Reviews

149 entries. 123,441 words.

2012-07

  • The Secret World, Likes and Dislikes. 2012-07-02. Here are some of my impressions from playing The Secret World for a weekend of beta and a few days of the head start. Likes: The “investigation” quests are awesome! You can Google the answers, of course, but trying to solve them without is a trip. We’re talking old school adventure-style puzzles and riddles here. (Make sure to turn off General chat if you don’t want to see spoilers, ‘cause, you know, people are lazy.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    836 words

2012-08

  • Guild Wars 2 Head Start Weekend. 2012-08-27. The hype is finally over and Guild Wars 2 is out (if you pre-purchased it, that is). After being down Saturday morning, GW2 worked flawlessly for the rest of the weekend. Usually the hype far overshadows the actual game. But in this one rare case, it’s possible that the hype was justified. Let’s talk about Guild Wars 1 for a second. I never got into it. Certain things just bugged me.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    410 words

2013-03

  • MMORPG Micro-Reviews. 2013-03-08. Being a little bored of Guild Wars 2, Tera, and Rift, I went looking on MMORPG.com’s list of games sorted by rating for free-to-play MMOs I haven’t played yet. These reviews are first impressions having played less than an hour of each. Wizardry Online - Ridiculously old-school and very slow-moving. Supposed to be really hard, but in the beginning it’s just hard to have fun. The writers clearly aren’t native English-speakers.
    • Reviews
    172 words

2013-04

  • BioShock Infinite – Game of the decade?. 2013-04-05. I finished Bioshock Infinite over the holiday weekend. I don’t often buy games as soon as they are released, because roughly 90% of the time they suck, and also 90% of the time they’re in a 75%-off Steam sale within a year. But like everyone else, I was blown away by the first Bioshock, so I knew there was a good chance this would be a great, culturally-significant game. Also, I knew there was going to be a twist in the story that I didn’t want spoiled by every jerkwad troll on the Internet.
    • Reviews
    440 words

2013-05

  • My Top 5. 2013-05-22. Saw this on MMORPG.com: The Best MMOs of 2013… So Far. Darkfall: Unholy Wars. Haven’t seen it. Not going to look at it. Age of Wushu. Really? Seriously? It doesn’t even have invert mouse! The Secret World. Yes, but it should be in the top 3. Star Wars: The Old Republic. Maybe, possibly. Neverwinter. It’s not bad, but I’m not prepared to put it at #3. EVE Online. No. I’m sorry, but no.
    • Reviews
    180 words
  • Defiance Beta Results. 2013-05-24. From the unpublished archives: I tried out the Defiance beta. It was “kind of” fun but it’s not really my kind of game. MMO shooters never seem that great to me. Lag plays a significant factor in being able to hit anything. Also, maybe my expectations are wack, but I thought all TPS (Third Person Shooter) games were supposed to have cover mechanics. This one didn’t. One thing that drove me crazy was the complete inability to see enemies and players in the environment until you’re standing on top of them.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    143 words

2014-02

  • Pingzapper. 2014-02-24. I tried out a service called Pingzapper that might be useful if you’ve experienced weird lagging in MMOs or I guess really any game. The alleged problem is that your ISP might be “traffic shaping” your data in a way that interferes with games. They are almost certainly messing up your streaming videos as much as they can get away with, so it makes sense that they would extend that policy to other areas.
    • Reviews
    376 words

2014-04

  • GW2 – Feature Pack Survived. 2014-04-23. I took the plunge and jumped into GW2, post-Feature Pack. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The meaning of the traits came back to me as I was looking over them, and I dumped points into things that sounded familiar. I haven’t done anything even remotely close to min-maxing in GW2 so it probably doesn’t matter. Also I don’t do dungeons or anything competitive, so my lack of optimization won’t affect anyone but me.
    • Classes
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    272 words
  • ArcheAge – It’s The New Black. 2014-04-29. Remember how I said I talked myself out of buying the ArcheAge Archeum Founder’s Pack? That only lasted through Thursday night, Friday, and Saturday. Then I bought it Sunday. I hadn’t even published my post about how I wouldn’t buy it before I bought it. Stupid peer pressure. Stupid ArcheAge RU not being in English. Stupid ESO not being addictive enough. Warning: I didn’t feel bad about spending the money because I already knew that I liked the game.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    520 words

2014-05

  • Rift – Trying Out The Arbiter in 2.7. 2014-05-12. I tried out the mage tanking soul Arbiter in Rift 2.7 on Thursday night. Overall I was pleased with its performance in Realm of the Fae, but I’m a bit worried that it will be “complicated” to play at higher levels. Take that with a big grain of salt though as I am far from an expert tank, and I have only seen low-level abilities. The "Arcanist" preset with the Arbiter, Stormcaller, and Warlock soul trees.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Tanking
    533 words
  • WildStar – Are You Sure It Gets Better?. 2014-05-14. According to my site statistics, I should be writing about ArcheAge and nothing but ArcheAge. But since I’m no slave to the SEO system, I’m going to write about WildStar instead. (Because everyone else is.) The skinniest hero in the land. I’ve already pre-ordered, but lately I’ve been forcing myself to play in the open beta anyway. I use the word “forcing” deliberately, because I’m having a hard time getting excited about this game.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    559 words
  • Black Gold Online Closed Beta Impressions. 2014-05-21. I happened to get a closed beta key for Black Gold Online from an MMORPG.com giveaway (I think) a while back. I was super excited, because I thought I was getting a Black Desert key. But alas, Black Gold is not Black Desert, so I forgot about it until I tried it out in a fit of boredom over the weekend. It seems that there is no NDA so I guess it’s safe for me to post this.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    566 words

2014-08

  • Assassin’s Creed 3 Story Finished. 2014-08-04. Taking a small break from MMORPGs for a bit and getting back to Steam. I went back to Assassin’s Creed 3 because I wanted to finish the main story before I considered getting any of the newer installments in Steam sales. (I don’t yet have Black Flag and I see now there is a new one coming out soon.) I resumed the AC3 story about halfway through and powered through to the end, largely ignoring all of the side missions and sandboxy elements.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    495 words
  • The Witcher 2: Skip the Tutorial. 2014-08-18. It seems like years ago that I bought The Witcher 1 & 2 in one of those deep-discount Steam sales. I spent about 15 minutes playing The Witcher 1 (enough time to watch the opening movie and then get to where I could feel the intense pain of the combat controls), and then never played it again. Lately I’ve started to see some buzz about The Witcher 3, and I see that it’s now available for pre-order on Steam.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    523 words
  • Neverwinter – Scourge Warlock First Impression. 2014-08-21. By accident I noticed that Neverwinter released a new update called Tyranny of Dragons, in which they added the very cool-sounding new class Scourge Warlock. In terms of gameplay, however, I found the SW a little on the “meh” side. I feel like they might have borrowed a lot from the Control Wizard because it felt very similar to me. (My first level-cap character was a CW.) The main attack is the same kind of triple-bolt spell that the CW uses.
    • Classes
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    363 words
  • Far Cry 3. 2014-08-30. Continuing my journey through cutting edge games from two years ago (also games I’ve already paid for), I’m finally playing Far Cry 3, previously purchased in a Steam sale. I enjoyed the first Far Cry. Well, I say that now, but when I look back on what I wrote about it in 2009, apparently I only thought it was “okay.” I picked up FarCry from Steam for $9.99 a couple weeks ago.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    810 words

2014-09

  • Landmark’s Combat Update. 2014-09-08. Is something I know very little about. I re-downloaded the game and eagerly logged in. Combat was here! Finally something to do besides dig up ore! My claim was long since gone, which was fine because it had nothing on it except some crafting tables. I ran to the crystal hub thingy in the middle of the map-an object that I still don’t know what to call-and found the right table to craft a weapon.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    499 words
  • Thoughts on Mr. Mercedes. 2014-09-15. A while back I decided to cancel my Audible.com subscription, because my income was decreasing. I had somewhere around eight credits saved up that I had to use before I could cancel, so I picked up a bunch of random audiobooks. One of them was Mr. Mercedes by Stephen King. I pretty much like anything that Stephen King writes, so it’s no surprise that I liked it. But it was the first time I had ever listened to Stephen King read as an audiobook.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    236 words

