It was so cool playing The Messenger and Sea of Stars back-to-back a few weeks ago. I thought The Messenger was pretty good but not great (probably an unpopular opinion) but Sea of Stars was absolutely phenomenal. I love turn-based RPGs and this one exceeded pretty much all my expectations. Also, poor Garl :( I'm so glad he gets to come back for the True Ending.

Speaking of RPGs, I've seen you mention the Trails games a lot. I haven't played a lot of JRPGs but I definitely want to dive into the genre. Would you mind giving me a rundown of that series? What does it play like? How hard is it? How are the stories and characters? How much of a time commitment would it be to go through all of them? I saw a remake of the first game was announced recently so I thought it might be a good time to add the series to my backlog.

Happy to see some attention being paid to the search features. Have you considered allowing multiple modifiers being toggleable at once?
For example, enabling 'Exclude My Games' and 'Hide Mods & DLC' at the same time?

Being able to exclude games from Collections would also be very handy as another toggle option!

I've asked for this as well. Something like "Isolate My Games" and "Isolate DLC" so I can see which games in my backlog are listed as DLCs instead of full games and correct them.

I'm neutral about the chat as well. I like to read it every time I visit the forums but wouldn't miss it if it was removed.

Did you play GTA III growing up/when it first came out? I've tried really hard to get started with it but find myself always getting impatient with its mission design

I'm not the person you asked the question to but I played GTA III for the first time in May of this year, ended up beating it on the 31st. I really liked IV and V but I don't think I enjoyed a single part of III. It felt way too clunky and obtuse. If you aren't a series completionist or have a tolerance for older game design, I'd say just skip it. Just my opinion though!

Only four games were completed this month, but those include two larger, meatier outings, and none of my completions were bad.

07-Aug-2024 - Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PC) – 9H42M
07-Aug-2024 - Bright Memory (PC) – 1H13M
15-Jul-2024 - Just Cause 2 (PC) – 24H13M
25-Jun-2024 - Thief (2014) (PC) – 24H48M

I was disappointed with Hellblade. I enjoyed the setting and the fighting, but overall, this felt like a gorgeous world with little substance. Even the land of the dead should feel more alive than this.

Bright Memory was fun. Hard to believe this is mostly the work of a single individual. With its short length, I could not score it higher, but I would have liked the experience to last longer.

Just Cause 2 was a fantastic surprise. It got such a high retirement rate that I was expecting a bad experience. Sure, the vast open world is full of repetitive activities, but if you do just enough of them to progress the main story, this is a fantastic 3rd person shooter with a beautiful materialised world, full of different biomes, fun activities, and punchy controls. Graphically, it still holds, and I am sure I’ll hop in from time to time to do some additional side quests.

Similar to that was Thief (2014). Sure, I can see why die-hard fans of the serious will take issue with this installment, but I felt it was a good stealth experience staged for modern audiences. If it wasn’t for dishonoured, this would have been one of the best stealth experiences around.

looking at my new year resolution, I can buy 1 game for every 4 I remove from the backlog – but I’m not going to because I have enough things on my list I can play before the big sales come around.

My Game Size Guide:
Tiny (0-2 hours), Small (2-6 hours), Medium (6-14 hours), Large (14-30 hours), Very Large (30-62), Epic (62+)

Isn't Bright Memory basically the prologue to Bright Memory: Infinite? That's why it's so short.

I just completed Sea of Stars myself for the first time and absolutely loved it. The artful gambit achievement is also the only one I'm missing but I have no plans to go back to it. The DLC trailer looked cool but I played through game pass and my subscription will run out before it's released :(

Only three completions this month, all Game Pass games:

08/01 - As Dusk Falls
08/07 - Still Wakes the Deep
08/18 - Sea of Stars

Sea of Stars takes game of the month easily, as I expected it would. Turn-based strategy games are one of my favorite genres for a reason, and the graphics, story, and characters were great too. It was fun seeing all the references to The Messenger as well. It's a tough choice and if Jedi: Survivor or Sea of Stars will be my game of the year, I'll need to think on it. As Dusk Falls was an interesting enough story-driven game I played with a friend. It was good but I feel like I would've liked it more if I didn't keep making stupid decisions that got people killed. Unfortunately don't have enough time left in my subscription to do another playthrough so it is what it is. Still Wakes the Deep was overall a disappointment and definitely the worst game of the month. The graphics are good and the monster designs were pretty cool but everything else fell flat. For such a short game, there was a lot of backtracking. You would think something as large as an oil rig would make it easier to lead the player to new places but you kept returning to the same ones multiple times. The gameplay also just consisted of "go here, straddle the ledge, push this button/pull this lever, then head back" over and over again. Still wasn't a bad game but not really memorable.

September will be my last full month of Game Pass as my subscription ends in early October. I plan on beating Jusant and starting and beating Scorn with my friend. I imagine these will be the last two games we'll be able to get through before the subscription expires. As for me, I'm probably going to dedicate the entire month to Starfield. I'm already 30 hours in but it feels like I've made almost no progress. It may be too early to tell but as a Skyrim and Fallout fan, this game is a bit of a disappointment so far. Hopefully my experience turns around and it ends up being good. Time will tell.

Midnight Protocol???

You got it

I know this was announced back in June, but I just spent an hour trying to remember the name of it or where it was announced to try and find the trailer again, so I'm posting it for posterity.

First previews with gameplay came out today and I think this game looks incredible. I hope it's good.

