Category: Games

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Games

Games of 2021

Legend
🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.)
✔️ Beat the game.
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.

PC

Since 2021 saw me shift to permanently working from home, I did little console gaming, but there’s a lot of PC games I played this year. This list is by no means complete, and may see a few updates.

Satisfactory 🌟
Update 5 released this year, which brought a lot of quality-of-life improvements. Building practically anything is easier than ever, and vehicles are a reliable way to transport products now.

Star Trek Online
Toward the end of 2020, I started finding a new love for Star Trek Online. A lot has been added, and while I still don’t really like how it’s monetized, the space combat is as fun as ever.

Destiny 2 🌟
I was on the verge of leaving Destiny 2 behind this year, but Bungie’s refocus on story, PvE, and solo content pulled me back in. Enjoying the game more now than ever before. My only complaint is the gear that’s only available in certain high-end, group-focused content (raids, Trials of Osiris) – as a solo player, that stuff is pretty much impossible to attain, and it tends to be the best gear in the game. Luckily, the addition of cross-play has meant that I don’t have to deal with those high-level weapons nuking me in PvP constantly like I did before.
Season of the Chosen had some great new content and started a theme of turning enemies into allies.
Season of the Splicer was outstanding, telling a great (if somewhat predictable) story and showing the other side of some allies and enemies. (It was my favorite season of the year)
Season of the Lost acted as a great buildup to The Witch Queen.
The 30th Anniversary event has been outstanding, introducing possibly the greatest 6-player PvE event in the game’s history with a great tongue-in-cheek tone.

Fallout 76
Played a bit into 2021, then uninstalled it and never turned back. If the seasons were better structured, I think I could stand it, but it’s more a chore than fun.

Cyberpunk 2077
Played for a few months into the year. I didn’t run into as many issues as some others, but stopped just before finishing the story (because I’m a completionist but got distracted).

Mindustry 🌟
I love Mindustry, and the 6.0 update introduced a world map with many more maps than prior versions, adding a lot of replayability.

Spacebase Startopia
Played the beta and release. Feels like a good modern update to the original Startopia. A few of the campaign levels are a bit difficult.

Per Aspera

Surviving Mars
Finished terraforming Mars. I liked it better red.

Everspace 2 🌟
Even in early access, this game is fantastic. It’s gorgeous, the gameplay is still incredibly solid, and all the new ships and abilities are great.

Dyson Sphere Program
Command a mecha, build production lines spanning planets and star systems. Sure, it’s another factory game, but it’s fun and looks fantastic.

Evil Genius 2
Enjoyed this even more than the original.

Genesis Noir ✔️
This “game” was weird and I still don’t get it.

Cyber Hook
Fun speed runner with a neon retro art style.

Before We Leave ✔️
A fun, easy-going city builder.

Slipways
Great 4X puzzle game.

Timberborn 🌟👍
A survival city builder with adorable little beavers? What’s not to love?

The Ascent ✔️👍
A great cyberpunk action shooter. I played the Game Pass version, which had a really rocky launch and was buggy through my entire playthrough. My biggest complaint, however, was the lack of a manual save. There were many times I needed to quit but had to keep checking the menu to find out if there was a recent save.

Starmancer
Played at early access launch on Game Pass. Super buggy to the point where it was unplayable.

Hades
Gorgeous action rogue-like.

StarCraft II
Played a little of this earlier in the year, but uninstalled it in “protest” of Activision Blizzard’s sexual harassment and discrimination.

Mini Motorways 👍
A great sequel to Mini Metro.

Shortest Trip To Earth
A lot like FTL. I enjoyed it.

Atomicrops
Fun and unique, but didn’t really hook me like I had hoped.

Grim Dawn ✔️🌟👍
Started playing with my wife as a replacement for Diablo. It’s way better than Diablo in basically every way – it’s darker, it has more variety and replayability, and the endgame is great. And it turns out I actually backed it on Kickstarter ages ago and forgot about it completely.

The Riftbreaker 🌟👍
Action RPG base-building. A lot of fun.

No Man’s Sky
The new Expeditions this year were a great way to reintroduce players to the game and provide some seasonal rewards. Still a lot of fun.

Chorus 👎
Played the demo. I had high hopes for this game, but the designers don’t seem to understand how space works. (No strafing? Seriously?) Everspace is far superior.

Maneater
Got this through Humble Bundle and thought it looked interesting. A bit like GTA, except you’re a shark. So much fun to leap out of the water, snatch a hunter off a boat, and dive back underwater while thrashing him to death.

Hardspace: Shipbreaker
A few updates this year, and I can now play it the way I like – with no time limitations. I can play spaceship surgeon as long as I want.

The Pedestrian
A great puzzle game.

Loop Hero
A unique take on the RPG rogue-like.

Final Theory

Endzone – A World Apart
A fun little post-apocalyptic city-builder.

Potion Craft

Space Crew
Fun. A lot like Bomber Crew.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
Since I’m not interested in MechWarrior Online, this is basically all I’ve got. I don’t like some of the grind, but the expansions definitely improved it.

House Flipper ✔️
I enjoyed this a lot more than I expected. Great casual game.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous
The Mythic Paths in WOTR fix a lot of the annoyances of Pathfinder itself and can make the game a lot more interesting. (I love how the Trickster path breaks the game.)

Portal Reloaded
It’s more Portal, and the new mechanics are a great new twist.

Valheim
I stopped playing with the update that made enemies more aggressive toward player structures. Definitely didn’t want to spend all my time repairing my house(s).

VR

Toward the end of the year, I upgraded to a Valve Index VR headset, and started playing VR games a bit more. I found a few new ones I really enjoy.

I Expect You To Die 2 👍
A great puzzle game like the first, though a bit more difficult.

Until You Fall 👍
Surprise hit for me. From the same people that do I Expect You To Die. Some of the best swordplay in any VR game I’ve played.

Boneworks
Refunded. Sudden and extreme motion sickness whenever I played.

Raw Data
Doesn’t work well with the Index controllers.

The Room VR
I’ve always loved the Room series, and the VR version doesn’t disappoint. Another solid VR puzzle game.

Battlegroup VR
Bought this during the holiday sale and wasn’t sure what to expect. Turns out it’s a great tactical space RTS in VR. A little buggy, though.

PS4

God of War ✔️🌟👍
Finally finished this one. Loved it. Got bored with the endgame pretty quickly, though.

Board Games

7th Continent
I’ve owned this game for a while but never got around to playing it. My wife and I started a game this year but quit after about 6 hours of play. I love the choose-your-own-adventure style mechanics, but a lot of the gameplay is tedious. After introducing some house-rules, it got better, but we haven’t been back to it to finish our first curse.

Unsettled 👍
Unsettled was the board game sleeper hit for me in 2021. We played 7th Continent earlier in the year, and while I liked the mechanics, I found the gameplay tedious. Unsettled is a similar game (co-op vs. the environment), but has better theming, better gameplay, and the best storage system I’ve ever seen in a board game. My wife and I just barely beat the first mission (got lucky with special equipment for our robot), and are looking forward to playing more.

Arcane Academy
A simple engine-builder. I like the artwork and components, but I have better games, so unfortunately this one is going in the donate pile.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition 👍
A great deck-building version of Terraforming Mars. Plays quicker and easier than the full game, but it’s still Terraforming Mars at its core.

Dinosaur World
Build your own Jurassic Park and populate it with cute dinosaur meeples.

Dice Throne 👍
Easy to play, lots of fun. The character variety is great.

