Blog: Games of December 2020

I'm not sure I was in a great mind-space in December. Looking at how I felt about most of what I played none of it really seemed to be great. I've been thinking about how to manage happiness and fun and so hopefully for the stuff I play next I'll be able to enjoy it more.

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

1. Civilization VI - Coming out of November I had a few fun games and a few games that weren't so fun. I want to love this game, but sometimes it just feels so draggy.
   
   
   
   
   


2. Hades - I'm a little frustrated that I'm not better at Hades than I am. On the other hand even as someone who isn't very good at it the game is still fun and interesting and doesn't make me feel like I'm really missing out. I wonder if playing mouse and keyboard has held me back some (I don't think much), but mostly I think I'm just a little too impatient with the game. I'll talk more about it in my 2020 wrap-up post, but the fact that this became a top 10 game in less than 2 months of play time really speaks to just how good it is.
   
   
   
   
   


3. Illusion of Gaia - I don't pick up Illusion of Gaia every year at the holidays but it's definitely the time when I want to play it again. It was nice to have a couple of days to play and I was able to get all the way though quite quickly this year (9 and a half hours) at least partly because I learned the speed running tactic (fact?) that the game gives you all of the XP even if you don't defeat the enemies. So it was nice to be able to tour through the parts I liked and keep going. It felt interestingly dark in the year 2020, with a lot of people not really responding to the crisis the world is facing in the game. 
   
   
   
   
   


4. Animal Crossing: New Horizons - I dunno. It's cute but I'm finding less and less urge to actually play. I've given myself a goal of getting my island to 5 stars in January and then we'll see what's next but without a significant update, I may just drift away from my island.
   
   
   
   
   


5. Luigi's Mansion 3 - If you are an animator you should play this game. Other than that I'm not sure. I think there are a ton of fun ideas in here and it's certainly charming, but I just didn't every feel that invested.
   
   
   
   
   

Here's my total play time chart for December:

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

New Year's Resolutions 2021

I'm always a little hesitant to do new year's resolutions, since really thinking about what I've accomplished and what I want to do is really a thing I do all the time. That being said, I get a little bit of breathing room each December, so it's a nice time to think about life and it's pretty fun to look back at these a year later*.

via GIPHY

With that being said, here are some things I want to work on in 2021:

1. Relax - I'm realizing just how badly my own stress is sitting on me and making my life harder, so I'm hoping by the end of 2021 that I'm able to get chill a little better than I am right now.
2. Go on More Adventures - This was one of my resolutions for last year, but then 2020 happened so now most of my adventures are trips as far away as my local coffee shop once or twice a month. Hopefully by the end of next year I'll be able to go more places and see and do more things that are a little out of the ordinary.
3. Read More - I read more in 2020 and I want to keep reading more and more types of things in 2021.
4. Write More - A lot of the projects I'm working on involve writing and certainly writing more would help get those done. Additionally I've been writing a journal since the beginning of pandemic and it's caused me to spend a lot more time thinking about the written word and now good it feels to craft sentences well.
5. Do More - This is a bit of an expansion on my resolution to Move Projects Forward last year. There's a ton of little things in my life that I'd like to get done and so I just want to remind myself that I can do a little bit each day and make really great progress.

* I like when podcasts do a predictions / predictions review show, but I really have no interest in predicting anything.

Looking Back at 2020's New Year Resolutions

 Uh. So. 2020. That happened ... a lot.

Back in the normal times of December 2019, I wrote down some resolutions. How'd those go?

1. Accept Life as It Is - The thrust of this was to try to be better about finding happiness internally rather than relying on outside factors or waiting for particular conditions to be met. In the first half of the year, I did okay with this, I think but I really fell off. I had some disappointments and ended up feeling very out of control. It's certainly the worst I've felt since the darkest days of my PhD.
2. Go on More Adventures - Uh ... fuck.
3. Read More - I did this. It was pretty good. I'd still like to read more and with a little more grace and control, but I read a lot more and a lot of cool things too.
4. Move Projects Forward - I almost did this, but by equal measure my Fall semester completely beat most of the project thinking out of my mind. Hopefully I'll be able to be more on track in 2021.

At the end of the day I'm not unhappy with 2020. 

I think I made some choices that held me back as the year went on. I got hung up on "need to" and "should" and struggled keeping with the day-to-day and finding my own happiness. I also struggled with my identity quite a lot and how to balance that with things that need to be done and what I want to do or be (and how what I want to do affects who I want to be). 

Still I learn a huge amount, about myself, about teaching, about making do and how done is so much better than perfect. So even even though 2020 was a pretty rocky year, I think I'm coming out of it stronger.

via GIPHY - and now for a 2020 nap.

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.