2014-10

  • Rift – Nightmare Tide. 2014-10-31. I’ve been playing nothing but Rift since the expansion came out.* If you even remotely like the game, you should definitely check out Nightmare Tide. I’m a little biased though, since I think Rift is the best themepark MMO out there, far surpassing WoW in every possible way. (Except in the amount of available content and player population.) A nice vista in Goboro Reef. Good things about Nightmare Tide: Ridiculously Plentiful Gathering Nodes.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    975 words

2014-11

  • Rift – Nightmare Judgments. 2014-11-22. One thing I’ve noticed in Rift’s Nightmare Tide is more pressure to spend money. I don’t mean in terms of a sales pitch; I mean in terms of making the game less tedious. Losing my head over Nightmare Tide! (Not really, it's a Halloween costume mask.) For example, two new things in Nightmare tide are Earring Slots and the Planewalker “attunement” which allows you to wear some of the new gear.
    • MMORPG
    • Opinion
    • Reviews
    824 words

2015-01

  • Elite: Dangerous Opinions and Advice. 2015-01-10. Elite: Dangerous is a neat game, however right now I see it mostly as a single-player game. I play it entirely in the “Solo” mode, and I don’t feel like I’m missing anything without other people around. Thus I wouldn’t consider it a contender for 2014’s MMO of the year, despite how bad the other choices were. From what I can surmise, there are only two possible outcomes that can happen if you encounter another person: Either they can a) ignore you or b) try to shoot you down.
    • Advice
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    931 words
  • Planetside 2 – First, Second, and Third Impressions. 2015-01-30. This is unrelated to MMOs (sort of ), but I’ve been on a Quake CTF nostalgia trip for a while, so I went looking for a modern AAA shooter that would provide the same sort of team-based competitive spirit. I don’t know if such a game still exists, but my first candidate for testing was Planetside 2, a game which I haven’t played before. (Well, that’s not entirely true-I installed it sometime around when it first came out, played it for about 30 seconds-enough to see myself airdropped into a chaotic mess-and then decided it wasn’t for me.
    • Reviews
    • Shooter
    2,053 words

2015-02

  • How To Survive (A Game, Not A Guide). 2015-02-09. In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. Perhaps I was inspired by the news that H1Z1 rushed itself out the door too soon came to Steam Early Access. I already had TUG and Don’t Starve, but they never really grabbed me. (I keep hoping TUG will improve.) I have a bunch of these kinds of games on my Steam wishlist, but as I’m sure you know, 99% of them are still Early Access (including TUG), so I tried to find something else.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    • Survival
    671 words
  • The Forest, A Visual Feast. 2015-02-11. In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. I’ve been intrigued by The Forest ever since I first saw it show up on Steam, but I generally try to resist buying Early Access games, particularly from unknown sources. Until one day when I was bored out of my mind with my current games and wanted to look at something new. And hey, it was only $15.
    • Pre-Release
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    756 words
  • State of Decay Is A-OK. 2015-02-17. In January, I went through a phase where I wanted to play some survival-type games. The first game I pulled out was State of Decay, which I already had on Steam. I’m probably the last person to discover this, but State of Decay is pretty cool. I had played it before, somewhere back when it first came to the PC I think, but it didn’t really “click” with me the first time.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    • Survival
    282 words

2015-03

  • Banished From MMOs For A Bit. 2015-03-02. Most of my time lately has been spent playing Banished, which is a city builder game that I picked up on a Steam sale for $6. This might be the best $6 I’ve ever spent on a game. I love this game. Historically, I am terrible at city builder games and usually give up on them quickly because it’s no fun to watch people starve to death. (That’s how my cities usually end up.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    294 words
  • ESO Unlimited Arrives. 2015-03-18. ESO Unchained or Unlimited or whatever looks pretty good to me. I patched up and logged in for a few minutes to check it out. Six pets seems like a rather small selection. The cash shop is very unobtrusive-about the same as GW2-but it’s also very empty… I didn’t see anything I might be tempted to buy, like for example, the only thing I really wanted-more inventory space. Also, the 800 crowns I was given wasn’t enough to buy much of anything but health potions or maybe a pet.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    125 words

2015-06

  • Besiege – Failing Is Fun. 2015-06-15. I found a hilarious physics/building game in the Steam summer sale… Besiege. There’s something about it that just makes me laugh and laugh. It’s pretty unique in that the most fun part of the game is failing. The more spectacular the failure, the more fun it is. It’s still early access but I give it a thumbs up. I’ll be honest, in the following videos, I was more concerned about running over the chickens than anything else.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    77 words

2015-07

  • Skyforge 2-Hour Scorecard. 2015-07-19. I spent a few hours with Skyforge. I didn’t buy any of the founder’s packs or anything so this is the totally free-to-play experience. Business casual is the way to go in Skyforge. Character Creation: Okay Lore: Meh Dialog: Meh Visuals: Good Performance: Good Sound: Okay Music: Meh Voice Acting: Okay UI: Fantastic Customization Settings: Minimal Ads: Subtle, except for the launch window Free-to-play disadvantages: Less “sparks” so I guess you advance slower Classes: Okay (3 to pick from initially) Combat Style: Action, Button Mashing Difficulty: Surprisingly challenging for a game these days Progression Style: Skill Tree, Gear Upgrades Crafting: Unknown Endgame: I doubt I’ll ever see it World: Small zones and instances that you travel to from a hub, like Neverwinter Costumes: Plentiful Appearance: Change anything at will (only the first one is free) Things that stood out:
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    254 words

2015-08

  • YouTube Gaming Or Something Like It. 2015-08-04. I don’t stream a lot but I like YouTube Gaming so far. Twitch is okay, and Hitbox is okay, but I almost always see a lot of stuttering, lag, and painful dropouts, both when I stream and when I watch other streams. With YouTube Gaming I’m just going to go out on a limb here and guess that they’re going to have the best possible video streaming technology working behind the scenes.
    • Pre-Release
    • Reviews
    • Streaming
    444 words
  • Project Gorgon – The New Black?. 2015-08-15. About a year ago I installed Project Gorgon and played around in the starter cave. It was mildly interesting but of course it wasn’t finished, the graphics were terrible, and there are so many other things to play. So I put it away again, filing it in the back of my mind. Now suddenly everyone is talking about Project Gorgon. And by everyone I mean MassivelyOP which apparently has turned into the all-Gorgon-all-the-time site.
    • MMORPG
    • Pre-Release
    • Reviews
    418 words

2015-11

  • ARK – Um It’s Got Issues. 2015-11-02. Here’s my advice: Do not buy ARK right now. At least, don’t buy it with any expectation of actually playing it. Because on my 12GB system it runs out of memory and crashes. If you run the “low memory” 4GB version it doesn’t crash, but it runs horribly slow. There is a good two minutes of loading screen to wait through before geting into the game (literally-I timed it). Then in order to get it to run at an acceptable frame rate (which to me is a rock-solid 60 fps, but I suppose in a pinch 30-40 fps will do) you have to disable almost every graphical setting, and then the game is painful to look at.
    • Pre-Release
    • Reviews
    • Survival
    529 words
  • Fallout 4 – Better Than Expected. 2015-11-12. I must confess that I did not like Fallout 3 and New Vegas as much as everyone else did. To me, Fallout 3 was exactly the same game as Oblivion, which I had already played enough to be tired of it. So after I finished the main Fallout 3 story, I was done with it. (Steam reports that I played some crazy number of hours, but that was only because I left it running 24/7 on a secondary PC.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    467 words

