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Frostpunk 2 (PC) by dkirschner (Jun 14th, 2025 at 13:35:10)

I never really got into this, despite getting most of the way through the campaign (about 4 out of 5 chapters). There is a lot more to manage than in the first game. In Frostpunk 2, you no longer have just one city around a generator, but also outposts to run and a big map to explore. There are more resources to manage. There are more systems to manage. There are multiple factions to manage. It's hard to keep track of everything!

Despite the bigger scope, it's a really similar game. Build your city, keep the people warm, calm, and free of disease and squalor. The temperature goes up and down and you must adapt accordingly, reallocating heat to different districts such that citizens can continue working (ideally uninjured) and not get sick or die of cold. If the cold sets in, things break down fast. Threatening again are the "whiteouts," huge blizzards that last for weeks. You must prepare for them ahead of time, stockpiling food, coal and oil, materials, goods, and so on. There was a major whiteout in chapter 2 or 3 that I had prepared well for in terms of stockpiling, but I hadn't accounted for how unhappy all the factions would get because of the cold. All four factions hated me, my trust went to 0, and they were going to vote to depose me (which is a game over). I couldn't believe it and the only thing I can figure I could have done differently is overheat the generator. But I didn't do that because I was scared it would malfunction. Or perhaps you are supposed to come out of the whiteout hated by everyone and have to rebuild their trust. I funded factions' projects, reallocated heat to their homes, let them pass whatever laws they wanted, and promised them power, and just in the nick of time before the vote, I gained the amount of trust I needed.

I rebuilt all that trust, continued exploring and expanding into chapter 4, where a new outpost required for progression became unmanageable due to mistakes I made. With this particular outpost, you can choose to settle it or salvage cores (valuable and rare resources) to power the generator of your main city to the max level. I chose to salvage, but there are toxic fumes in the outpost. These get worse as you break the ice and extract resources, and I just kept losing so many people from disease. I replenished them over and over, but couldn't keep track of that and funneling other resources to the outpost at the same time, as well as managing my main city and first outpost. The outpost's generator kept losing power, one faction was really pissed off and kept destroying housing districts, which meant my people kept becoming homeless and freezing to death. I finally researched and built a watchtower for security, but then the faction attacked my industrial zone that was automating extraction (so fewer workers died from toxic fumes). Through all this, the generator kept powering down, I think because I didn't have energy extraction set up there and I wasn't funneling efficiently from my main base. Looking back on it, I probably should have built housing in the hills above the toxic fumes so at least my workers wouldn't die at home.

My favorite thing was trying to play all the factions. There's a system again where you pass laws, and each faction can gain and lose representatives in a chamber. They each have different ideologies too, and you might align with one over the other. But of course, doing something aligning with one or two factions might piss off another one, so you're always balancing. The game is transparent about how many votes laws need to pass, and if you need more votes, you can make promises to factions that were hesitant. This serves the dual purpose of getting your law passed and making a hesitant faction happy by fulfilling your promise.

Anyway, managing all these different things was very stressful and felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. I appreciate the complexity of Frostpunk 2, and I still love the environment, story, and tough choices. But like the first game, it's not enough to make me love playing it. I saw, oddly enough, that these developers have another game that just came out on Game Pass, The Alters, which looks unique. I might give that a look in the next few weeks.

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The Outer Worlds (PS4) by jp (Jun 13th, 2025 at 14:16:48)

I've accumulated too many PS4 games, so I've been trying to bring them off the pile of shame onto the "pile of played".

So, I started this one...a few months(?) ago - but didn't get very far and was then unable to keep on playing.

My first impressions from then was that this was really interesting, it would take me a while to learn the details of the stats and equipment and numbers and stuff, but that was ok, and that the world/setting seemed interesting and familiar...but in a way that didn't make it stand out or resonate. So, it's Fallout, but in space...but also on the ground. Oh, but this is now like Borderlands too. So, again from my limited time, I didn't feel like I had a strong sense of "wow, this is different and interesting".

After starting it up and getting past the tutorially parts I had a clear sense of what to do - some missions to follow up on and so on. In this case, "you have a ship, but it's busted and you need to get a part to fix it" and a world to explore, places to visit, people and factions to learn about and interact with, and from all of this I expected to - eventually, many hours later, get the ship part and "leave this forsaken rock of a planet".

