PLAY 100 GAMES IN 2018
Clear your backlog and expand your horizons. Here’s what the team played this month
Crouching In Bush es
Ireturned to Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun this month. I loved what I first played of the tactical stealth game, but didn’t get very far. Now, I’m determined to make it to the end. It’s going to take a while. I spend most of my time crouching in bushes, figuring out the most efficient way to proceed.
I’m also enjoying Descenders. It’s an arcade-style mountain biking game, currently in Early Access, in which you speed down procedurally generated levels doing tricks and trying not to bail. It’s perfect for playing in bitesize chunks.
Finally, I’ve spent a few hours with Dynasty Warriors 9. I’m not a fan of the series as such, but I do enjoy its action. The open world just isn’t working for me, though. It’s barren, and usually boring. The first disappointment of my list.
Humongous Games
This month has been an odd mixture of humongous games, which ended up swallowing whole weeks, and tiny games which occupied mere minutes. Subnautica was probably the biggest of the big ongoing projects, as it took a solid 50-hour chunk of my time. No regrets, it’s fantastic!
More variable was a trip down memory lane after I reinstalled Oblivion. It’s still my favorite Elder Scrolls game but I’ll admit that’s at least partly because it’s flawed in interesting ways.
Grey Garden 9 was an in-browser experimental gardening game which occupied a pleasant few minutes, whereas Aaron Oldenburg’s Islid seemed like an attempt to make a digital version of Kurt Hentschlager’s disorienting art experience, ZEE.
Surprisingly Generous
Fishing: Barents Sea is a commercial fishing sim set in the Arctic Ocean, just off the coast of Norway. I’ve never had any desire to set nets or gut fish, but it’s such an unusual premise that I just had to try it.
Continuing the simulator theme, Train Sim World: CSX Heavy Haul is a game about driving heavy duty cargo trains. But I was more interested in the Great Western Express DLC, which recreates part of a route I’ve travelled many times in the real world, from London to Reading.
I also found some time to start Path of Exile, a generous free-to-play Diablo- style dungeon crawler with a dizzying amount of content. The download was an eye-watering 77GB, thanks to years of free updates, and more are on the way. I can tell this is going to be a time sink.