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Review: The Outer Worlds 2
As mentioned, I recently completed The Outer Worlds 2 (TOW2) after about 70 hours of playing. There is a lot of like about TOW2, especially in comparison to the original game, but there is an equal (or greater) amount of terrible game design. Moreover, for all the news articles extolling Obsidian’s return to Fallout: New Vegas form with this title, I see regression at best. And, seriously guys, it’s been 15 years.
First, the good stuff. The game is gorgeous, maps are large, the skyboxes interesting. One of my criticisms from the first game was that interior spaces felt generic and cut & paste in the “let’s pretend it was on purpose because modular sci-fi habitats” kind of way. Thankfully, TOW2 feels much more diverse and detailed. There is still a definite lack of something that the aging Bethesda Gameybro Engine is able to evoke, but it is worlds better than before. Also, the act of traversing the landscape itself feels great, with double-jumping and auto-vaulting on par or better than with Avowed.
Gunplay and collecting bits and bobs out in the world is also much improved. There are baseball-esque cards sprinkled around everywhere that grant you +1% critical hit chance (etc), which makes exploration more exciting. The world is populated with many junk items that can be broken down into crafting components and then turned into ammo or mods. The original game featured a punishing repair/tinker system that drained you of resources; this one lets you use whatever guns or armor you want (for the most part) straight into the endgame.
Where the game falls apart for me is with the Skill Checks, and a broader fetishization of “choices matter” when they really do not.
Before I begin, there is one aspect of Skills I do want to give Obsidian credit for: they solved the combat vs social skills dilemma. In almost every RPG I have played, allocating a limited amount of points into something like Speech meant you were radically weaker than someone who put them in Guns. Broadly speaking, that is not the case in TOW2. Each point is Speech gives you a +10% damage bonus against Human targets. There is further a Perk called Space Ranger that gives you a 2.5% damage bonus against all targets for every level of Speech you have. While that is not as good as an unconditional 10% per Guns level, it no longer feels as though you need to gimp your character in order to talk to characters in an RPG.
But, see… that’s just the thing. This is a game of “choices” which is governed almost exclusively by Skill checks. In the original game, you could respec, wear gear with Skill bonuses, or even take certain companions with you to achieve certain Skill thresholds. Not anymore. You are hard-capped at level 30, meaning you can have three Skills at 20 with maybe two points elsewhere; two Skills at 20 with a few more at scattered about; or a single 20 Skill and a more even distribution across a few interesting ones. Obsidian devs have said they wanted players’ “choices to matter” and for players to commit to mistakes. Choices made… where? On the character page, prior to knowing anything about the rest of the game? Something like the very meaningful choice between Lockpicking 5 and Lockpicking 6?
The end result is this nonsense:
I spent the last third of the game with 17 unallocated Skill points, and 5 unchosen Perks. This is an epic game design fail on all sorts of levels. For a start, it illustrates how easily I was able to forgo 170% extra gun damage and still breeze through the game (on Normal). Indeed, my “build” was capable of one-shotting every non-boss enemy in the game from stealth… with zero points in Sneak. Second, it makes a mockery of “commitment and/or consequence” seeing as how I was easily able to pop into the character menu and become an expert of any relevant Skill as needed. Finally, it demonstrates how boring the capstone Perks (ones requiring 20 points in X) were, that I was completely unmoved to commit the Skills points needed to get there. As a matter of fact, almost none of the Perks were especially relevant or impactful, which is crazy considering there are 90 of them.
Now, as pointed out in my Tips post, you don’t actually have to max out Skills to avail yourself of all the most meaningful options. You wouldn’t know that while playing the game though, which is part of the problem. A lack of meaningful information precludes a meaningful choice. Would you still choose to get to Speech 20 if you knew Speech 9 was good enough for the kumbaya ending? Or, honestly, Speech 5 considering how odious one of the factions ends up being. And if Speech 5 is good enough, why do we need Speech to be the determining factor in the decisions our character makes at all?
“It’s an RPG.” So are Mass Effect and Dragon Age: Origins. Is a game only an RPG if you have to put points in a Speech skill in order to make decisions? That sounds more like a Roll-playing game, amirite.
