I generally write these recaps as a kind of running journal throughout the course of the month, then just hit publish on the last day. This month I haven’t been doing that. This sentence is being written on the 23rd, so while I do still have a week to work on the post, I’ve mostly forgotten what I did in the first couple of weeks.
Like almost every other thing I’ve ever done on a predictable schedule, the recaps went from fun to routine to a chore, so might be time to sunset them. On the other hand I DID just renew the blog’s hosting plan for 2 more years, though I’m feeling a bit of regret about that. So if I don’t do the recaps, what will I do other than let the blog lay fallow? I guess we’ll see. For now though…
Last Month’s Games
I finally got free of Genshin Impact. When the new battle pass started, I made a conscious decision to NOT go after points for it so that I wouldn’t get sucked into that cycle of doing tasks to earn points rather than because I wanted to do them. And when my $5/monthly sub ended I didn’t renew it so I don’t have the incentive to do my daily log in for free Primogems. Now I play it when I want to play it which hasn’t been too often. I still like the game, just need a change of pace for a bit.
Almost nothing else from last month remains. I did boot up Pillars of Eternity once or twice for a grand total of maybe 2 hours played all month, and I continued to play Age of Empires IV for the first week or so, but it too has been set aside.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns is in danger of being forgotten amidst a ton of new shiny things that have distracted me, but I’m not ready to write it off yet.
New This Month
Golf games (2K, EA, Everyone’s Golf) — Early this month I got on a golf kick, trying ‘realistic’ games from 2K and EA, and Everyone’s Golf on Playstation, which is more cartoony and uses the old 3-click system. 3-4 days was enough of golf, though, partly because I couldn’t decide which variety I wanted to play. Choice paralysis set in and I moved on.
Meet Your Maker — Wrote a post about this one, played for a couple more evenings then uninstalled. I just need some kind of narrative hook to keep me playing a game (even if that hook is only happening in my ‘internal roleplaying’) and Meet Your Maker doesn’t have one. Don’t expect to be going back to this one any time soon, but I do still think it’s an innovative game and I hope it enjoys a lot of success.
Ghostwire Tokyo hit Xbox Game Pass and I enjoyed it for a few nights before drifting away. I quite liked it but I’m just struggling to stay focused on anything these days. It’s nicely creepy but somehow doesn’t feel like horror, which is a good thing for me because I’m not really into horror or being scared. Real life is scary enough. Being creeped out, though? That I can do. Somehow fighting headless school girls comes across as creepy rather than scary.
No Man’s Sky & Star Trek Online are both games I’ve started SO many times and never gotten far. Now I’ve started them both again and… surprise! I haven’t gotten very far. For No Man’s Sky it was because I opted to play it on PS5 and for some reason couldn’t access my PS4 saves. I probably had to convert them or something but opted to start fresh. In Star Trek Online I was DETERMINED not to start over but then there was an event where if you started a new character you could earn account-wide awards so of course I had to do that. Thus a Vulcan Science Officer was born.
Honkai: Star Rail is like Genshin Impact, only in space and with turn-based combat. It’s out on PC and mobile and is supposed to come to Playstation soon. I’m dabbling in it but doubt I’ll play it seriously until it hits the PS5.
This isn’t everything but it’s all I can remember and I haven’t played anything enough to have much to say about any of it. I’m cautiously optimistic about Redfall, but that’s not out until next week. Sad that it is capped at 30FPS on Xbox but I can live with it.
TV
Picard Season 3 was gosh darned amazing. We just loved it. And cry? Yes, we cried… a lot.
The Mandalorian was pretty good, too.
The Walking Dead is a show we watched for like 10.5 seasons as it was airing before finally losing track of it. It’s finally hit Netflix so we decided to watch the last season and a half just so we can say we did it. That show got SO damned repetitive. We’re sorta glad we finished but I can’t see myself ever re-watching it.
School Spirits is basically an 8 episode mystery. It’s about a girl who was killed and is now a ghost, destined to haunt her high school. She can’t remember who killed her though. Show does a great job of leading you from suspect to suspect. I enjoyed it more than I thought I would even though I thought the protagonist was pretty horrible to everyone around her. It’s on Paramount+ and seems to have a modest budget, so even though many of the characters are ghosts there aren’t any special effects or anything which, it turns out, is absolutely fine. A good mystery trumps good CGI, I guess. My only real gripe was (of course) the ending which did present us with the solution to the mystery but in doing so opened some pretty big plot holes, AND then revealed kind of another level of mystery which, presumably, will be explored if they get a season 2. Overall I would’ve been happier with a tidy ending and a single season show, I think.
Also been watching a lot of Major League Soccer and English Premiere League football.
Reading
Finished Babylon’s Ashes and started Persepolis Rising. Yup, still doing The Expanse thing. Still enjoying them though, spoiler, there is a 30 year jump between the two which made me a little sad.
Sorry this month’s recap isn’t very interesting to read. It’s really mostly just a record for my own use if for some reason I ever want to remember what I was playing this month.
Not sure what next month will bring. While I like having a record, I feel weirdly embarrassed about starting so many games and not sticking with any of them. If I don’t do recaps I can just play what I feel like playing, whether it’s for 10 minutes or 10 months. But once I put it in a recap and then wind up dropping it by the next month, I feel like I’ve failed.
Might be time to go back to random “Hey I played this last night and it was kinda cool.” posts and leave it at that.
I’m selfishly pleased to hear you’ve renewed your blog hosting for another two years. Also, I found the recap interesting, as always. I’ve picked up a number of recommendations from previous ones and I’d definitely watch School Spirits, if Amazon Prime didn’t want me to pay extra for the privelige. I thought Paramount+ might be one of the free channels but it seems not. Then again, Housebroken (Which I highly recommend) is on Paramount+ and I watched Season 1 of that for free on YouTube so maybe it’ll turn up there in time.
Paramount+ (over here anyway) is the new branding the CBS All Access, which we subscribed to for new Star Trek.
I haven’t heard of Housebroken. Looks like it may be available on Hulu over here.
We really subscribe to FAR too many streaming services… 🙂
Echoing Bhagpuss’ opening statements — I’m also selfishly glad you decided to renew, and found your recap interesting as always. I’ve more than once picked up a good recommendation for either a show or game from you here. 🙂
I’m with you on Picard S3 as well. I think it was good enough that it retroactively made the show as a whole a lot better, too — even though I never had as many issues with it as some others seemed to. (But then, I also really liked Discovery too. And Strange New Worlds, although I think liking SNW is less of a contentious thing… I think? Hah.)
Yeah I think SNW is pretty universally liked. Well, as much as anything is ever universally liked.
I liked Discovery S1 & S2 but then they started to lose me. I may need to do a rewatch!