And there goes January, drifting off into the past. I was REALLY hoping to be able to talk about the games I’d finished in this recap, but in the end I didn’t finish any. Once again. I’m maybe destined to play the same games forever! Well at least I’m having fun. I just need a couple of clones so I have time to play all the games I want to get to!
Playing
Horizon Forbidden West is one of the games I really thought I’d get finished. And to be fair I DID finish the main game, but now I’m working through the DLC. Horizon Zero Dawn was one of my all time favorite games, but I haven’t found Horizon Forbidden West quite as compelling. It took me quite a while to put my finger on why that is but I think it finally clicked. The newer game has a more complex combat system that rewards using the right kind of arrow on the right enemy part to cause elemental explosions. It also puts an emphasis on shooting off specific parts that you can then use to upgrade your gear. On paper this sounds great but I find myself just plinking away with regular arrows most of the time since I found the ‘right way’ to be too fiddly. Because of that battles tend to take a long time, which in turn slows down the pace of the game. I was at around 100 hours when I finished the main campaign and most of the side quests. How Long To Beat has that content taking an average of 60 hours. So yeah.
They clearly plan for a 3rd game and I kind of hope they walk back the complexity of the combat. I love shooting off parts of machines and stuff but my weapon wheel is so cluttered and the machines turn so quickly it is just rare that I get the right arrow drawn at a time I have a visual on the appropriate elemental weak point. Plus I’ve never been one to use traps and stuff. I just want to let fly with a ton of arrows! This is for sure a “me” issue more than an issue with the game itself. Anyway hopefully I’ll have the DLC wrapped up in February!
Borderlands Game of the Year Edition is another title I thought I might finish in January but it is still rolling on. My character is level 30 now and since that triggered an Achievement I thought it might be cap and I might be nearly done, but it seems not. It isn’t a game I play every day, either, so I’ll keep plodding along. I’m determined to finish…for some reason.
Over in the MMO world, I started the month playing both Warframe and Elder Scrolls Online, but drifted away from both of them for no reason other than distraction and wanting to finish some finish-able games.
Atlas Fallen is a game I bounced off of, but then came back to. It has somehow become my after work palette cleanse. I never play it for long… 20-30 minutes/session. But I find the traversal systems really fun, between double jumping and air-dashing, and the snowboarding like sand-surfing mechanic. I find the world pretty compelling too. It’s post-apocalypse, but not of Earth as we know it. But there are ruins of HUGE ancient structures half-buried in the sand and the sense of scale is great. This is aided by an incredibly long rendering distance meaning you can climb up on some tall structure and see huge lumbering beasties way off in the distance. It’s pretty cool. The story and the characters I find less interesting and the combat was frustrating to me until I stopped being stubborn and turned down the difficulty. Now I can mostly button-mash my way through the combat, which is fine with me.
Early in January Wuthering Waves came to Playstation and I’d read so many positive posts about it from Bhagpuss at Inventory Full that I knew I wanted to try it. What I found is a game remarkably similar to Genshin Impact, which led me to firing up Genshin again. Meanwhile Dusty at I’m Still Playing was talking about Zenless Zone Zero so I wanted to give THAT another go, and as long as I was gacha crazy I fired up Honkai Star Rail, too. I knew there was no way I could play all these games but I figured I’d settle on just one. In the end I kind of just burned out on gacha and the daily tasks they all ask you to do. If I ever decide to focus on one, I’ll talk more about it.
Eternal Strands is the newest game in the recap; it just came out last Tuesday. It’s from Mike Laidlaw’s Yellow Brick Games. Laidlaw was Creative Director for Dragon Age over at Bioware back in the good old days of Bioware, so I was anxious to check this game out. It’s very early days but so far I’m enjoying it. You play a ‘weaver’ (a mage) who uses various elemental spells to fight and solve puzzles. (Though there is melee and bow combat as well.) It has an interesting cast of characters and a world that feels ripe for exploration. Part of the reason is that the game’s map is more of a sketch than a detailed map, and the first zone, at least, is pretty dense and complex. I found myself learning landmarks to help me find my way around, which is the kind of thing I enjoy. The compass is off by default, but you can toggle one on in the options, and there’s a “wisp” feature if you’re not the exploring type… you can follow the wisp to your next quest goal. But by ignoring those features and finding my way, I’m just having fun exploring so far. But again, very early days…at the time of this writing I just have a few hours into it.
Watching:
Nobody Wants This (Netflix) stars Kristen Bell so of course it was great. She plays a podcaster who, along with her sister, talks a lot about sex. She falls for a rabbi. His family is appalled because she is not Jewish and because of the tone of her podcast. Hilarity ensues, for the most part. It’s irreverent, sometimes heart-warming, often funny, often quite dirty. We really loved it.
Silo (Apple TV) – Season 2 had its lulls but overall it continues to intrigue us and we can’t wait for Season 3, which, along with a Season 4, is already greenlit. The show is based on a trilogy of books, I’m told. S1 & S2 covered book 1 and S2 and S3 will cover books 2 & 3 respectively. I hope things don’t feel too rushed. But overall, great show!
The Gentleman (Netflix) – When an army captain finds he has inherited his father’s estate and title, he learns there’s an underground marijuana farm that is helping to keep the estate afloat. His father had just kind of looked the other way but our new duke gets involved in an attempt to get the criminal element off the grounds. He pals up with the daughter of the drug kingpin who owns the farm. She gives off “criminal Emma Peel” vibes to me and I loved the character. Meanwhile the new duke’s brother, who is a hot mess, keeps causing trouble. I’ve never watched Breaking Bad but I’ve heard this described as “Breaking Bad meets Downton Abbey”. We enjoyed it, but since there’s a bunch of organized crime baddies running around, it can get pretty violent.
Reading:
A Knight of the Word and Angel Fire East – I’m continuing with my read-through of the Terry Brook’s “Pre-Shannara” series. So far they are just OK. I liked A Knight of the Word well enough to keep going, but it’s not like I can’t wait to get my work done so I can get back to reading. I’m just still curious about how he’s going to tie all of this into the Shannara series, because we’re still solidly in modern America urban-fantasy land. A Knight of the Word took place in Seattle at Halloween and Angel Fire East has us back in the main character’s mid-west small town around Christmas. Nest, the main character, is now 29 and spends a LOT of time putting on cold winter clothes and making cookies and hot chocolate for house guests, which isn’t really what I’m tuned in for. In all three of these books (book 1 was Running With the Demon) Brooks spends a little too much time showing off how well he knows these areas, constantly describing the buildings and roads our characters travel on even though they’re all pretty mundane. But again, I keep reading so there must be something here!
And that’s January in the bag. I don’t really do goals but I REALLY hope to be done with Horizon Forbidden West by the end of next month, and I’m looking forward to more Eternal Strands. Stay warm, everyone!