Category: What I’m Playing Wednesday

Blog Ideas That Got Left Behind

Posted in Blogging About Blogging, Low Spend 2020, The Nope List, What I'm Playing Wednesday4 Comments

… this one too was loosely inspired by Naithin!

Over the past couple of years, I’ve tried out a handful of regular blog posts or personal challenge ideas that have just … fizzled out. Mostly, they weren’t anything I deliberately abandoned, rather things that just fell by the wayside or that weren’t working out for me. In fact, other than the updates around the change of the month (which seem to have settled comfortably into a review post and a goals post), there’s very little that hasn’t changed from the start of the blog.

So what ideas seemed like they were great, but just didn’t work out for me?

What I’m Playing Wednesday

Man, I thought this was such a great idea. Pick one day a week where I would talk about the game that was currently taking up the majority of my game time. Except I didn’t think about what would happen when I was deep into a game for multiple weeks in a row. Or when I was between games. Or when I was playing five different things, but none of them for long enough to have even formed a cohesive opinion. What I’m Playing Wednesday didn’t really make it out of 2019 (although I brought it back for one post in 2020 when I wanted to write about a bunch of games I’d been dabbling in, but had no idea what to call it and it just happened to be a Wednesday).

The Nope List

Initially, The Nope List was a post made up of bite-sized summaries of games I had failed to actually get into in any given month. Then I folded that into my In Review posts, which wasn’t really working for me either because those could sometime get unwieldy due to tossing so many things into a somewhat disorganized format. Starting in March 2020, I did away with The Nope List entirely as a regular feature, although it did pop up again as a convenient way to divide the demos I played during the first big Steam Games Festival into multiple posts.

Ten Games to Tackle in 2020

This category and the next one are kind of intrinsically linked. Going into 2020, I had some big plans mostly centered around really working my way through my library instead of chasing after something shiny and new. Over the years, I’d acquired some games which, if I were to play them to completion, would represent a very hefty time investment, and because of that, they weren’t getting played. They were intimidating. I was starting to wonder if I’d ever actually dive into them.

So I made a list of some of these beefy games, planning to make a dent in them. Another cool concept that just didn’t work for me. I played only one of the ten games for a fairly significant amount of time. I tried out another four, but just long enough to bounce off of them (and if I’m being really honest, only one of those did I dedicate a fair amount of time to before walking away). Which means half the games I selected, I never even loaded up. Sure, 2020 was an unusual year for all of us, but I think the real reason this one didn’t work out for me is that I chose games I felt like I should play rather than ones I really was excited about.

And that loops right into…

Low Spend 2020

Out of all of these, this one is the one that kind of hurt to have had to throw out, and the only one I think was well thought out and could have worked in any other year. I made the rules in such a way that I completely set myself up for success; I allowed for Humble Choice purchases, for subscription game services, for MMO expansions, and to continue being the Steam Sale Santa.

What I didn’t count on was that my non-nerdgirl plans were going to be completely derailed by a global pandemic, leaving me in a kind of dark place, where I would really need the serotonin hits from buying stuff I didn’t need. By the end of April, I was desperate to spend some senseless money. I revised the rules. I gave myself $100 to play with. I thought I could salvage the plan.

And then, I just … kind of forgot about it. I started to have computer issues, and was finding most of the games I wanted to play wouldn’t run. In May, I was still tracking what I bought, but June brought the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice & Equality, and then the Steam Summer Sale, and I formally decided in my July Goal Post to throw in the towel.

In retrospect, I realize that was also about the time I was entering a bit of a mental health crisis, alongside people everywhere who were watching COVID spiral out of control and realizing that this wasn’t going to be over anytime soon. I realize that just buying stuff willy-nilly doesn’t actually fix anything, but I was able to have some experiences in 2020 that I would not have had if I had continued arbitrarily restricting my spending.

Instead, I bought some things I really enjoyed, and some things I almost immediately forgot about. I threw money at cool sounding Kickstarters. I picked up early access titles that I really wanted to support. I grabbed a couple games I probably never would have bought, but my friends were playing them, and we played together. When I look at the big picture, I really have no regrets.

This is a project I might revisit again, but probably not for an entire year, and probably not until the world around us settles a little bit, if it ever does. I do think it was moderately successful, as I’ve been much more conscientious about where my money goes, and I have been looking at alternate ways to get value from my library long after the happy chemicals have faded from the purchases.

