Category Archives: Commentary
Avowed – The End
Got the end of Avowed after 66 hours.
Despite souring on the combat, I did not rush through the end. Aside from a few hidden treasures in the last zone, I otherwise completed all of the side-quests available. Due to the strange open-endedness of Avowed, sometimes it was not clear whether these were legit side-quests or just required story beats done out of order. Either way, I wrung out every ounce of whatever value Avowed had.
And in the final analysis? Avowed was not redeemed in my eyes… but it got closer than I expected.
To me, there was a disconnect between the story and the plot. Maybe those are the wrong terms, but follow me for a moment. I consider the plot to be the main quests and decisions you make in each of the four zones. None of those bits were especially interesting, and not just because I didn’t know what my motivation was supposed to be – the “choices” were just too comically extreme. For example, the game tells you Animancy is banned in your empire, that it’s dangerous, etc. What the game doesn’t do is show you it’s dangerous, or why it’s banned, just that it is. You then get asked if you want (or accidentally allow) every Animancer in the area to die. Huh? The fourth area was even worse.
The broader story on the other hand, I did find more interesting. Each zone has a god totem you can put together from pieces hidden about, and the first time I completed one and then heard their conversation… I was quite intrigued. I did not finish the first Pillars of Eternity game, but I am vaguely aware that the gods get involved a bit more personally in the setting (although what RPG endgame doesn’t, amirite?), and I’m all for it. That bit was very interesting to me, and may be a seed that grows into a desire to play PoE 1 & 2 later. Then again, I technically already know what happened.
In any case, I have zero interest in any future Avowed DLC and have already uninstalled the game.
Avowed – What’s My Motivation?
I haven’t written much because I’m trying to work my way through Avowed. And it really is work at this point, because Avowed is not a good game. But I feel it is not good in a similar way that Bioshock Infinite was not good: the most frustratingly nuanced ways imaginable.
One example is with the combat system. I’ve talked about it all before, in that Ranger was strong but boring, Warrior was active but weak, and Wizard was both active and strong. About halfway through the 3rd zone though, none of it really mattered – even the Wizard became a chore. There are a lot of little reasons that quickly add up in the background until it hits you all at once.
- Very few enemy species (mostly beetles, spiders, bears, lizardmen)
- Very few enemy types (shield guy, magic guy, healer guy, ranged guy, summon guy)
- Zero percent chance any dropped loot is useful in any way
- 99% chance all the encounters feature 6+ enemies
- 100% chance all the encounters play out the same exact way, regardless
- Leveling and upgrading largely become perfunctory starting in 3rd zone
Regarding the last point, Avowed has a really shitty talent/skill tree. It’s not something I’ve seen many other people talk about, but it’s one of the most uniquely uninspired one I’ve ever seen in a game. Seriously, look at this shit. Warrior has 6 buttons to press, Ranger gets 5, and Wizard… 21, technically. But look at the level 15 and level 20 bands, which is where one might assume you’re getting the biggest power boosts. Outside the active button, Fighter gets shit like… perfect (!!) blocks rebound arrows, and you deal 70% of the damage you received. Ranger gets increased crit chance (already 100% when you hit weak spots), and bonus damage on unaware enemies. Wizards get… increased elemental accumulation, but you have to spec into each element individually.
Oh, and on the ultimate level 20+ band? Fighters can… heal companions by 10% when you kill enemies! Rangers can… deal more stun accumulation with power attacks with ranged weapons! Wizards can… get fucking nothing, unless you want to learn Meteor Shower without a spellbook, which you never would because spellbooks give you like an 80% Essence discount on that otherwise meter-eating spell. Yes, Arcane Seal is something a Wizard can take at 20+ and effectively have infinite Essence regen. But at that point in the game, you effectively have infinite regen already from the hundreds of random vegetables you’ve collected throughout the game.
The other half of character progression is also shit. Getting Uniques out in the world has long ceased to be exciting. First time you replace a generic weapon with Unique? Fantastic. The second time? Frustrating, because you likely sunk a bunch of upgrade mats into the first one. Then you start to realize that none of the special abilities of Uniques matter all that much compared to the overall “tier” due to the asinine enemy “level” balance. If your stuff is blue and they are purple, you deal 35% less damage and take 35% more damage. Meanwhile, each time you upgrade a weapon or armor, you get silly shit like +9 damage or -4 damage received. Upgrading a Unique never boosts the special effects… why?
Finally, I want to talk about the story in general terms. I’ll throw a Yellow spoiler warning just in case, but the short version is: the game never answers the question of “what’s my motivation?”
