This was another free game on Epic that I thought looked pretty and might not take very long to play. It turns out that while you can technically complete the game very quickly if that’s all you want to do, there is plenty of content in it if you want to take your time. Also, while there is no combat and no way of losing, this isn’t a zero-friction game either. There are puzzles and hidden secrets which might take some effort to work out. I don’t really like it all that much but it’s not bad.

Back when I was actively playing nearly every one of the historical Total War games, an entry set in China’s Three Kingdoms era seemed like an obvious no brainer. So when Creative Assembly finally announced it, I was so happy and looked forward to it so much. The problem is that they left it too late but by then I was thoroughly burned out of the series. Even now after having left it alone for years, I’m finding that while it’s quite satisfying to start and struggle through the beginning of a campaign, actually finishing one feels far too daunting for me. I’ve simply played too many of the Total War games over the years and despite the many innovations in this title, in the end it still feels like more of the same.

Once upon a time, I trained as a journalist so news video editing is actually the kind of thing I’m supposed to be able to do. So when this game which puts you in the chair of the editor of a news program came out, I just knew I had to play it. A full playthrough isn’t really supposed to take very long but I agonized over improving my score and rewatched the full broadcasts and the rushes, so I took much longer than necessary. I felt unnecessarily stressed about doing a proper job, was enthralled by the emerging stories of all of the characters and, needless to say, had a great time.

I’ve never played a game by legendary game designer Hideo Kojima so this game being free on Epic and being itself so fascinatingly eccentric, it seemed like the best opportunity to remedy this failing. I’ve still heard enough about Kojima to be skeptical that I’d actually like it and the concepts in it are so ridiculous that surely it couldn’t be coherent. Yet despite myself, I found myself drawn into Kojima’s imagination and impressed by the richness of its game mechanics. There’s still a lot here that I don’t like, such as the excessively long cutscenes, but I have to admit that the guy really is a genius.

I still haven’t played Elden Ring yet as I want to wait to get a better computer before getting around to it. In the meantime I have this sitting in my library unplayed for a while now. It’s one of those Dark Souls clones adapted for 2D. I was interested because of how much I love Dark Souls but I have zero experience with and indeed am terrified by metroidvania-style platforming games. Most people seem to think that this is significantly easier than Dark Souls but I found this far more difficult as I am simply so awful at platforming and had an almost impossible time navigating the map areas that require lots of jumping.

I never got around to playing the War of the Chosen expansion pack for XCOM2 which was probably a mistake given how good everyone says it is. This smaller, standalone builds on it with human and alien populations having achieved peace but naturally there are still dissident factions from both sides who are unhappy. This game puts you in control of Chimera Squad, composed of both human and alien soldiers, who are assigned to keep the peace in City 31. This squad isn’t part of XCOM but the Reclamation Agency meant as a police force rather than a military force. Unlike the XCOM games, each member of the squad is a unique individual and losing even one of them means game over.

80 Days was such a unique game that I still think of it from time to time years later. So when the developer Inkle made a game that has you play as an archaeologist and the primary gameplay mechanic involves deciphering a language, I was all over it. In practice, the invented language seems too directly translatable into English to be plausible and the protagonist Aliya is a rather poor archaeologist. There’s nothing else like this game though and it is very satisfying to uncover the history of civilization of the setting so I’d still count this as a success.