After finishing the Halo campaign, I didn’t feel like jumping into another big game right away, so over the past week or so I’ve been messing around with several of the indies that dropped more or less recently: Lake, The Pedestrian, Unpacking, and Gorogoa.
Out of those my favourite is definitely Gorogoa, and the only one I’m certain I’ll finish. And there’s something about the simplicity and mundanity of Unpacking that’s got me hooked, even though I kind of vaguely recent it at the same time. I know that probably doesn’t make much sense, but that’s how I feel. I basically end each session with “this is stupid.” But then later after playing something else, find myself back there, unpacking another box.
I really didn’t care for Lake. Uninstalled it without spending more than 25-30 minutes with it.
Next I’ll give Firewatch, Olija, and Moonglow Bay a shot.
If you’re interested, I just unlocked all achievements, 30h overall. You don’t even need to find all secrets, collectibles and do all the side missions (like 90%), only in the first DLC you need to find all collectibles and do all the missions. Very easy completion anyway.
Thanks but no interest in achievements or trophies for that matter. I’m just going to be playing through the story campaign and afterwards, jump into the two expansions so I can have the game wrapped up long before the eventual sequel releases.
Just finished the Braking Point story mode of F1 2021. Doing a couple of story missions in Far Cry 6, think I’m 25% in or something like that. And I keep coming back to Slay The Spire, trying to beat ascension level 4 with all characters.
After the huge disappointment that was The Suicide of Rachel Foster I completed the following chill games over the holidays:
Lake did a good job of capturing the vibe of returning to your little hometown. It even had some interesting and rather natural conversations for a video game. I only wish you could drive the car more recklessly with a bit more environment destruction. Coming directly from FH5 not beeing able to drive over a street sign was weak.
I didn’t like No Mans Sky at all so The Last Campfire was a pleasant surprise. Its a really good puzzle game with charming artstyle. Just the uneven difficulty of the puzzles could be more balanced.
Unpacking was also rather nice to play in short bursts. Its not challenging but ideas, artstyle, music and environment storytelling form a very unique package. I can see why some outlets voted it their GotY.
Townscaper is more like a tech demo or editor than a game, but a very impressive one. Just fun to mess around and see what the diffent combinations of buildings form in the end.
Just started The Gunk and first impressions are at least good. Seems simple and rather old school design wise.
Thats a good selection of short indie games. Gorogoa was my puzzle Goty when it came out on Xbox in 2018. Unpacking also has very subtle but good environment story telling. Still have to try Pedestrian.
Oh, for sure. And it successfully makes me react and feel things too. As each level progresses, I find myself discovering several different aspects of the protagonist’s personality that makes me not care for her more and more. Not in a disliking sort of way, more in a “I don’t identify with this person at all” sort of way.
One example: As you unpack her things, you keep finding stuff in boxes where they don’t belong. Like a t-shirt in a kitchen box or something. And to me that suggest a scatterbrained and messy person, a personality trait which I have a hard time dealing with in real-life.
And already having that impression, I then couldn’t help feel sorry for her boyfriend later on. Based on his apartment, he’s clearly a neat, organized person. And suddenly he’s gonna have to deal with all this mess and clutter. Poor guy, hopefully he loves her enough that it doesn’t bother him too much.
It’s an OK game, but I found it a little too one-note in terms of its puzzle mechanic. Nice presentation though. Hopefully it evolves and reinvents itself as it progresses.
Yeah, I played that Day 1 when it dropped on Game Pass. On that first sitting, I ended up spending an hour or two (it’s easy to lose track of time in there) and it kind of surprised me how entertained I was. I don’t know that I’d call it fun, necessarily, but it’s kind of like how I remember building Legos was when I was a kid. Zen-like, allowing your imagination some room to play.
Thats like pretty normal with moving, happened to me every time. From a game design standpoint it also would be more boring if everything was all neat and orderly in the boxes.
Her diploma bothered him very much so i doubt there was any real love and respect.
Maybe for some people. I run a pretty tight ship when it comes to moves. You keep one “assorted” box open until the moving truck arrives, that way all your odds and ends are in one place. And it’s not just one or two things, it’s happening constantly with her.
I hear you on the game design aspect though, it does make it more engaging. Although I’m thinking it might be doing double duty, both as a personality conveyer (especially in light of the boyfriend’s apartment) as well as an improvement to gameplay. Also, her penchant for hanging on to stuff further reinforces my impression of clutter-person vs. neat-person.
I haven’t yet gotten to the point discussed in your spoiler tag, but now I’m quite curious what’s going to happen, and how what you mentioned will be conveyed.