The general premise of the game is that you are a godlike of an unknown god, working in the court of an Aedyran emperor. You are then tasked with solving the Dreamscourge plague problem in the Living Lands, an isle that the emperor is interested in taking over. You are sent over as an Envoy of the emperor himself, granting you leeway in resolving the Dreamscourge crisis in any manner you deem fit.
The problem is that all the Aedyran empire stuff just up and evaporates as soon as you step on the docks, unless you commit to being cartoonishly evil for the rest of the game. And if you do, all of your companions are from the Livings Lands, so they’ll be mad at you for everything you do. Having evil options in RPGs is a good thing even if players do not typically engage with it, but the problem is setting up your game to support it. None of your Avowed companions will leave you no matter what choices you make. There are no Aedyran or Steel Garrote companions, which would make such an evil playthrough more reasonable. And while I have not yet finished the game at the time of this writing, I haven’t really seen any good motivation to even care about the Aedyran side of things. Nobody is reminding you of your duty to the emperor, or even really questioning your loyalty.
This is not the first place Avowed leaned so far into “roleplay” that it fell directly into RPG mad libs. There are frequent dream sequences throughout the game where you are asked to choose how events in the past played out. Some of these choices lead to you getting one godlike ability versus another, but the majority of it is just… there. I understand that there are (presumably) people who like this sort of thing, but Avowed just sort of drops it on your porch and leaves. There’s no context, no sense of purpose. Again, what’s my motivation? Am I training somebody to be more forgiving or spiteful, depending on my dream answers? Or am I literally playing one-person mad libs?
I get that this may not sound all that different from all the normal RPG choices you encounter in the genre. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you can choose to free a gnome strapped to a windmill or send him flying by cranking up the speed. That choice doesn’t matter too much in the scheme of things, either way. Except, of course, to the gnome, and possibly some party members. But that at least has some immediate context and consequences and feels like a real choice. There are some quests vaguely similar to that in Avowed, but they all ring hollow. Perhaps in the abstract the quests are identical, and I’m just not invested in the world of Avowed in the same way as BG3 or Mass Effect or anything else. Or perhaps the devs simply were painting-by-numbers and forgot to include a soul in their creation.
And that brings me back to the Bioshock Infinite comparison from the top. There are some games in which I can understand people enjoying, even when I do not. League of Legends? That’s definitely of no interest to me, but I get it. Overwatch 2? Sure, I enjoyed the original for a time as well. Call of Duty? I prefer the Battlefield series, but a more arcade feel can be fun.
If someone says Bioshock Infinite is one of their favorite games though, my eyebrows go all the way up. Maybe the DLCs fixed the plot later, but Bioshock Infinite’s story was otherwise objectively terrible, like Mass Effect 3 original ending terrible. I feel the same way when I see people online say Avowed is a 9.5/10 or they are eager for another playthrough. I don’t even want to finish this first playthrough, let alone running around opening chest after chest of the same random crafting materials again. Some aspects of Avowed are fantastic genre improvements, like the feel of melee and the feel of exploration via jumping/traversal. Unfortunately, tragically, there is just no follow-through, no stuck landing.
The only way I can see Avowed being someone’s favorite RPG or deserving of a high score is if they simply haven’t played better games before. Which, given that many of my own favorite games came out 10-20 years ago, might be increasingly understandable. What a bummer.
I suppose there is still time in the 4th Act and resultant endings for Avowed to pull a miraculous redemption. Well, aside from the combat and itemization and character progression and world interactivity – those ships have already sailed. We’ll see if the plot payoff was worth the pain.
Avowed – Veneer Off
I have added another 16 hours into Avowed (total: 32), clearing the entire second zone. And while some of what I reported earlier is still accurate – traversal is fun! – the game’s veneer is definitely rubbing off.
Combat, which hitherto has been fun, is now very rote. For the first half of the second zone, I respecced into a Ranger gun build and almost ended up abandoning the game entirely. There was… just no buttons to press. Sure, Ranger has a sort of vines CC ability, but aside from that, it was power attacks from pistols and nothing else to actively press. Technically I could have grabbed some more active buttons from Wizard as well, but Ranger is the only real splash-class, and trying to elevate your Intellect stat to the point where spells are relevant is a fool’s errand without just being a Wizard.