Having said all that, a lot of this is moot because the overall narrative of TOW2 is weak. The game starts off fairly strong with a much more consistent tone than the original. You learn about Auntie’s Choice, the ultra-capitalistic caricature of corporations from the first game, and then interact with the Protectorate, the ultra-authoritarian, brainwashing, jobs-assigned-at-birth and report-your-family-members bad guys. Later, you meet the Order, who represent scientists who use math and probability to predict the future. But then the Protectorate becomes generic antagonists and you just have Auntie’s Choice and the Order to play off one another and I could not be less interested. The vaunted, hard-hitting choices from the makers of Fallout: New Vegas boil down to who you want to attack you on sight for not taking them to prom. With a high enough Speech skill, you can take them both. Whee.
Maybe that is reductionist. All I know is that I played through all the faction quests and did not once feel a spec of moral gravity. Compare that to interacting with Caesar’s Legion, NCR, House, or going it alone in New Vegas. The companion quests in TOW2 did fare better than the main story, but it is one of those situations in which you sort of question why the writers are hiding the light under the bushel of characters you technically don’t even have to recruit. Maybe that’s what they mean by choice? Then again, that’s sort of like saying you’re making meaningful choices by not playing the game.
…which I may ultimately recommend.
In the final analysis, I did end up playing The Outer Worlds 2 to conclusion after 70 hours, so there’s something there. By the end of the utter slog that is the third act though – especially when Obsidian goes full Starfield with forcing you to fast travel across planets via 10 loading screens to talk to NPCs – all I could really think about is how much better Avowed was in comparison.
And I didn’t really like Avowed. At least it had respecs though.
Review: Death Howl
Death Howl is a self-described “Soulslike deck builder” that I completed in about 24 total hours on Game Pass. It features low-fi visuals, a trippy pre-historic Scandinavian story, deck building combined with grid-movement, and some evocative and deadly enemies.
The general gameplay is you moving Ro around the spirt-world landscape in a click-to-move way, collecting resources laying around, and then encountering the outline of a grid near some static enemies. Cross the grid and you will see the claustrophobic fighting arena, which enemies are present, and any special terrain. At this point, you can exit the battle without penalty. Choosing a starting square (based on which direction you came from) will begin combat.
The fights are relatively quick, brutal affairs. You start with five energy, with movement consuming one energy per square, and the cards consuming the card-specific amount. You can glean a little bit of information from hovering over the evil spirits, but it is limited to their movement range and if they have certain buffs. It is actually quite frustrating how little information you are given during these fights, as you do not even know ahead of time which enemies will go first. Into the Breach this ain’t. At the end of your turn, you discard your hand, the enemies take their turns, and then you draw more cards. Defeating all enemies awards you with both additional resources and “death howls,” which are necessary to craft more cards.
Incidentally, the whole “Soulslike” marketing basically describes what happens when you die/save the game. If you die in a given battle, you come back to life with the same HP right outside of the grid of the battle you lost. What you lose are any accumulated death howls, which are now floating on a random combat square. Should you start the fight over, you can recollect them, or an enemy will get a huge buff if they walk over them instead. To save and/or heal your HP, you must navigate to a Sacred Grove (e.g. campfire) and convert any death howls into a progression currency. This process will also reset ALL enemies on the map. Luckily, you can freely fast-travel to any previously-unlocked Sacred Grove, so you are generally only ever 2-3 fights away from a save point.
Your deck building options are limited to start… and kinda stay limited. Decks have to be at least 15 cards but no more than 20. You can have no more than 5 cards that have the Exhaust keyword (e.g. one-time use per battle). As you collect resources, you’ll hit thresholds at which unlock four more cards for the specific Realm that you are navigating; actually crafting these cards to be put into your deck require the consumption of resources and death howls. The Realm-specific cards are almost always better than the generic Realmless cards you start with, but are generally keyed to a certain style of play. For example, the beginning Realm of Distorted Hollows features a lot of discard-style synergy or cards that do bonus stuff if it kills and enemy. Meanwhile, cards from the Realm of Hostile Plains focus on movement-based synergy or cards that do bonus stuff if it’s the first card you play in a turn.
A limiting wrinkle is that as you move around the four Realms, cards not of that Realm cost 1 more energy to use. This generally makes it close to impossible to leverage previously-unlocked cards to jumpstart your fights in a new zone, but some exceptions do exist. For example, some 0-cost cards are still good at moving around the battlefield at 1-energy. Considering that by the end of the first zone I had a deck capable of playing dozens of cards per turn, I did actually appreciate the game forcing me to try new strategies as I progressed. It can be somewhat annoying though having to play with jank until you unlock enough Realm-specific cards though.