2015-12

  • Trying Betrayer. 2015-12-09. Here’s a video I recorded in October of the first hour of a game called Betrayer. It’s a first-person exploration/mystery sort of game set in the time period of Jamestown. It’s a neat-looking game, and I liked the idea of it, but I never finished it because I thought the pacing was a bit too slow.
    • Reviews
    • Videos
    56 words
  • Listmas 2015: Recent Audible Listens. 2015-12-23. I’m sort of trying to merge this and my horribly neglected writing blog together. Maybe. I don’t know. My “branding” is all messed up right now. Also I haven’t written much lately. Anyway, one of the things I tried to do on the writing blog every now and then was talk about books I’d read lately and what I learned about writing from them. So that’s what this post is.
    • Reviews
    • Writing
    1,338 words

2016-01

  • ARK – Another Chance In The New Year. 2016-01-04. With the start of the new year, I decided to give ARK: Survival Evolved another chance. So many people rave about this game, in streams, podcasts, and blogs. I had a lot of bad feelings to overcome, but I figured it was possible that I was the one who was wrong about it. So on January 1st, I fired up a single player game, determined to play until I “got it.
    • Gaming
    • Reviews
    • Survival
    807 words
  • Looking At Unity 5 and Unreal 4. 2016-01-23. (I totally stole this image from depaul.edu.) One weekend I got the idea that it would be simple for me to write a hit video game, make tons of money, and leave my day job*. I’ve dabbled at writing games now and then since I first learned programming back in the 80s, so this is nothing new (I have yet to actually complete a game, though). Anyway, I started reading up on popular 3D game engines.
    • Development
    • Reviews
    817 words

2016-03

  • Black Desert Online. 2016-03-11. TLDR; I’m enjoying Black Desert Online, and I think it’s worth $30. If you like crafting, it’s well worth $30. It’s not your grandfather’s MMORPG, though, and it takes some time to get used to it. I mentioned on Twitter that I didn’t understand why people were drawn to The Division, and it occurred to me that I should explain why I’m drawn to Black Desert Online, in case anyone is looking at the BDO hype and scratching their heads.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,190 words

2016-07

  • Snap Judgment – Riders of Icarus. 2016-07-11. Welcome to another installment of Snap Judgment, where I fully evaluate every nuance of a game after playing it for less than an hour. I downloaded and installed the latest malware … I mean, Asian import MMORPG … Riders of Icarus. I kid, I kid. But it asked me to reboot to finish the installation, which makes me wonder just what kind of rootkit it put on my system. Not to mention the extremely suspicious Nexon anti-cheat monitoring software that runs in the background.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Snap Judgment
    254 words

2016-08

  • Doom Impressions. 2016-08-12. I bought Doom when it was half off on Steam a while back and have been playing it here and there. I’m not quite sure what to make of it. On the positive side, it’s a beautiful game, and it runs beautifully on my new gaming PC. It’s suitably fast and violent and hard on Ultra Violence. The chainsaw had me giggling like a kid when I found it. (Remember how the world thought the original Doom was over-the-top gruesome?
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    311 words
  • Legion Pre-Expansion Invasions Are Fun. 2016-08-15. I had fun with the WoW Zone Events aka. Invasions over the weekend. But first, the biggest news from my weekend was that I finally moved all my furniture from the old rental house into my new house. I achieved my goal of picking the hottest day of the entire year to move. I believe it was upwards of 95 degrees Farenheit with a heat index of 105. (Google tells me that’s 35 and 40.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    845 words
  • ShareX For Uploading Screenshots. 2016-08-29. A while back I asked on Twitter if there was a way to automatically upload screenshots taken from games to some kind of online repository: Is there a tool/app/process that makes it easy (ie. automatic) to upload my game screenshots to some cloud repository? — Endgame Viable (@endgameviable) August 24, 2016 It turns out that ShareX has this capability. You can’t actually take the screenshots using ShareX, because it doesn’t support full screen applications, but it has a feature where it will watch certain folders and upload any new files to wherever you want.
    • Advice
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    215 words
  • Early Legion Impressions. 2016-08-31. So far Legion is … well, just like playing WoW. On your mark, get set, … I only played for about an hour and a half last night. I stopped right after I got my Mage Artifact staff Ebonchill. Obviously I haven’t seen all there is to see in Legion, but it starts out with … quests. Just like you’ve done in WoW for the last 50 bazillion years. As yet there is no emergent new gameplay to be seen, which makes it a bit less interesting for me than the pre-expansion Invasions.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    801 words

2016-09

  • WoW Legion, Last Impressions. 2016-09-12. In this post I will share my thoughts on the new features found in Legion. This will probably be the last time I talk about WoW since, barring a last minute change of heart, I’m planning to let my subscription end today, the 12th. A brief character status update: In case you’re wondering, the brick wall hits in Suramar, the fifth zone. That’s where the grind begins and you’ll start wondering why you ever came back to WoW.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Status
    2,200 words

2017-04

  • Mass Effect 1 Replayed (Spoilers). 2017-04-03. I’m writing this draft on March 21, launch day for Mass Effect: Andromeda. I probably won’t post this until much later, because I’m very paranoid about exposing myself to Mass Effect story spoilers right now, and my vivid imagination sees everyone running to the comments to post their Andromeda thoughts even though this post has nothing to do with Andromeda. Not only do I not want to hear about Andromeda, but I also don’t want to hear about Mass Effect 2 and 3.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,572 words
  • Mass Effect Andromeda Impressions. 2017-04-04. No razors in the future. There are no story spoilers below, but I totally understand if you’re on complete blackout and want to skip. (I was, and did, and still do.) I finished the first three Mass Effect games and finally started Andromeda. First, if you’re like me and were way behind on the series, there is no connection between the original trilogy and Andromeda. Much to my chagrin, there is no need to play the first three or know anything about the previous story.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    982 words
  • Mass Effect 2 Replayed (Spoilers). 2017-04-06. Continuing with Mass Effect week… I’m writing this Mass Effect 2 “review” on Tuesday, March 28th. I finished ME2 on Saturday. It took 31 hours, according to ManicTime, which is actually a lot less than I expected. I thought ME2 was huge compared to the first one and would take at least twice as long, but apparently it only felt bigger. There were definitely more cut scenes to watch in ME2.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,187 words
  • Mass Effect 3 Halfway Point (Spoilers). 2017-04-07. Mass Effect week continues… I don’t know how far into Mass Effect 3 I’ve gotten at this writing (March 29th), but I’ve just gotten the Quarrians on board the Normandy. Percentage-wise, I have no idea where that is in the game. I’m just guessing it’s the half-way point. I have some initial impressions which I’ll write down, and as usual, I’ll follow it up with another post when I finish the game.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,849 words
  • Mass Effect 3 Finished (Spoilers). 2017-04-14. Whoops. Forgot to publish this dramatic conclusion to Mass Effect week. I finished Mass Effect 3 on Friday night, March 31st, completing my play through of the original trilogy. I spent a total of 42 hours playing it, but I restarted it twice so you can probably throw 6 or 7 hours away. (And if you’re keeping tracking of days and hours played, yes I played these games a ton in March.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,367 words
  • Mass Effect Andromeda – 50 Hours In. 2017-04-15. Possibly some spoilers below if you haven’t reached Kadara. So this game has pretty much taken over my life, as I figured it would. Honestly I think this is why I put off playing Mass Effect 3 for so long. These Bioware games are really hazardous to your health. :) The first three games took over my life, too, but I played them more quickly than I might have at the time they came out.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,395 words
  • Rogue One (Spoilers). 2017-04-29. I did not see Rogue One in the theater. I regretted that decision for a day or two, then felt good about it. I decided that it was “fan fiction”-a term I don’t use in a particularly positive sense. (Sorry superfans.) I waited until it came to FIOS VOD. Then I forgot about it. Then I remembered it. I went into the movie with very low expectations. I wasn’t expecting “real” Star Wars.
    • Media
    • Musings
    • Reviews
    550 words