During the last half of the zone, I went into Fighter, first with a 2H weapon focus and then 1H with shield. Fighter had some more buttons to press – including a very satisfying Charge – and was a more dynamic experience overall with the Parry mechanic and blocking. The issue is that the DPS was just not really there. Avowed loves to throw groups of 5+ enemies at you, which is understandable considering Rangers/Wizards will nearly one-shot most of them from range in the opening salvo. As a Fighter, it’s not satisfying at all spending all your Stamina trying to block/dodge so many enemies. Although you do have two squad mates to help spread aggro around, the reality is that so do Rangers/Wizards, and those classes can actually eliminate enemies quickly. Which technically goes against the “gameplay” of Fighter, as if things die before you get into Parry chains or full attack combos, a lot of the Fighter-based weapons are useless. Which they are anyway, since they don’t kill quickly.
The other major issue that I glossed over previously was the world in general and interactivity in particular. Avowed is not Skyrim. Which is fine, most games aren’t. But as a first-person fantasy game that came out 14 years after Skyrim, Avowed is incredibly static. NPCs barely move (if ever), there is no world reactivity, there is no “stealing,” and every object out in the world is bolted onto the floor, aside from some breakable crates. To be fair, this is more an intellectual criticism, as I hardly noticed anything amiss in-game. But now that I have, I see signs of a Hollywood set everywhere. Which might have been fine, if this were not a fantasy RPG released in 2025 for $70 MSRP.
The final thing that is really dragging me down is the upgrade system and Unique weapons. I have been playing the game “as intended” when it comes to looting and experimenting, but have come to find out that the devs punish that playstyle. For one thing, all the respeccing I have done required me to upgrade several weapons that, oops, I am no longer using. Then I found out that all unique weapons in the world scale to the highest upgraded weapon you own at the time of pickup. What this means is that if the best weapon you have is Fine (blue quality), all the uniques you discover will be Fine. However, if you funnel all your upgrades into one particular weapon and get it to Exceptional (purple), those same uniques would have been Exceptional. And this works all the way into Superb (red) and Legendary.
Do you like exploring the map and picking up things organically, doing a few upgrades here and there? Punished! Because now if you decide to go with another weapon or playstyle, you will need to double (or more) the upgrade materials required to level them up. Which, let me remind you, is very necessary because weapons and armor get a debuff if they are more than a few “tiers” below the enemies you are facing. Also, remember that enemies and money is finite in this game, so it is very possible to just screw yourself and be locked into something that is no longer fun.
Which might just be the entire game itself for me, at the moment.
I don’t know, guys. Not everything I play needs to be Game of the Year material; lord knows I play plenty of trashy survival games for hundreds of hours. But, truly, Avowed feels like a game that would have been really great… in 2015. Or maybe 2010. Obsidian is not Bethesda, yes. But this also ain’t New Vegas. And between this and Outer Worlds, I’m thinking that Obsidian needs to stick to what they do best: iterating on the shoulders of better games, rather than trying to make their own.
Grounded was great though, so… ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Stars’ Rug-Pull
Stars Reach is the Raph Koster moonshot that, as far as I can tell, has immediately shot itself in the head. The official Kickstarter will be active at the time of this post, but some of the pertinent details have become clear in a fireside chat with Koster (emphasis added):
[…] The game itself, however, will be free-to-play at its full post-early-access launch, with an optional sub (called a “property pass”), supporter packs, a cash shop, all for cosmetics, not P2W items. “We’re not gonna break the economy for the sake of the Kickstarter,” Raph Koster says.
The devs don’t want players thinking of the property pass as a subscription – “We’re avoiding saying the word,” Koster admits – but it pretty much is; that pass will be required to own homesteads and to receive early access to new cosmetics. If you let the pass lapse, your house will just pack up and be ready for you to place again when you resume (Stars Wars Galaxies, basically). […]
Let’s review for a second. Stars Reach is a game about exploration, gathering resources, fighting mobs, all with an entirely player-based economy. It is being billed on the official website as a “massively multiplayer sandbox RPG” meant to “immersing yourself into an alternative world of adventure.” And it will be Free-to-Play!
…unless perhaps you want live anywhere you will be playing. That will cost you a $10/month subscription.
But it potentially get worse! I was taking it as a given that players would have some base-level ability to set up crafting stations inside a spaceship or whatever, even if you weren’t paying space-rent. You know, like in Starbound or No Man’s Sky. But according to the preview on homesteading:
A Homestead is a patch of a world that you claim as your own. You set up a camp, register that camp with the Transplanetary League, and voila!, it is yours.
Now you can build on that plot of land. You can create a home, a shop, a manufacturing facility, a farm, a giant robot…whatever you desire. If you claim a homestead in space, you can build a starport, or hollow out the interior of an asteroid as a smuggler’s base, and more.
Combine that with this other Reddit AMA thread:
Proximity will matter a lot.