Bonus Blaugust prompt idea: Have you tried out any type of regular posts that just haven’t worked out for you? Was it because you changed your focus, your circumstances changed, or perhaps you just jumped into an idea with both feet before really thinking it through? Are there any types of posts you’ve gotten away from that you would like to revisit in the future? What would you do differently if so?

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Short Attention Span Edition

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Hooboy, I haven’t done one of these in a very long time. However, considering the way I’ve been interacting with … well, pretty much everything, I figured a sum-up post would be a whole lot better than no post at all. With that said…

World of Warcraft Pre-Patch

I’ve been waiting oh-so-impatiently for the pre-patch to make an appearance, and now that it’s here, I’m finding myself both overwhelmed and unenthused simultaneously. On the upside, the leveling experience feels lightning-fast – I managed to take my warlock from level 21 to 50 in just a few days. My paladin, who only needed about 6 level pre-patch was finished up in a matter of hours. Having finished up those goals, though, I’m feeling more or less uninterested in continuing, and as of right now, I’m still not sure whether I’m planning to pick up Shadowlands on release.

I love the idea of getting all my alts ready for the new content, but I’m apprehensive about what looks like it’s going to be a massive gear gap going into new expansion leveling. Also, I have expansions worth of old crafting materials on the characters I had played regularly in the past, and the whole concept of figuring out what might or might not still be worth something is more work than I’m willing to put in right now.

Unfortunately, due to a glitch in paying for sub time with tokens on patch day, I have an active subscription until December 13th, so I hope I get re-motivated to at least do a little something with all that game time.

Abracadabrew

I stumbled across Abracadabrew while poking around on Steam for something else for my friend group to try out on days we had a small group that wasn’t really interested in playing anything too serious. Although this one was designed for local co-op, it also allows multiplayer via Steam Remote Play Together.

Unfortunately, it isn’t likely to work for the particular group of folks I had in mind. Still, I spent about an hour and a half playing on my own, and it fills a niche for me of bite sized gaming. I don’t expect it to have a lot of staying power – as a game designed for co-op, it’s pretty damn difficult to beat the intermediate levels as a solo player.

The entire game play loop consists of opening containers to find ingredients to mix potions. There are also events that need to be dealt with, such as your cauldron floating away or bats covering the entirety of your screen. The mechanics are simple, but the timers are tight, and I can see how this could be really enjoyable with a couple friends.

Stories Untold

I played text adventures when they were the peak of technology, and I remember how profoundly frustrating they can be, so Stories Untold isn’t a game I would have been likely to seek out. I received it in the September 17 Humble Monthly, and finally decided to give it a try last week.

If I’m completely candid, there was nothing about any of the game play that impressed me. I still don’t care for text input as a game mechanic, the “puzzles” were more exercises in tedium than actual puzzles, and in almost all of the chapters, the pacing felt off to me.

That said, the narrative was really well composed, and I am glad that I played it (although I admit to using a walkthrough). The whole thing took just under two hours, and I could easily have had 100% completion on one play through, but I missed a few things in the last chapter rushing through to get to the ending.

I’m glad I played it, and I absolutely appreciate the game for the things it did well, but I’m not sure it’s anything I would recommend.

Puzzle Pirates

In a completely bizarre turn of events, I’ve also been dabbling in Puzzle Pirates again. I played this one extensively around the time it released, and poked it again very briefly a few years ago when I noticed it on Steam. At the time, it felt very very dead, and I decided that there just wasn’t enough to do without a whole bunch of people, or paying for a subscription.

This time, I did my research. Apparently, the only action to be found is on the Emerald Ocean, which is not where I had my characters previously. So I find myself starting over, this time on a server utilizing the premium currency option rather than the flat monthly fee. I’m still not 100% sure how I feel about the Dubloon system, but I am really enjoying jobbing on ships and slowly working on getting my puzzling reputations up.

It’s been a very very long time, and there’s a lot of things that have changed, and even more that I’ve forgotten, but this has really been my perfect zone out game. I can’t tell you how much of that is due to nostalgia, and how much is due to the mechanics of this 17 year old game still being solid and satisfying, but I’m just glad it’s working for me.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – West of Loathing

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It’s been many years since I had even thought about Kingdom of Loathing, never mind having actually played it, when I saw that West of Loathing was coming out. Intriguing, sure, but not something that would skyrocket to the top of my Must Play List.

I downloaded it on a whim from XBox Game Pass for PC, and since I’ve been kind of struggling to find the next thing to play, I decided to fire it up a couple of nights ago.

