Tale

I loved the heck out of Everspace. I'm playing Final Fantasy VII Remake and loving every minute of it. Enough that I'm going to be doing a full playthrough of the original soon, too.

Spoilers are circulating for the Final Fantasy VII Remake due to early releases. And they've convinced me I have to get this game on day 1. Have I mentioned State of Mind on here? I think it was part of Humble Choice in the last couple of months. Anyway it's fantastic if you're into the story focused game where you mostly run around and talk to other characters with the rare puzzle here or there. Highly recommended. On the downside, it has less choice and consequence than your typical Telltale game.

Greedfall on PS4 It's interesting and fun, but seems kind of slow paced. I don't mind it too much. The combination of open design and small budget does mean that I keep accidentally stumbling on solutions to quests just by doing other stuff.

After Black Mesa I did some Half-Life 2 marathoning. After Episode 1 I remembered why I hated the Episodes enough to not bother with Episode 2. It's just more of the same stretched way too thin. And not even usually the best parts of it. Like I'm pretty sure every Half-Life 2 installment has a bit where you're crossing toxic sludge by tediously shuffling objects about to stand on. Why?!?!?!?

I'm the one guy in the office that wasn't told to stay home. So it's just me and the cat. Where I am we're basically on the honor system. I'm thankful that no one I personally know has been hit yet, but I fear if it gets severe enough that the odds of that drop, they'll have to rethink it. And be a couple weeks behind where they should be on controlling the situation.

I recently tried going through the Still Life games. Post-Mortem, the very first one, is intolerable.

Heaven's Vault. I played a ton of this over the weekend, ultimately completing it. It deserves awards. It's an incredible adventure about language, history, waterways in a nebula. Seems there's some choice and consequence stuff because I hear people talking about events I never got because I played cautiously with stuff. I also tried The Bureau: X-Com Declassified. I played through the first level and decided it was completely uninspired and boring. Then promptly uninstalled. Not a single interesting story beat or mechanic is introduced.

Mo: Astray is finished. I recommend it. Black Mesa, the fan remake of Half-Life 1, is in progress. It's very good. Xen is amazing, though maybe a little long. I did some Battlefront 2 again. It's like a whole new game from when I last played. Supremacy was not a thing, but now it's the main game mod? Pretty cool.

I tried playing the Final Fantasy VII Remake demo. "Tried" because it crashed during the countdown, but I mostly like what I saw. The only real issue is they really need to get a cinematographer behind their cutscene cameras. The camera doesn't need to zoom in close and start panning every time some minor character starts running.

MO: Astray It's on sale on Steam this week and the user reviews were pretty great. I see where they're coming from. It's like a sci-fi horror puzzle platformer where you play an adorably cute blob. Which is just kind of weird until you realize your adorably cute blob can latch itself onto the heads of the zombies and monsters and pilot them. The cuteness just exists to soften the edge of the gruesome. Also it's fun.

I do one Dreams tutorial a day. It's fun for me to just learn tools and pretend I'll do something with them. And I spent several hours playing Star Wars: Fallen Order. It's an interesting experience. Feels like a good exploration of various Star Wars tropes. Maybe the best Star Wars since the Disney acquisition that Filoni wasn't involved in.

Dreams The example game has better writing and production value than many full games.

Starcom Nexus Fun little indie space game. Get to design your ship with parts, research tech, find resources, and pew guys who pew you. There's a compelling story hook in there about getting lost in another region of space and maybe time travel. But it's too slow to develop.

Edit: All gone. I've got a few leftover choices this month. Pathfinder: Kingmaker Explorer Edition Cryofall Okami HD The Hex Warstone TD I can recommend Pathfinder and The Hex. Okami I hear great things about, too.

I see quite a few people saying New Jedi Order is the height of old Star Wars Legends. Which considering how much I appreciate Zhan's books, and him never writting a single NJO book, it comes across as high praise for that period.

Been procrastinating on a Thrawn Trilogy reread. Started it last week and am almost done. About halfway through The Last Command. Aww yeah, this is the Star Wars I really enjoyed in the 90s. Maybe I'll push on through to the New Jedi Order I missed out on.

I finished Call of Cthulhu last week, the Cyanide one. It was pretty good. The illusion of choice fooled me a bit right up until the end and there were a few decently tense moments. For $10 I can recommend it. Just don't expect anything deep.

Disco Elysium is the greatest experience I've had roleplaying an alcoholic since that Halloween party where I threw up on everything and almost caught fire.

I agreed to do her mission, but only because I thought I could sabotage it. Turns out you can't. I also figured she'd shoot at me and I was sick of shooting.

You are at the second mission from the end.

I finished The Outer Worlds. It's the best game of the type of RPG it's trying to be. But I think I'm largely done with RPGs of its type. The shooting really needs to step up. I was really just done with shooting by the end. I let the companions do all of it. And I was glad to have been a persuasion focused character because just so I didn't have to shoot my way through the finale.

Is it not just a speed limit?

I finished Still There last night. Honestly it was kind of great. Just not the kind of great I'm itching to play again. Kind of depressing. It also marked the 10th item in my Steam curator, so that forced it public. Which sucks, since I hadn't gotten a logo yet.

I'm watching some Another Life just in the vague hope there's something worthwhile in it. I hate everyone in it. Apparently a second season has been greenlit.

Internet has been out at the house for over a day, so I played a couple games on my PS4 that have just been sitting there. Mass Effect Andromeda demo. Why is the opening of this so boring? No urgency, no action. Like there's three exciting beats over the course of 30 minutes, but they're all treated with the impact of a dentist's waiting room. The gravity shut off? Don't worry, just wait. An explosion?! Would you be a dear and scan that thing then flip a switch. The ship crashed into a mysterious cloud? Ehh, we'll deal with it in half an hour. Our shuttle GOT TORN APART AND YOU'RE FALLING, nah it's fine. Time for some light jogging. Sara Raydar is so passive and seemingly uninvested in anything that I couldn't bear to finish the demo. Neon Chrome. Fun enough, but it wore out on me quick.