Basically sat out October it feels like, work was manic and kept getting every illness going.
So am bouncing back by starting the Nov thread. If you want to feel particularly old and have kept track of things then my kid is 9 years old in a few days! Which doesn't feel possible.
Play -
Kotor 2 - its been half term this week and finally gotten back to this properly and started to make actual progress. Feel like its taken about an age and months and months of little bits of playing to fully start, have finally made it off the first major planet you get to pick and have now unlocked HK47 finally.
Football Manager 26 - This comes out of beta and into GamePass this week. I actually kept my full sub to try this as its been pretty poorly received it seems. Very different with lots of poor UI and bugs.
Wobbly Life - We play a little blast of this everyday and its funny and enjoyable, well worth checking out for people with younger kids.
Call of Juarez - was like £1.49 on the Xbox store and really enjoying it. Its poorly pieced together narrative doesn't detract from the gameplay, even if the enemies are particularly stupid it feels like. Its nice playing a FPS where everything feels like a 10-25 minute level again, as that fits perfectly with my gaming habits and times.
Want - a Switch Lite - want a device to fire in my bag for lunch times at work and seen these selling for between £70-£120 depending on condition and what it has with it. Ebay and marketplace for the lower end but seen shops with them at £100.
Final Fantasy 7 remake - I missed this initially as was PS4 only, considered getting it on the Switch2 though now.
Bin - the weather. My kid had spent months making and thinking about Halloween and trick or treating with her friends, she had made her Halloween costume by the first week of the summer holidays for example, and then it was an utter wash out last night, I felt so bad as she was so upset it was ruined.
Aw, sorry to hear about your weather. Ours get super excited about Halloween, too - E says she likes it more than Christmas.
Play
Tomb Raider II is a very different beast to the first game. I'm only a couple of levels in, but it's got way more combat, more focus on plot, and the puzzles are mostly of the "find the key/switch to open this door" variety. I assume that's a result of the development time - the thing was put together in 6-8 months, and I imagin puzzles are harder to design than "shoot some guys". TR3 had a similar production cycle, IIRC, so I don't know how well that bodes.
I must be on a bit of a nostalgia kick, because I've also been replaying Bioshock Infinite. It's a game that I seem to recall reviewed well, had a pretty quick reevaluation/backlash in some circles, and then kind of dropped out of view. I always thought it was at least interesting, and liked it better than most, but it is all very on the nose.
Want
I can't say there's much that I'm particularly excited for at the moment. I keep eyeing up Tomb Raider Legend in sales, but I'm trying to finish the first six before I move on, so I'll probably not reach it for a year or two at my current pace. Looking forward to Stray hitting PS+ next month; I played the start of it a while back when I was briefly on Game Pass PC.
Bin
I gave Tomb Raider: Unfinished Business (the expansion pack for the first game) a go, but it's just deliberately difficult and obtuse, so I'm not sure I can be bothered.
Play
Breath of the Wild - still plugging away at this, still loving it. I'm finally at the point now where combat isn't a threat at all. I have so many daft glowing weapons in my inventory but I rarely need to use them. The world doesn't feel so big any more now that I've been almost everywhere, and between fast travel and jumping up clouds and flying from peaks I can get almost anywhere in a minute or two. All of which is too say that this game really nails the feeling of progression you want from an RPG.
Wind Waker - I was half way through this when I picked up BotW. It's going to seem very basic if I go back to it now.
Want
I'm tempted to grab one of the Hyrule Warriors games. I remember Gar singing their praises.
Play
I had been making my way through Assassin's Creed II for some reason, but I started The Outer Worlds 2 and stayed up far too late last night playing that, so Ezio might be on the back burner for a while.
Want
A lottery win would be nice. I'm not greedy—just a couple mil is plenty. Enough to go back to Japan right this minute.
Bin
I think, at this point, I need to accept that roguelikes are not for me. I played several runs of Hades, nowhere near completing any of them (often not even reaching the first boss, let alone beating her) and feel like I've seen all its mechanical tricks. Getting the same vibe from Rogue Prince of Persia, which—don't get me wrong—is very stylish and slick and all, but I'm just not enjoying. Maybe I'm just not cut out for the progress-reset loop.
I'm tempted to grab one of the Hyrule Warriors games. I remember Gar singing their praises.
The original (which is on Switch, with all the DLC, as "Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition") is one of my all time favourite games. It's a kind of huge mash-up of the entire Zelda series up to Skyward Sword, where time travel shenanigans allow characters from all eras of Zelda to interact and fight together. The actual game is part button-mashing power fantasy, part battlefield management where you're trying to keep track of what's going on all over the field and zapping between characters to try and turn the tide of battle. It has an absolutely VAST amount of additional content and unlocks, so much so that I can't believe anyone has ever actually completed it. In fact just writing this makes me want to go and play it again.
The second game, Age of Calamity, is a prequel to Breath of the Wild so might be a really good fit for you right now. It ran like an absolute dog on Switch 1, is apparently better on Switch 2 but is still locked at 30fps if that bothers you so it might get a proper Switch 2 patch at some point maybe? Anyway I haven't played it, it's supposed to be really good with a surprisingly decent plot but doesn't have the insane amounts of side content that DE has.
The new one, Age of Imprisonment, is out this week, and is a prequel to Tears of the Kingdom. Reviews haven't dropped yet but it looks really good and I'm looking forward to it very much.
Yeah Age of Calamity sounds like the place to start. Although I'll probably just get whichever goes on sale first.
Play
Doom: The Dark Ages - I'm close to the end of this now. It's certainly got its issues (it's a bit long and samey, the plot is absolute bobbins, most encounters feel like loads of enemies chucked into an arena rather than anything that's had any real thought put into it) but on a moment-by-moment basis it feels absolutely fucking brilliant to play and I've enjoyed it immensely. It's a game that knows that at heart it's creating a power fantasy and it's there in every detail: the thud of your footsteps as you rush into battle, the shockwave as you land from a height that means even the act of you entering battle helps to start to turn the tide, the absurdly generous parry timing that in many lesser games would be used as a skill check but in this just goes towards making you feel awesome. It's big, loud, violent and stupid and I love it.
The Return of the Obra Dinn - absorbing and atmospheric mystery game that requires genuine thought and doesn't reveal its secrets easily. I've been chipping away at this for a week or two and I'm getting there, slowly. Sometimes it feels like the need to plod slowly round the decks gets in the way of the deduction a little (if you want to rewatch a particular scene, you have to navigate back to the corpse in question rather than just being able to review it from your notebook) and in that sense I felt Curse of the Golden Idol was maybe a more cerebral kind of mystery game, but the atmosphere is second to none and I feel like I've learned a lot about life onboard a ship as part of the process of piecing things together.
Want
Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment - please be good please be good. I loved Tears of the Kingdom, I love Hyrule Warriors, what can possibly go wrong?
Anno 117 - still haven't seen a single impression of the console releases, I'm getting a bit concerned now. I mean obviously it's a PC-focused series and I could, if absolutely required, run it via my Steam Deck hooked up to my monitor (it works tolerably well for Anno 1800) but really I'd like to kick back with a proper console version if they can actually make it work well.
Bin
Nothing specific this month.