Canvas 👍
A beautiful game about creating unique works of art.

Pandemic: Fall of Rome 👍
Loved it. Better and deeper than the original.

Trogdor!! The Board Game
Fun game with a Strong Bad theme. Brought back memories of watching those videos in college.

The Butterfly Garden
Simple game about gathering butterflies.

Mining Colony

Agropolis

7 Wonders: Duel 👍
A fantastic version of 7 Wonders for two players.

Plague, Inc: The Board Game
Appropriate for our current times. Feels a lot like the digital game.

Chimera Station
A worker-placement game with a gene-splicing mechanic.

Cavemen: The Quest for Fire

Caper
A fun two-player game with classic spy movie styling.

Forbidden Sky
It’s fun to make the rocket launch at the end.

Small Star Empires
Like chess, but with spaceships and colonies.

Core Worlds

Lanterns: The Harvest Festival

Patchwork: Halloween Edition
We already own Patchwork, but the Halloween Edition uses eyeballs instead of buttons and cute Halloween-themed fabrics.

Space Cadets: Away Missions
Like a mini tabletop RPG. Pretty easy to play.

Categories
Games

Games of 2020

Keeping up the tradition, here are the games I played in 2020.

Legend
🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.)
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.

Xbox One

Darksiders Genesis
Played a bit of this with my wife for some couch co-op fun.

Switch

Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order
A fun beat-em-up in the Ultimate Alliance franchise. Got boring fairly fast, though.

Animal Crossing
I still have a love-hate relationship with Animal Crossing. Building stuff is fun, but it feels like too much of a chore. I stopped playing after a few months.

PC

Destiny 2 🌟👍
I still love Destiny. Beyond Light introduced a bunch of changes that I really appreciate, though it’s starting to get a little boring.

My festive FICSMAS factory

Satisfactory 🌟👍
My newest gaming addiction. Played this hard for a while, building up a factory, oil refinery, and a skybridge that circled the map. Stopped playing for a while once I had unlocked everything, then came back for the extremely well-designed FICSMAS event.

Kerbal Space Program 🌟👍
Started playing this again to see where it’s come in the time since I’ve been away. It got a lot more fun once I started using MechJeb extensively to handle launch and rendezvous so I could just focus on designing rockets and missions.

X4: Foundations 🌟👍
Played a lot of this. I’ve always enjoyed the X series, but X4 is one of the easiest to play. I barely even touched the story missions until I already owned about half the galaxy and had several shipyards. (I also did a lot of idling, letting my fortune grow while working.)

Hardspace: Shipbreaker
A puzzle game where you’re slicing open ships to salvage them, using the money you make (after fees from your employer) to upgrade your equipment. A time limit on each shift is your biggest obstacle, forcing you to cut corners to save time. If you’re not careful, you can cause an explosive decompression, slice a fuel tank, or cause a reactor explosion. And any accidents cut into your income.
There’s also a hyper-capitalist dystopian backstory here. You’re an “independent contractor” and you’re charged rental fees for your equipment and housing, so that $1M in salvage may only net you about $200K. Eventually you’ll save up enough to buy your equipment outright and avoid the fees, but it’s a long road to get there.

Diablo 3
Season 20: Barbarian. Season 21: Demon Hunter. Season 22: Skipped.

Trailmakers
Got this in one of the Humble Monthly bundles. It’s a fun little vehicle-building game using Lego-like components. I had a hard time designing anything I really wanted, so I ended up pulling things from the Steam Workshop to finish out the campaign.

Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Loved this. It’s a great CRPG with the depth of Pathfinder underneath, though you can’t always pull off some of the builds you can with the pen-and-paper version.

Jurassic World: Evolution
Kept playing this in 2020. Still love it.

Warframe
I don’t play a lot of Warframe, but I still enjoy it. Came back this year for some 7th Anniversary events.

Command and Conquered: Remastered Collection
I love classic C&C, and this brought back some memories.

Spacebase Startopia
One of my favorite games from the 90s. Played the beta. Still a little rough, but all the basics are already there and it definitely feels like the original. Planning to have a lot of fun with this after release.

Observation 👍
Great sci-fi story. Basically a story-driven puzzle game. It’s pretty easy and relatively short, but worth playing.

MechWarrior 5: Mercenaries
Starts off slow, but once you get a few pilots to fill out your lance (after the third or fourth mission), it gets better. It’s a bit of a grind to earn reputation and c-bills, and it’s difficult to find good mechs and pilots until later in the game. Overall, it’s good, but not great.

Spiritfarer 👍
A fun game about ferrying spirits to the afterlife. You have to keep them happy and solve their problems so they can rest.

Not For Broadcast
I don’t think I’ve played a game like this before. It’s difficult and has a very odd story. If you like British humor, definitely give it a try.

Supraland
A fun little first-person Metroidvania. Good humor and some great Easter eggs.

Gris 👍
Deserves all those awards.

Phoenix Point
Fun. Similar to XCOM.

Everspace 🌟👍
I’m typically not a fan of rogue-likes, but something about Everspace clicked with me and I loved it.

Nova Drift 🌟👍
Surprise hit for me. It’s a rogue-like shooter with some incredible ability combinations. Every run is fun even if it’s short-lived.

Genesis Alpha One
Another rogue-like where you build up your ship and crew until you can start a “Genesis” colony on an alien world. Fun and super creepy at times.

Little Big Workshop
Build a factory, hire workers, build stuff. Cute, but gets tedious.

The Universim
I’ve been playing this through several betas (even before it was on Steam). A civilization builder that’s had a lot of content added.

Railway Empire
Got through Humble Monthly, played because I was bored. If you like trains, it’s good. I found some of the rail laying annoying, but overall a solid tycoon game.

Inch By Inch
Bought and played this after seeing it on YouTube. It’s a short, simple puzzle game with an interesting mechanic. Won’t take long to beat it for the first time, but you can adjust the settings to customize your challenge.

No Man’s Sky
Decided to play some more of this after the Origins update to see where it’s come. It’s still a great solo exploration game, but they’ve added a lot of extra content to really expand on the original formula. I’ve always been a fan.

Fallout 76
Played this because it was part of Xbox Game Pass. When I started, my one-sentence review was: “It has the Fallout setting, but not the soul.” After playing further, I’ve started to see that Fallout is here, setting and soul, but I’m convinced Bethesda just doesn’t know how to build a multiplayer game like this. That said, they’re slowly getting better. The One Wasteland For All patch fixed a lot of issues with exploration and quest progression (for example: low-level quests with steps in high level areas, lack of content for mid-level players). Plans to build equipment and structures are difficult to find.
In my opinion, the worst part of the game continues to be the “Fallout 1st” subscription; it seems like you’re actively punished for not paying. Weight is constantly an issue, but Fallout 1st members get containers with unlimited capacity (scrapbox to store as many crafting components as they want).
I desperately want to like this game, but there’s so much that’s annoying by design. There’s content to enjoy here, but unless you have people to play with regularly – or are a huge Fallout fan – probably avoid it.

Marvel’s Avengers 👎
Super buggy. The single player storyline can’t figure out what type of game it wants to be (beat-em-up? stealth-action? adventure?) and does a poor job being anything.

Star Trek Online
I haven’t played this in several years, but I wanted to fly around in a spaceship and shoot things, so I started playing again. I’m not a fan of the daily grinding for things, and the inflation of the real-money store is crazy ($30 for a single ship). There’s a lot of pay-to-win stuff going on here (and I don’t like the gambling in lock boxes), but through lots of gameplay, you could actually convert earned resources into premium currency and buy things (which partially contributes to the inflation). As long as you’re not playing PvP (which I’m not), there’s still a lot of fun content here. Can be played solo, but a lot of content is behind fleets (several ship upgrades, officers, some items).