No need to apologize. You had it tagged, and I’m the one who chose to reveal it. And it’s not really a game that can be spoiled, but I like to be liberal with my spoiler tags because we all have different tolerance levels for that sort of thing.
Finished Nier Replicant and loved it and then i started Tales of Arise only to realise that both main characters from Nier and Tales are voiced by the same actor, it’s very distracting. I think I’ll put tales on hold for a week or two.
I’m starting Ghost of a Tale Windows version today, was bugged for months but they’ve fixed it just a few days before it leaves gamepass have to play it again though after enjoying the console version.
Have also been working on Halo Infinite, hit level 90 on the battle pass and expecting to complete it later this week when the new challenges arrive. Also helping a friend complete all the weekly stuff on FH5 which is better now more of the issues have been fixed.
Can’t decide what to play next though, going to choose between Biomutant, Kingdom of Amalur Re-Reckoning and Mass Effect Legendary Edition. Have never played any of these so it’s going to be a big RPG year for me
As someone who just finished Biomutant, if you really want to play all these games, I would play Biomutant first, Kingdom of Amalur second and the ME trilogy last. Basically, go from worst to best. Just my opinion though.
After playing a bunch of indies I decided I wanted a bit of a bigger game, but one I could finish off before Hitmen drops next week, and opted for Star Wars: Squadrons. According to HowLongToBeat it’s about 9 hours long, which should be pretty perfect.
One mission in and I’m loving it. Very reminiscent of X-Wing and Tie Fighter, two of my favourite PC games. Naturally the gameplay graphics and FMV is much improved, but the general vibe is very similar. I only wish I was playing it with a proper flight stick instead of a gamepad, I had to do a bit of customization to make it feel natural to control.
As I had foreseen, I ended up finishing off Star Wars: Squadrons last night, just in time for Hitmen to hit Game Pass. Been refreshing the app every 15 minutes for the last hour, wanting to start the download so it’ll be installed and ready for when the mood hits.
Squadrons was good, not great, and I’m glad to have played it. As I said, it’s quite reminiscent of the X-Wing and Tie Fighter PC games. Ditto the Wing Commander franchise. All games which I loved.
On the “pros” list we’ve got:
They really nailed the Star Wars vibe. The story, graphics, sound FX, music… it all felt authentically Star Wars.
Speaking of the sound, I played this in my home theatre and the surround sound is very active. I can’t possibly oversell the awesomeness of hearing Tie Fighters roar past you, while you fire your pew-pew-pew lasers. Ditto the awesomeness of the iconic Star Wars music coming at you at appropriate moments.
The missions were perfect in length, about 15-20 minutes each, allowing for nice bitesized chunks of gameplay.
I enjoyed the storyline and the performances were quite good. It was fun seeing and playing both sides, getting to experience the ramifications of your previous actions.
And some cons:
I really dislike the default controls. Luckily they are completely customizable, so I ended up remapping most of them. If you’ve got a good enough PC, this is probably best played there with a proper flight stick.
Several missions are buggy. Basically you’re not given the next objective, and end up flying around aimlessly not knowing what to do. Usually this was fixed by reloading the last checkpoint. Once I had to exit the game, force quit it, and start it up again. Very annoying.
I’m also still making my way through Metroid: Zero Mission, and I’ve got some more thoughts on it, but maybe I’ll post those later.
Oh, games? Stellaris of course. Just today they announced the addition of MegaCorp Zombies (!) on PC, coming soon to Xbox. I’m loving the constant additions to this game.
I’ve also done plenty of driving in FH5. Just driving around Mexico listening to Horizon Pulse radio is just so relaxing.
Currently smashing through Nobody Saves The World. Hitman Trilogy downloading to give that a go too. Might have to quit watching TV series I enjoy just to have more time to finish all the great games that keep coming to Game Pass.
Phasmophobia with a friend and it’s been a lot of fun. Don’t let the beta status scare you off, it is very stable and over the 12 or so hours we put into it we’ve run into only a handful of minor bugs.
Decided to give this a second chance and currently just started Chapter 6. Trying to have this completed before February hits as my 2021 gaming list will finally be complete as I start fresh in 2022 with Dying Light 2.
Back to Lost Judgment, im liking the story and characters which are usually always great but the combat/gameplay after four previous games is just not doing it for me anymore. Was awesome when I started with Yakuza Zero but not anymore. Voice acting (yes, im using the English voices) is real good but that’s no surprise as Judgment was real good too. Visuals are what they are. Way too much NPC pop in to where it’s just ridiculous. Absolutely hate the forced stealth. It’s so horrible.
You keep one “assorted” box open until the moving truck arrives, that way all your odds and ends are in one place. And it’s not just one or two things, it’s happening constantly with her.
have to play it again though after enjoying the console version.
