Endgame Viable

I finished the story of Death Stranding over the weekend. It took almost 80 hours over the course of two months. I left a large number of optional tasks unfinished, but I’m hoping to get back and do them at some point. It’s definitely the game of the year for me. These 80 hours have been quite an experience. I’m very thankful that I’ve been able to play a AAA game with so much originality, because frankly I didn’t think I would ever see one again in my lifetime. Major titles have become such homogenized reskins of previous successful games that I feel like I’ve been playing the same game over and over again throughout the 2010s. But that’s definitely not the case with Death Stranding. Love it or hate it (and there are good reasons for both), it’s impossible to deny it’s different. There have been ups and downs, good parts and bad parts, but it’s been a very unique ride. I’ve never played a game like it in my entire life, that I can remember. (2943 words.)

Here’s a quick rundown of memorable games that I played throughout the decade. These are games that I played more-or-less continuously for a month or more (that I remember, at least). In between these games were plenty of others, but these are the ones that made the biggest impact on me. Age of Conan. 2010. I can’t find many records of what I played in 2010. Age of Conan, WoW. (ref) (413 words.)

I briefly mentioned the category “Ongoing Games” in my last post (or “post”) as a potential replacement for the terms “MMORPG” and/or “MMO.” Even before I saw Jeromai’s post, which I agree with, I started to doubt my own judgment about it. The more I thought about it, the more “Ongoing Game” meant nothing whatsoever. It might as well be “Game.” Almost any game could fit into this category in 2019. Final Fantasy XIV? Sure. Fortnite? Sure. Sekiro? Probably. The Division 2? Definitely. Death Stranding? Absolutely. Outward? Well, maybe not that one. (226 words.)

I try to avoid “tweet storms” that go beyond two or three threaded tweets but I couldn’t resist the temptation to live tweet the Game Awards last night, as I was just sitting in front of the television and a laptop. My assumption is that people can mute tweet threads if they find them annoying (and let’s be honest, every tweet thread is always annoying to someone). It’s the first time I’ve watched them, and probably the last time as well. Today I found a tool to “unroll” my thread into text that I could paste into a blog post for posterity. (I only wish there was an option to include timestamps.) (1035 words.)

I picked up a game called Outward on sale for $20 a while back. It looked like a fun single-player third-person RPG, and the emphasis on starting weak and earning your rewards appealed to me. My jaunty adventurer with a big permanent smile on his face. I almost immediately regretted my purchase. The voice acting isn’t very good, and they do that thing I really hate where they only speak the first line, leaving you to read the rest of it. (It’s particularly annoying if you’re making videos.) (1636 words.)

I don’t exactly write “reviews” here on the ol’ blog, but these are my thoughts about the XIM APEX Adapter. It’s a USB gadget that plugs into a Playstation 4 (or an Xbox One, allegedly) and allows you to use a mouse and keyboard to play games that otherwise could only be played with a controller. You may or may not have noticed a recurring theme here in the past year, which is that I constantly mention how much the PS4 controller hurts my hands. Specifically my left hand, and even more specifically my left thumb. If I use the controller too much, I lose a great deal of gripping strength in my left hand for days, so things like holding plates or opening jars become quite a bit more difficult. Normally I have to limit my PS4 playing time to maybe an hour a day, and ideally every other day. It’s not ideal when there’s a game that I’m dying to play. I don’t have the same trouble with mouse and keyboard, so I thought I’d try out this adapter. (1575 words.)

I’ve heard about Death Stranding for years, but I’ve never had any idea what kind of game it is. Shortly after the game begins. I tried to read some reviews, but I simply couldn’t stand to visit any of the major games journalism web sites to read them. Every game web site is completely obscured by ads that cover almost 75% of the screen, blinking at you, playing videos at you, whatever. The text is buried beneath an avalanche of constantly-shifting “reactive” crap. My laptop fan starts blowing full speed whenever I try to load these pages. It’s just godawful. (1245 words.)

Over the weekend, I noticed Steam was giving away a free trial of this game called Generation Zero, which I’d never heard of before. So I thought I’d try it. I kind of miss those Halcyon days of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, when I got to play a brand new game every day. I didn’t even know what this game was, to be honest. It sounded like a shooter. But it said it was “set in Sweden,” which is something I’ve certainly never seen before in a game. (880 words.)

Naithin poked some of us on the Blaugust Discord to chime in on this: If you could only play five games in a year, what would they be? It turns out this would not be a terribly big sacrifice for me. I don’t play a lot of games in a year to start with. I’ve already done some research for my 2019 year-end post, and the number of new games that I’ve purchased and started in 2019 is extremely small. (Three-Sekiro, The Division 2, Astellia Online.) The number of new games I’ve actually completed is even less. (One-Sekiro.) (1099 words.)

I don’t get into Halloween much at all, but this year I thought I would break with tradition and try to find a scary game to play. You know, one of those kinds of games that makes the streamers whimper and cry and scream and jump, for the lulz and the clicks. I’m not especially prone to being scared by a game, and I’ve played a number of horror games before that I didn’t find particularly scary, but I wondered if I could find one out there. (890 words.)