- You have limited inventory. Ships also have limited inventory. If you want to transport a lot, you will be dragging it behind you in wagons or containers.
That means you will have to physically (and relatively slowly) move goods from the wilderness to your spaceport, from orbit to a wormhole to another space zone, across that other space zone, across however many astroid fields, nebulae, etc, as there may be, until you get to orbit around the destination planet, land, then schlep the stuff to its delivery location. And monsters are probably going to be trying to steal it the whole way.
Neither of which indicates to me that the space hobo way of life is especially supported. By which I mean any F2P player. Because what are you going to be able to do on a foundational level? All items decay and have to be replaced with player-produced ones. Lugging around resources is apparently going to be painful. I’m taking it as a given that players will be able to craft basic items without needing a homestead, but who even fucking knows at this point? There’s a flowchart on the “Stars Reach Tour” that I have helpfully annotated with the latest information regarding the property pass:
It truly boggles the mind. Or would, if these “industry veterans” were not a font of dumbass ideas.
I have less than zero interest in Stars Reach at this point. It was already conceptually hostile to solo players, but I still had it in the back of my mind as a sort of “challenge” to engage with down the road. But paywalling the one aspect of the game that is remotely sticky enough to get players to stay? No thank you. It’s almost as bad as the devs from Forever Winter with their real-time water mechanic.
Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond… your wallet
I have not played Shadowverse in… whoa, about eight years. So, while it affects me personally very little, it did still come as a shock recently when I found out that Shadowverse had been put on maintenance mode last year while Cygames rolls out a sequel called Shadowverse: Worlds Beyond.
Of course, this is not the first time a game company has released a direct sequel to a Live Service game while hoping everyone migrates to the new one. EverQuest immediately comes to mind as a classic example, along with the original Guild Wars. But I haven’t quite heard about this happening in the CCG space before. Maybe Magic Online vs Magic Arena counts? Anyway, I suppose maintenance mode is better than oblivion (see SolForge, Hex, Artifact, etc), but there is an extra bit of salt in the wound when there’s a sequel being developed with only the barest of cosmetic carryovers and zero of the, you know, potentially purchased cards.
Which sort of begs the question of why there is a “sequel” in the first place. I mean, I’m assuming the answer isn’t simply cash cash money. Technical debt? The new game does look very slightly flashier, and would offer the opportunity to switch up game engines. Also, there is a “metaverse” looking lobby with chibi avatars, fishing, mahjong, and more for… reasons. Presumably Cygames knows what their audience wants.
…or perhaps they are looking for a new audience. In which case, caveat emptor.
The Hopes of the Game Industry
In short: they hope GTA 6 will cost $100 so they can raise their own prices.
As reported by VGC, Epyllion’s Matthew Ball just released a report focusing on the “State of Video Gaming in 2025”, which shares his thoughts on what might happen within the industry this year. Of course, a lot of that focus is out on GTA 6 which is primed to be one of the biggest game releases of all time, with some analysts predicting that it’ll make more than $1 billion in pre-orders alone.
Within the report, Ball claims that there is “hope” within the industry between publishers and developers that Take-Two will respond to all of the excitement and hype surrounding GTA 6 by raising the default price of the game to $100. Considering the fact that GTA 6 is going to sell well no matter how much it costs, the industry is reportedly hoping the price gets raised so that others can follow suit.
There is a ridiculous sort of myopia associated with seeing (and/or experiencing) high-profile commercial failures and escalating production costs, only to come to the conclusion everything would be better with higher unit prices. How about… *checks notes* … lower production costs? “But players demand AAAA-quality graphics!” Do they? I can appreciate the dilemma faced by developers, wherein the last game cost $400m and not wanting to gamble with a $350m (or lower) sequel. But if the acknowledgement is that the status quo of ever-increasing production costs is unsustainable, higher prices at best stems the bleed temporarily. At some point you need to address the root cause.
I was curious at this point as to what “the industry” actually thought about things, and if GTA 6 selling for $100 was all of it. So, the article I linked to above points to this VGC article, which then points to a 222-slide presentation by Matthew Ball, whom appears to be a “strategy advisor” to, presumably, the games industry (and others). If you have the time, I do very much encourage you to take a look yourself, as it is surprisingly straight-forward and facts-based. A summary:
- 2011-2021 saw the game industry grow at 150% annually
- However, in 2022 revenue fell -3.5% and remained flat in 2023-2024
- This mismatch in prior projections has dried up VC pipelines and investments
- The growth of the prior decade was due to multiple “innovations” that has since exhausted themselves
- Think microtransactions, mobile gaming, Battlepasses, etc
- Assumed new innovations are not bearing out (AR/VR, etc)
- Worse, rise of social video (TikTok) is actually eating into mobile leisure-time in a significant way
- PC and Steam growth appears to be bright spot… but all because of China
- Chinese game companies are exporting and directly (and successfully) competing with Western devs
- Game industry has unique struggles in variable pricing, and cannot easily pass on inflation
- Overall engagement is decreasing in gamers, including the hardcore ones
- Most of all gamers’ playtime is with existing titles – only 12% is spent on new games
- Network effects mean players stay playing the games their friends are playing
The final section of the presentation includes thoughts on potential new growth engines. And it does include GTA 6, but also several others.