Along the way I realized that I wasn't too much of a fan of the combat in the game - there's aiming and shooting, but there's also a lot of stats stuff happening and I found that I was dying really easily and quickly and wasn't sure what to do about it.

Then several months of real world time passed...and I picked the game up again.

To my surprise, the "get the ship part" turned out to be a lot quicker/shorter than I expected and within a few hours I was done with that and ready to leave into space where the game opened up with a space map, a new mission, and a general idea of "hey, there's so much more stuff for you to do now". All this while still having open quests back on the original planet!

So, I played some more, did some more missions, moved things along and then...after a mission I kept dying on because "shooty-shooty not so good" I sat down and asked myself... do I really want to keep on playing?

The answer was no, in part because I was a bit frustrated with this mission - but mostly because, I just wasn't engaged with the story or world - the things that were supposed to be funny, weren't (for me) because it felt a bit too...uh... familiar? (as in, I've heard those jokes about corporations that are dumb and have you do dumb stuff..and so on). I also realized that I might have to dig deeper into the crafting and gear stuff just to be better suited to handle combat, and...well, I couldn't be bothered really.

So, I'm done. Not because the game was "bad", I just didn't really gel with it.

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I Was a Teenage Exocolonist (PC) by jp (Jun 13th, 2025 at 14:00:32)

So I finished a full "run". It's weird to call it that even because it felt so much more involved than I would think of in the context of a "roguelike", which this game sort of is...but also isn't. I mean, there's lots in the game (including when you get to the end) that strongly suggests you want to play again, not just to get "different endings" or see "other paths through the story", but because there is a meta-campaign of sorts to explore/discover/investigate. I'm not sure I want to do that - mostly for time - because I really did have an interesting time with this game (it was a big surprise for me since I was expecting less, or at least not to find it as compelling as I did).

Perhaps what I need to do is wait enough that I've forgotten a lot of the details of my 1st playthrough before playing again?

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Monster Tale (DS) by jp (Jun 13th, 2025 at 13:57:12)

Finished it!
I really enjoyed it if, at times, it started to get a bit too grindy/back-tracky, but perhaps the back tracking goes with the territory for the type of game? (what we'd now call a metroidvania).

I've been thinking about it's place in these "top lists" of DS games you never heard about but should play and... well, I don't think the game is "OMG this is the best ever", but I DO think it's a game that deserves more attention than it got. So, in that sense it's place is worthy/meritorious...because, sure - it's a "typical" (which may not have been THAT typical when the game came out) metroidvania in many ways, but the two-screen use, your monster companion is really interesting and novel (then and now). So, mixed feelings - but also, I get the sense that the game aims at a younger demographic... The game isn't THAT hard (by this I mean, I was able to beat it, it took me a few tries in the end, but I would describe it as a high-challenge game) - but that's not a bad thing! (to be fair I did think the difficulty is somewhat uneven).

Super glad I played it and, this is unusual as I make my way through my DS backlog, I stuck all the way to the end.

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Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (PC) by dkirschner (Jun 12th, 2025 at 16:51:43)

Epic epic epic! I had zero expectations for this, having never heard of it until sometime after it came out and seeing that it got really good reviews. If you like Uncharted, you have to play Indiana Jones. Or if you like Indiana Jones movies. It's very authentic. It's by MachineGames, who has been doing the (mostly) excellent Wolfenstein games. They're sticking with the Nazi antagonist theme. This has Wolfenstein DNA, it feels like Uncharted and Tomb Raider, and it also feels like (unexpectedly) an immersive sim like Dishonored or Thief or something. It's REALLY good. I’m going to rattle off a handful of things I liked and then note a few rough patches.

(1) Story. Solid. I was invested. It’s a typical treasure hunt mystery “go to x places to get the x items” thing, but well done. The voice acting is top notch from all the leads, and even from side characters and random Nazis. The Harrison Ford likeness was cool to see. Characters were well written, good dialogue, good banter between Indy and Gina. An excellent bad guy, a Nazi archaeologist named Voss. He’s sufficiently patriotic and out of his mind for power, arrogant, cruel, and manipulative.