Tropico 6
Good old Tropico. Hasn’t changed much, but that’s not a bad thing when the game was already great.

Everspace 2
After playing Everspace, I got really excited about Everspace 2. Played the prototype during a Steam event and I love where it’s going. Unfortunately, the Cyberpunk juggernaut pushed the release into 2021.

Per Aspera
Mars resource management strategy with an interesting story. Played during one of those Steam demo events and ended up buying it when it released.

Mars Horizon
Played the demo. A simplified version of the history of spaceflight. (Maybe a little too simplified.)

Fights in Tight Spaces
Played the demo. Loved the concept and execution of this one.

5D Chess with Multiverse Time Travel
And here I thought I was pretty good at chess. I’m still having trouble wrapping my head around this one.

MarZ: Tactical Base Defense
A really good tower defense game about zombies on Mars.

Siege of Centauri
Another sci-fi tower defense game. Not quite as refined as MarZ, but still fun to play.

Mindustry
The 6.0 update made some major changes to how the game is played and vastly expanded how much game is here.

Wash your face.

Cyberpunk 2077 🌟👍
I played this on PC, so I didn’t really run into many of the problems I saw making the rounds online. Still working through the story after 70 hours, and still enjoying every minute with my quickhack-focused build. This is probably my GOTY for 2020.

Camus is a good boy. And temporarily trapped in a car body.

Cloudpunk
It’s like a chill version of Cyberpunk.

Iron Harvest
Haven’t managed to put a lot of time into this yet, but first few levels make this look like a highly tactical RTS. (Positioning and cover are extremely important.)

Tabletop

Wingspan 🌟👍
Wingspan continues to be one of the best board games I own.

Azul: Summer Pavilion

Queendomino

Fences

Darkrock Ventures

Chai

Kodama

Tiny Epic Dinosaurs
I love the “Tiny Epic” series of games. The label fits: they’re small-box games with big gameplay. In this one, you’re managing a tiny dinosaur park; buying and selling dinosaurs for points. There’s some puzzle-style gameplay and a ton of cute, tiny dinosaur meeples.

Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries
I don’t think this is as good as the original. It’s a tighter map, but my wife and I both had a hard time getting the colors we needed to complete things. Locomotives are still wilds in this version, but can only be used on ferries and tunnels.

Horizon: Zero Dawn The Board Game 🌟👍
Captures the fun of hunting robot dinosaurs across several short encounters.

Kingdom Rush: Rift in Time 🌟👍
Tower defense in board game form. My wife and I loved this one. It’s like playing a series of tiny Tetris games. Narrowly beats Horizon as my 2020 Board-GOTY.

Seven Wonders
Owned this for a while but only just got around to playing it for the first time this year. Fun, but a little awkward with two players. (Probably should play Duel for two players.)

Elder Sign
Despite winning, I didn’t really enjoy this game. Felt too random.

Categories
Games

Fallout 76 – Addendum

After my Fallout 76 Review, I had some additional thoughts about the game regarding some of my frustrations. There was also a “Bombs Drop Event” this past week – celebrating the day everything went to hell in the Fallout universe – which provided one-week access to Fallout 1st perks, so I now have some firsthand opinions about those perks.

Build Frustrations

I touched on this in my review, but I wanted to elaborate on some of the frustrations I have about build balance. I understand a game with as much variation as Fallout is difficult to balance for multiplayer (which is another reason it probably shouldn’t exist as a multiplayer game), but the amount of imbalance continuously annoys me. I’ve built my Fallout 76 character as a stealth sniper – a style I’ve always enjoyed because it deals high damage without the use of heavy weapons. When I’m free exploring, this build works great, as I can typically handle anything I find in my travels without much difficulty. Unfortunately, this build is at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to most high-level content. Most of the Fallout 76 endgame is structured around public events and the new “Daily Ops” introduced in the One Wasteland for All patch. These events all work in a way that makes the rifleman build weaker than the alternatives.

In “Daily Ops”, enemies have two mutations that make them more difficult than usual. One of these mutations is permanent and provides them with heightened perception that makes stealth useless. These events also require you to defend points in the area, which means all the enemies know where you are and you can’t hide from them. You can manage through with a rifle, but stealth just won’t work, so all the perks I have to boost my stealth and my sneak attack damage are worthless. I also don’t have any perks in the same stats to replace them, so I just have several wasted points when I’m playing these events.

In most other endgame events, you’re either fighting a boss or defending against waves of enemies. The rifleman build works for a few of these where the enemies are relatively few and weak (the lower-level events), but in most cases high-powered single-shot rifles put you at a disadvantage; mostly just because of the way experience works in the game. Players will gain experience for any kill on an enemy they’ve damaged, regardless of who gets the kill. As a result, players who carry heavy, rapid-fire weapons like gatling lasers or miniguns tend to gain experience the fastest, as they can simply spray an area and hit nearly everything. In most high-level content, I find myself fighting alongside players in power armor toting gatling lasers, gatling plasma, or miniguns (usually explosive miniguns). The only way I’ve found to keep up is by using a tesla rifle, which shoots lightning that will arc to multiple targets (or off the environment), allowing me to hit multiple targets at once; though it will also arc to players, so if there are several hulking power armors between me and an enemy, I’m still not likely to get a hit. Even the players who aren’t carrying heavy weapons are typically using automatic rifles, which works the same way.

Rifles also end up being extremely weak against bosses. Because of their low rate-of-fire, rifles perform very poorly when fighting a boss with high resistances. Even with all my bonuses and using my highest-powered rifles, I can’t cause much damage to high-level bosses, while players with heavy and automatic weapons will regularly chew through bosses much faster. Semi-automatic rifles have a damage boost over automatic weapons, but it’s not enough to make up for the difference in fire rate. With the disadvantages rifles have in most of the multiplayer content, it seems they should be much stronger to compensate (likely to the point that a rifle-focused build should one-shot most enemies), or automatic weapons weakened to bring them in line. (I doubt either will ever happen.)

The only “disadvantage” to automatic rifles and heavy weapons is the amount of ammunition you need to carry (and its weight). There are perks to reduce the weight of the ammunition (to the point where it’s practically weightless), so that’s already balanced out. You need the crafting materials to craft ammunition as well; but lead, steel, and gunpowder are easy to find and there are perks to increase the amount of ammunition you craft. Maybe you could point to the amount of scrap you need to keep on hand as a potential disadvantage, but it turns out there’s a way around that, too; it just costs real-money dollars.

Fallout 1st

After a one-week trial of Fallout 1st, I can say this much with certainty now: it’s not worth the asking price and the scrapbox should be given to all players.

The scrapbox is a storage item you can place in your camp that stores an unlimited amount of scrap. When I started the trial week, I immediately crafted it and moved all my scrap over. Half of my 800-pound stash was scrap material. Over the week, I grabbed everything that wasn’t nailed down so I could scrap it and put it in this magical box of scrap-holding; just so I would have a stockpile once I could no longer add to it. (When your Fallout 1st subscription lapses, you can still remove items from the scrapbox; you just can’t add to it.) And while I certainly won’t hoard as much junk now that I can’t put it all in this container, I did notice a change for the week I had it: I was less stressed. Constantly having to worry about your storage space is annoying. You can’t just sell all the scrap, since vendors will only buy so much per day. I can sell to other players, but until someone buys it, the scrap continues to take up space. So ultimately, I’m left carrying a significant amount of my junk on my person, with the Pack Rat perk reducing the weights to make it manageable. This one item actually made the game more fun, and I don’t think it’s a good idea to lock items that make the game fun or less stressful behind a subscription fee.