Having absolutely no clue what I was getting into, I decided to play through as a Beanslinger. Before I knew what was happening, a couple of hours had passed, I’d giggled at the absurdity more than a few times, and I discovered that hey, this is actually pretty fun.

I’m currently undecided if I’m going to push through to the end – I have probably about 6 hours into it so far, which means I’m more than halfway to the end. However, I’m already finding myself somewhat underpowered, and I don’t know how much of that is due to skipping things – not having a dedicated quest log or journal means I don’t really remember where I left off when I fire the game up.

That said, it’s reasonably priced, and if you have fond memories of Kingdom of Loathing or really really like puns and referential humor, it might be worth picking up. For me, it’s been a lovely little palate cleanser while I debate what to dive into next.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Sunset Overdrive

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I thought I might have gotten wanton mayhem out of my system for a little while by playing Dead Rising 3 last month, but apparently not. I installed Sunset Overdrive from XBox Game Pass for PC on a whim. It was nothing that had been on my radar at all, but it looked bright and violent and weirdly fun, so why not? Even if I didn’t make it through the intro level, I had nothing to lose.

Welp.

I’m a good chunk of the way through the story content, and I’ve wandered off a few times to do side quests. What I haven’t done much of are the challenges – there’s one that’s required to progress the main stories, and I’ve steadfastly ignored all the others so far because if we’re being completely honest – I feel like I’m playing the game very badly.

While I’m sure the game would still be a lot of fun if you had, y’know, actually skills, it’s also really enjoyable to just flail around and hope for the best. Sure, I die a lot, but death doesn’t feel overly punishing. In fact, when I was stuck on a particular parkour sequence three-quarters of the way up a tall tower, I kept dying repeatedly. The respawn point was very close to the spot I was having trouble with, and the character even says something to the effect of “Thanks for not making me start at the bottom!”

I love it.

Sure, the self-aware meta-humor might not be for everyone, but I think it’s fantastic.

If I rush to the end, I could probably wrap the game up in another 3-4 hours. However, if I decided to go for all the challenges, collectibles, and side quests, I probably could play for another 10-20 without running out of things to do.

What I will likely do is something in the middle. I have quite a few things I would like to poke at this month, and since I can see myself replaying this one in the future, I’ve added it to my Steam wishlist and plan to pick it up next time it goes on sale (or maybe before, if I don’t find a discount before the end of the year).

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Dead Rising 3

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Games where you can slaughter masses of undead with whatever is handy are kind of a guilty pleasure, especially when they’re not particularly difficult. Dead Rising 3 is not particularly difficult, at least not on the story mode – I haven’t touched the Nightmare mode, and I don’t really plan to unless I’m really DYING for some more zombie slaughter once I finish the main game and DLC chapters (and maybe do some ridiculously grindy achievements).

The thing I liked least about the first two Dead Rising games was how punishing the time limits felt – I’m not about optimization and efficiency when I play these games. While Dead Rising 3 doesn’t do away with time limits, they are so very very generous. Which is good, because the world is also chock-full of opportunities to save random people, collectibles to find, and distractions like trying to get gold medals on Survival Training activities.

Combo weapons – which were always part of the allure of the Dead Rising series – feel more powerful than they were in the preceding games, which makes some of the psycho (boss) battles feel downright trivial. Which is fine by me – psycho battles were never close to my favorite part of the games.

I’ll be honest – it’s not a great game. Good, sure. Fun? You betcha. And I love the fact that I’m not struggling, but for people who love a challenge? You can play that way. I’m just going to keep cutting swaths through hordes of zombies with ridiculously overpowered combo weapons, and running them over with equally overpowered combo vehicles.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Aven Colony

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Ok, I know I said I was frustrated. I was. I took a day off, played some Ode, and went back to it fresh.

And then:

Sure, half the colony was unemployed, and crime was rampant, and we were running out of food, but I did it. I saved all 1000 colonists in time.

There’s just three scenarios left – I probably won’t play the sandbox mode (if I need to build more colonies on alien planets, I have other games for that). I find I rarely enjoy this type of game without very specific goals and win conditions (although an open ended colony builder like Rimworld really works for me).

Maybe when I finish this up, I’ll be ready to get back into something story driven. Yesterday, I cancelled all my active subscriptions (ESO+ and Utomik) until I see how much time & energy I’m going to have for gaming during Day Job’s busy season.

It’s not like there aren’t plenty of things in my Steam library I can play without paying for services I’m not using.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Albion Online

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I wasn’t looking for another MMO, really, but a friend of mine recommended Albion Online and since I had never actually played a true sandbox MMO and it was free to download and play, I figured I’d give it a shot.

