Tangentially related to 2022, with n+1.

Workwise, I ended up receiving a significant “market adjustment” raise on top of higher-than-normal raise at the beginning of the year. Both were sort of defensive moves intended to stem the bleeding/poaching of staff, and it largely seemed to have worked. I certainly stopped looking for other positions… for the time being. Truth be told, I’m a bit of a big fish in a small pond. With golden handcuffs. On the, er, fins. Excellent health coverage, 99.99% work from home, substantial pension, the job is both intellectually fulfilling and easy, and I don’t actively hate anyone I work with. It would take a lot of money to make me roll the dice on something else.

Family continues to do great as well. Kiddo will be in kindergarten (!) next year.

For this look-back, I’m going to list out the new (to me) games I played along with the hours logged.

Steam (425h)

Looking up the /played time and putting them in order really puts things in perspective. As ordering things tend to do. Hadn’t quite realized how much time I spent with Dark Souls 1 & 2, for example.

I have every expectation on returning to Baldur’s Gate 3… someday. Originally, I was slowing down because of what I heard about Act 3 being buggy. But the reality is probably closer to what happened with me in Divinity: Original Sin 2: being too thorough. It’s how I could still be in the Underdark after 61 hours (!). Also, knowing that I would immediately turn around at the Act 2 prompt and go explore the Mountain Pass alternate route was a bit too much me. I mean, if you aren’t uncovering the fog on every square inch of isometric CRPGs, are you really playing them?

Epic Game Store (106h)

• Cyberpunk 2077 (Phantom Liberty) [62h]
• My Time at Sandrock [38.5h]
• Disco Elysium [4h]
• Surviving the Aftermath [1.5h]

Once again, can I just say how idiotic the Epic launcher is when it comes to gathering meaningful information from your games? I sort by “Recently Played” and it sorts by Recently Installed which is obviously not the same thing! And there’s no way to sort by install size. In any case, Epic has been doing better in the price department and will result in a few more purchases before the Winter sale is done. Still, not a whole lot of games played in comparison to Steam.

As you may have heard in the gaming press, Cyberpunk is indeed in the No Man’s Sky redemption club between the expansion release and the more-important 2.0 Skill rework. I actually started a brand new character to play through the expansion, and enjoyed myself thoroughly (as evident from the /played time). Still haven’t gotten around to finishing the game’s main plot though. The situation reminds me of Witcher 3 wherein the primary plot device is the least interesting thing going on.

Xbox Game Pass (302h):

I, uh, really liked Wartales, huh? Hearthstone probably absorbed more time overall, but Wartales very clearly exceeds the total game time of any other item on the list. But guess what? If you said “I bet you didn’t finish the game” then you would be correct! It’s starting (ending?) to be a problem.

As for Starfield… man. What a disappointment. Bethesda was teasing some updates with “new ways to travel,” which is kind of a funny way of saying “new loading screens.” But seriously, what’s the point? Even if they added some kind of rover or fun new traversal mechanic, all that will do is get you over the nondescript terrain and into the copy/pasted POIs faster. Are they adding new Abandoned Mines, or is it the same one I saw on 13 different planets and our own goddamn Moon? It boggles my mind how these designers could experience the wild successes of the Elder Scrolls and Fallout series and then completely forget why those games are any good. “What if we took our dense environmental storytelling and, like, divided it into loading screens lightyears apart?” What a waste.

On a different note, Game Pass itself provided 302 hours of gameplay for me over the course of the year, at an approximate cost of $120. That’s a pretty decent >2.5:1 ratio for entertainment by itself. In September though, I snagged three 3-month membership cards for $22.56 apiece, each one granting me a bonus month when I redeemed them. So, $67.78 for as much Game Pass as I can stand through most of 2024. Not sure if the “trick” will still work for others, but it certainly beat buying Starfield or Redfall for full (or any) price.

What’s Next

Playing more games, of course. Just not the correct ones, or finishing anything.

For real though, I am actually running out of space on my 2TB game drive and thus have an external motivation to complete (or delete) these games. Specifically, in 2024 I’d like to finish:

• Cyberpunk 2077 (for real)
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Death Stranding
• Red Dead Redemption 2
• Starfield (sigh)

I’ve already picked up a few other games during the Winter sale (not listed), so there will be some competition to my clearly limited attention span. Or maybe its just a healthy reaction to something in my life no longer sparking joy. After all, I did officially become Old™️ this year. Well, middle-aged, anyway. Which certainly feels pretty damn old (apologies to those bloggers with 20+ years on me).

Here’s to hoping we all get older in 2024.