2017-05

  • Mass Effect Andromeda Halfway (Spoilers). 2017-05-03. This post is going to be a brain dump of my thoughts about the Mass Effect Andromeda story at what I’m guessing is around the halfway point. Spoilers, obviously, if you haven’t gotten to and completed Kadara in the Priority missions. I’ll wait until I finish the game before posting this, in case anyone feels compelled to jump into the comments and explain how everything turns out. Yes, that means I’ve finished the game as I’m posting this.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    2,074 words
  • Mass Effect Andromeda Completed (Spoilers). 2017-05-04. Not a Movie Night picture! Instead a random frame of video from early in the game. I declared myself finished with Mass Effect Andromeda on Saturday, April 29. I finished the Priority missions and basically everything else except the sillier busy work under the Tasks section. ManicTime shows that I played for 99 hours. I reached level 59 in the end, and the save page showed I completed 92% of the game.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    3,078 words
  • Snap Judgment – Quake Champions (Open Beta). 2017-05-15. I don’t know how many people know this, but I used to play a lot of Quake CTF with Crayola Clan in the 1990s. Back then, “eSports” were community-run tournaments with no stakes and no prizes and barely any organization. We played mostly NetQuake, QuakeWorld, and Quake 2. We played a little bit of Quake 3 Arena but I personally never liked it and by then gaming started to get commercial with sponsors and cash prizes and it was more work than fun and it was all too stressful to deal with.
    • Reviews
    • Shooter
    • Snap Judgment
    707 words
  • SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson. 2017-05-31. I’m back with another book report. This time it’s SEVENEVES by Neal Stephenson (I have to look up the proper spelling of his name every single time), which I read sometime last year. (Hey, at least I’m writing this post this year!) In my Cryptonomicon review, I said Neal Stephenson is hit-or-miss with me, but this time he delivered a solid hit. I loved this book. It’s about the moon breaking up and destroying the world, and the steps taken to save the human race.
    • Media
    • Reviews
    730 words

2017-06

  • Prince of Thorns by Mark Lawrence. 2017-06-09. I bought Prince of Thorns back when it was relatively new on the market (a few years ago?). I read the first chapter, didn’t particularly care for it, put it away, and moved on to something else. Recently I found it again in my Kindle library after I wrote that bit about the grimdark genre, remembered that I’d only read a single chapter, and decided maybe I didn’t give it a fair shot.
    • Media
    • Reviews
    853 words
  • Stormblood Very First Impressions. 2017-06-17. Glad I got the memo about the dress code here. It’s here! Well, if you pre-ordered. Upon first logging into Stormblood, I was greeted by this very prominent window explaining the new Song Gauge for the Bard job. “Here we go,” I thought, sighing heavily. This was exactly what I was afraid of: Huge changes to my class that will require mental energy and work to learn. The FFXIV equivalent of a talent point respec.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,207 words

2017-08

  • The Mist (2017). 2017-08-26. When I heard that there was a new version of Stephen King’s The Mist available to watch, I ran to my nearest cable box and found the ten episodes of season one buried in Spike TV’s video on demand on FIOS. The Mist has always been one of my favorite Stephen King stories. It was a novella at the beginning of the collection Skeleton Crew. (Survivor Type is the other memorable story from that book.
    • Media
    • Musings
    • Reviews
    600 words

2017-09

  • Line 6 Spider V 30 Practice Amp. 2017-09-15. I bought a new electric guitar amp! Finally. I haven’t had one since around 2001. It arrived from Amazon yesterday. I settled on the Line 6 Spider V 30 for $200. It’s a little 30 watt practice amp. I wanted something I could simply turn on and go, as opposed to something like RockSmith on Steam which takes about an hour to load and has that dreaded input delay. I was undecided between the Spider and a Fender Champion 40 for the longest time.
    • Music
    • Reviews
    603 words
  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 1, Out of the Shadows. 2017-09-25. I bought the Path of Fire expansion on Friday morning, about four hours before launch time. Not that it matters, but I hope that my purchase was late enough that it doesn’t “count” in the video game industry’s pre-order shenanigans. It was early enough that I got the bonuses, though. (Not that I’ll ever use them.) When I logged in around 11:30, I realized that I had not yet started the Living Story Season 3, and I remembered that I had planned to finish that before going into Path of Fire.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    691 words

2017-10

  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 2, Rising Flames. 2017-10-04. Bhagpuss recommended that I skip the Living World Season 3* and go right into Path of Fire, which by all accounts is far superior, but I’m stubbornly persisting in my efforts to complete the whole season first. Partly it’s because I’ve been recording this adventure, so I’ll have videos of it all. And partly it’s because I want to experience it “as it was intended.” I see a lot of people using their new mounts to get to places which seems like cheating.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    544 words
  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 3, A Crack in the Ice. 2017-10-06. Episode 3 of the Living World Season 3 takes us to Bitterfrost Frontier, another new map north of Frostgorge Sound. The episode begins with some “challenges” in Tarir to train baby dragon Aurene how to be a good dragon. I cringed at first but it turned out the challenges were fairly benign, if somewhat tedious. It seemed like filler material to extend the length of the content, to be honest.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    311 words
  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 4, The Head of the Snake. 2017-10-08. Episode 4 is entitled The Head of the Snake, and by the end, I was hoping someone would cut off my head to put me out of my misery. It began innocently enough, with a party at Divinity’s Reach with Queen Jennah. It reminded me of another story instance I vaguely remember from the distant past, perhaps in another Living Story, where you had to walk around talking to party guests.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,226 words
  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 5, Flashpoint. 2017-10-09. For the record, I’ve finished Living World Season 3 and started into Path of Fire. As of Monday morning, I’ve just gotten to the second map, Desert Highlands. It’s a far better expansion than Heart of Thorns already, although I just ran into a story gate that isn’t obvious how to open. Now back to the past… Living World Season 3, Episode 5, Flashpoint, starts off with a trip to Taimi’s lab, where we find Kasmeer chastising us for not inviting her to join Dragon’s Watch yet.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,038 words
  • GW2 – Season 3, Episode 6, One Path Ends. 2017-10-14. Apologies for the delay, but my SSD drive failed and caused all manner of random crashing issues for four days. PC problems have a way of pushing all other concerns to the background. Once I finally determined it was the SSD (not so easy, since all tests indicated it was perfectly fine), I installed an older, smaller SSD from an old laptop and reinstalled Windows, so I’ve now got a blank new machine for all intents and purposes.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    738 words
  • FFXIV – 4.1, The Legend Returns. 2017-10-19. I dragged myself away from Guild Wars 2 for a little while to play through the FFXIV 4.1 Main Scenario Quest, “The Legend Returns.” I’m so happy to be caught up with FFXIV and be in a position to play these patches when they come out, instead of rushing to catch up later. I didn’t even have to get any new gear. This is probably the first time I’ve ever been so caught up in any game.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    821 words
  • FFXIV – 4.1 Features. 2017-10-21. Last time I only talked about the story, but this time I want to talk about some of the new features in Patch 4.1. Royal City of Rabanastre The new Rabanastre Raid is typical for an alliance raid. Lots of mechanics and most of them try to kill you. By now I’ve learned that it’s pointless to try to watch a guide beforehand for these things, so I just jumped in totally blind.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,223 words

2017-11

  • Snap Judgment – Necropolis (Brutal Edition). 2017-11-03. Not surprisingly, there was a Steam sale for Halloween, and one of the games that’s been on my wish list for a long time was really cheap: Necropolis. They apparently made some changes from the original launch version and now call it the “Brutal Edition.” I didn’t want to buy it, because even though it was only $4.49, I didn’t want to send the signal that it was “okay” to release an incomplete buggy game at launch and then fix it later.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    883 words