Overall, I enjoyed the first 16 hours (of 24) of Death Howl, but it definitely started to drag after a while. Each Realm has three maps, and each map generally has side quests with interesting card rewards and “Nests” that can contain slottable Relics to enhance your strategies. Or they can just contain the progression currency which you could easily farm from simple enemies. Fighting 8-10 battles to complete side-quests only to be given more of the same currency you already earned completing those same battles feels terrible. If the devs could have some visual indication on these quests/Nests that something special is in them, that would have been great.
If you’re a fan of deck building games with a movement grid, I say give Death Howl a shot. This isn’t a roguelike and won’t scratch the Slay the Spire itch, but it gets close. Just… stop when you’re done, IMO.
Price Hike
You have likely heard the news already, but in the last few weeks Microsoft has increased the price of Game Pass, kind of significantly. The Ultimate tier went from $19.99 to $29.99, for example, which is a 50% increase. Even the PC tier where I’m at went from $11.99 to $16.49, which is a 38% increase. While Microsoft has tried spinning the “value added” from things like free battlepasses to a few F2P games, most everything is the same or worse.
I have a couple of things I wanted to say about this.
First, the amount of “I told you so!”s from people – including former FTC chair Lina Khan – who suggest the price increase is a result of the Activision Blizzard merger is kind of ridiculous. Yes, $55 billion is a lot of investment money that Microsoft expects a return on. However… do we imagine the Game Pass subscription was going to stay at the same level if the merger didn’t occur? Was Microsoft not going to lay off the same game devs as before? Subscriptions go up and to the right. It doesn’t take Nostradamus to predict that Netflix and Disney+ will have a(nother) price increase within the next two years, with or without any mergers.
Incidentally, the math on people canceling their subscriptions is interesting. Even if just under one-third of people cancelled their subscription… Microsoft would still break even. Hell, depending on the network traffic and other server costs, Microsoft probably comes out ahead even if half of everyone quits.
For the record, I’m not here to defend the price hikes or Microsoft in general. We are absolutely seeing an across-the-board decrease in Consumer Surplus as a result of this, and it behooves everyone to double-check their internal math to see if Game Pass still makes sense. If all you’re playing is Hollow Knight: Silksong for the month, well, you were better off just buying it outright. Even the “free” copy of Call of Duty is going to start costing you extra starting in month 3 versus 7+ now.
But let’s not pretend that where we’re at today wasn’t worth how we got here. Microsoft was going to Microsoft anyway. The fact that we got to enjoy a comparatively cheap way to play videogames for years and years was phenomenal. The party is over now? Oh no, back to… buying videogames again.
Compare that to what’s going to happen when the AI music inevitably stops.
Game Passes: Blue Prince, Atomfall
These are games I played recently on Game Pass that are, well, passes for me.
Blue Prince
I had seen Blue Prince be praised a bunch recently, but I’m apparently not smart enough to enjoy it.
The premise of Blue Prince is that a young boy has to navigate a magic estate that moves rooms around every day, and discover the mysterious “46th” room. You start with 50 steps, which is how many rooms you can enter within a day, and when you reach a door, you get to pick one of three random blueprints for what kind of room is on the other side. The blueprints themselves come from a deck of sorts, so there is an element of strategy involved as the unchosen blueprints go back into the “deck.” You keep going until you run out of steps or, infinitely more likely, you end up getting dead-ended with your choices and/or the doors start getting randomly locked and you didn’t RNG your way into enough keys.
And that is kind of where things fell off the rails for me. I don’t like puzzle games generally, but I have played and enjoyed ones like Braid, The Talos Principal and… uh… does Portal 1/2 count? In the case of Blue Prince, the actual playing bits aren’t fun. Go to door, pick 1 of 3 options, possibly collect items, go to next door. I have encountered some “chests” that require other items to open, but near as I can tell, the required items are RNG-based as to whether they will show up in a given day. There was one run when I alllllllmost got to the Antechamber but then every door was locked/gated by a currency I ran out of and… it honestly felt like those bad roguelites where they make it impossible to win until you grind some progression. Although I guess there’s an achievement for winning on Day 1? ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Whatever. The bank can have the house.