The Fallout 1st trial also game with use of the survival tent, which is a freely-movable fast travel point with some storage and crafting items. This was convenient to use, but this is one of those items I’m OK having behind the subscription. I’d love if everyone had access to it, but it’s not as game-changing as the scrapbox. While the fast travel tax is annoying, it’s not as stressful as the inventory management needed to handle all that scrap.

Finally, the trial gave players a few free items – a wallpaper and a flooring. Woo. Sure, give these to subscribers for free; doesn’t bother me at all.

The trial didn’t provide the stipend subscribers get (understandable; it’s approximately $16.50 worth of premium currency), but I think the stipend is just thrown in there to make it seem “worth” the asking price. Personally, I don’t think giving away $13 (or $8.25/month at the $99/year) of my real-world dollars is worth it for $17 of Fallout fun-bucks. Just give me a $5/month or $50/year option just to get a few free items and the tent. That seems worth it and much more fair to players.

Seasons

The past week also provided players with double experience and double score for the season. I was able to progress very rapidly (both because of the bonuses and because of the scrapbox; less time managing my inventory means more time actually playing), and managed to get to rank 80. I still think I’m going to have to play daily to just barely finish the season, but at least it feels more attainable. I think this serves as a sign that the amount you have to put into the season needs to be reduced, as the current model adds to the stress. I feel like I should be able to finish the season in about a month if I play daily. If Bethesda wants to keep players engaged for a longer time, they need to provide content, not yet another thing to grind through.

Fallout can be better

I think Bethesda could learn a lot from Bungie and Destiny here. I can complete a Destiny season in about a month of regular play. The “subscription” is a $60-70 expansion pass each year, and that pass comes with a lot of new content – strikes, patrol zones, Crucible and Gambit maps, gameplay modes, events. While paying for the expansions and seasons will give you several items up front, everything is attainable by free-to-play players (aside from some cosmetics). Even the cosmetics in the Eververse store can be had with enough gameplay – you can finish quests for Bright Dust and buy items from Eververse in the weekly rotations. Sure, Destiny is a grind, but I never feel particularly disadvantaged.

The only experiences in Destiny that I don’t get to experience are the raids and challenging quests. These events are interesting and provide some great gear, but typically require a well-coordinated team and a large time investment. While I’d love to have that gear, I’m just fine without it, and the only time it actually affects me is during PvP, which I don’t really like anyway. There’s also enough alternative options to reduce the sting of getting taken out by a weapon I’ll never be able to have. This is the one area where I feel Fallout does better, multiplayer-wise: I can play end-game events because they don’t require a well-coordinated team; just players who can fight back enemies. Daily Ops are like Destiny strikes, and the world events are like Destiny’s public events. They’re not always quite as interesting in Fallout, but they’re accessible, and that’s what I like most about them. Bethesda just needs to work on making everything in Fallout 76 that accessible.

Categories
Games

Review: Fallout 76

A battered Nuka Cola sign

Back in July, Fallout 76 came to Xbox Game Pass and I decided to give it a try. I had avoided the game since its launch because everything I heard about it sounded distinctly non-Fallout: PvP focus, no NPCs, etc. Even since I started playing, there have been updates that have improved the game, so Bethesda is definitely doing a good job making the game better. I’ve played frequently since I started, and since I’ve reached level 100, I feel like this is a good time to put my thoughts about the game down. As with all games, there are good and bad elements, but ultimately, however, I don’t think Fallout works as a multiplayer game.

The Good

A player camp from Fallout 76 with a lovely diner design.
A player camp from Fallout 76 with a lovely diner design.

Just recently, the One Wasteland for All update has been a great update and actually solved a lot of problems I had with the game before. The update causes enemies to scale to your level, so you’re free to explore the wasteland without encountering the random high-level creature. Before, there were several low-level quests that would lead a player into high-level territory, preventing progress until the player is higher level. Since the update, I’ve been able to freely explore places I was less comfortable exploring before, and I can join any event I like. I’ve seen players just freshly out of Vault 76 (in the level 1-10 range) joining endgame events and contribute just as well as the level 400+ players. Everyone is fighting the same enemies, but always at their level.

Me and a few others playing instruments during an event.
Me (left) and a few others playing instruments during an event.

My favorite parts of the Fallout experience have always been exploring the wasteland and learning about what happened before the bombs fell. When I started, the Wastelanders expansion was already out, which introduced NPCs and new quests, so I can’t compare to how the game felt before that point, but the Appalachian wasteland feels like classic Fallout now. I learn about characters and their stories without ever meeting them; I learn about what happened both before and after the Great War; I get to learn about the real-world West Virginia in it’s fictionalized version. The classic Fallout experience is all here.

A picture of my CAMP in Fallout 76
A picture of my CAMP in Fallout 76.

In Fallout 4, one of my favorite features was building up the various settlements, but the build limits always felt restrictive – I remember my settlement in Sanctuary had a wall around the island, a single building, and a bunch of shops on a concrete foundation. In 76, you get your own “C.A.M.P.” to place and build up wherever you like. While the amount of space you get to build within and the budget for building still feel restrictive, I’ve loved building up my wasteland home. It’s my own personal workshop, shelter, and farm. I’ve spent hours building and decorating. I get excited when I find new plans for something else I can build in my camp. The building elements from Fallout 4 have been expanded and improved in Fallout 76.

A player CAMP from Fallout 76 designed to look like a Brotherhood of Steel checkpoint.
A player CAMP from Fallout 76 designed to look like a Brotherhood of Steel checkpoint.

Finally, there are certain multiplayer elements of the game that I really enjoy. I enjoy seeing other players visit my camp and make use of my workstations or buy from my vending machines. I love seeing how other players have built their camps. I enjoy the world events that groups of players can join and face waves of enemies. Bethesda has made it really easy to join up with other players in many different ways. I generally play solo, and you can play the majority of the content completely alone. Most endgame content has to be played with other players, but you don’t have to team up with other players during events. I like being able to play the game alone with other players wandering around, occasionally encountering another player in the wasteland or at my camp, then continue on my way. And generally, other players are very friendly and well-meaning, which improves the overall experience of the game.

The Bad

While there’s a lot to the game that I enjoy, there are some constant annoyances that I encounter that continually detract from the game. Most of these issues are ultimately caused by the multiplayer aspect of the game, unfortunately making what could be a truly fantastic game disappointing.

I don’t enjoy PvP in the slightest. There are plenty of games that I completely avoid because they’re primarily competitive (e.g., the entire “battle royale” category). In Fallout 76, you can turn on a “pacifist” flag that will prevent you from hurting other players and other players hurting you. While I’ve never killed another player (and never intend to), I’ve been killed by other players twice. The first time was after I picked a lock in a workshop claimed by another player. Typically locks have red text when unlocking them is bad (I assume); this one wasn’t, but still put a ten cap bounty on me. Later, I was turning in a quest when I was one-shotted by a high-level player. The second time, I was preparing to defend a workshop I had claimed from a wave of enemies, when I was one-shotted by a player, losing 50 caps. Both of these experiences soured me on Fallout for a short time, so I can’t imagine how bad things were when the game first came out. The experiences will also shape how I plan to play from now on – I never intend to stay at a workshop for very long, for instance, to avoid opening myself up for PvP. (I don’t understand why you’re forced into PvP for owning a workshop anyway.)

