Hello! Due to the absorbing nature of some of the main games I played this month, there’s not a whole lot of fully fledged entries. To make up for that, enjoy some slightly meatier dabbles!
Dabbles:
- MX vs ATV Alive (Xbox Live Gold) – I didn’t expect to enjoy this game, but I never bother with Gold titles, so why not give one a try? It seems this is primarily a multiplayer offering, and perhaps unsurprisingly since this has just been given out to subscribers, the lobbies actually had players! But I couldn’t get on with the handling. Maybe another time!
- DC Universe Online (Free To Play) – I still plan on spending more time with this MMO in the future, but for now I had some fun in the character creator while showing it off to a friend. Meet Chaddius Krongler, hero of ages. Jokes aside, I did play a little of the tutorial experience and didn’t find much to love with the outdated graphics and simple combat, but again, I’ve not uninstalled it.
- Craftopia (Xbox Game Pass Game Preview) – Breath of the Wild looked at survival games and said, “how can we make this into an open world RPG?” Contrarily, my first impression of Craftopia is that it looked at Breath of the Wild and asked, “how can we make this into a crafting survival game?” Not to be too unfair, I will say that its progression systems look engaging and the game is definitely pretty. I just feel like I’ve done this a thousand times before.
- Danganronpa (Xbox Game Pass) – I watched a playthrough of this game on Youtube, and loved every episode of it. I would go so far as to call myself a Dangranronpa fan at this point. Thanks to the kind of game it is, though, playing through it myself feels like re-reading a book I’m already familiar with. Since it’s on Game Pass though, I figure I should lend the creators support by engaging with it, since I didn’t pay for my first experience with it. Plus, achievements!
- Bugsnax (Xbox Game Pass) – I’ve been thinkin’ ’bout Bugsnax for a long time now. The game caught my eye the moment it was revealed for PS5, so I was naturally delighted when it came to Game Pass. This game is pure, un-distilled serotonin. I challenge you not to smile when you encounter your first Bunger. Bungerbungerbungerbunger…
- Borderlands 3 (Owned) – Having heard many things about Borderlands 3 – mainly in the writing department – I held off on this game for far longer than I otherwise would have. Having played a few hours now, however, I can confirm that it’s a sequel to the first two – and a half – games in the best ways possible. Most notably, the guns feel so much better to shoot. This game simply fell victim to others hogging my attention.
Continued:
- LEGO Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga (Owned) – I expected to fall off of this game before experimenting with too much of the open world gameplay, but I’ve actually slowed down before reaching the end of the story levels. I think the reason for that lies in the sequels. They not only leave a slightly bad taste in the mouth, but as someone who was obsessed with The Complete Saga for a decade, these levels don’t have the same level of interest from me as new offerings. Still, I’ll finish them at my own pace.
- Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) – I saw the icon for this game in my library and got a hankering. A grand total of two races later and I’m back on my opinion about it being a little overrated. These races are all straight lines and obstacle dodging! It’s okay, but not great.
- Peggle 2 (Xbox Game Pass Ultimate) – I don’t normally bother booting up a game just to do a Microsoft Reward Points quest, but this time around I was trying to score just a little extra to get me to a coupon, and ended up playing a bit longer to grab a couple of achievements. The system works! I also played entirely over XCloud, because why wait for an entire 884mb download?
- Fortnite (Free to Play) – My god. I have been playing so much more Fortnite than I expected to. I’m currently level 139 in the battle pass, and I fully intend to push that as close to 200 as I can before the end of the season. Not only that, but I’ve actually bought some additional V-Bucks on the store to grab outfits such as Ezio Auditore from Assassin’s Creed 2, and a banana that looked like a roman emperor. Because of course I needed that!
Xbox Game Pass Ultimate
Astroneer
It’s been a while since a game kept me awake for far longer into the night than it should have, but me and my friend Reece have been loving Astroneer. It’s been on our radar for a while, but the other night we finally downloaded it. You may remember from my entry above that I’m a little burnt out on crafting survival games, but everything Astroneer does is so unique and well executed – not to mention charming – that it feels like the breath of fresh air that other entries in the genre would do well to consider. The only other survival game I can remember feeling this unique was Subnautica, and if that game was co-op, you better believe we’d be playing that, too.
Astroneer combines the colourful outer-space aesthetic of No Man’s Sky (ala lo-fi polygons) with the technical progression of Minecraft mods like Galacticraft to create a well-polished, space-faring exploration experience. The basic gameplay may boil down to searching for materials that you can refine into upgrades, but the tangible nature of those resources and the way in which you gather and transport them lends an immersion to the entire experience. For instance, gather enough compound and you’ll have a little brick of the stuff you can slot into your backpack, literally represented on the back of your body. You can pass it between friends or leave it lying around near your base for future use. Similarly, creating new machines such as smelters and centrifuges is done with a 3D printer which literally prints them in real time.
It helps that the goals you work towards are exciting, too. Blasting off to other planets within the solar system is something to look forward to, so much so that you’ll only realise when you get there how much you enjoyed the journey of doing so. So far I’ve only made it to the Desolo, the arid moon orbiting the first planet, but knowing there’s so much more out there waiting for me to explore will keep me coming back to the game for many evenings to come.
Oh, and you can make friends with snails! 10/10!!!
Owned
The Elder Scrolls Online (also available on Game Pass)
High Isle doesn’t come out for another month and a half, but the preview event ignited my interest in the game early! For the most part, I’ve been working on finishing up achievements within content I’ve already finished; for example, I went back to the Deadlands DLC to finish all sidequests for Hero of Fargrave, I finally killed a group dungeon boss with my Blackwood-earned companion for the companion related achievement, and I’m now working through the side content of The Reach.
I’m also taking some time to level up alternate characters. For the most part, I’m just concentrating on my Argonian Stamina Nightblade, who’s level 42 at the time of writing. My plan is to take a new character through each major yearly DLC, but I could also do with an Ebonheart Pact and an Aldmeri Dominion focused character, as well catching up on alts through Morrowind, Summerset, and Elsweyr.
I feel like the hallmark of a good MMO is being able to look at the character select screen and talk near-endlessly about your characters, and the plans you have for each of them. One of my most viewed Youtube videos is when I did just this for World of Warcraft a few years ago. It may sound like gibberish to the uninitiated, but to those in the know it’s prime water cooler conversation.
In Summary
I’ve spent most of my time this month playing just a few games that I like a whole bunch, but that’s fine! The sweet spot for me is when I’m fully into a game or two, with the slump usually coming when I’ve burned myself out on playing and don’t know what I want to play next. That happened with LEGO Star Wars before I went back to ESO. As always when I’m invested in ESO, though, my gamerscore gain suffered for it!
Gamerscore as of April 11th: 28,334
Gamerscore as of May 10th: 28,849
32 Bit Brain 