Atomfall
British Fallout!
…except not at all.
To be fair, they never said British Fallout, even though that is what everyone wanted. Instead, you have a first-person pseudo-mystery game in which you accidentally solve all the mysteries by just playing the game like a Fallout. Except the hoarding part, because you have an extremely limited inventory, no means of crafting anything until you purchase schematics, and no currency to purchase schematics, only what you can trade with what you’ve managed to stuff in your limited inventory.
Honestly, exploring every derelict house and having to continuously pass up on yet more Scraps or Cloth because I had the maximum amount already is what killed this game for me. Can’t stash the extra bits, can’t sell them for currency, can’t (yet) craft them into useful items, so… what? Should I just ignore all the exploration and make a beeline to the quest objective? I understand 2.5 hours might not be long enough for any plot to materialize, but if the gameplay or setting or characters can’t bridge the gap until it does, then you’ve got a pretty piss-poor design, IMO. And certainly not worth 71.6 GB of space.
The Alters
I recently completed The Alters after about 24 hours of gameplay via Xbox Game Pass. Overall, I found the experience to be unexpectedly poignant and also refreshing.
The general premise of the game is that you are Jan Dolski, sole survivor of a crash landing on a hostile planet. Getting your bearings, you discover that while the mobile expedition base is intact, there is no realistic way you can manage all of its components by yourself and still escape a scorching sun just over the horizon. In the midst of despair, you find Rapidium, the MacGuffin mineral that precipitated the expedition in the first place. With Rapidium’s special properties – plus a Quantum Computer and Mind Records – you are able to clone yourself and selectively modify the clone’s memories such that they made different choices at pivotal moments in your past, thereby specializing in different fields (such as Scientist, Refiner, Doctor, etc). You must then balance exploration for resources, base management, and keeping your surly other selves happy long enough to (all?) get rescued.
The first kind of obstacle I encountered with the game… was its very premise. I actually felt like the various Jans getting physically pulled from other dimensions would have been more believable. After all, you do actually encounter numerous “anomalies” as enemies to fight or flee from on the alien world you are stranded on. But the game does a good job of exploring multiple facets of its own seemingly-shaky premise, so if that is a potential hang-up, well, please dial again.
The only other sort of criticism I have with the game is the sort of stark shift in gameplay that happens within each Act. At the beginning of each section, you are typically left dangerously low on supplies in the midst of an unknown landscape, knowing that the game-ending sun with be coming up behind you after an unknown amount of days. This part feels exciting and strategic, as you attempt to balance securing resource locations with longer scouting trips. Once the map has been filled out though, you wind up ending yours days within 5 minutes by holding down a button at a mining drill (which fast-forwards time) before clocking out. At one point, I started to avoid leaving a specific Act so I could “farm” research unlocks and add the maximum number of sections to my mobile base. The difference between that and how I felt immediately after getting to the next Act was enormous. I just wish the ebbs and flows were more uniform, ya know?
Of course, I would be remiss to not mention the Alters themselves. While you are out and about (or even farming resources), the Alters will get into certain moods and come to you with requests that might require the diversion of resources. It is during these times that you learn more about your alternative paths and what could have been. This sort of thing could easily have devolved into some on-the-nose proselytizing, but… it doesn’t. None of your other selves really have fairy tale lives, and in spite of diverging several possibly ways, all end up choosing to participate in Project Dolly in the end. Was that narrative convenience? The constraints of the Quantum Computer in altering the Mind Records of the clones? Or is it a broader commentary on the choices you make in life and how you must seek meaning in them even if you end up in the same place?
Overall, I would consider The Alters to be a top-tier Game Pass game. There is technically some replayability as you cannot choose all of the available Alters within a single play-through. Additionally, there are higher difficulties that probably make the second half of each Act more exciting from a resource juggling perspective. Regardless, hats off to the devs for making an engaging game, and also releasing it for $35 MSRP.
Dumb Problems to Have
Scenario: Fanatical is having another one of their bundle sales. In this specific situation, you want to pick up Backpack Heroes and at least one other game, in order to activate the discount. But which other game? Looking through things, you remember hearing that Laika: Aged Through Blood was an interesting “motorvania”. But wait a minute… do you already have that? Let’s check:
- Steam
- Epic
- GOG
- EA
- Amazon
- Ubisoft Connect
- Xbox Game Pass
Luckily, there are a few aggregators. GOG Galaxy is one, for example. However, for some reason it has got stuck trying to import your Epic games, and thus you can never really trust it. Google searches show you Heroic Games Launcher and Lutris, but after browsing it appears those are Linux-based options intended for the Steam Deck and/or Linux handhelds. Finally, you see Playnite. Will that work?
Yes… and no. Out of the box, Playnite will display every Xbox Game Pass game you have ever played before, even if it is no longer on the service. Very annoying. There is an add-on you can install though, to create a separate button to browse the currently available Game Pass games (under Generic: “Game Pass Catalog Browser”). Additionally, there is still some oddness with Steam, insofar as the 449 hours /played of 7 Days to Die is not registering, which kind of calls into question the validity of any of the other stats. But, at least it’s something.
Of course, all of this is an exceedingly dumb/first-world problem to have. A true “I can’t hold all these games” moment. A double-embarrassment of riches, if you will.
I just wish this modern problem would have a modern solution.
Avowed – Early Impressions
I have played about 16 hours of Avowed via Game Pass. Early impressions: mostly great!
Although I have not yet stepped outside the first area, Avowed is a very gorgeous game. More than that, it is a joy to walk around in. It cannot be understated how much I like a first-person perspective in exploration games, which is elevated further when the character actually feels competent within it. There are marked ledges with the stereotypical yellow ropes, but there is almost no areas in which I felt I could not reasonably scramble up. This isn’t climbing sheer cliffs BotW/Genshin Impact-style, but it’s enough to feel like the world is explorable. It honestly feels one step below Dishonored in how good it feels walking around – if more games could have shadowstep-like abilities, that would be great.
Combat also feels really, really good. I am currently focusing on a Wizard character which gives me, honestly, too many options. The great thing though, is that there is a lot of variety in builds (on default difficulty) and how you engage with enemies. For example, I was rocking the standard wand + spellbook loadout, but I didn’t like how short range the wand ended up being. So, I have a pistol + spellbook. Plus, I have chosen a spellbook that allows me to conjure up a magic staff to beat people with if things get too hairy in close-quarters. Honestly, I kill most things with alpha strikes from a bow and follow-up pistol shots, so I’m leaning towards respeccing more into the Ranger class altogether. Which is easy to do, as it only costs a small amount of currency to respec, which is another plus.
I’m not going to comment much about the story, especially given how early in the game I am. What I can say though, is that I like how the game takes itself seriously without also being too far up its own ass. Being able to view a glossary of all the Proper Nouns during a conversation is helpful, but it’s not always necessary either. Which is great! I did play the original Pillars of Eternity enough to get some of the references, and there were plenty of references to the second game I did not get, but still understood from context clues. I never fully expected Avowed to follow The Outer Worlds irreverence, but nevertheless I am glad the slapstick is relegated to only minor side quests.
Having said all that… yeah, I do have some criticisms.
First, enemies are finite – once you clear an area, it stays cleared. I’ve seen some people praise this as being “immersive,” but it honestly leads to un-immersive player behavior. For example, I was walking in an area and saw some of the lizard creatures battling with spiders. That is great dynamic happenstance (assuming it wasn’t scripted)! But instead of letting them duke it out and attacking the weakened victor, I immediately jumped into the fray because I realized that any incidental monster deaths was a permanent reduction in my possible XP. Now, I am assuming that there is a level cap that can be reached way before the end of the game proper. But this is also a game that gives you more abilities than you have points for, and thus I want to get any many as I can, as soon as I can.
It did occur to me that the original Pillars of Eternity – and most CRPGs – also have the “feature” of finite battles. So perhaps that is not entirely out of place. But even aside from the metagaming aspect, combat itself is fun enough to want more of. I’m seeking out more of these random battles because it’s fun to push the buttons. Which is great! But I hate the idea of knowing they are a dwindling resource.
Another metagame aspect I do not enjoy is the carryover of The Outer Worlds’ “unique item” system. Essentially, the progression mechanic in Avowed is to choose amongst the the items you pick up and then upgrade a few of them over and over. Indeed, almost all of the loot you get from battles and hidden treasures are simply upgrade materials. The problem is that Avowed is also peppered with unique items that have bonus effects that regular items do not. What this means is that if you really like using Bows as a weapon, you are wasting upgrade materials on any regular bow, and should use something else until you get a unique Bow. The problem with that strategy is that weapons are debuffed against enemies of “higher quality” than the weapon used, because… reasons.
So, remember how I said I was using guns instead of wands for my wizard character? Aside from my range concern, what pushed me towards guns was the fact that I found two unique pistols and no unique wands. Without looking it up, I don’t even know if I’ll find a unique wand in the second area either. Which means I either waste upgrade materials on a regular wand so I can keep up with mobs, or I do something else. Similarly, upgrading spellbooks feels bad because you are locked into getting bonuses to just four spells. You can spend your precious few skill points to memorize spells without needing a spellbook, but you don’t get those bonuses that come from an upgraded spellbook.
Pressing buttons feels good, but each level up (and item upgrade) leaves me feeling unsatisfied.
Overall though, I do anticipate playing Avowed to completion. Perhaps the Wizard life is not for me, and the Ranger will be straight-forward enough to feel satisfying to level. It also helps that I have those unique weapons for the ranger already. Will I grow bored of using just those though? Well, it hasn’t happened yet. And perhaps I’ll accumulate enough Wizard uniques by the time it does.
…and hopefully I’ll still have enough upgrade materials to get them up to speed.
Let’s see how it goes.
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.
Game Passed
As you know, Game Pass has been good to me over the years. I haven’t been playing as much, but it definitely still feels worth the subscription. Recently, I even started playing through the last portion of the Starcraft 2 campaign (Protoss) which I missed back in the day. Definitely looking forward to STALKER 2 as well… maybe a year from now when they work out all the bugs.
Then again, I recently logged in and saw this message:
Specifically, that message was regarding Coral Island. I enjoyed my time well enough, got decently far within the game’s narrative and just sort of trailed off. Which was strategic in a way, because the game wasn’t actually done – there was a very obviously cordoned-off Savannah biome, among other things. And here I am, a year later, and the game is leaving.
There does appear to be a convoluted method of finding and porting your save file over to the Steam version. Or, you know, just buying it from Microsoft. Either way, the value proposition in that is a bit dubious. I’ve already played for 46 hours… am I really going to pay $25+ to reach whatever “endgame” is available? On the other hand, it also feels bad losing access. Which, of course, happens all the time with Game Pass. It’s just that I haven’t actually been burned in quite this way before.
Oh well.
In An Age 
End of Year: 2025 Edition
Dec 31
Posted by Azuriel
Similar to 2024, with 100% more leopards eating faces.
Workwise, not much has changed since last time around… which is a good thing! I have put off the certification I needed, but procrastination won’t be possible in 2026. There are a few people who will be retiring in the next year or two, and I’ve been given the nod to take over for one of them. While the increased title will be nice, the pay bump is generally limited to 5% and is not really worth the added stress. Nevertheless, it is really the only form of advancement left where I’m at and I still have quite some time until pension-based retirement. Hope the world still exists in a recognizable state by then!
Family-wise, everything is fantastic. Wife managed to get her student (including graduate) loans forgiven literal weeks before Trump started fucking everyone over, so that’s good. The Little Man is making tremendous progress in 1st grade and overcoming all sorts of challenges that came his way. Also, he’s playing videogames now, so my life is just about complete.
Onto the games played this calendar year.
Steam (325.5h)
Under my normal “rules,” Abiotic Factor should not be on the list, as I played ~19 hours of it last year. However… seems a bit silly to not have it on there, no? The Steam Replay stats show that I had a 21-day streak of booting it up, with an overall count of 64 sessions. Which means that I played over two hours on average each time. Really a testament to how hard I fall for good survival crafting games.
Speaking of both rules and survival crafting games, I did leave off 7 Days to Die (Rebirth mod) and No Man’s Sky despite racking up about 40-50 additional hours apiece on them. The former has been getting a lot of very interesting updates on the base game lately, indicating a practically seismic shift in terms of dev attitude. For example, they brought back glass jars! Regarding NMS, I like what they’re doing with things, I just wish they’d put more than like three people on getting Light No Fire started.