The character creator is as basic as it gets – there’s no classes or races or any of the usual MMO tropes. You pick a preset, adjust the cosmetics if you like, and plop in a name. Much to my surprise, I got the first name I tried.

There’s a tutorial that took me a little under an hour to get through, but shortly after leaving the tutorial island, the quest flow just stops. It’s not that you have to hunt for new quests – there just aren’t any more. They give you the very basic basics and leave you to it.

What Albion Online does have is a somewhat weird and confusing destiny board. I opened it up, and immediately noped right out of there. Too much to think about. Instead, I started concentrating on the smaller list in the upper right hand corner. I wandered around doing the things listed there, and watched my percentages go up.

Mostly, so far, I’ve gathered things, refined them, and used them to make tools. If there are vendors who buy your junk and give you money, I haven’t found one, but I have discovered that tools sell on the player market. Am I getting ripped off just selling them for whatever pittance I can get? Yes, I probably am. But I don’t need a dozen novice axes, so off they go.

I have managed to hit my first goal of being able to craft a fishing pole. Why did I want a fishing pole? I DON’T KNOW. Now that I’ve made myself one, I’ve started hunting for fishing spots and trying to figure out how to get the fish out of the water and into my bags.

What I’ve learned so far: You click and hold to cast; the longer you hold, the further out the line goes. You can cast the line right off the damn screen if you’re not careful. Once you get a bite and the bobber dunks, then you start a new little minigame. You have to keep the bobber in the green bar as the fish proceeds across the blue bar from left to right. It’s fiddly. It’s perfect for Albion Online.

I’m coming up on three hours now, and I still have almost zero idea what I’m doing, but I keep coming back, staying to the lowest level safe areas. I realize that soon I need to go further out to get higher level materials to do higher level crafting. Albion Online is horrendously grindy, but I’ve been satisfied by watching my itty bitty percentage bars increase, and have been trying to do enough every day to get my daily activity rewards.

Apparently, a big allure of the game is open world PVP, but I don’t even really like having to kill snakes for leather. This is probably not a game for me, and I say as much to myself every time I log off. And then I find myself opening it up over and over again to play just a little more. It’s not really clicking, but at the same time, it’s not quite scaring me away.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – House of 1,000 Doors: Serpent Flame

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On the rare occasion that I actually finish games, I usually like to play something very casual right afterwards as sort of a palette-cleanser. Since I’m still seeing how much value I can get out of a month of Utomik, I figured I’d download a hidden object game. Serpent Flame is the third game in the House of 1,000 Doors series, and I have already played the first two, so it seemed like a decent choice.

Now, for me, the story is the least important part of a hidden object game, which is what I think enables me to keep enjoying them – almost all of them have stories that range from the mildly absurd to the completely nonsensical. The story (at least as far as I’ve played) is pretty ridiculous here: solve puzzles and find objects to go into portals to other times to help banish the giant snakes that are destroying the world.

No. I didn’t make it up. That’s the plot.

So onto more important things – at least to me. So far I’ve encountered only two types of hidden object scenes – ones with words and ones where you put part of an object or collection with like items. Serpent Flame hits the sweet spots where the hidden object scenes are cluttered enough to make finding everything a challenge, but not made overly challenging with cheap tricks, like flickering lights or an abundance of shadow.

Also very important – you CAN travel by map, which cuts down on a lot of exceptionally slow moving around. The map will, by default, show both locations with available actions and with undiscovered collectibles, but both can be turned off with a simple checkbox. Since I prefer to move swiftly between hidden object screens and puzzles, and don’t care overly much for pixel hunting, I usually make frequent use of the map, and really appreciate the set-up of this one.

I’m about an hour in, just having completed the first of four portals, so I expect I’m probably slightly more than a quarter done with the game (since there was some pre-portal set up work that needed to be handled). For me, the puzzles are perhaps a bit too simple, but I’ll take that any day over frustratingly difficult. There are many kinds of games I like to play when I want to challenge myself – hidden object games are not one of them.

I’ll be surprised if I don’t finish this before the weekend – and I’m unlikely to do a full “Game Over” on it because my experience with hidden object games is that if I haven’t bounced off of it for having one more major issues for me within the first hour, I’ll enjoy it through to the end.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Startopia

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The cinematic trailer for Spacebase Startopia dropped this week (you can watch it below), and instead of getting me all excited for this reimagining, it just made me want to replay the classic.

