Right after last month’s recap, our beloved dog Lola died, and that definitely cast a pall over the month. After spending 15 years taking several walks per day with her, plus feeding her and various playtimes over the course of the day, we found ourselves kind of adrift and WAY out of sorts (and, of course, extremely sad). That led to a dip in doing things in the early part of the month, but then a spike later when I found that immersing myself in a game or something would take my mind off of missing her.

If you think that surely a month is enough time to get over the loss of a pet, I’m here to tell you that you are wrong, if it is a pet that you have a special bond with. Lola was our “heart dog” and the closest thing to a child we’ll ever have. We still shed tears most days when we’re reminded of her and the fact that she is gone.

Transitioning away from THAT sad topic… I don’t have much of a recap this month mostly because I’ve actually posted a few times about what I’ve been playing. But let’s dive in. Basically I’m in a quasi-holding pattern waiting for Death Stranding 2 to come out. Every year my brother sends me a check for my birthday and I used that to pre-order DS 2. With the massive bills we incurred at the vet, [the GoFundMe is still up if anyone with an excess of cash laying around happens to read this] buying new games is off the table for a while, but I figured birthday money was fair game.

Anyway point is, I’ve been sifting through offerings on Game Pass and PS Plus Extra (both of which were paid for last year) and picking games that are either short, or were generally disliked and/or didn’t sell well. The latter just because I’m always curious about why a game becomes widely disliked. My PS+ Extra sub ends in July and I can’t really justify renewing it so I’m mostly focused on that service. Game Pass gets paid for via Microsoft Reward Points, and anyway is paid up for like 2 more years still so I’m good there.

Playing

Dragon Age: Veilguard [PS+ Extra] finished after around 105 hours and wrote a post about it. It was OK but overly long, in my opinion.

Clair Obscura: Expedition 33 [Xbox Game Pass] is one of those games everyone loves but that I’m struggling with. (By the way I was playing this because it hit Game Pass on Day 1, NOT because it falls into that category of being disliked or not selling well; it’s well reviewed and seems to be selling great.) I enjoy the combat and find the world’s mystery intriguing, but the lack of a map and the fact that so many zones are so dark I can’t even navigate by sight has me playing it for very short periods of time before frustration sets in. Right now I’m trying to find 3 crystals for a friendly mob and the only way I can figure to do this is by constantly re-spawning enemies and hoping a crystal drops. So I’ve been fighting the same mobs for almost a week now. So far I have 1 crystal.

So shortly after I wrote this, I had a super obvious A-HA! moment and logged back in and pushed up the brightness and gamma settings and voila! I could see what I was doing again. And I realized that I could get the crystals I was looking for just by smashing some; they didn’t have to come as drops from mobs. With that out of the way I finished Act I, finally. I still dislike not having a map. For instance at the end of Act 1 I was at a fork in the road. I started going one way but it seems like a long route and there were Save Points, so I figured this was the main path. So I backtracked and went the other way and nope, THAT was the main path and it ended in a boss fight and then me being whisked away to another part of the world and I can’t seem to fast travel back to see what I’m missed on the other path. That’s gonna bug me now.

Inside [Xbox Game Pass] finished and I wrote about it. It was great! And delightfully short.

Planet of Lana [Xbox Game Pass] is a side-scroller that I’m still enjoying. It’s supposed to be short so I expect to finish soon. I wrote about it, too. [A shot from Planet of Lana is at the top of this post.]

Immortals of Aveum [PS+ Extra] I bailed on, and wrote about why. After I gave up playing I watched a YouTube video of all the cut scenes so I know what happens and don’t regret setting it aside at all.

Forspoken [PS+ Extra] is another game that got pretty blasted at launch, and I remember playing the demo and thinking “nope” but here I am playing it and honestly, it is growing on me. Frey is unpleasant and her companion (a magical bracelet) is grating, but a) there’s a setting where you can turn their banter off, thankfully, and b) Frey actually seems to be growing as a person and I love to watch characters better themselves. It seems like a huge open world game with WAY too much stuff to do, so I doubt I’ll finish it, but so far I’m enjoying myself. One last side note: I remember when this was called Project Athias and was used to show off how amazing Unreal Engine can look. That wasn’t THAT long ago, and already Forspoken looks a bit data. It’s astounding how fast graphics are improving.

Saints Row [PS+ Extra] is another game that everyone seemed to hate, but that I’m enjoying. It’s pretty mindless and very ridiculous but it’s that kind of dumb fun that comes with mowing down enemies and creating good looking explosions and doing nutty stunts like jumping onto the back of a jet to get at the pilot. Again, not sure I’ll finish but I’m finding it entertaining for now.

That’s a lot of gaming without opening my wallet! And I guess it wasn’t all that short after all!

Watching

We subscribed to Max for The Last of Us S2 and while we had it, figured we’d binge on Max offerings this month.

The Last of Us Season 2 was way too short. I enjoyed it but they’re saying they’ll need 2 more seasons to finish the story and that sounds right to me. I felt like this season barely got into the meat of the game, though maybe I’m remembering wrong. With Max being so pricey we might skip Season 3 and re-subscribe when Season 4 is out and get it all in a 2-month sub.

The White Lotus Seasons 1-3 was.. a lot. I think I would have enjoyed these more if I’d put some time between seasons. I loved Season 1 (Hawaii). Season 2 (Italy) was mostly about watching the lovely Simona Tabasco as Lucia, if I’m being honest. Season 3 (Thailand) was pretty good mostly due to Walton Goggins & Aimee Lou Wood and their relationship. I’m the one person in the world who isn’t the hugest fan of Jennifer Coolidge — I like her characters (and she always seems to play the wacky character) in small doses but after a while I get tired of her — so her not being in S3 helped get me back into it. Oh and in case you’re not familiar, ‘White Lotus’ is a chain of luxury resorts and each season focuses on a group of generally entitled and obnoxious characters being pampered and acting terrible in front of the local staff. And usually there is murder mixed in… it’s dark comedy.

Dune Prophecy was one of those shows where I wanted to love it, but didn’t, and I can’t put my finger on why. It reminded us a lot of Foundation on Apple TV+ and of the Wheel of Time (the sisterhood in DP reminded us a lot of the Aes Sedai in WOT). I mean it was OK, but just OK.

Reading

Back to doing no reading since I used to do a lot of my reading while sitting outside with Lola. No Lola means no sitting outside, so far. I need to find a new reading time because I do miss it. It also seems like it has been raining the entire month which has prevented us from getting into the habit of getting out of the house.

So that’s May, overall one of the saddest months I’ve ever lived through. Hoping that June is a bit more upbeat!