My teddy bear collection in Fallout 76
My teddy bear collection.

You do a lot of building things in Fallout 76. This requires a lot of scrap that you need to keep around to build things. Unfortunately, the stash at your camp only holds 800 pounds of stuff, including guns (which can be very heavy), armor, chems (also oddly heavy), miscellaneous items, and junk – including your scrap. Apparently early players could only keep 400 pounds in their stash and I have no idea how they managed, as I’m constantly fighting my 800-pound limit. It’s difficult to actually keep the items you’d like to keep because of the stash capacity. Making matters worse, vendors and the legendary exchange machine (used to scrap legendaries) have a limit to how much you can get from them per day, meaning I’ve sometimes had to quit the game to come back the next day and get rid of unwanted gear. In general, weight management is a giant pain, even with perks and equipment to reduce weights or increase carry capacity. I’ve gotten better at managing my own inventory since I managed to complete the quest line to craft a backpack (a quest that takes far too long to complete), but I still occasionally face problems with the weight of items.

Most games like this contain a lot of grinding, but Fallout 76 takes it to a new level. Nearly everything you do in the game is another grind: gaining experience beyond level 50; earning gold bullion; earning reputation with the raiders and settlers; finding good legendary equipment and scrapping the bad for legendary scrip; gaining perk coins to level up legendary perks; seasonal score; daily quests. At a certain point, the grind just gets boring. One thing I’ve used to break up the grinding are some of the quests in the game – what I mentioned above as one of my favorite parts of Fallout. Unfortunately, 76 almost seems to discourage completing quests – the rewards for an hour-plus quest line are worse than a fifteen-minute event. It seems like spending time with the lore of the game should be rewarded better than a short event; especially considering those quests can only be completed once anyway.

There are also numerous, lingering bugs in the game – things typical to the Fallout series, but aren’t a major issue in single-player games. Controls have stopped working while at a terminal or picking a lock; equipment has spontaneously duplicated itself; I’ve been unable to use a workbench because it’s “in use” by no one. The worst issue I’ve encountered is in combat: I’ll have to “kill” an enemy multiple times, when my headshot doesn’t register properly (their health bar is reduced to zero) and they heal back to full health after a second or two. Some of these are likely things I’ve seen in past Fallout games, but they’re made worse simply by being in a multiplayer game.

The Ugly

This happens relatively often.

There are some parts of the game that aren’t necessarily bad, they’re just implemented in a way that doesn’t work well.

There are a few “cap taxes” in the game that aren’t necessarily bad (they’re meant to pull caps out of the economy), but they’re annoying. I don’t have any problem with the vendor-based tax (10% of what a player pays doesn’t go to the seller), but the fast travel tax is simply annoying. It can cost more than 30 caps just to travel across the map. Bethesda recently made the two faction bases – Crater and Foundation – free to fast-travel to (and you visit them frequently as part of their quest lines and daily quests), so you can use them as a free fast-travel before paying to get to wherever you’re headed. However, making any location free for fast travel only makes it obvious how silly it is to charge caps for fast travel in the first place. If they need to take caps out of the economy, just put something worthwhile, expensive, and repeatable into the game. You can buy mutation serum recipes for around 20000 caps, and they’re worth buying; the game just needs more things like that.

A picture of the interior of my CAMP in Fallout 76.
A picture of the interior of my CAMP in Fallout 76.

In the latest patch, they’ve introduced a new event called “Daily Ops”. These are meant to be short, objective-based missions within an instanced area. Unfortunately, these events aren’t balanced very well. The enemies will have a random mutation, and some are incredibly annoying. One that was common for several days was “resilient”, where enemies can only be killed with a melee attack – not even a nuke would kill them. In addition, the enemies always have a “perceptive” mutation which allows them to see any player, even my high-stealth invisible character. Since I play a stealth build with relatively low resistances, I’m at a severe disadvantage playing the daily ops.

The seasonal system is a huge grind and requires you to do things you may not enjoy. Daily goals may include claiming workshops, playing the new “Daily Ops” event, or killing a particular type of enemy. Most of the time, these goals are pretty easy to accomplish, but the limited nature prevents much progress on the seasonal scoreboard. Destiny handles this much better, where you gain progress for earning experience, so you can simply do whatever you want and be rewarded with seasonal progress. I’ve been playing nearly every day since the latest season began (about a month now), and I’m only just getting to the halfway point. Even if I continue to play every day through the rest of the season (until November 24th), I’ll probably only barely reach the end. Games that demand my attention daily generally turn me off these days, and the least Bethesda could do is make the seasons last longer or provide ways to complete the season faster.

Finally, there’s the “Fallout 1st” subscription. I’m not opposed to a subscription for the game, but the asking price here – $13/month or $99/year – is far too high. I have no interest in private servers, and I don’t care about the premium-currency stipend (if I’m desperate to buy things, I can just buy the currency separately), but there are a few quality-of-life items locked behind the subscription. Fallout 1st players get a “scrapbox” to hold all their scrap with unlimited storage, and a “survival tent” they can place as a mini-camp to act as a free fast-travel point. If the price were much lower – maybe $5/month or $50/year – I’d consider joining for the QOL items, but at it’s current price, it’s just not worth it, and this leaves a lot of the non-paying players feeling like second-class citizens.

Summary

A player camp in Fallout 76.
A player camp in Fallout 76. I like the “kill laugh love” neon sign above the door.

I’m disappointed and frustrated by Fallout 76. I can tell there’s a good game in there, but it’s buried under annoying systems and tons of grinding. It’s at least at a point where I can recommend it to fans of the Fallout series (barely) – but I definitely wouldn’t suggest it to anyone else. I want desperately to love this game, but I keep finding things that annoy me and make me want to stop playing. I’ll likely try to finish this season, but I may not play any more after that (especially considering there are a lot of games coming at the end of November that I’m going to want to put time into).

Categories
Games

Games of 2019

This list should be more complete than last year’s, since I actually kept it updated throughout the year.

I’m making some minor changes to the legend this year. Taking some inspiration from John’s post last year, I’ve decided to re-purpose the star icon to indicate a personal favorite, and added a check mark to indicate I finished a game. I also dropped the “trophy” icon for 100% completions since they’ve become rare.

Legend
🌟 A personal favorite. (Not necessarily for everyone.)
✔️ Beat the game.
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.

PS4

Spider-Man ✔️ 🌟 👍
Managed to finish it this year, along with its DLC. Fantastic game.

God of War 👍
Lost interest in this one early in the year and never managed to come back. Hoping to finish it some day.

Red Dead Redemption 2 👍
This game looks amazing, and has a lot of depth. I just can’t keep the “run” and “shoot” buttons straight, though… So far, I’ve accidentally shot a guy in the middle of town and punched my horse.

Switch

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 🌟 👍
Continued playing this into 2019.

Starlink: Battle for Atlas
Still playing this one.

Overcooked! 2
Great with a group. Tough with two players.

Death Cubed
Played a demo with my wife. I like the puzzles, but the movement is annoying. While death is part of the game, it’s frustrating when you clip a corner and go flying off the map.

Splatoon 2
I wish there was a better single-player mode here, since I’m not interested in multiplayer at all.

Hyrule Warriors
It’s like a modern Dynasty Warriors, but fun!

Golf Story
Because all the world’s problems can be solved with golf.

Super Mario Odyssey
This was a really fun game, but I’d like to know what the designers were smoking when they came up with this… A kingdom of sentient hat-people who can possess other creatures? Weird.

