Old_Man_Harper

Happy New Year!

Rolled the credits on my second play through of KCD2 this morning. This time I got the good ending, which requires taking the tougher or more humane option at certain key points.

Now on to the ‘Mysteria Ecclesiae’ DLC, which takes place entirely in the confines of Sedletz Abbey, which isn’t accessible in the main game. As the name suggests, it’s a mystery and all weapons and armour have to be handed in on entry to the abbey. It should suit my Henry, as I focused on speech and scholarship.

More KCD2. I won a duelling contest, which is something I would have found unimaginable the first time I was in a sword fight!

@Nightcrawler71 a tip for lock picking is to rest the controller on your knee so you can use your right thumb and index finger on the thumb stick to get more control.

All my favourites on Xbox this year were ones I bought: KCD2, Helldivers 2, Jurassic World Evo 3, Lost Records, but I used reward points towards all of them.

I’m mixing working from home (i.e. laying on the sofa and occasionally glancing at my laptop) and replaying KCD2, with a focus on doing the side quests I didn’t do on my first time through.

@Nightcrawler71 It’s definitely not a 40-hour experience. More like 150-200. But goodness me I found it rewarding.

@Nightcrawler71 KCD2 is my GOTY - I’m just replaying it myself. My advice - you’ll soon start a main quest called ‘wedding crashers’ - DO NOT rush this quest. Before you go to the wedding take your time to learn the systems, do some blacksmithing and alchemy (you can easily earn money by doing the latter and you’ll soon be making multiple strong potions just by brewing once). Do side quests, read books, get drunk, play dice, explore. Grind some skills up. Get your horse back. Don’t fight armed people if you don’t have to - get some reasonable armour and learn some fighting skills - ‘master strike’ is a game changer.

My picks were:

1 - KCD2 (by a wide margin the best game I played this year)
2 - Helldivers 2
3 - Jurassic World Evolution 3
4 - Lost Records: Bloom and Rage
5 - Ball X Pit

I can only contrast the 267 hours (with more to come - I haven’t played any of the DLC yet) of KCD2 with the 3 hours 22 minutes which were all it took for me to lose interest in E33…

Finished JWE3 - really good fun if you like that type of game, and I do. Started my second play through of my GOTY KCD2 on Series X now that all the DLC is out and enjoying relaxing back into medieval Bohemia. I also bought myself a gaming laptop in the Black Friday sale which was delivered today, so will take some tentative steps into PC gaming…

More Jurassic World Evo 3 on Series X. A very engrossing game - the different parks in the campaign all provide different challenges, but I’m now onto the last one, so I should soon find out who has been sabotaging my parks. I have a strong suspicion…

If you enjoyed any of the Life is Strange games, Lost Records is definitely worth a go, one of my favourite games of this year.

I’ve had a right laugh playing this with my friends. The levels of destruction you can unleash are hilarious and impressive. How about a nice cup of liber-tea!

I dropped to Premium. I’m retiring in January so I’ve had a cull of subscriptions. The ‘big releases’ on Ultimate this year haven’t impressed me enough to keep it, especially at the new price, although that may change.

@TheCrafter1578 Did you learn Master Strike from Tomcat? Once you learn that, combat gets much easier.

At this rate, I’ll be playing it in a care home or a hospice.

@TuscanUK I took my time over it - started in February, finished in May. I didn’t play anything else at all during that time - I enjoyed it so much that I didn’t want to.

You aren’t really going to be able to scratch the surface of it in that short time! My playthrough took over 200 hours and there were quite a few side quests I didn’t do.

Yesterday was pay day so I bought Jurassic World Evo 3. If you’ve played the other games, it’s basically more of the same but better, which is fine by me.

I haven’t tried them all, but Ball X Pit is excellent, Breakout meets bullet hell.

They deserve their success, Helldivers 2 is a great laugh with friends, the best since Horde, although judging by the amount of friendly fire damage me and my mates manage to inflict on each other, we’d be incapable of running a back garden firework display without losing limbs.

I played a bit of The Casting of Frank Stone, but I wasn’t in the mood for something gloomy, so I switched to Ball X Pit which is very addictive. Might give Keeper a try tomorrow.

Good Lord, what a horror! Wasn’t the wolf spider bad enough?

More Subnautica. I have now constructed the submarine which I will need to go down to the deep depths and hopefully solve the mystery of this planet. However, it will still need strengthening to withstand the pressure and I’d really like to add some weapons too, because there are some right horrors down there!

This seems sensible to me, if they are going to release on multiple platforms. Give your own customers first bite at the cherry (and on Game Pass), then everyone else a bit later.