Again, I think it is worth looking at the presentation yourself, as each of the 11 bubbles there get multiple slides that introduce, justify, and even caution about the “solution.” Well, aside from GTA 6, which is noted would be the cheapest GTA ever (in real terms) if it comes out at $70. GTA 5 was released in 2013 at $60, which would be over $80 today, for example. Notwithstanding the billions of dollars GTA Online brought in, of course.
Overall, I did come away a bit more sympathetic to the plight of the games industry. Some of the headwinds I can personally attest to. For example, there have been multiple nights in which I found 2-3 hours of my “gaming time” consumed by Youtube Shorts scrolling. The network effect or “black hole” games are certainly a challenge as well, as anyone who has spent years playing MMOs can attest to. How do you compete against Fortnite, Minecraft, Roblox, and/or all the others?
“Raise prices,” of course!
Unfortunately, the actual solution is both pithy and hard to achieve: make fun games. Note how that solution did not include the words “spend 8 years painstakingly rendering every blade of grass.” Also note that I’m not saying that coming up with a fun game is easy either. But the industry seems stuck in this death loop of hiring more artists, programmers, marketers, and greenlighting enormously long development times… only for the game to fall flat because the fun wasn’t there. You can’t just hire more people to increase the fun quotient. And sometimes the fun that is achievable is only experienced by a narrow slice of the market, too small to be sustainable for the larger companies.
I don’t know the solution. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t be giving it out for free. But it might well be… decimation for the industry. I think a lot of publishers are just going to go bankrupt trying to spend their way out of the tailspin. AI could be a big disrupter, but disruption favors small indie shops, not the big guys. And while I do feel like longer development times is the obvious root issue for ballooning costs, I don’t see how the industry moves towards shorter development times and… then what? More releases? I mean, I wouldn’t be mad about a new Fallout every 2 years. If they keep the releases the same with a shorter development time though, that just means an implosion in the game jobs market. Not ideal.
…or maybe it is?
I dunno. I’m just a dude looking for fun games to play with my ever-decreasing amount of free time and eroding consumer surplus. When I look at my most-played games though, what I don’t see is full-priced titles with photo-realistic graphics and 8+ years in development. Well, I guess some Early Access titles were being worked on for that long, but it was like with three guys, not three hundred.
Anyway, Take Two can try and take $100 if they want and everyone raise prices as a result. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. Nevertheless, my parsimony will abide.
7 Days to Die – Rebirth
I’ve recently taken the plunge in playing Rebirth (v1.1 b14), a total overhaul mod for 7 Days to Die. There are a number of such overhaul mods out there, including Darkness Falls, Afterlife, Undead Legacy, and more. I’ve only played Darkness Falls before this, aside of course vanilla for a few hundred hours.
Verdict: it’s got some great concepts, but… there’s some foundational concerns.
One of the biggest draws to Rebirth is the companion system. You start out with a dog companion that both warns about and fights enemies. You can eventually expand your fighting group with more dogs (or other beasts), NPCs, and temporary help. This does a lot to make the game feel less lonely in single player, and the companions are actually very handy in a fight. And don’t worry: if the dog dies, it just respawns back at your bed.
Another of the “draws” is a return of Learn By Doing and overall reimagining (and slowing) of progression in general. While there is character XP in the game, it does nothing by itself. Instead, to progress your character – including in one of 10 classes! – you need to use specific weapons, gaining extra progress for headshots. By itself, the system is OK for what it is, and you certainly have more opportunity for progression as zombie density has skyrocketed.
The problem is that the mod’s difficulty progression is also tied to zombie kills. Once you hit certain thresholds, zombies have a chance to spawn with random buffs, including a RNG roll to revive in a stronger state. This “works” on a conceptual level, but it feels bad in practice. The name of the game is still scavenging, so while killing a huge wandering horde might give you +2.5% weapon speed or whatever your class does, it makes getting food, crafting components, and everything else actually meaningful harder.