Untitled Goose Game
Finally, a game where I have the freedom to be a complete asshole without hurting anyone.

Xbox

I played more Xbox this year thanks to Game Pass. I’m hoping it continues to be a great way to play new games.

Outer Wilds

Crackdown 3

Gears 5

PC

Oxygen Not Included 🌟👍
Still my favorite PC game.

Two Point Hospital 🌟 👍
If you liked Theme Hospital, you’ll like this one.

Elite: Dangerous 🌟
Played with some of the newer content this year. Finally managed to unlock some engineers to tune my equipment, and discovered the new deep core mining added to the game which I find both fun and profitable.

TerraTech 🌟
I’ve played this on and off for a few years. A few updates with new parts pulled me back to it. (I can finally build my hovering fortress!)
If you’ve never played it, it’s a big sandbox game. You can build just about anything you can imagine. You can gather resources around the world; destroy AI-controlled vehicles and collect dropped parts; and take on missions to unlock parts. Easy to sink a lot of time into.

Surviving Mars 🌟
I still love this game. Great music, pretty chill and challenging at the same time. This year introduced the “Green Planet” DLC, which lets you terraform Mars and make it a lush green paradise! As I made Mars greener, I found myself missing the red planet.

Destiny 2 🌟👍
My go-to FPS when I want to just shoot some things. The Season of Opulence this year was a big hit with me. The Menagerie was a fun new mode and I enjoyed being able to somewhat choose my rewards using the chalice.
Destiny’s move to Steam was great, and the Season of Undying introduced a lot of great new content. The new armor system is definitely a step in the right direction. I even got my first title – Undying – after some last-minute grinding that was rewarding but tedious.
And now that Destiny is free to play, it’s easy to recommend.

Scanner Sombre
A spooky VR game where you explore a cave with nothing but a fancy handheld LIDAR device.

BattleTech
A few new DLC packs with new mechs and the skill revamp had me coming back. I finally managed to beat the Smithon mission that was holding me back.

Diablo 3
I come back to this every season to play with my wife. Season 16’s free Ring of Royal Grandeur made some interesting builds possible. I played a Barbarian for the first time and named her Barbararian (the Barbarian Librarian).
Season 17 had me back to playing my Necromancer, “LichPlease”, to try out some of the adjustments in the latest patch.

Forts
Simple, fun, a little hectic sometimes.

Driftland: The Magic Revival
An RTS where you move floating islands around and use magical abilities to help your warriors. Feels a lot like Settlers but without the supply chain stuff.

Particle Fleet: Emergence ✔️
An interesting RTS with a short story and support for custom ships and player-made maps. A good challenge without being impossible.

Risk of Rain 2
I played the first Risk of Rain and it was fun but fizzled out pretty quick for me. I was hesitant to play the new one, but got it for my birthday. It’s pretty fun, solo-able (which is important to me these days), and has plenty of unlocks and progression. Sometimes finding the teleporter is a chore, though.

Bad North
It’s like a tiny tactical tower defense game. You get a few armies to defend a small island from invaders, with each map getting more difficult. Certain islands have special rewards, like new armies or special items.

Graveyard Keeper
A management game with a story. This game was pretty tedious at the beginning, but after I had a few zombies handling the basics I was able to have more fun.

Unheard
A fun little puzzle game where the gimmick is that you have to deduce things using an audio track.

Landinar: Into the Void
Take missions, earn money, upgrade your ship, repeat. Fun, but there are lots of games that do this now. The ship building aspect is pretty good.

Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order 🌟👍
Great gameplay, some slightly annoying platforming. Combat is fantastic.

Cliff Empire
Frostpunk Lite. Starts off easy but things can quickly fall apart. It’s fun to maintain the balance.

Aven Colony
Another Frostpunk Lite. I have a type.

Outer Worlds 🌟
It’s Fallout with a new skin. It’s still as fun as Fallout and I like the hyper-capitalist dystopian world it presents.

Mindustry
Picked up during the Steam sale. It’s a fun little harvesting plus tower defense game with a surprising amount of depth.

Jurassic World: Evolution 👍
Another one from the Steam sale. This one took me by surprise. It’s a theme park game with a lot of genuine Jurassic Park stuff added in – you send teams to dig for fossils, extract dinosaur DNA, incubate dinosaurs and release them into your park. You have to deal with storms and the dinosaurs themselves.

GRIP
A fun combat racing game.

Tabletop

Azul 🌟👍
Easy to play, fun, colorful, and has great components. Highly recommended.

Almost Got ‘Im
I’ve never been a big fan of Coup or Resistance, but this game is similar and much more interesting to play. I accidentally subdued Batman as Catwoman and lost.

Villainous
Fun and well themed. The game seems pretty well balanced, but there is some luck-of-the-draw involved with several of the villains.

Epic Spell Wars: Battle at Mount Skullzfyre
A great game with a lot of humor.

Yokohama Deluxe
A fun little economic engine builder. Takes a while to play, but there seems to be plenty of replayability. The deluxe version has some really nice components, though the stickers for the point tokens were a bit too large for the wooden token. (I 3D-printed replacements.)

Reef 🌟
Similar to Azul in a lot of ways. Simple to play, fun, and strategic. Played at Mox Boarding House while visiting John and Christina in Seattle.

Jumpdrive
A faster, simpler version of Race for the Galaxy.

DropMix 🌟
Stumbled on this a while back and was interested, but then copies of the base game were dumped at Five Below for $10. Easy buy. This being a Harmonix game, it’s fantastic. And some of how it works is simply magic. Fun to play with a group or even solo. The only drawback is in collecting the cards, which can get expensive.

Splendor 🌟👍
I end up playing this a few times every year. Still fantastic.

Fences
It’s Carcassonne-lite. Easy to play with cute barnyard animals.

Master of the Galaxy
A 4X game I’ve had for a while (backed it on Kickstarter), and finally got a chance to play it with my brother over the holidays. It’s fun and pretty easy to play.

Sagrada 🌟👍
A beautiful game about making stained glass windows using dice. Fun and a perfect amount of difficulty.

Tiny Epic Mechs
As usual for the Tiny Epic series of games, this is a pretty big game in a tiny box. I’m not sure about how well balanced the characters are, but in my one play with my brother, we forgot some resource collection rules that made it very lopsided.

Xtronaut: The Game of Solar System Exploration
Designed by the leader of the OSIRIS-REx mission, this is more of a hard-science game about exploring the solar system. It’s really simple to play and plays very fast.

Categories
Games

Rift Core 2.0

I was recently playing some new VR games (Scanner Sombre and Psychonauts and The Rhombus of Ruin), and found the Oculus interfaces have seen a major upgrade – both Home and their dashboard are much nicer now. Since it’s been a pretty pleasant experience, I decided I’d write a quick post about it.

Your Virtual Home

Oculus Home used to be very boring. It was a pretty environment for you to stand in place and view the store and your library. I enjoyed my SteamVR home much more – you could customize everything and viewing your library was a small part of what your home was. SteamVR still has some advantages over Oculus Home (there’s scavenger-hunt like stuff in different worlds, and some of the informational screens in the home are more useful), but Oculus Home is quickly becoming just as good (if not better).

First off, your Oculus home is now customizable. The shape of the home is always the same, but you can change the ceiling, floors, walls, and items in the room. I changed mine to a sci-fi looking home that looks out on a sun and planets. Within the space, you can place decorations like tables, shelves, seating, lamps, and plants to make it your own. There are also several “toys” you can place, like a blaster, a bow, and targets to shoot at. You can also place a VR game console and cartridges based on the games you own. You can put a game in the console to launch it. It’s a fun way to interact with your library. And just like Steam, you can unlock new items over time, mostly just by playing.

