Blog: Games of March 2021

March was a bit of a weird month. I think I played the fewest games in a month this month than every before (at least in a long while). This was a combination of getting into Battle Brothers (maybe a little too deeply) and trying to be a little more mindful about my time.

My top five games (by play time) for March were:

1. Battle Brothers - I'm really enjoying how much I've been able to learn. I've done around 20 runs at this point and I usually find a dumb way to die (spiders - ugh), but I'm enjoying that each time I go back in I'm a little better and I'm able to get a little farther. I've been following the game's reddit, so I feel like there's a bit of a limit to the possibilities for high level play, but I'm enjoying my low level wandering around.
   
   
   I do think the game is a little bit limited by it's random world generation. My most recent play through ended up trailing off a bit because the world seemed to be missing some of the things I needed and where it had them they were in awkward places to get to. Still this has been a ton of fun and since it's pretty easy to boot up, it's been my go to a lot of the time.
   


2. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - Playing Path of Radiance has been really enjoyable. It may be the nostalgia, but among Fire Emblem games it feels like it has a good balance or like it illustrates things I'm going to enjoy about other games later on. The story is pretty good and the game play is pretty good and overall, even if it's a bit slow, it's felt like a good place to put my time.
   
   


3. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - I've been playing Bowser's Fury more than 3D World. The open world where you can jump into interesting platforming challenges is a lot of fun. I've just finished up Bowser's Fury and I feel like the 100 Cat Shines was a nice challenge without sticking around for too long. 3D world is also a total joy to play and amoung all of the Mario games Nintendo rereleased this year, it's the best to go back to.
   
   


4. Mario 35 - Well, they've wrapped it up. I found I did play Mario 35 more than I might have because there was the looming deadline of them turning the game off. It's been a lot of fun and it made me play the original Super Mario Bros. way more than I would have. I'm sad it's done, but I'm glad it was here.
   
   
   I will say, I hope we see it again for a season next year and I also hope that Nintendo has thought of a follow up in the form of Zelda 35, or possibly something even more unique and interesting. I had hoped they'd announce something by now, but they haven't.
   
   


5. Valais IV - An unusual aspect of this month is that the games I very briefly try out actually showed up in the games of the month list. So Valais IV came out for the Nintendo Online service (I think) and I tried it out. It wasn't really my thing. I'd like to get into some of those SNES style combat platformers (Castlevania stuff), but Valais really didn't really grab me.
   
   
6. Kirby's Dream Course - Another quick test. I don't get this game. I've watched a couple Let's Plays and I think it looks fun. On the other hand, I just have no intuition for what the game want's me to do. Still I might
   
   
7. Animal Crossing: New Horizon - Oooof. I feel bad, but I just couldn't pick this game up this month. The couple of minutes I played were to go to one my the villager's birthday. I felt badly about missing a digital creation's birthday, but generally feel like the game doesn't really reward an emotional investment.
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for March:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of February 2021

February felt like a very busy month. I had my head down trying to get a lot of stuff done, but I also tried to pretty intentional in what I played. I happened to hit a mix of new(ish) and old and a mix of strategy and platformer / action that really made me feel good.

My top five games (by play time) for February were:

1. Battle Brothers - I head about this game years ago on Three Moves Ahead and thought it sounded like fun, but maybe a little hard and gory. I saw it go past on a good sale on Steam and picked it up a while ago and finally just started playing. I really like it. It's hard to put down, thanks to a Civ style one-more-turn and really well paced learning and difficulty turns. It's "hard" and has a bit of Dwarf Fortress "fun" in it, but honestly every time I've been wiped out or screwed something up I've been happy to start again with my next band of brothers. It *is* a little gory, but since everyone is a shown as a bust moving around the field it's not to bad (although I'm not thrilled when "brains" end up in the trophy bag).
   
   


2. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance - I'm trying to set aside some time each Sunday to really get into an RPG or something big. I wanted to go back through Path of Radiance and more so Radiant Dawn (the sequel). The game's a little rough compared to newer entries (Three Houses especially) but the story is pretty good and I've enjoyed playing it. (Much as I desperately want zones of control from Battle Brothers.)

   

   From GameFaqs user Shogain

   
   
   


3. Super Mario 3D World + Bowser's Fury - I played 3D World at a happy point in my life, so I have a lot of nostalgia for it. Additionally, while it has some problems, it is a really good game and I appreciate how focused it is, even if that results in levels that feel a little constrained. Bowser's Fury is a a fascinating hybrid of 3D World and Odyssey, it's a lot of fun and a little frustrating. The mechanic that Giga Bowser shows up to make your life harder is really interesting, but sometimes I find the levels were just hard enough already so it tends to throw me off sometimes when I want to be focused. On the other hand I think the game would probably be a little boring if there wasn't a giant fire breathing monster on a timer.
   