I want to really reemphasize how badly you are punished for killing zombies here. You slowly level your primary Attributes by performing certain tasks, and there are specific Perks that you can then put points in once you hit certain thresholds. For example, you need Dexterity 1 in order to put a point into Cardio. How do you get points for Cardio? You buy them from a vendor for cash. How do you get cash? Scavenging, primarily. You can get some from Questing, but keep in mind Questing gives a lot of XP which then levels you and makes the game harder. If that is the mod author’s intention – to discourage the chain-questing that is (still) meta in vanilla – it should be more explicit, IMO.
The overall increased difficulty is another “draw” but similarly falls flat. The mod is hard, but difficulty in practically all 7 Days to Die iterations is predicated on HP sponges and/or ridiculous mob counts. Rebirth has both. Once you hit a certain level threshold, periodically a boss zombie will spawn in your immediate location along with ~30 of their best friends. For the most part, especially early, you will just die and drop all your stuff. But, hey, don’t worry, the boss and mobs will still be there waiting for you! If you somehow whittle down the horde with your non-existent bullets and take down the 6000+ HP boss, you get a loot chest that will give you maybe 15% progression towards one Attribute point. Yay! Also, get used to this shit, as to unlock certain crafting tables you have to purchase quests from a vendor that spawns these types of hordes. I’m not sure if the intention is to build a nearby cheese base or just kite them around for hours or what.
By the way, you still have to contend with the 7 day hordes on default settings.
I suppose that is worth mentioning as a positive to Rebirth: the large amount of settings you can tweak. Turning off Horde Night is one first things I did, once I realized that I was still struggling to stay hydrated on Day 6, let alone figuring out how I would ever survive the night. There may be other knobs that can be turned to address a few of the other complaints I already voiced, including turning them off. On the other hand, most people are likely to roll into Rebirth under default settings and get run over, so… yeah.
If you have squeezed all the fun out of vanilla 7 Days to Die and are looking for more, I recommend… Darkness Falls. Although I haven’t played it lately, it had a completely new look and feel with increased difficulty that, at the same time, did not feel punishing. Sure, you could encounter a few high-level zeds outside normal progression, but that is the spice of life. Combined with the extra tiers, it felt like 7D2D++ rather than a whole new game. Rebirth has some neat concepts I would like expanded on (companion system, bandits), but it feels more like a punishment simulator than anything else. As a player, I should never feel like I have to metagame killing less zombies in a zombie-killing game.
[Fake Edit] Since my primary character is already screwed, I started a second character and revamped a lot of the settings. For example, I turned Character XP down to 75% considering levels only serve to punish you. Conversely, I turned Class XP levels to 150% to improve the speed of getting abilities and such. Between those settings and a better understanding of the mod’s flow, I have had a somewhat better experience.
However. It’s still not that good, honestly. I’m going to give it a bit more time to cook to see if things improve once I progress a bit further, but it kind of feels like a slog still. And not in a “sense of pride and accomplishment” way, but more in a “nothing feels rewarding and I’m punished for playing the game.”
Steam Mod Supremacy
It has long been my opinion that Steam being the premier PC gaming storefront is not a problem for consumers. Indeed, I would argue that when Steam had a higher market share years ago, it was even better – more deals, more enhancements, and the same smooth experience. Monopolies are never ideal, but with Valve (and it being a non-public company) we seemed to have lucked into one of those Philosopher-King situations that ended up better than the alternatives.
What I am slowly discovering though, is Steam’s crushing presence in the game mod department.
Project Zomboid recently came out with a new build, and seeing a spate of Youtube clips of it has renewed my interest in the game (after 6ish years). However, a lot of those clips also talked about all of the mods that are still “required” to fix some of the rough edges to the game. Seeing as I had bought the game on GOG all those years ago, I naturally headed over to Nexusmods and… huh. Definitely not the same options available on Steam. Maybe there is just not a lot of updates yet? Went to the official forums to see if mods are listed there, but that was useless. Finally, I started Googling around to see how I could download Steam Workshop mods and use them with GOG. Short answer: don’t bother.
I’m not saying this is an impossible situation. I could probably just, you know, play the game as-is. If I dedicated more time to the endeavor, I could also probably figure out a solution to how to get Steam mods working with my GOG version of the game. For a moment, I did actually consider purchasing Project Zomboid on Steam, “subscribing” to a bunch of the mods to get them to download, copying the files when they show up in my Steam folder, and then refunding the game. Or just take the L and purchase the game on Steam and start using it from there. It’s even on sale at the moment for like $14.