You can also place TV screens and add a stream to them. Currently I can only add my desktop, but I could see this being used to display Twitch streams or YouTube videos (if they ever do something like that).

I don’t often make use of the social aspects in most VR games (or any game, really), but you can also invite other people to your Oculus Home and interact with them. Steam has done the same for a while now, but it’s nice to see Oculus finally catching up.

The new Dashboard – “Dash”

Along with the home update came a change to the dashboard you can bring up while in games. The old dashboard was dull – a flat panel in a big empty room. The new dash is still in a big empty room, but you now have an arc of buttons that float in front of you (like Windows’ taskbar), and you can easily navigate to the store, your library, social areas, or back to your home.

My favorite part of the new dashboard is the virtual desktop they’ve added. This was always an area where Steam was way ahead – being able to interact with your desktop within VR was necessary sometimes; I even bought a virtual desktop application a few years back when Oculus didn’t have their own. The virtual desktop Oculus implemented is easy to use and fits in with the rest of their new Dash UI very well. There’s even a beta feature where you can pull windows off your virtual desktop into their own VR windows. I can now edit spreadsheets in 3D! Apparently you can also pin windows so they stay visible while playing other games. I can watch Netflix in my spaceship in Elite or watch YouTube tutorials while I play a game.

Another feature that I really enjoyed was a simple VR watch you can strap to your virtual wrist. It shows the date and time and has a few buttons for quick navigation to some areas (like notifications). It’s a little touch that’s really nice to have. Unfortunately, it only shows up when you’re using the new dashboard or in your home.

I’ve also noticed Oculus will track any VR application you run, bought from the Oculus Store or not. This is great because I can now easily launch my Steam games without having to launch SteamVR first. If I could link my Steam library to Oculus somehow, I’d probably never need to launch SteamVR again (unless I wanted to, of course).

With the new UI, I’m actually much happier with the Oculus experience. Steam was certainly faster to make the home experience better, but I’m happy to see Oculus finally catching up. In the past, I’ve really only used the default Oculus apps until I got SteamVR running. Now, I’ll probably stick within Oculus’ realm most of the time. Which was probably the goal to begin with.

Categories
Games

Games of 2018

It’s been a few years since I kept track of the games I played over a year and what I thought of them. I’d like to get back to that, if just to give me more opportunities to write something. I didn’t keep track of everything I played in 2018, so this list is mostly the highlights from 2018 (or at least what I can remember).

Legend
🌟 Beat the game.
🏆 100% cleared the game, including all achievements.
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.

PS4

Spider-Man 👍
One of the best games this year. Insomniac nailed the web-slinging and it feels great just to swing around the city. This game made me feel like Spider-Man.

Dad of Boy God of War 👍
Still haven’t managed to finish this one, but it won GOTY, so it must be good, right?

Shadow of the Colossus

Okami HD

Switch

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate 👍
Aptly named – I feel like this is the perfect way to play Smash Bros. It’s got loads of content and the Switch is the perfect platform: you can start it up, play a few matches, then put it down and pick up right where you left off.

Starlink – Battle for Atlas
I wasn’t sure what to expect of this game, but I kept hearing it was a cross between Star Fox and No Man’s Sky. That was enough to get me interested, but the toy Arwing you get with the Switch was what pushed it over the top. It’s fun to change the equipment on your physical toy and see the game respond to it, but the toys aren’t really that important to the game. Unfortunately, if you want more equipment, you have to buy those toys.

Mario and Rabbids Kingdom Battle

Kirby Star Allies

PC

Oxygen Not Included
The only game that has come close to topping Kerbal Space Program in total play time. This game is cute, fun, tough, and science-y. There’s never really a point in this game where you can sit back and relax – there’s always some new problem you need to work on. And the number of ways you can solve problems is amazing.

Surviving Mars
Came back to this after some time away and some new DLC. Still fun and scratches the same itch that Oxygen Not Included does.

About the best you can hope for.

Frostpunk 👍
Yet another survival strategy game. (I’m sensing a theme…) Frostpunk is hard. It’s from the creators of This War of Mine and is similarly brutal. Victory in this game is marked by a message simply stating, “We have survived”

The Universim
A mix of Populous and Civilization. Still early in development, it’s a fun little game where you play as “The Creator”, helping a tribe of “Nuggets” grow and thrive, eventually progressing through technological eras and into space. It’s a bit ambitious, but it’s doing well so far.

They’ll never see it coming.

Bomber Crew
This game took me a bit by surprise. I watched the videos and thought it looked pretty good, and when I bought it, it didn’t disappoint. You get to manage your own WWII-era bomber and crew, and send your bomber out on missions to earn money to purchase upgrades and hire more crew members. Surprisingly fun, and can be pretty tough.

I just wish I wasn’t so scared to fly it.

Elite: Dangerous
I need to play this more often. I finally have a nice ship to work with, but I need to do some upgrading.

Two Point Hospital 👍
It’s Theme Hospital in all but name!

I Expect You To Die 👍
The best VR game I’ve played. It’s funny, it has a catchy theme song, and it’s fun to play. My only complaint is that it’s a bit short; I would love to see more levels added as DLC.

Interkosmos 👍
Speaking of funny VR games, Interkosmos is a hilarious, chaotic, and sometimes terrifying experience.

Subnautica
Subnautica saw its official release this year. I refuse to play this in VR.

Into The Breach

BattleTech
A great turn-based strategy game. I just wish I was better at it.

No Man’s Sky
I’ve always liked No Man’s Sky, even when it was just a chill single-player galaxy exploration game. I’m just glad everyone else is getting to enjoy it now. And the updates have made a huge difference – it is far better than it was.

Star Control: Origins
It’s good old Star Control.

Tabletop

I haven’t included tabletop games in the past, but I have a lot of them and enjoy playing them, so it seemed like an appropriate section to add.

Splendor 👍
I’ve owned this one for a while and recently played it with some new people. Still a fantastic game.

Sagrada 👍
It’s a puzzle game in board game form with pretty dice. Easy and fun.

Azul 👍
Got this one for my wife for Christmas. It’s a lot like Sagrada – easy to play, colorful, great components. There’s a reason why it has won so many awards.

Tick Tock is my favorite card in Villainous.

Villainous
I was thinking about getting this for my wife but I hesitated since it’s a board game about Disney IPs. I started hearing some good things about it so I bought it. Turns out it’s really fun. Each player has a completely different goal (which makes it difficult to help other players in the first game) and can meddle in other villain’s realms to slow them down. Knowing the films makes the goals easier to understand and makes the game a bit more fun. I played Captain Hook and murdered Peter Pan just before Jafar managed to get the Magic Lamp to the Sultan’s Palace.

Photosynthesis
A game about growing trees. Great components and a pleasant theme.

Roll for the Galaxy 👍
I’ve owned this for a while and finally got a chance to play it with my brother over the holidays. It’s a cross between Race for the Galaxy and Yahtzee. Much easier than actual Race for the Galaxy, but still manages to capture a lot of the depth of the original.

Talisman 👎
Played the physical version of this recently after playing the digital version a while back. Personally, I think Talisman is a very poorly designed game. There are some spaces on the board that are only there to slow down progression, and there’s too much random luck involved.

Mysterium
This is a great co-op game, though I’d never want to be the ghost. Too much pressure.