   


4. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - I think musou games will never be for me, but I really enjoyed this. I finished up mid-month and haven't been back, but I thought it was pretty fun. It was also interesting to look at some people who are really into the genre and see what they liked and didn't like. In short I probably never really "got" the game, but I certainly had fun and the story was interesting.
   
   


5. Mario 35 - It's almost over! (Supposedly). Still fun to dip into and I think it's definitely set me to think about playing Mario games more. I had more fun with 3D World, but a few minutes of Mario 35 was always good.
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for February:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of January 2021

January was a transitional month for me, so I had a different month playing games. My days are a little more structured and I'm much more able to take an evening or a day on the weekend to play. I've also been trying to play more intentionally, and focus on a couple of games.

My top five games (by play time) for January were:

1. Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity - The more I play Age of Calamity, the more interesting I find it. I do find that the musou style of game play doesn't really appeal to me, but with practice I do feel like I'm doing epic things now. The story and especially the cutscenes are really well done and have made it worth playing.
   
   


2. Dicey Dungeons - I needed to find something to enjoy during lunch. Now given that I work, take lunch, play PC games and do my hobbies all at the same desk, maybe I *don't* need something to enjoy during lunch, but I'm still looking. Dicey Dungeons has more-or-less been a good fit for that, but I am finding I'm hitting a bit of a wall as I get to its harder difficulties. It's fun and has a lot of good mechanics, but the pacing is a bit harsh.
   
   


3. Hades - Still totally awesome, but I've been playing a bit less just due to focusing on other things. The one thing I find frustrating is that if I don't play for a few days, my next few runs are really rough.
   
   


4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Uh, I'm sliding out of this. They have announced several updates and events for February, but I'm finding it harder and harder to stay interested. I'd still love to love this, but they're just not really finishing development. I don't know if it was caught in the pandemic, it was just successful enough that Nintendo decided to put resources else where, or this was their original idea of the game, but as anything beyond a doll house it's hollow.
   
   


5. Mario 35 - I suppose Nintendo's gambit that putting a time limit on how long you can play the game worked because I keep choosing to play this over other games because it's going away in March. It's good game and the battle-royal is interesting. 
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for January:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month:

Blog: Games of 2020

2020 has worked out to be a pretty good year in terms of games I've played. I managed to play six games released this year. They were all pretty good, but I certainly like some more than others. In particular I have been absolutely blown away by Hades and I'm pretty sure you should go play that right now. Then you can come back and read the rest of this post later.

For this end of the year post, I've broken my list down into: games I didn't play much, games I thought were okay, games I thought were good, games I thought were great and games that were outstanding.

The Ones I Didn't Play Much

Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity

I played the Demo and about the Demo again after the game came out in full. (The fact that Zelda games almost always drop on my birthday make it pretty hard to avoid).  So I'm pretty clear on the first 2 or so hours of the Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity. It's pretty good, I think it has a ton of interesting ideas and the quality of the game is very good. The thing that kept me from picking it up more was the fact that I just have no intuition for musou games. I've tried to play a few (including the original Hyrule Warriors) and every time I find myself baffled about what I should be doing. The gameplay always feels too loose and like I'm not involved with what actually happens. Age of Calamity feels similar, although they've definitely made things make more sense. I'll try to push into it a bit more in 2020.

The Okay

The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance: Tactics

When I first saw a trailer for this I thought it looked a lot it had visuals that looked like Muppets. Sadly in the end, the graphics didn't wow me in the end and the game play felt very slow. My partner and I pushed through and watched the whole of the show, which I generally enjoyed, but I think the game did not come out as well as it might have.

I think my general lack of skill at tactics games (despite my love of them) is holding me back some and then I think compared to other games like Final Fantasy Tactics or XCOM it just feels a little stilted. I might come back to it at some point but it's not really calling out to me.

The Good

Animal Crossing: New Horizons

I'm sad this is only good. I think New Horizons had a lot of opportunity to be exceptional and instead Nintendo played for the Instagram shot. I like the game, it certainly has moments where it's fun and charming. Other times it ends up feeling lifeless, like it's designed to take a good photo but not much beyond that.