Here’s the thing: it’s incredibly clear to me now that if you EVER suspect you may want to mod a game, you need to buy it on Steam. Do all games have Steam Workshops? No. Are there games in which Nexusmods is the definitive place to be? Yes. But there will never be a situation in which the Steam version of the game is penalized from a modding perspective, whereas the opposite is true.
And that sucks.
Prior to this moment, I preferred having all my games on Steam because it was convenient, and easy to track time played. However, I was not opposed to taking advantage of those Epic Game Store coupons they used to have, or when something only launched on GOG or whatever. Now? I do feel trapped within the ecosystem. Well, “trapped,” with golden handcuffs and all. But I’m starting to realize that perhaps I was only looking at first-order monopoly effects, and blind to the second-order ones.
Of course, the ideal solution here would be for Steam to make it easier to download Steam Workshop mods without having to own the game. Or at least making it more straight-forward.
In the absence of that though… well, full Steam ahead.
End of Year: 2024 Edition
Just like 2023, except with more oligarchy.
Workwise, I remain one of the most-senior members of my overall department. In the coming months, I am going to have to get a pretty difficult certification to maintain my present job title, likely to detriment of my organization. After all, once I have the official certification, I can officially… just go anywhere else. On the other hand, the job market isn’t all that great and not slated to look any better. Also, at this point, I’m kinda all-in on the pension. Theoretically, I could retire at 57 with full benefits!
Family is doing well. Wife is trying to get student loan forgiveness before the regime change fucks everyone over, and we should be successful. Kiddo is in kindergarten at a private school, because school shooting fears. No, seriously. Welcome to America!
Anyway, let’s talk videogames. Ones in bold have been completed.
Steam (514.5h)
- Satisfactory [123h]
- V Rising [56h]
- Zero Sievert [40.4h]
- Nightingale [40.3h]
- Planet Crafter [34.5h]
- Core Keeper [31.1h]
- Cobalt Core [26.6h]
- Dungeon Drafters [26h]
- Astrea: Six-Sided Oracles [23h]
- Icarus [21.5h]
- Abiotic Factor [18.7h]
- Once Human [14.6h]
- Dave the Diver [14.3h]
- 1000xRESIST [13.3h]
- Kynseed [7.6h]
- The Bloodline [7.3h]
- Enshrouded [6.3h]
- Smalland [5.5h]
- Wall World [2.8h]
- Luck be a Landlord [1.2h]
- Tails of Iron [0.5h]
As in prior years, I am not including games I played significantly in the past. This omission really only effects Stardew Valley and Sun Haven, when I started new & modded saves of both about mid-year. Both games ended up getting their total playtime doubled as a result, actually, but ironically I never made past Year 1 Winter in either. Truly a testament to how poorly I pace myself in life-sim games.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was not omitted – I played zero minutes of it in 2024. It’s kinda embarrassing at this point, but also Patch 8 is going to coming out Soon™ and will include a dozen additional sub-classes. Waited this long, what’s another indeterminable amount of time?
Epic Game Store (118h)
- Cyberpunk 2077 [86h]
- Dead Island 2 [32h]
I just said that I don’t include previously-played games, but I think +86h on Cyberpunk 2077 deserves a mention. Aside from that, Dead Island 2 was the only other Epic game I played this year. which makes things all the more ridiculous that I have rather religiously acquired every free game offered each week.
Epic still has most of the heavy-hitting AAA games I have yet to start and/or complete. Alan Wake 2, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Death Stranding, specifically.
Xbox Game Pass (104.5h)
- Keplerth (26.5h)
- Control (19h)
- Frostpunk 2 (17h)
- Dyson Sphere Program (14h)
- Orcs Must Die! 3 (9.5h)
- Palworld (8h)
- Jusant (4.5h)
- Bramble: the Mountain King (4h)
- Nine Sols (2h)
- Diablo 4 (?h)
- Starcraft 2 (?h)
Game Pass has mostly been a pass for me this year. I stayed subscribed for the entire year, which is foolish, although the majority of that time was had at an absurd discount from stacking codes from last year. On the other hand, I can’t really blame Microsoft here. My “Play Later” queue includes Dead Space Remake, Lies of P, Tales of Arise, Persona 3 Reload, Octopath Traveler 2, ARK: Survival Ascended, Stalker 2, COD #whatever, and so on. Nevermind however many games arrived and then departed throughout the year that I have forgotten about.
Still, now that I’m back on a month-to-month plan, it may be worth taking a closer look at where I’m spending my time (and money). I think Avowed is the biggest title I’m looking forward to, and that’s in February. On the other hand, Game Pass continues to have the uncanny ability to push in surprise games I already purchased. Dead Island 2 showing up recently was particularly vexing to me.