2017-12

  • Snap Judgment – Kritika Online. 2017-12-08. I alluded to trying out Kritika Online in my last post, so I thought I would write a bit about it. For one thing, I want to have a post to link to later in the year for my “Game/MMORPG of the Year” post, and for another thing, Friday is looming, and I don’t have anything to post yet. I downloaded and played Kritika on November 22nd, the day before Thanksgiving.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Snap Judgment
    914 words
  • Snap Judgment – Warframe. 2017-12-13. I’m not entirely sure how to categorize a post about Warframe. It’s usually covered by the MMORPG press but after only a few minutes with it I can say it’s obviously not an MMORPG. Perhaps I finally need to add that “MMO” category to my blog, for discussing what are effectively little more than regular old multiplayer games. I’ve never heard anyone say they didn’t like Warframe. In fact I’ve heard a lot of “positive buzz” about Warframe.
    • MMO
    • Reviews
    2,239 words
  • The Last Jedi (Spoilers). 2017-12-18. This is a post about The Last Jedi, so don’t read any further until you’ve seen the movie. I’ll give you some blank lines to click away. Note: I added an update way at the bottom of this post. I’ll give you a few more blank lines just in case you accidentally flick your eyes down lower on the page. Okay, get ready. Brace yourselves. This is going to change everything you’ve ever known about everything, and your life will never be the same.
    • Media
    • Reviews
    3,889 words
  • Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition. 2017-12-27. I allowed myself to buy one game in the Steam Winter Sale, which was Divinity: Original Sin. Then, a few hours later, I bought the Skyrim Special Edition, because I saw everyone on Twitter talking about it which reminded me that I wanted to buy that too and, hey, what a coincidence, it was on sale. But this post is about Divinity: Original Sin. It’s an isometric, turn-based strategy RPG which can trace its ancestry back to games like Baldur’s Gate (the earliest example of this kind that I can think).
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    901 words
  • Endgame Viable Awards 2017. 2017-12-29. It’s time once against for the prestigious Endgame Viable Awards for 2017, posted a bit early because the 31st is a Sunday. Hopefully I won’t play any new games over the weekend to skew these results. 2016 Awards 2015 Awards I give out three awards: Game of the Year, MMORPG of the Year, and MMORPG Expansion of the Year. In my warped worldview “Game of the Year” sort of implies Steam game of the year and excludes traditional MMORPGs.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    760 words

2018-01

  • ARK Revisited Two Years Later. 2018-01-15. There is a wide variety of interesting sky effects, too. I haven’t played ARK much since early 2016, so I decided to re-download it and give it another look. The game finally “launched” last year, after all. Presumably all of the problems I had with the game are now fixed. Well, not exactly. Although to be fair I really enjoyed it before, too. I just ran out of challenge. I got to a point where I could go to any biome and survive, and kill any dinosaur in my path, and that is pretty much “winning” the game.
    • Reviews
    • Survival
    1,026 words
  • The Authorities by Scott Meyers (Audiobook). 2018-01-26. Published by Rocket Hat Industries. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by … Scott Meyer? (Presumably the author paid Luke Daniels to make the audiobook.) Sinclair Rutherford is a young Seattle cop with a taste for the finer things. Doing menial tasks and getting hassled by superiors he doesn’t respect are definitely not “finer things.” Good police work and bad luck lead him to crack a case that changes quickly from a career-making break into a high-profile humiliation when footage of his pursuit of the suspect—wildly inappropriate murder weapon in hand—becomes an Internet sensation.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    316 words
  • The Land: Founding by Aleron Kong (Audiobook). 2018-01-26. The Land: Founding: A LitRPG Saga: Chaos Seeds, Book 1 by Aleron Kong Self-published. Read by Nick Podehl. Produced by Tamori Publications LLC. Tricked into a world of banished gods, demons, goblins, sprites and magic, Richter must learn to meet the perils of The Land and begin to forge his own kingdom. Actions have consequences across The Land, with powerful creatures and factions now hell-bent on Richter’s destruction. This is definitely a winner for the largest number of sub-titles within one title.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    302 words
  • Pandemic: The Extinction Files by A. G. Riddle (Audiobook). 2018-01-26. Pandemic: The Extinction Files, Book 1 by A. G. Riddle Published by Riddle, Inc. Read by Edoardo Ballerini. Produced by Audible Studios. In Africa, a mysterious outbreak spreads quickly. Teams from the CDC and WHO respond, but they soon learn that there is more to the epidemic than they believed. It may be the beginning of a global experiment-an event that will change the human race forever. Another one where I have no idea how or why this book got into my Audible library.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    1,083 words
  • Gardens of the Moon by Steven Erikson (Audiobook). 2018-01-27. Gardens of the Moon: The Malazan Book of the Fallen, Book 1 by Steven Erikson Published by Tor Books. Read by Ralph Lister. Produced by Brilliance Audio. The Malazan Empire simmers with discontent, bled dry by interminable warfare, bitter infighting and bloody confrontations with the formidable Anomander Rake and his Tiste Andii, ancient and implacable sorcerers. Even the imperial legions, long inured to the bloodshed, yearn for some respite. Yet Empress Laseen’s rule remains absolute, enforced by her dread Claw assassins.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    461 words
  • The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (Audiobook). 2018-01-27. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu (translated by Ken Liu) Published by Tor Books. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Macmillon Audio. I got this a long time ago because it won the Hugo in 2015, but I only just got around to it in my January 2018 listening binge. Set against the backdrop of China’s Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    492 words

2018-03

  • Besieged by Kevin Hearne (Audiobook). 2018-03-30. Published by Del Rey. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Random House Audio. The ancient gods are alive and well in the modern world in this hilarious, action-packed collection of original short stories featuring Atticus O’Sullivan, the handsome, tattooed, 2,000-year-old Irishman with extraordinary magic powers from Kevin Hearne’s New York Times best-selling Iron Druid Chronicles. Listen time: 8 hours, 46 minutes, between 1/26/2018 and sometime in February or March? I finished listening to this a while ago, but forgot to write about it.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    229 words

2018-04

  • Kingdom Come: Deliverance Completed. 2018-04-09. I’ve been holding off on writing about Kingdom Come: Deliverance until I was done, but finally, after 86.7 hours according to the save game file, and 108 hours according to ManicTime, between February 20 and this past weekend, April 8, I finished the game. An interior in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Spectacular scenery and lighting is common. I say “finished,” but what I mean is that I reached the The End screen, the point at which the developers believe your characters’ story has ended.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    2,436 words