New Horizons modernizes a lot of things with other Animal Crossing games and generally makes playing very easy and comfortable. Customizing your own island is fun. Unfortunately it's missing enough personality in the villagers and the factors outside your player that it just isn't great.

Mario 35

I liked Mario 35 quite a lot. Especially when it first came out, I found it to be a huge amount of fun. It forced me to learn a lot about Super Mario Bros and then to learn a lot about how to play this competitively. I'm not great, but I'm certainly good enough on any given day that I have a session last 10-15 minutes.

It has slightly different mechanics than other Super Mario Bros ports, so I found trying to go back and play those harder than it might have been. That being said other than in trying to get better at learning the game, there's no real need to go back right now.

I've found having played for a few months that it's a little less exciting than it was when I first picked it up. I will say that Nintendo's plan to stop letting people play in March seems anti-consumer, but I think shaking up the game play over time is going to be necessary to keep my interest.

Paper Mario: The Origami King

I wrote up a Things About post on this game, but generally I found that this was a good and well executed game. I also found that it was so highly polished that it slipped off my mind. I may have just not been in the right place when I played it, but generally I think I remember Color Splash more and enjoyed that game more.

This game is worth playing. It's beautiful and fun, with an interesting and fun combat mechanic. However, the story is not very interesting and the characters are somewhat forgettable.

The Great

XCOM: Chimera Squad

I really enjoyed XCOM: Chimera Squad. One of the primary problems with the original XCOM was the that the missions were very slow. Xenonauts is possibly even slower with it's large map size.  New XCOM definitely struck a good balance and XCOM:2 tried to shorten times by limiting the number of turns you were allowed to take (which I didn't love).

XCOM: Chimera Squad takes the whole XCOM formula and then asks what if we just did the setup parts. In each mission you "breach" into a space and then spend a turn or two fighting the bad guys you didn't take down on your way in. It speeds the whole game up and makes every mission quick and fun.

I also like that you play as a police force rather than a military force. The investigation game play between missions is minimal, but it's a nice flavour change and I like that the game directly rewards you for disabling enemies rather than killing them. I think they could have pushed it a little farther, but overall it's a really nice experience.

The only thing I'm sad about with Chimera Squad is that there are only 3 and 1/2 real investigations. Even though those have a little bit of variation on replay, I could really happily take on a whole bunch more game.

The Outstanding

Hades

I am absolutely blown away by Hades. It is immediately and continuously fun. It feels good to play. The story is interesting and the characters are deep and engaging. 

I started playing after watching a few Let's Plays and streams. I found I wasn't great at it, but there was always enough progress each time I played and I felt like I was learning to get better each time.

Later I watched some of those Let's Plays again and was fascinated to realize just how carefully constructed the tutorials were. From the order in which boons are introduced, to the way enemies are introduced, to the way the story is introduced it's all extremely carefully structured to guide new players into understanding each mechanic and how to really take advantage of each idea. 

Despite the menacing look, it is very hard to actually hurt yourself in this room.

I watched a video about the game's dialog system and was really impressed by how carefully constructed that is. Having a pool of reasonably interesting things for each character to say, prioritized by the things that are the most pressing.

I absolutely love this game and feel like I could play it for years to come. Probably it'll fade a bit, but I think this is a true classic and absolutely think anyone should play it.

 

Blog: Games of October 2020

October was pretty busy. Keeping two classes in the air while teaching remotely has been a bit of a struggle. So I've been playing more of the bite sized things. I can jump in to and out of really quickly.

My top five games (by play time) for October were:

1. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - Getting some seasonal, halloween, things to do did perk the game up a bit. I'm still finding it a touch bland.
   
   

   

   I'm mad they won't let me pick my own costume...



2. Ogre Battle 64 - Did it snow? Yup. I described Ogre Battle to my partner the other day as "my favourite spreadsheet".
   
   


3. Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild - Again and again this remains a classic and my favourite game to just relax and play.
   
   

   

   He must dance.



4. Mario 35 - This has been a ton of fun. I've always been a little embarrassed at how I never learned the first Super Mario Bros. This has been great motivation to actually get good (even if it isn't quite the same game from 1989). It's also bite sized
   
   

   

   I seem to have died. Again.



5. XCOM: Chimera Squad - I tailed off playing Chimera Squad a little just because sessions can be a little long and I've had a ton of stuff I need to keep working on. There's also the drawback of going back to the desk you've sat at all day to play more games is sometimes a bit hard.
   
   

   

   Sometimes the fighting goes bedroom to bedroom.

Here's my total play time chart for October:

And here's a chart of how much I've played over the month: