Endgame Viable

Yesterday for the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I played a game called Never Alone. It was released in 2014, but I couldn’t find any record of when I bought it or for how much. This is the most interesting game in the list so far. I had been looking forward to this one, and dreading it at the same time. I knew it was a game that involved a story with an animal companion (a fox, in this case). I usually can’t watch stories with animal companions, because I get way too emotional about them. I played that game with the mama lynx and her babies [Shelter 2, a lovely game] exactly one time and didn’t dare to play it again. I was afraid I was going to blubber all over my live stream with this one. (753 words.)

I stopped writing about my Quest for The One Blog for a very good reason: I gave up on it. What I want to do is essentially impossible unless I develop the blogging platform from scratch myself (or fork one of the open source projects). It’s within my skillset to do that, but I just don’t have the time or motivation or funds for it. (But hey, if anyone is interested in Kickstarting it, let me know!) (834 words.)

Okay I’m going to try to be brief here because nobody likes a buzzkill. World of Warcraft Classic launched Monday night here in the U.S. It was extremely smooth and free of major technical issues, as far as I’m concerned, which is an amazing accomplishment. Blizzard has gotten really good at launches. The “narrative” will be that it was a catastrophe, because that’s the only narrative that can be spun to draw a crowd, but it wasn’t. Queues were inevitable. (693 words.)

Yesterday I played the second Tolkien property game in my Steam Backlog Bonanza: Middle-earth: Shadows of Mordor. It came out in 2014, I bought it in 2016 for $7.50, one of the more expensive titles on this list. First the good news: The story of this game starts out fantastic, one of the best I’ve seen. It began with yet another “this is the epic story of the entire history of Middle-earth” prologue and I started to roll my eyes. But before I could even complete my ocular gymnastics, the prologue stopped and we saw the main guy. (627 words.)

Yesterday an odd game called Enclave appeared on the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I had never heard of it before. It’s an action-ish RPG which I bought in 2016 for $1.24. This screenshot looks much better than the game does. According to Steam, it was released in 2013. I quickly discovered, through simple observations, that the game did not look particularly advanced for a 2013 game. I’ve since learned that it was actually released in 2002, and re-released on Steam in 2013. That explains the unexpectedly primitive graphics. (618 words.)

Speaking of Souls-like games, yesterday on the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I played a game that is frequently described as Souls-like: Titan Souls, from 2015. I got it in that infamous Winter 2016 sale, what turned out to be the last hurrah of Steam sales, for a whopping $3.74. I don’t remember why, except that I probably had a vague memory of seeing it described as a game that fans of Dark Souls would like. And it was super cheap. (1044 words.)

I started hearing some buzz about this new game called Remnant: From The Ashes. Most of what I’m hearing is that it’s “too hard” and that it’s a “Souls-like.” This of course triggers the usual “games have to make everyone feel like a winner” backlash, which is mostly what drew my attention. I’m sure the PR folks behind Remnant will be ecstatic to hear that, because I probably never would have heard of this game otherwise. (677 words.)

Yesterday for the Steam Backlog Bonanza I tried out an MMORPG called Tree of Savior. It launched in 2016, but I’m not entirely sure how it got onto my list. It’s free-to-play on Steam, so I never actually “bought” it, so it’s technically not in my backlog. I might have placed it in there manually because I wanted to try it, but I don’t remember. I made the game list weeks ago. Who can remember that far back? (821 words.)

It was a dark and stormy night, and noir was in the air when I played Max Payne 3 for the 26th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I got it in 2013, just a year after it’s release, for $4. In those days, the sales were sales. Now you’re lucky to get $4 off in a sale. Anyway, I was looking forward to playing this particular game. I don’t precisely remember why I bought it-probably because it was a AAA title for $4, which was reason enough in 2013. I may have heard good things about Max Payne 3 at some point in my life. I don’t know. I just know I expected good things from this game. (1250 words.)

I used to play ArcheAge. There was a time when I got a ridiculous amount of blog traffic on my ArcheAge posts, which to this day, I still can’t explain. (This post on PvE content after level 30 was a top performer for some reason.) I remember being very excited about ArcheAge. It was actually a great game. Then I stopped playing. I was never particularly angry about it, I just didn’t agree with their decision to force people to subscribe to maintain a house and property. And once you lose your house and property, there is no compelling reason to play ArcheAge. (1176 words.)