Unsighted?

If so I cede my turn, I always forget.

Correct!

I just to let you know there's two games it would be great if you could add:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/291630/Mirror_Mysteries/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/291640/Mirror_Mysteries_2/

MobyGames Proof: https://www.mobygames.com/game/44943/the-mirror-mysteries/

https://www.mobygames.com/game/104409/the-mirror-mysteries-forgotten-kingdoms/

You can add games to the site (pending review) by clicking the submit button next to the search bar at the top, but it looks like both of those games are already on the site here and here.

NUTS - it's a wonderful puzzle walking adventure that anyone who loved Firewatch would enjoy. It's only about four hours long and was the result of a games jam that got rave reviews in raw form. This prompted the creators to make a full game and the visuals are stunning. I highly recommend it.

It has only six reviews currently. One is mine and another is the Auto populated IGN one. Released in 2021 they scored it 70%. I really liked it.



...I have just seen a game I played with no reviews though and I quite liked it.

It looks like Nuts has 34 reviews so it wouldn't qualify for this thread. I do have it in my backlog though, it looks pretty.

Amazon Prime continue to bombard members with more free games than they can play with four more freebies here. Links in the game names.

Puzzle platformer 'KeyWe' is free and delivered to your Epic Game Store


The rest are all delivered free to the Amazon Games Launcher but they do include the excellent metroidvania dark fantasy Grime



As well as Indie hack-n-slash RPG 'Young Souls'



And loud puzzle, exploration games 'Figment 2: Creed Valley'

You missed Spells & Secrets which is a GOG code.

https://gaming.amazon.com/spells-and-secrets-gog/dp/amzn1.pg.item.8927f0ff-f8f2-4f40-9e29-1376d2f6999d?ingress=amzn&ref_=SM_SpellsSecrets_S01_FGWP_CRWN

https://howlongtobeat.com/user/lodynet

There was a second user who posted something very similar in the same thread a minute later but just as I was about to post this comment, the profile disappeared. I assume they were connected and would keep a close eye on more bots from wherever this one came from.

Forum feature request: The ability to delete posts and spoiler tag pictures. I put an image link inside of a spoiler tag and the post just dropped the tag and posted the picture like normal.

I like that you created a new blog post after 2.5 years and didn't acknowledge the pause lol.

I have Love and its sequel Kuso from the itch.io bundles in my backlog as well. Looks interesting! Two of the hundreds games from those bundles I still need to get to.

Just got the True Ending in Sea of Stars without dying once.

The Dream Machine Chapters 1 and 2 were merged into a single game on Steam. Steam ID is 94300.

https://howlongtobeat.com/game/9842
https://howlongtobeat.com/game/9843

Apparently I use the 'retired' button differently. I retire games when I no longer own them. Is this wrong?

Retire usually means you stop playing a game before you beat it and have no plans to go back and finish it. If it's a physical game that you sold before beating it I suppose that also qualifies.

I'm not sure if it is still considered a popular series at the current moment, but Borderlands is one that feels impossible for me to get into these days. I played a good amount of 2 when it was one of the hottest games at the time and I find it really difficult to play nowadays without falling asleep. Even more so with the other main games like the original, pre-sequel and 3. Their brand of looter shooter gameplay and storywriting does not make me want to stick with those games at all, even in Co-Op.

Also, one singular game I have tried to get into multiple times is Hades. It's a really good game, but for some reason I always burnout after a few longruns and don't return to the game for a while. Might be more due to the genre than the game itself, but I do like the card roguelites similar to Slay The Spire.

Losing a long run in a roguelike or roguelite is very demoralizing, I know exactly what you're talking about. Roguelites like Hades have less of a sting because at least you're still upgrading/unlocking something that makes subsequent runs easier. Having to start from scratch with a roguelike though is brutal and causes many people to quit the genre altogether. I recently had to retire Barony which is a roguelike because my friend and I died on a boss almost three hours into a run and we both decided we didn't want to go through all that again.

Im working on FF7:Rebirth *still* at about 90hrs, Dragonquest (nes *emulated) and P3P (switch)

Oof, three big RPGs at the same time. Best of luck.

Looks a lot of people are throwing out genres as well as series in this thread. In that case, with a few exceptions, I can't really get into RTS, tower defense, fighting, puzzle, point and click adventure, beat/shoot 'em ups, arcade, sports, hidden object, or sim/management games. And yes, I looked up the Wikipedia page for video game genres to help with the list. RTS has too many things going on at once and I feel like I wouldn't be able to effectively attack and defend with all my units at the same time. Tower defense seems too passive. Fighting games have way too many combos for me to remember and get good using. Super Smash Bros with friends is an exception here. I'm too dumb to figure out most puzzle or point and click adventure games. Portal is one of the few exceptions for puzzle games I enjoyed. I'm really bad at all shoot 'em ups I played and beat 'em ups seem too arcadey. Speaking of, I don't like the endless nature of arcade games where you're just going for a high score and there's no story. I want a definite conclusion so I can move on to something else. Similarly, sports games are infinitely replayable which doesn't appeal to me. Hidden object games are boring. Management games feel too much like my job staring at numbers all day. Sim games cater to very specific niches that I feel like I don't belong to.

I'm sure there's a few but off the top of my head, I can't get into the Sonic series. I know there are good games and bad games in the series but I played through Sonic Generations a few years ago which is supposedly one of the good ones and I don't think I enjoyed a single moment of that game. Will not be trying any others.