once a day or so in one-hour chunks.

The Surge (Xbox)

Wow, I’m making actual progress this time. My Xbox One X makes the game actually playable, where my OG Xbox ran the game like garbage and made me shelve it early on. I’m on Map 3 so far.

Ys VIII: The Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

Just started playing this again yesterday. It only took about 20 hours, but things are finally starting to get interesting. I’m playing on Hard mode, and except for an occasional boss fight, the early game seemed like too much beginner level/standard fare type stuff to me. But now the story and the capabilities of my party are going interesting places. One of the things I do like is the Zelda/Metroid style special item system that unlocks inaccessible areas of the map as I find special equipment my party can use (like the Hookshot in Zelda, or bombs in Metroid). With only 33% of the main map uncovered so far, I don’t think I’m anywhere close to finishing this game yet.

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This month had a couple games that could have qualified for game of the month but I’ll go with Far Cry New Dawn. This is actually surprising to me because I usually get bored of Far Cry games even if I force myself to press on. New Dawn had just enough story / characters, good action, and not an extra 25 hours of padding. I stayed interested for pretty much the whole game. It’s great looking too.

Runners Up

Monster Hunter World: My first Monster Hunter game. I liked it quite a bit, but it did have several weaknesses for me. I enjoyed most of the battles. To me they had a cross between Dragon’s Dogma and Dark Souls. I personally prefer the pacing and size variety in Dark Souls. I also absolutely hated the dialog and story but luckily I could get back into the fighting without too much trouble.

Train Valley: I forgot just how fun this game is. I had purchased the Germany DLC and finally played it. Then I went up and completed the challenges I missed in the rest of the game. I’ll pick up the sequel at some point.

Worth Mentioning

Minos Strategos: Another fun bite sized game by BrainGoodGames. Simple rules but challenging with its automatically adjusting difficulty.

Mr. Shifty: Fun concept, Blink around like Dishonored and punch enemies and avoid traps with a top down view. While the game play was fun (and very difficult at times), it had way too much padding. Some of the checkpoint placements were not generous either.

Shadow Warrior 2: I’m not that far in. It’s OK. Fast action. Sometimes humorous sometimes annoying. I don’t like games as much when they rely heavily on elemental damages. I just don’t find it fun switching weapons (especially in an action game) because it is strong vs fire and weak vs acid. So, most of the time I just don’t care and play with the same weapon.

Framed Interesting concept and presentation. Arrange the comic book cells to get the protagonist safely through the scene. Some was trial and error and some could be deduced. It did wear out it’s welcome.

Not a Fan
Toki Tori 2+: It’s missing something that the first game had, I’m not sure what that is. To be fair I didn’t play much before I lost interest.

Obduction: It seems like it does it’s thing well, it’s just that that’s no longer my thing.

Interplanetery: It didn’t grip me enough to want to figure out how to get good at targeting. Which means I sucked and didn’t want to spend the time trying to get better.

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I played really short games this month. Loved all of these :)

Aragami
Blair Witch. <3 Bullet
Moto Racer 4 PSVR.
Nom Nom Galaxy
Quest for Booty
Tachyon Project