2018-05

  • The First Time I Played Fortnite Battle Royale. 2018-05-07. Fortnite was in the news last week. The real news, that is, not just the MMO news. Both The New York Times and The Guardian mentioned it. But I’m not here to talk about those articles. They just reminded me of those heady days when I played Fortnite Battle Royale myself. Heady day, I mean. Because I only played for one day. One match, in fact, on that one day.* It didn’t click with me.
    • MMO
    • Reviews
    1,846 words
  • Fortnite, The Followup. 2018-05-09. After writing my last post on Fortnite, I played over a dozen more games and now I have a somewhat more nuanced opinion about it. To respond a little bit to Jeromai’s comment, I think I get it now. Kind of. At least I have some understanding of the appeal of the battle royale genre in general and Fortnite in particular. Two major things clicked into place, which I’ll detail below.
    • MMO
    • Reviews
    2,426 words
  • Ryse: Son of Rome. 2018-05-14. You play Marius, a Roman soldier with a gruff Sean Bean-style accent. The main reason to play Ryse: Son of Rome is because you bought it for $7 in a Steam sale three years ago, and you’re bored of everything else and desperate for something-anything-new and interesting to play. (Without the bother and expense of spending $60+ on actual new games.) That being said, it’s actually not a bad game.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    1,244 words
  • DDO Likes and Dislikes. 2018-05-21. I played a few more hours of Dungeons and Dragons Online over the weekend, continuing to start over from scratch since I couldn’t get to my previous characters after the switchover to Standing Stone Game. It’s kind of a relaxing game for me right now because it requires no thought or effort. I just click, click, click and look at the pretty pictures on the screen as they go by.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    764 words
  • Scourged by Kevin Hearne (2018, Audiobook). 2018-05-24. Published by Del Rey. Read by Luke Daniels. Produced by Random House Audio. Unchained from fate, the Norse gods Loki and Hel are ready to unleash Ragnarok, a.k.a. the Apocalypse, upon the earth. They’ve made allies on the darker side of many pantheons, and there’s a globe-spanning battle brewing that ancient Druid Atticus O’Sullivan will be hard-pressed to survive, much less win. Listen time: About 9 hours, 5/22-23. (At 120% speed.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    599 words
  • The Bear and the Nightingale (2017, Sample) by Katherine Arden. 2018-05-25. Published by Del Rey. A magical debut novel for listeners of Naomi Novik’s Uprooted, Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus, and Neil Gaiman’s myth-rich fantasies, The Bear and the Nightingale spins an irresistible spell as it announces the arrival of a singular talent with a gorgeous voice. I have this idea that I will try to read a sample of a Kindle book every day or at least a few times a week for a while.
    • Books
    • Reviews
    566 words

2018-06

  • Dark Souls Remastered Edition. 2018-06-27. To the dismay of I’m sure most people on the Internet, I could write for days about how much Dark Souls pitches exactly into my wheelhouse as a game (mixed metaphor used intentionally because it’s funny), but I’ll try to keep this post focused on just what is different in the PC version of the Dark Souls Remastered edition. In short: There aren’t that many differences. But there are some.
    • Reviews
    1,368 words

2018-07

  • Demon’s Souls, Briefly. 2018-07-11. As I wait for my hands and fingers and thumbs to regenerate themselves, which is taking forever-frankly at this point I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be able to play an action game with a controller ever again-I thought I would try to injure my hands more by typing up a bit about Demon’s Souls. If nothing else, The Nexus has a lot more artistic style than Firelink Shrine. I’ve wanted to play Demon’s Souls ever since I played Dark Souls, three years ago.
    • Reviews
    • Videos
    978 words

2018-08

  • Diablo III for the First Time – Blaugust 12. 2018-08-12. The quest for non-WASD games to play using only the right hand on the mouse inevitably leads to either strategy games or isometric action RPGs. I’ve been through a number of strategy games already and I just can’t get into them right now. In the past, I’ve turned to Path of Exile in this kind of situation (because it’s free), but this time I decided to try out the trial version of Diablo III for the very first time.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    847 words

2018-09

2018-10

  • Snap Judgment – Bless Online. 2018-10-26. Bless Online launched on Steam for free the other day to exactly zero fanfare, as far as I can tell. Certainly nobody mentioned it on Twitter or in the blogosphere. I had to use my feed reader’s search feature to find the announcement on MassivelyOP. I’m a big fan of free trials when it comes to MMORPGs, and very rarely have I ever spent money on one without trying it out in some way first.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,025 words

2018-12

  • RimWorld First Impressions. 2018-12-10. The rest of the world has already played and finished with RimWorld, which I think has been in Early Access for quite some time, but I just started playing it. I happened to see Sean Sands from Gamers With Jobs playing it on their YouTube channel and thought it looked amazing, so I picked it up. I didn’t even wait for a sale, because I wanted to jump into it while I was interested.
    • Reviews
    • Single-Player
    • Steam
    354 words

2019-01

  • My Brief Dwarf Fortress Time. 2019-01-11. I saw @Stargrace and some other folks talking about Dwarf Fortress in the blogosphere and on Twitter. It’s that game that has that reputation for being the greatest game ever, and also the most impossible to actually play, that I’ve been hearing about for the last ten years. I think I first heard about it on the Gamers With Jobs podcast years and years ago. It dawned on me that I’ve always heard it’s a game that sounds similar to RimWorld, and I love RimWorld, so therefore by the transitive property I should also love Dwarf Fortress.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    1,749 words

2019-03

  • The Division 2 Open Beta. 2019-03-04. I tried the open beta this past weekend, because it was free. First, in marketing terms, it was a far better game demo than The Division 1 Open Beta, because you got into the action much faster, and didn’t spend your first 30 minutes just wandering around trying to find where to start. So in that sense, it’s much better. Other than that, there’s nothing much to report. It’s basically identical to the first game, except it takes more CPU and GPU power to run.
    • MMO
    • Reviews
    895 words
  • My First ChromeBook. 2019-03-16. My 2013 MacBook Air died recently. Don’t ask how, because it’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done with an expensive piece of electronic equipment. Okay, I dropped it in some water. It wasn’t in the water for more than a second, and only the keyboard part was submerged, but that was enough. It continued to work while wet, surprisingly enough, but I immediately turned it off to let it dry out, and it hasn’t powered back up since.
    • Musings
    • Reviews
    1,209 words

2019-04

  • Albion Online Impressions. 2019-04-16. I’ve had nothing at all to write about for the last month except Critical Role and Sekiro. I can’t write about Critical Role because a) most people don’t care and b) any discussion of it would basically be 100% spoilers and c) D&D isn’t really my thing anyway. I can’t write about Sekiro because there’s nothing much to say except “I’m playing Sekiro.” It’s not the kind of game that lends itself to a lot of discussion.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    1,195 words

2019-06

  • Amazon Gaming Chair. 2019-06-18. Someone on Twitter asked a question that gave me an extremely rare idea for a blog post that I haven’t already covered before: Gaming Chairs. So, my PC chair is on it's way out, and starting to get uncomfortablke. Anyone have any decent recommendations? I was thinking on looking at all those "gaming" chairs that are all the rage since I'd like a higher armrest and some comfort but…y'know, need suggestions — Marc Evans (@CommanderFlynn) <a href="https://twitter.
    • Musings
    • Reviews
    859 words
  • Bloodborne Impressions (PS4). 2019-06-28. Bloodborne: It’s fantastic. I’m not even finished yet and it clearly deserves to go into my entirely fictional All-Time Hall of Fame Game Library. That’s it. That’s my impressions. If you like this kind of game, it’s a must-play. (If you don’t, then you probably won’t like it, because it is the quintessential version of this kind of game, the template from which all others of this kind of game are poorly copied.
    • Consoles
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    1,767 words

2019-07

  • Newsflow RSS Reader for Windows 10. 2019-07-22. I’m trying a new RSS feed reader for this Blaugust. It’s a Windows-based reader called NewsFlow. The grid layout. I don't read posts like this but it was more colorful for the screenshot than just a list of text. It’s not that I particularly wanted to try a new reader, but InoReader, my web-based reader of choice, has implemented a limitation of 150 feeds in the free version. At the time they implemented the limitation, some time earlier this year, I had over 300 feeds in my list.
    • Musings
    • Reviews
    560 words
  • Steam Backlog Bonanza – Lord of the Rings: War in the North. 2019-07-30. Is Lord of the Rings still Lord of the Rings even when it’s not Lord of the Rings? That is the question I set out to answer when looking at Lord of the Rings: War in the North, from 2011. Actually, it was just the next game on my Steam backlog list. I paid $5 for it in a Steam sale some time back, and yesterday I looked at it for the first time.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    823 words

