I’m being a manic gamer lately

My gaming life always ebbs and flows. Sometimes I’ll go weeks without playing anything, and then other times I’ll get the itch again and spend every evening playing something. The past couple of months I’ve been doing a bit more gaming than before, and whenever I’m playing games it makes me want to blog. Funny that is. I just wanna be cool like Belghast who has something interesting to say on his gaming blog every day. 🙂

One experiment that I started was with my Steam library. I’ve spent a bit of money on games lately and I was guilting myself about it by looking through all my unplayed Steam games. I decided that I’d start at the top, and if I spent less than 30 minutes in a game I would have to play it.

Alan Wake

I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this — I had bought it on a whim during a Steam sale. I have to say that I was pleasantly surprised. It’s a scary game, inspired by Stephen King novels about a writer with writers block who goes to a Pacific Northwest cabin to clear his head and ends up being involved in a mystery surrounding his girlfriend and some creepy zombie things. It has a very Twin Peaks vibe to it and made me want to go to the PNW!

The combat in this game leaves much to be desired, but I found myself really wanting to hear the story.  I ended up getting about 4 hours in before I found myself frustrated with an encounter I couldn’t beat and ended up switching to YouTube to watch a Let’s Play in order to finish the story. I get why Let’s Play’s exist now! I was kind of tired of getting scared and the combat was getting monotonous, so I was happy for an opportunity to still view someone else’s experience.

All in all, I’d say it’s a pretty game that has aged pretty well. Go into it if you want a creepy atmospheric story but don’t expect much out of the actual game mechanics.

Alice: Madness Returns

Basically every game I buy and never play on Steam is scary, apparently.

Alice: Madness Returns is a fun action platformer that’s just stunning to look at. The art direction is so wonderful that I kept playing for 4 hours just so that I could see what the next area of the game would look like. Unfortunately, I ran into lots of bugs (such as not being able to re-equip my weapons) and ended up having to reload and lose progress many times. It was very frustrating so I ended up quitting. The gameplay of this one definitely gets old quick because it’s the same thing over and over. But it’s just so darn beautiful and it’s so cheap to buy that I’d recommend checking it out for the visuals alone.

Bioshock

I know, I know. I never played the original Bioshock, can you believe it?  So for this one, I fired it up on PC since it was the next alphabetically and instantly I was hooked. However, I kept having bugs and crashing. So I Googled and realized there was a remastered version for PS4 that included the other 2 games as well so I ended up buying that. Well, I got about 6 hours in (and LOVED it much like I loved Bioshock Infinite) and kept getting nauseous when I was playing. Something about the big TV and the first-person perspective was really getting to me. So I’ve given up. Part of me wants to buy the remastered version on PC so I can keep going, but my time is precious and replaying those 6 hours seems terrible. This might be another great candidate for watching a Let’s Play.

Zelda: Breath of the Wild

I impulse purchased a Nintendo Switch in January during a particularly freezing rainy weekend stuck indoors. And then I proceeded to spend 4 nights straight bingeing Zelda and then never turning on the Switch again. I have no doubt we’ll be reacquainted in the future, but for some reason Zelda just didn’t connect with me. I will never deny that it’s a fabulous game, and I think it was worthy of all the awards it won last year. But I always struggle with Zelda games. I’m really not a huge fan of the puzzles and find myself Googling my way through them more often than not. I did enjoy the wild horses though, and had fun trying to catch them. I think I’ll go back to BotW at some point but I’m not sure when.

World of Warcraft

I was super gung ho for a few months and then per usual, the excitement wore of. I’m sitting at 885 or so for my ilvl and don’t have a ton of motivation to do anything in the game. I still haven’t finished Suramar, haven’t done Broken Shores stuff, or Argus. I’ve barely scratched the surface on World Quests. I haven’t unlocked flying. I haven’t preordered the expansion, therefore no Allied Races for me yet. I know it’s only a matter of time before I get the WoW itch again, but currently I’m in a lull.

I’m not too sure what game I’ll play next. I’m intrigued by Eco, but the $29.99 price tag is pushing me away (and I’m not the biggest fan of early access games). I want to dip back in and check out Fortnite’s Battle Royale, but I’m terrible at shooters so I’m not sure why I’d even bother. I’ve kind of bounced completely from Overwatch as it was just frustrating for me to play as a filthy casual.

The next game on my Steam playthrough is Brothers – A Tale of Two Sons which looks good. At this point it would be nice to enjoy something enough (and not have any bugs) that I want to finish it. 🙂