Marrying Mr. Darcy
I can’t stand Pride and Prejudice, but this game is actually a lot of fun.

Potion Explosion
The marbles in this game always make it fun.

Scoville
The names of the creations in this chili-making game are part of the fun.

Terraforming Mars
Great game with a lot of depth. I need to play this one more often.

Joking Hazard
Better than Cards Against Humanity.

Fire of Eidolon
A co-op game in a small box with an 8-bit art style. There’s a lot of nostalgia baked in, but it’s also a decent yet simple dungeon crawler.

Knit Wit

Ladies and Gentlemen

Kingdomino

Lanterns

Tiny Epic Zombies

Tiny Epic Defenders

Scythe
Played a short learning game with my wife. I’d like to play a full game at some point.

Loonacy

Spaceteam

Exploding Kittens

Bears vs Babies

Flash Point

Magic Maze

Illimat

Categories
Games

Dead and Buried

Since I’ve got an Oculus Rift with Touch controllers now, I figured I’d start posting about games I’ve played and the experiences I’m having. First up is a game I got for free with the Touch controllers: Dead and Buried.

Dead and Buried is a pretty basic first-person shooter. There’s a single-player shooting gallery that’s pretty neat but a bit boring. It’s great for improving your aim, though. The real draw of Dead and Buried is its multiplayer modes, of which there are four: Quickdraw, Shootout, Robbery, and Horde. Each mode supports 2 – 4 players.

Quickdraw is exactly what it sounds like. The players go one-on-one in quickdraw duels. Each player has three lives, and the last man standing wins. The one time I played this, I lost every duel and was left on the sidelines to stand and watch everyone else duel. It’s a neat game mode and certainly appropriate, but wasn’t very fun. Maybe it’d be more entertaining if I had better aim.

Shootout puts two teams against each other with a time limit. When you die, you spawn at a new location around the area and continue the firefight. There are also various weapons hidden at some locations that you can use if you spawn near them. Sometimes a shotgun will be lying on a table near you, or a stick of dynamite on the floor beside a column. Occasionally you’ll spawn in an area with very little cover and die pretty quickly, but overall it felt balanced. Most games ended with only a few points separating the two teams. This was the most fun competitive mode for me.

Robbery is another team-based mode where a team of outlaws tries to rob a safe while another team of good guys tries to stop them. There are several battles that play out before the safe. If the good guys win enough battles, they win by driving away the outlaws. If the outlaws win enough battles, they get a chance to crack the safe. Things seem fairly even (maybe the outlaws have a slight edge) until the safe, where one outlaw has to cover the other while they unlock the safe. This seemed really unbalanced and the good guys won every time I played.

Horde is the game’s cooperative mode, where the players are all on the same team with a shared set of lives. Zombies enter the area and shamble toward the players. If the zombies get close enough, they’ll start to destroy your cover. If they get through your cover, they’ll kill you. Between waves you’ll be able to spend coins you’ve earned (by killing zombies) on cards to repair your cover, get new weapons, or gamble for a random buff (or penalty). Every map has a theme and an appropriate boss that appears every few levels. I’ve played this mode the most because I tend to prefer cooperative experiences, and it’s really fun and chaotic.

In Shootout and Robbery, cover plays a big part of the game. There are crates, tables, and walls that you can duck behind, and you can work up a sweat while playing. I would crouch or stand on my knees to hide behind cover, either popping up my head to aim and shoot or firing blindly. My girlfriend says I looked ridiculous.

Dead and Buried doesn’t do a lot (it’s a pretty straightforward shooter), but it does it well and in a fun, stylized way. It’s a good VR experience and definitely worth playing.

Categories
Games

Oculus Touch

I bought an Oculus Rift back in October and I’ve been enjoying it, playing whatever I could find that worked well with a VR headset and controller. My favorites are House of the Dying Sun and Lunar Lander. (Elite: Dangerous is also great but I’m terrified of destroying my ship repeatedly and becoming penniless.) I pre-ordered the Oculus Touch controllers and they arrived a few days ago. I’ve been playing Touch games constantly since I got them and the experience is absolutely incredible.

I’ve played games with an HTC Vive at a friend’s house and they were always a lot of fun. Vive’s wands have a good feel and are easy to use. And while the Touch controls have similar inputs (trigger, grip, control pad/stick, a few buttons), the way they feel in a game is significantly different. The Vive wands are represented in VR as a device you’re holding (similar to the wands themselves), while the Touch controls are represented as your own hands. These virtual hands mimic your real hands around the controller. It sounds like it might be a little weird, but the controls are so well done that it works out incredibly well.

The accuracy of the virtual hands hit me when I was talking to my girlfriend in my living room. I was in the Oculus Home app (after playing Bullet Train) and I turned to talk to her, looking through the gap around my nose. I was gesturing toward her, and I noticed that where my real hand ended, the virtual hand began, and it was matching my gesture perfectly. I was pointing toward her, and my virtual finger was pointing just like my real hand. It was incredible. I moved my hand a bit and the virtual hand was matching the position and gesture pretty accurately.

In games made for the Touch controls, you can really start to feel like your hands are in the game. Holding weapons just feels right, whether you’re holding a handgun, a rifle, a bow, or a sword. Gestures can be done with broad motions or pointing. You can communicate with other players by pointing (👉), thumbs-up (👍), or OK’s (👌). I saw two players fist-bump. Then I learned I could make obscene gestures (👉👌). It’s awesome. Playing games designed for Vive’s wands don’t have quite the same level of interaction.

The only downside to the Touch controls are the downsides to the Oculus itself. The cameras certainly aren’t as good for room-scale, and their tracking isn’t as precise as the Vive. For games that are mostly forward-facing (and many games are), the Oculus works perfectly fine, and the setup with two cameras along the same wall is a bit more convenient than Vive’s opposite corners setup. You can still look around or behind you, but interacting with things directly behind you can be an issue if you hide a controller from one of the cameras. However, the precision is generally good enough, and most games tend to keep you facing forward, so these downsides are relatively minor.

Overall, I enjoy the Touch controllers more, but honestly, both HTC and Oculus have great VR products. UploadVR has a comparison of the controllers from back in June that I’ve found pretty accurate.

Now I’m eager for Steam’s winter sale so I can stock up on VR titles…

Categories
Games

Games of 2014

The last time I blogged the games I played was way back in 2011. That was fun, but I didn’t keep track as well in 2012 or 2013, but for 2014 I decided I’d keep track in a blog post so I’d be ready come the end of the year. Here’s my list of games played in 2014, categorized by platform. Since the PC list is enormous, I saved it for last.

Legend
🌟 Beat the game.
🏆 100% cleared the game, including all achievements.
👍 Recommended if you haven’t played it.
👎 Avoid it. It’s terrible.

PS4
Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag 👍
Started in 2013, beaten in 2014. This game was so great, I wrote a review for it.

PS Vita
PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale
Tearaway

3DS
Fire Emblem: Awakening

PC
Star Trek Online
CastleStorm
Evoland
Company of Heroes 2
Hammerwatch
Delver
Dead Space 3  🌟
Starbound
Broken Age 👍
StarCraft II
Played ranked for the first time and found out I’m terrible. (Not that it was a surprise.)Starpoint Gemini 2
SimCity / Cities of Tomorrow
Came back to this game after a long break (because it was so disappointing at launch). It seems most (if not all) of the early problems have been fixed, and the promise of offline play finally made me return. Cities of Tomorrow is a fun expansion, though at $30 it’s definitely overpriced.