Other Unmentionables
Yeah, I still play Hearthstone. Sometimes a lot. In fact, I would probably be embarrassed if there was any way to actually track the time spent throughout the year. One should never feel “embarrassed” for playing a game, of course, but in my particular situation, it is always at the expense of anything else I could be playing instead. Like, I would be sitting in my chair, staring at the list of titles unplayed, and then… close Steam and boot up Hearthstone as a sort of unthinking default.
It doesn’t help that Hearthstone itself is in a pretty miserable state right now. The latest expansion was a total flop, set intentionally weak presumably to help reign in power creep. But that only works when sets rotate, so everyone is still playing powerful cards from two years ago. There is a Starcraft-themed mini-set coming in January that may shake things up, but not if they want to keep power creep under control. In Battlegrounds, a new season meant they removed Quests/Buddies/Trinkets, which makes games less variable and more boring.
Another recent game without hour-tracking I’ve been playing a lot is Balatro (mobile). Again, not sure how long I’ve played, but I have unlocked all the decks and unlocked all the stakes on one of the decks (e.g. highest ascension). I started to do the same on another deck, and going from Orange Stake down to the basic one was eye-opening to me. Was it always this easy? Sure… probably after 100 hours.
What’s Next
I am going to largely rehash my goals from last year, with a caveat: I no longer care about “finishing” games and absolve myself from any guilt surrounding it. I go back and forth on this, of course, but at the same time I am realizing that I feel better about life when “done” games are no longer visible in my library. Did I beat V Rising? Nope. But I did play until I could derive no more enjoyment from it, so why let it keep taking up space? I’ve been good on this front already, just need to stay strong in 2025.
Games I would like to complete this coming year:
- Baldur’s Gate 3 (after Patch 8)
- Death Stranding (for real)
- Red Dead Redemption 2
- Alan Wake 2
Basically… you know, all those AAA games I have in my library.
In any case, I hope everyone gets everything they voted for in 2025.
In An Age 
Switch 2 Paying Too Much
Apr 2
Posted by Azuriel
In the weeks leading up to today, I was actually looking forward to hearing the details about Nintendo’s next console, Switch 2. Which might seem odd, considering I let the entirety of the original Switch lifecycle pass me by. And, actually, the last console of any kind that I purchased was a PS3 and I barely played any of the games I bought on that. I did upgrade my PC in 2022, and that is where I do most of my gaming. But… well, I have recently started being interested in portable gaming and figured that if I were to jump into the waters, maybe the Switch 2 would be as good a place as any.
Except, perhaps, when it costs this fucking much:
Leaks were suggesting $399, and it’s “just $50 more” as some say… but look at the game prices now. We were just talking about analysts suggesting (and begging) for Grand Theft Auto 6 to launch at $100, and it seemed like an absurdity. But here’s Nintendo leap-frogging the new $70 “standard” and going right for $80. And since it is Nintendo, these game prices are going to basically be set in stone for the decade – no Summer Sales or discounts for us.
Well, aside from the $500 console bundle with Mario Kart, saving you $30 one time.
The grand irony is that I had started getting interested in the Switch 2 because I developed a renewed interest in handheld emulators. I fell into a deep YouTube rabbit-hole around the explosion of these handhelds, and even picked one up myself on the cheap (Miyoo Mini+). This was technically (even more) unnecessary considering I still have a PSP and even an OG DS which are both set up to be emulators. In my mind though, I wanted something dedicated to emulation specifically, with a smaller formfactor, with the assumption that I may give it to my son once he gets into gaming. With me playing it in the meantime, of course.
After playing around with the Miyoo Mini+ though, I discovered strange sort of nostalgia holes. It will play up to PS1 games no problem, but I started thinking about the N64 games I might want to play again. Or GameCube. But not PS2, for some reason. Anyway, once you start looking into that direction, your options shrink until you start hitting the “Steam Deck” tier which is $400 (or more). At which point, well, here we are again. Although potentially tackling my Steam backlog…
…I wonder how long it will take for the Switch 2 to be cracked? Best of all worlds, potentially.
In any case, god damn, Nintendo. There are plenty of talking heads saying that $70/$80 games are “necessary” to “save” the industry. What’s not often mentioned is how many chairs will be remaining once the music stops. Gamers were already spending 60% of their time playing 6+ year old games back in 2023, so how many new $80 titles do you think they’ll be buying in 2025 in this economy? Nintendo will probably be fine. Other studios? Probably not so much.
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: Emulator, Nintendo, State of the Industry, Switch 2, Too Damn High