Epic Game Store (10h)
Yep. How embarrassing is that? Epic is even offering Battlefield 6 for $49 plus 20% back and I still had to have a long think on it. I’m actually passing on BF6 for now because I don’t want to get into another time-killing game when I have so many single-player experiences waiting to be, er, experienced. Many of which are, in fact, on Epic. Perhaps playing Epic games will lead me to opening the launcher more…
Xbox Game Pass (228.5h)
As always, one has to ask “was Game Pass worth the subscription this year?” Unlike in prior years, I had no banked cheap subscription cards, so I paid $148 total (including December’s new $16.50 price). Based merely on the games played and the hours thereof… probably not. Granted, Avowed and The Outer Worlds 2 retailed for $70 apiece, so technically just those two alone would have paid for everything, let alone Alters and Silksong. To say nothing of the other games I have installed and ready to go, like Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Metaphor: ReFantazio, Warhammer 40k: Rogue Trader. Or the others I have bookmarked like Hogwarts Legacy, Dragon Age: Veilguard, Grounded 2, and so on.
In other words, if the subscription wasn’t worth it, that’s really on me.
Game-wise, it’s a bit funny seeing two Obsidian games up there at the same time, e.g. Avowed and Outer Worlds 2. They share a lot of the same DNA, including how traversal feels in the world, but also some of the same foibles, e.g. problematic Legendary weapons, lack of romance options for companions. Once I get around to finishing Outer Worlds 2, it will be interesting to gauge how it feels in comparison to its brother. The answer may end up surprising you! (Hint: one game allows respecs).
Switch (unknown hours)
Yeah, buddy! Father-son game time! The Little Man has a long way to go in terms of solo play, but I really appreciated being able to play Odyssey with one person controlling Mario and the other the hat. Indeed, we straight-up beat that game a few months ago now, and have even restarted as my son wanted to play it again. This time, I’m a backseat driver at most (with Assist Mode on, of course).
Super Mario Wonder is another hit with The Little Man, but as a more straight-up platformer, it’s considerably more difficult. In Odyssey, you can get hit five times before dying, and even go hide somewhere to regain your health. If you drop down a pit in Wonder, you dead. Or rather, you will float back as a ghost and only lose the life if your partner can’t touch you within the five-second window. Still, the penalty is much harsher. And somehow we all raw-dogged this kind of shit back in the 80s?
The Switch has a lot of additional games at the ready, for when The Little Man gets a bit better and/or I have more inclination to play it by myself. For example, I have both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom on there. Oh, and Super Mario Galaxy 1 & 2 are on their way.
Guild Wars 2 (probably several hundred hours)
Yep, still playing every day since I re-re-restarted back in October. It’s probably the #1 factor in how little I have “accomplished” in terms of other game completion. Then again, if I were truly in the mood for whatever else, I probably would have just played that. I made time for Outer Worlds 2, for example.
As far as what I’m doing, well, I finally got around of completing the Secrets of the Obscure expansion story after months of slow-rolling it. I also started Janthir Wilds long enough to unlock Spears, as that seems to be a meta weapon for several classes. Chances are good that I skip Janthir for now and go directly into the newer Visions of Eternity, if only because that’s where most daily/weekly quests are pointing. Plus, you know, most people and/or most profitable activities.
Incidentally, I sprung for some gem store purchases a few days ago, after essentially talking myself out of a few Steam games. After all, if my argument is that spending money on games I’m not going to play immediately is silly, then that means spending money on games you are currently playing must be wise. That’s how it works, right?
Other Unmentionables
I stopped playing Hearthstone back in October and the streak of not playing continues. I even uninstalled it from my phone, freeing up like 8 GB of space. Still have it installed on the PC though.
Hmm… October. Isn’t that about the time I started playing Guild Wars 2 again? Surely a coincidence!
What’s Next
As always, I vacillate between “must finish games before uninstalling” and “stop playing when you stop having fun.” Last year was the latter, and this year will be the former. Sorta. I’m a reasonable guy. For example, I want to close out FF7: Rebirth because the final part of the trilogy is something I want to play. Elden Ring though? It’s been two years, so that is probably getting uninstalled. Anyway, the list!
Those are in order, although perhaps Death Stranding should be above BG3, I dunno. There are more games that I probably “should” be playing, but let’s be reasonable, shall we?
Posted in Commentary
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Tags: End of Year, Epic Game Store, Guild Wars 2, Steam, Xbox Game Pass