(2) Environments and level design. Outstanding. There aren’t a ton of areas that you’ll visit, but there is a lot of variety. Some areas are like semi-open world maps, while others are more linear. The semi-open world maps are full of places to explore, secrets to find. Discovery is organic. You’ll be infiltrating a Nazi camp and come across a “mystery” (the game’s category of puzzles, often finding and deciphering codes to open safes or locate a tomb or something). You might start the mystery by reading a note. Or, you might come across a piece of information from a note or an NPC or something that starts “fieldwork” (the game’s term for side quests). Fieldwork can be involved and is the side content that is most worth doing. There is usually a story component, often new characters, good puzzles, a great trippy sequence after Indy touches a poisonous frog, and so on. You can take or leave all the side stuff though. Some of it is well hidden, and I imagine it would take a good long while to find all the secrets in this game. Side content gives rewards you with money, adventure points (experience), and items. I purchased every skill I had access to by the end of the game, had a ton of points left, and had plenty of side content left to do. So, you won't be starving for experience. Also, the pacing is on point. There is a good mix of puzzles, exploration, combat, and cut scenes. You’re always moving forward toward some goal or another, even if it’s self-directed goals like “I’m going to clear out this Nazi camp” or “I’m going to stop at all these islands and see what’s on them.” The platforming is fun too, which usually goes along with the puzzling.

(3) Melee. Something that felt unique about this game is the melee focus. Indy famously punches Nazis, so that’s what he does in the game. There are melee weapons scattered all over the place, everyday items like pots and pans, guitars, pickaxes (lots of excavation equipment), clubs, hair brushes, brooms, etc. Near the end of the game I found a violin and bow and made sure to clobber enemies with them. You can block and throw a charged punch too, as well as parry and counter-attack. You can also employ your signature whip to disarm enemies. Especially as you go further in the game, enemies will have guns, which you are also welcome to pick up and use as clubs, or you can shoot them. Enemies tend to match your combat style though, so if you use your fists, they probably will too, or they’ll pick up a nearby weapon (and often will throw things at you). If you open fire though, if they have guns, they’ll shoot back. Plus, enemies from all over the place nearby will converge on your location. Shooting someone often meant death a minute later.

Some things that felt broken:

(1) Dogs. Patrol dogs are annoying. I couldn’t figure out how to stop them from attacking me. The game says that if you whip them, they flee, and that they’re also scared of gunshots. I would whip them and they would completely ignore it, latching onto my arm anyway. I would shoot them, and it seems that the game has a “no animal violence” thing because bullets simply don’t do anything to the dogs. The game also says that you can mash left and right click to get the dog off you, but it didn’t work. So, every time a dog saw me, there was nothing I could do but let it attack me! Then, once it attacked, a whip crack would keep it away.

(2) Dropping items. You can drop items by pressing “Q” and you will drop whatever you’re holding if you press “tab” to open your bag or “2” to take out your camera or lighter. This was very annoying early on, though less so as you learn the rules by which Indy drops things. It was also less annoying as I realized that it was just being realistic. Indy has two hands. He can’t use a camera and steer a boat at the same time, can’t climb a ladder and hold a gun, can’t bandage himself and hold a map, etc. BUT, what didn’t get any less annoying is that way too often the dropped item will “disappear.” You can’t see it on the ground. Sometimes this was because you’d drop it and it would “bounce” away. Other times, it just resets to its original location. And one time, I couldn’t complete a mystery puzzle because I dropped an item in a pit, but I couldn’t get it back out of the pit because Indy can’t hold his whip with both hands and carry an item at the same time. Actually, thinking back to this now, I probably could have thrown the item up and out of the pit. At that time, I didn’t know I could throw things. This is because…

(3) Not much explanation for UI. The game tells you surprisingly little in terms of how to play and what things mean. This was neat for “figuring it out,” but, like I said, I didn’t know how to throw items until later in the game! And I had to look up what the various bars meant (hint: the white bars are health, the blue ones you get by eating food are “bonus” health, and when you eat fruit, you get extra yellow bars which is like reserve stamina). There is an in-game manual that doesn’t have this stuff in it. It’s weird. The game also doesn’t explain how to go back to previous areas of the game until AFTER you do it. And there’s a scary “you will lose unsaved progress” when you click to go back to a previous area, so I didn’t do it at first, and eventually looked it up.

I would play a sequel in an instant. Hopefully MachineGames is making another! Or they could make another Wolfenstein game. At this point, I'll play whatever they make, especially if it's about killing Nazis, which they seem to be the best at making games about.

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