I have, for as long as I can remember, loved all manner of city builders, colony builders, space station builders. Heck, if you can give me the right toolkit, I’ll happily just build stuff for hours. Give me a resource or two to manage, and I could easily lose a whole evening. I spent a lot of time with Startopia when it was new, but unlike some other games of its generation, I don’t revisit it regularly – honestly, I just like knowing that I can.

This is one of those games I own on both Steam and GoG. I started with the Steam version, futzed around with it, trying to make windowed mode work. Then I tried the GoG version, the unofficial 1.02 patch, and got into a super-extra-bonus-fun crash loop for a little bit. Then I decided I didn’t really need windowed mode and got on with it. I think the fact that I still wanted to play after all that boded well.

Let’s be real – I expect a game that’s old enough to vote to feel a little weird. The controls are actually a little too simple – everything you can do has multiple buttons assigned to it. Of course, that doesn’t mean you can actually do all the things you want to – there doesn’t appear to be any way to rotate furniture, which I found exceptionally offensive to my sense of symmetry.

I did skip the tutorial missions, diving right into the start of the campaign, and it was as wonderful as I remembered. The sound & the voice acting were particularly enjoyable, and obviously, the graphics were showing their age, but not as badly as I might have expected.

I had a good time rolling through the first couple of missions – I feel like I remember it getting harder later on, but I didn’t struggle at all, and was frequently energy-capped during the second. Honestly, the biggest struggle was waiting for the grey aliens – who are the only ones who can work in a sick bay – with any modicum of skill to show up.

Since I’m still playing my way through Little Dragon’s Cafe, and still trying to remember to log into ESO everyday (hey, I might even go back to leveling characters eventually), I don’t know how much more of Startopia I will play, but it’s been a delightful romp down memory lane. I love revisiting games I played obsessively in my younger days, when I had to put a lot more thought into my gaming purchases – and let’s be honest – there were a lot less choices out there.

What I’m Playing Wednesday – Little Dragons Cafe

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Well, I was right about Utomik not being great for my backlog. Little Dragons Cafe has sucked me in. I’ve been struggling with motivation for a few days, so allowing myself a day or two of play (which is usually only 15-30 minutes) has been ideal for a mini-reward as I tackle other real life tasks.

You play as one of a pair of siblings running a cafe after their mother has fallen ill. Turns out, whatever is wrong with mom is due to the fact she’s half dragon because obviously. So while you’re making sure to keep the cafe going, you’re also raising a dragon, also because obviously.

And the dragon? Is adorable.

This game is about as far from fast-paced as you can get (although once you reach a certain point, the work of actually serving customers can feel just a little hectic) – you wander around the island, exploring and gathering ingredients and recipe parts. Sometimes you fish, but it’s the easiest fishing “mini-game” I’ve ever seen.

Cooking is a two-step process – first, you need to select appropriate ingredients, then you need to complete a rhythm game. The first part is really just balancing quality versus quantity. Ingredients that you find early on in the game will be plentiful, but ingredients that you find as new areas open up will be of better baseline quality. Ingredients also come in four qualities each, so there’s a lot that can go into each dish.

It feels like higher quality ingredients (as well as adding extra ones past the minimum requirements) make the rhythm game more difficult. However, sometimes a dish you prepared less successfully will still have a higher rating than a dish prepared perfectly depending on what goes into the dish. There is probably some min-maxing that can happen here, but as long as you have some pretty decent dishes on your menu – which can only hold 10 dishes at a time – it doesn’t seem to much matter.

Which brings me to the thing that will make some people hate the game – it really doesn’t seem to matter at all what you do, if you participate in the daily work of the cafe, or even if you go to bed as soon as the story beat for the day has passed. There are no real fail states. Sure, you can stall the story by running out of food and treating customers horribly and only serving the very worst of the worst food. You can also stall the story by ignoring the requirements for satisfying each story customer. But there doesn’t seem to be anything you can’t recover from just by playing.

This is an immensely casual game that someone felt good about sticking a $60 price tag on, and therefore, nothing I ever would have played if it hadn’t be available as part of my subscription. However, since I started it, I find I’m having a good solid relaxing sort of fun with it, and over the past several days, have managed to put in quite a few hours and get about halfway through the story.

Of course, I stumbled across this gem on Reddit, and I felt that it was too perfect not to include it.

Apparently, I’ll see you all in a week with a nearly endless supply of cooking ingredients that never seem to spoil, and, oh yeah, A DRAGON. No strategy required – good on me for playing a game you can’t die in.