2019-08

  • Steam Backlog Bonanza – Majesty Gold HD [Blaugust 1]. 2019-08-01. It’s possible that I’ve played Majesty before, according to Steam, but I don’t remember it at all. From the description it sounded like it would be in the same vein as Dwarf Fortress or RimWorld, both games I’ve enjoyed, but it was a little bit different. Yesterday was this game’s (possibly second?) chance to impress me, according to the schedule. The map where you select the "quest" to embark upon.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    773 words
  • Steam Backlog Bonanza – Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3 [Blaugust 2]. 2019-08-02. I was looking forward to seeing this real-time strategy game from 2008 for the first time, and now that I have, I’m not even sure what to say about it. This might be the exact point in time when the games industry stopped and said, “Wait, I think we might have gone a little too far here.” Or should have said that, at least. First, let’s talk about the game part of the game.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    655 words
  • Hitman: Absolution – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 4]. 2019-08-04. Inside-Baseball Note Of Possible Worth To New Bloggers during Blaugust: I forgot you’re supposed to put the more important and unique search keywords at the beginning of a blog post’s title, and thus have I changed the format for my titles and introduced an inconsistency into my Blaugust posts. (At least, that was the last SEO advice I remember reading. It changes at least once a year.) Yesterday, Hitman: Absolution came up on the Big Board for the last day of the first week of my Blaugust Steam Backlog Bonanza.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    887 words
  • Brütal Legend – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 5]. 2019-08-05. For undoubtedly many of the same reasons as the rest of the United States, I wasn’t in a very good mood yesterday, so I called an audible and substituted Brütal Legend instead of the game I *planned* to play. I remember enjoying a demo of Brütal Legend on the PS3 years ago, so when I saw a PC version in a Steam sale for $5 in 2013 I had to get it.
    • Music
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    399 words
  • Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 6]. 2019-08-06. I bought 2010’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit for $8 in a Winter sale in 2014, and yesterday I installed and played it for the first time. I believe this was the ninth game in the Backlog Bonanza so far, with a depressingly huge list of games left to get through. Every frame of every race looks exactly like this. I’ve always liked racing games. They’re simpler games from a simpler time.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    848 words
  • NEO Scavenger – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 7]. 2019-08-07. Yesterday I played NEO Scavenger for the 10th day of the Steam Backlog Death March I mean Bonanza. It was released in 2014, and I bought it in 2016 for $5. (Coincidentally it’s actually on sale today for less than that.) Waking up from cryosleep. I goofed with this one. I have, in fact, played it before. But for some reason, Steam didn’t think I had. I know I played it because I found a video I recorded of it in 2016.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Survival
    • Videos
    750 words
  • Vortex: The Gateway – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 8]. 2019-08-08. Yesterday on the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I tried out a survival game from 2016 called Vortex: The Gateway which I got for $9 in a sale. (I think it’s probably a universal constant that all of the games in everyone’s backlog are games from a sale.) Surviving on an alien planet that looks like a nice camping trip. I only played for about 40 minutes because of a looming thunderstorm, but I tried the two different game modes.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    709 words
  • Kholat – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 9]. 2019-08-09. Yesterday I played a game called Kholat for the 12th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, which I got in 2016 for about $9. For some reason, most of the literature puts it in all caps so it’s KHOLAT! Not just Kholat. KHOLAT!!! One of the main attractions is Sean Bean voicing some of the narration. It’s a really interesting game, in a certain kind of way. It’s basically a walking simulator at its heart, but it’s a very intense walking simulator.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    839 words
  • Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 10]. 2019-08-10. Back in 2013 I bought Shadow Warrior for $10, and it came with a free “mini-game” called Viscera Cleanup Detail: Shadow Warrior. That’s what came up on the schedule for yesterday’s stream, so I finally tried it out. I had heard about Viscera Cleanup Detail before but I don’t own it. It’s a physics game where you take on the role of a janitor who “cleans up” after the heroic gamer has gone through and slaughtered all the bad guys, exploding them into gibs or whatever.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    554 words
  • Game Of Thrones – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 11]. 2019-08-11. Game Of Thrones, the game from 2012, not to be confused with all of the other Game Of Thrones games, was next on my Steam Backlog Bonanza. I bought it in 2013 in a $10 bundle with … I don’t even know what else. I played it for the first time yesterday. This is not a Nazgul, but in fact the character that you play at the beginning. It’s actually surprising that this game has been sitting here for almost six years.
    • Reviews
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    458 words
  • Apotheon – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 12]. 2019-08-12. Yesterday for the 15th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza I played a game called Apotheon, which I got in 2016 for $3.74. Hard to believe I’m into a third week of this. Anyway, I had been looking forward to this one because I knew it was a visually unusual game. I don’t normally like side-scrollers. The last one I remember enjoying was Pitfall on an Atari 2600. Actually I can’t think of any other side-scrollers I’ve played on any platform since then.
    • Reviews
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    388 words
  • Penumba: Requiem – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 13]. 2019-08-13. The Steam Backlog Bonanza marches on with a look at Penumbra: Requiem (and Black Plague). Penumbra came out in 2009 but I couldn’t find any records of when I bought it, so it must have been a long time ago. I had played Black Plague for about a half hour before, but yesterday was the first time I looked at Requiem. An obelisk puzzle in Penumbra: Requiem. Penumbra: Requiem is actually an “expansion” for Black Plague.
    • Reviews
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    • Streaming
    • Videos
    480 words
  • Geometry Wars 3 – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 14]. 2019-08-14. Yesterday’s new game for the Steam Backlog Bonanza was Geometry Wars 3: Dimensions Evolved. I think it’s an extended edition of the “Dimensions” release. It’s a pure arcade action game, of the kind you might find in an old-fashioned upright arcade cabinet. It's very difficult to get any sense of what the game is like from a still image. I don’t know why I bought this game, but it was only $1.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    545 words
  • Alan Wake’s American Nightmare – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 15]. 2019-08-15. For the halfway point of Blaugust, more-or-less, I played Alan Wake’s American Nightmare from my Steam backlog. I got it, along with Alan Wake, for $4 right before it was removed from Steam. Is it live or is it Memorex? The first game, Alan Wake, did not qualify for my Steam Backlog Bonanza because, according to Steam, I’ve played it for precisely one minute. I do not remember that minute. I’ve read numerous reports that Alan Wake was a great game, a must-buy game, particularly when it was about to be removed, but I haven’t played it, and apparently something about it made me recoil away from it.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    822 words
  • A Story About My Uncle – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 16]. 2019-08-16. The big wheel of life turned and landed on a game from my Steam backlog called A Story About My Uncle*. I got it in a 2016 sale for $2 and tried it for the first time yesterday. (It turns out that 2016 was the final year that I indiscriminately bought games on Steam.) It’s getting really hard to think of a different opening sentence and paragraph for each one of these things.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    933 words
  • Darksiders II – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 17]. 2019-08-17. Death knocked at the door yesterday, and I answered with a game called Darksiders II. Get it? Because Death is the protagonist in Darksiders II? Anyway, it was the 20th day in a row of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, and one of the most expensive games in the list so far. I got Darksiders II for $10 in 2013, and it’s taken six years to install and play the game.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    614 words
  • The Bureau: XCOM Declassified – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 18]. 2019-08-18. I was minding my own business when aliens descended from the sky, firing lasers from their circular flying saucers. Everything around me exploded. Otherworldly creatures crept out of the smoke and fire, approaching me like simians on all fours. Anyway the next game on the Steam Backlog Bonanza is The Bureau: XCOM Declassified. I bought it in a 2013 Steam sale for $4. Just an average green glowing energy field in a federal building.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    596 words
  • S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 19]. 2019-08-19. I found myself wandering a wasteland of wrecked tanker ships when a radiation storm blocked out the sun. In other words, I played S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat yesterday for the 22nd day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza. It’s one of those Eastern European shooters from 2010. I couldn’t find any record of when or how much I paid for it, which suggests I probably bought it soon after 2010 and it’s been sitting in my Steam backlog unplayed for nearly nine years.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    660 words
  • The Age of Decadence – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 20]. 2019-08-20. For the 23rd day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I played an indie game called The Age of Decadence, which I got in the 2016 Winter sale for $7.50. I think I mentioned this before, but the Winter sale of 2016 was the last time that I splurged on Steam games just because they were on sale. The outdoor isometric view, which is actually not seen very much. I don’t remember why I bought this game.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    628 words
  • Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (Enhanced Edition) – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 21]. 2019-08-21. I was in a funk yesterday so it would have been a great day to discover a fun new game. Unfortunately, Gothic 3: Forsaken Gods (Enhanced Edition) was up next on the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I got it as part of a “Gothic Complete Pack” for $7.50. Now I didn’t realize this until afterward, but Forsaken Gods is actually an expansion or addon to the base game of Gothic 3. Steam tells me I’ve played the base game of Gothic 3 for 12 minutes, so technically I can’t say that I haven’t played it.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    441 words
  • Crysis 2 Maximum Edition – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 22]. 2019-08-22. Ladies and gentlemen, there is nothing up my sleeve, there are no wires or electronic devices of any kind. That’s because I played Crysis 2 Maximum Edition yesterday for the 25th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza. And I’ve been watching episodes of Penn & Teller’s Fool Us as well. The mean streets of New York, sometime in the near-future. I bought Crysis 2 for $10 back in 2013. I already had Crysis 1, but I only played it for about 4 hours.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    475 words
  • Max Payne 3 – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 23]. 2019-08-23. 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.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    1,250 words
  • Tree of Savior – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 24]. 2019-08-24. 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.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    821 words
  • Titan Souls – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 25]. 2019-08-25. 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.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    1,044 words
  • Enclave – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 26]. 2019-08-26. 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.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    618 words
  • Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 27]. 2019-08-27. 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.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
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    627 words
  • Never Alone – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 28]. 2019-08-28. 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).
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    753 words
  • Remember Me – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 29]. 2019-08-29. Two great games in a row! Yesterday I played a cyberpunk action game called Remember Me for the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I got it in the 2015 Winter sale for $6. I really enjoyed it. I liked it so much I lost track of time, and played for nearly two hours. It’s an “action movie” kind of a game, by which I mean it has a whole lot of cut scenes and voice acting and storytelling in between the gameplay.
    • Reviews
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    • Streaming
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    908 words
  • Mount & Blade: Warband – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 30]. 2019-08-30. The game of the day was Mount & Blade: Warband for the Steam Backlog Bonanza. I got it in 2010 Winter sale, but I can’t find any record of how much I paid for it. I probably got it in a bundle with both Mount & Blade and Warband. Fighting bandits from horseback. Warband is an “old” game. You can always tell an “old” game because they are stretched out horizontally.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    480 words
  • BioShock 2 Remastered – Steam Backlog Bonanza [Blaugust 31]. 2019-08-31. Since my production pipeline is offset by a day, this should be my 31st and last “official” Blaugust post. However I’m still going to play at least one last game today on the 31st as well, which will get a blog post tomorrow. Yesterday for the 34th day of the Steam Backlog Bonanza, I returned to Rapture with BioShock 2 Remastered. This is a game I’ve owned since 2010, but never played until now.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
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    526 words