More Subnautica - really engrossed by this now and intrigued by the story you uncover as you progress.

Kind of cool that they are releasing it on Mega Drive.

For the King 2 looks interesting, it hadn’t been on my radar but I’ll give it a try.

I thought I’d try Subnautica again as I didn’t really get anywhere the first time I tried it, and lost interest, which bugged me as I know others had a great time. This time, having played Grounded and others, I’ve got a lot more experience with survival games and am finding it much easier to progress.

I can’t see past KCD2 for my personal GOTY. Honourable mentions to Lost Records and Helldivers 2. Some games I’d looked forward to - E33, Blue Prince - just didn’t click.

I bought it, so I can’t really review it on Game Pass, but I thought it was a pretty solid 8. The story is somewhat vanilla in comparison with the earlier games, but the combat is really good, apart from that flipping dragon that electrifies the ground. He took some killing.

A bit more Gears Tactics, which I’m enjoying, having not played it since back in 2020. May also try a little solo Helldivers 2, just to get a bit more experience and familiarity with the mechanics before the next session with my friends.

@Vordus That reminds me of when I bought Dark Souls 2. I bought it, spent an hour or so installing it, pressed start, watched the opening cinematic until I got control of the player, then thought “Do I really want to play another damn game like this?” and that was as far as I ever got with it.

I finally got round to playing it with my Thursday crew and we had a great time! There was rather a lot of accidental friendly fire, so God help us when we get serious weaponry….

I played through the first remastered game earlier this year and thought it was showing its age a bit - lots of corridors and courtyards and quite grey/brown to look at - so I don’t particularly fancy trying it again.

I thought I’d have a go on Gears Tactics - I’d forgotten how good it is, the three-move turns make it a lot more kinetic than (say) Xcom and it captures the feel of Gears well. I’ve got Helldivers 2, but saving it for Thursday when I can play with my usual crew.

Veilguard has the most vanilla story of any of the series but it isn’t that bad. It looks good and the combat is the best of any DA game.

I expect I’ll mostly be on Grounded 2, but I’ve installed the updated Hellblade 2 and will also have a go at that.

I’ve put some hours into it over the weekend. I now have my own ant to ride around on (I’ve called him Mortimer) and successfully defended my base against an attack by a mysterious insect force. In all that time I’ve barely ventured more than a metre from the snack bar area where you start. I’m having a great time! 🙂

Grounded 2 - after co-oping with a couple of friends last week, I’m back to soloing, which takes a lot more preparation and scouting. Hopefully I’ll be able to obtain and train a steed tomorrow!

I wonder if this would have happened if Concord had not been a failure? Either way, I’m saving up my reward points and looking forward to trying it - it’s a reasonable price too. I thought about buying it on PS5 , but my friends are all on Xbox and I didn’t fancy soloing it or playing with randoms.

@BacklogBrad Same here. I wanted to like E33, but the static turn based aspect seems so anaemic in comparison with something like BG3 that I found it boring.

I’m surprised Abiotic Factor isn’t getting more love. It’s a terrific game but hasn’t even had enough reviews to get a Metascore. 🤷‍♂️ Perhaps the old-fashioned graphic style puts people off, but they are missing a treat!

It’s not all that good. The bike is quite fun, but having to ride right across the map for a mission that was nothing more than a 1-minute cutscene was the last straw and I gave up on it. Also, in my experience members of motorcycle gangs tend not to be very nice guys.

Played a bit of Grounded 2 this morning - looks good - but mostly I’ve been on with Abiotic Factor, which I’m really enjoying.

@Ricky-Spanish Honey I Shrunk the Kids if it was flat-out terrifying! I never left my base after dark when the wolf spiders prowl…

I was going to jump straight in, but Abiotic Factor is totally scratching the survival itch at the moment and likely for some time to come.

I’m playing Abiotic Factor, which is really good - sort of Half-Life with crafting. Every item you pick up will give you an idea for something it could potentially be used for. Think about it (a mini game) and you get a list of items you’d need to craft it. Really engrossing once you get to grips with it, I can see this one eating up hours.

I waited for the 1.0 version of Grounded before playing, but I think I’ll be there from the start for this one. Hopefully the early access period won’t be as long as the first game, which was clearly lengthened by the pandemic, and we’ll get 1.0 quite soon.

I wanted to like the first one, but all I seemed to be able to do was survive on a day-to-day basis and never even got close to building the big submarines and underwater bases it promised, so eventually I lost interest and gave up on it.

Yes, a definite buy - in fact all my regular Horde crew are planning to pick this up. Looking forward to it - I would have bought it on PS5 but all my friends are on Xbox.