Gaming News
As Reddit is largely my source of gaming news these days, periodically I find that several items relevant to my interests have been buried by random nonsense. In no particular order:
Oxygen Not Included’s DLC has entered Early Access
Called Spaced Out!, the DLC seems focused on creating and managing multiple mini-colonies rather than one. Considering how complex and fragile just one colony can be, Klei is either targeting hardcore vets of the original game or will be introducing methods to trivialize some of the fundamental problems players encounter (heat, water usage, leaning on and then running out of algae or coal, etc). Although I have logged 143 hours into the game – making it my 5th most-played game on Steam – I have never actually made it to the rocket launching endgame, so I would be fine with the latter.
ARK 2 has been announced, starring Vin Diesel
No, really, look at the (pointless) trailer. Cue up the Adam Jensen “I didn’t ask for this.” Supposedly there will be more details coming out over the next few days, but the underlying kick in the teeth is that Studio Wildcard is rather pointedly ending the development of its original game in favor of a star-studded sequel. This shouldn’t come as that much of a surprise, considering Wildcard is rather infamous for releasing a paid DLC while the original game was still in Early Access.
Having said that, if the end result is ARK on more stable game-code… maybe it’s worth the re-admission price. Clocking in at 147.5 hours, ARK is my 4th most-played game on Steam. And all that time was spent in single-player, almost entirely on the original map. The bones were good; it’s the flesh that needs work.
Slay the Spire is (still) coming to Android… Eventually!
Mentioned in passing at the top of the latest patch notes: “While we’re awaiting news from our publishing and porting teams for the Android mobile release, we’re bringing some more of the under-the-hood improvements to PC!” While an Android release of Slay the Spire is not news per se, I’m always happy to be reminded that it might eventually happen someday. After all, it’s been six months since it was released on iOS and I have resorted to a number of questionable phone games (like Hearthstone) to scratch that particular itch.
And just to continue the theme, Slay the Spire is #2 on my Steam list with 166.8 hours played.
Posted on December 17, 2020, in Commentary and tagged ARK 2, News, Oxygen Not Included, Reddit, Slay the Spire. Bookmark the permalink. 6 Comments.
In An Age 
Your most played numbers are staggeringly low. Is that because you drift from title to title a lot, don’t play almost everything on PC via Steam, or just not actually gaming that much?
About ARK, don’t mind them going to a sequel, but I think everyone is going to be a lot less forgiving of a rough launch this time around, and at EA launch ARK was a ton of fun because it was so new (RUST was before it, but ARK was 10x more of a game than RUST at that time). That’s not the case anymore, so they have to bring something big and new.
LikeLike
“Staggeringly low,” he says.
In looking at my library, those times aren’t counting the games I have uninstalled and “hidden” to remove them from my primary list. That said, the only noteworthy hidden title was PlanetSide 2 with 433.4 hours. Most everything else that I play long-term are MMOs or similar outside of Steam. Fallout 76 is at 336 hours, for example. WoW is WoW, GW2 is whatever, etc. It would be interesting see what the numbers might be for Battlefield 3 or 4, but I don’t think EA kept those sort of records from back in the day.
Having said that, yeah, I’m not gaming nearly as much with a 1.5 year-old running around. Certainly not 20-40 hours/week anymore.
LikeLike
“Staggeringly low,” he says.
My top 5 are all 500+ hours, although to be fair Mighty Party at #1 at nearly 2k hours is a LOT of it running in the background. The 711 hours of PUBG are all legit though, as is the time with Life if Feudal, Mount and Blade, and Battle Brothers. Rimworld at ‘only’ 329 isn’t likely to ever make it into the top 5.
But yea Steam doesn’t track EVE, or WoW, both would be in the top 5 if it did. Wish mobile games had this kind of tracking as well, guessing CoC and CR would be 500hrs+ easy.
LikeLike
Yeah, I have the same problem with ONI. As much as I like the initial part of the game, it then turns into a chore with totally uninteresting solve-the-same-problem-20-times difficulty. I also dislike when game design clearly shows “features” which exist just to be annoying, as it adds nothing to the gameplay itself (electric wires being deep in this category).
Slay the Spire I dumped after 9 hours. I can find RNGfests with much better graphics.
My top time games have WoW indubitably at #1, then some other MMOs like Archeage/Black desert. On steam it’s probably Cities: Skylines, Euro Truck, Kerbal. Is there a way to sort the games by time played instead of alphabetic?
LikeLike
Go to your Steam profile, recently played, then view all games.
LikeLike
Thanks. I guessed right the top 3 on steam, WoW is still way ahead (according to Altooholic), and I have no way of tracking the time for Archeage/BDO/GW2, etc….
LikeLike