2019-09

  • Serious Sam Fusion 2017 (Beta) – Steam Backlog Bonanza. 2019-09-01. For what will probably be the last game in the Steam Backlog Bonanza, the 35th one on the list, I played a shooter called Serious Sam Fusion 2017 (beta). I have no idea how I got this game. I have a bunch of Serious Sam games, but I don’t remember buying any of them, and since Blaugust is over now I don’t particularly feel like doing the work to look it up.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    • Streaming
    • Videos
    488 words

2019-10

  • Scary Game Experiment. 2019-10-28. 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.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    890 words

2019-11

  • XIM APEX Mouse and Keyboard Adapter for the PS4. 2019-11-15. 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.
    • Hardware
    • Reviews
    1,575 words

2019-12

  • Outward. 2019-12-02. 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.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    1,636 words

2020-04

  • No Man’s Sky. 2020-04-10. I’ve been wrestling with whether I should get No Man’s Sky for almost four years now. To their credit, Hello Games has put a lot of work into upgrading it over the years, but I worried it was one of those games that looked great visually and conceptually, but didn’t have much substance or gameplay underneath it. Recently I heard they did another big update, and I was looking for a mouse-and-keyboard game to play on my PC on my “controller-rest days” in between playing Horizon Zero Dawn on the PS4 (which I restarted a little while ago).
    • Reviews
    • Survival
    825 words

2020-05

  • Doki Doki Literature Club. 2020-05-08. I’ll start with non-spoilery stuff. I saw some folks talking about Doki Doki Literature Club on the Blaugust Discord (raving about it, one might say), and I noticed it was free on Steam, so I downloaded it to try it out. I’m pretty sure I’ve heard people talking favorably about it in the past as well, though I never understood why. It’s a really, really slow burn, but I think it’s probably worth it in the end.
    • Reviews
    • Steam
    1,841 words

2020-06

  • Assassin’s Creed Franchise, Part 1 – I, II, and III. 2020-06-15. I’m going to attempt to write a blog post now. I don’t really want to, but I feel like I should at least try to get one post out about something every month. But honestly, who gives a crap about blogging right now? Not me, that’s who. Anyway, after I reached a stopping point with No Man’s Sky, I turned to the Assassin’s Creed franchise. I didn’t really plan to, but after I saw the reveal trailer for Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, I thought, “Hey I want to replay that first Assassin’s Creed game and get a good recording of it.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    1,716 words
  • Assassin’s Creed Franchise, Part 2 – Liberation HD. 2020-06-16. Continuing my epic playthrough of the Assassin’s Creed franchise in my Steam backlog, so that I can be ready to … not buy Valhalla at launch and wait for a Steam sale some time in the future, like I do with every iteration of Assassin’s Creed. These blog posts are largely here to archive and expand on all the tweets I wrote. (To be perfectly honest, this specific blog post is mainly here to test whether or not Tweetdeck is going to show an image on the automated tweet that Jetpack is going to create for this post.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    348 words
  • Assassin’s Creed Franchise, Part 3 – Black Flag. 2020-06-18. Continuing my epic playthrough of all of the Assassin’s Creed games in my Steam backlog in order, and archiving the tweets I wrote about them. Last time it was Liberation HD. This time it’s the pirate game that I knew I wasn’t going to like, and the main reason I stopped playing Assassin’s Creed games in the first place. Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag (2013), May 28 Get used to this sight.
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    • RPG
    • Steam
    883 words
  • Assassin’s Creed Franchise, Part 4 – Rogue. 2020-06-20. Continuing my epic playthrough of all of the Assassin’s Creed games in my Steam backlog in order, and archiving the tweets I wrote about them. Last time it was Black Flag, next is the one that made everyone step back and say, “You know, maybe we don’t actually need a new Assassin’s Creed game every year.” Assassin’s Creed Rogue, June 2 Shay Cormac, our completely level-headed character for this game, who will not at any point make any rash decisions whatsoever.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Steam
    774 words

2020-09

  • New World Beta Unimpresses. 2020-09-05. I’m not going to dwell on this very much, because everyone else seems to be enjoying it, but just for the record, I didn’t care for the New World beta very much. I was ready to give up on it after a half hour, but I recognize that MMOs tend to start slow. So I persevered for a little over two hours and by the end I felt it to be repetitive and unrewarding.
    • MMORPG
    • Reviews
    855 words

2020-11

  • Pathologic 2. 2020-11-26. While everyone else is playing Shadowlands for some reason, I just got a game called Pathologic 2. It’s been on my wish list for over a year and I just saw it was on sale for $20 last week. I first heard about this game when I saw a YouTuber mention it while playing Death Stranding. They suggested it was, like Death Stranding itself, one of those atypical experimental sorts of games that more people should play, so I put it on my wish list.
    • Reviews
    • RPG
    • Single-Player
    841 words

2021-09

2021-10

2022-01