noboners

Brotato

Solar Ash

@atheistpreacher: wow. Thanks for those tips. I don't think this game particularly showed well during any previews, so I was similarly cautiously hopeful about the outcome.

But I really love everything about this game. It translates better in 3rd person than I thought. I do think the original was a bit easier as there were more obvious tells of where your teammates are and what they are doing, but the spike in difficulty doesn't deter me much.

The server issues have affected me pretty severely on PS5 though. I basically can't play a mission in a party at the moment. Any time I have it has resulted in a bugs ranging from a dropped network error; losing all 3 teammates at the same time mid mission; or the worst is when it completes the mission but hangs on the mission report screen, then puts me back in the title screen saying the servers are full with no rewards from the mission the next time I load in.

All those problems aside though, the game is really fun to play. But I think I'm gonna just have to wait until the servers are ironed out.

I started watching episode 1 at the start of the pandemic to help me sleep. My partner ended up watching with me around skypiea/the introduction of Nico Robin once I compared it to Avatar the Last Airbender. We're now on episode 521. We've watched 200 episodes in the last 2 months (Impel Down/Marineford really fucking moves, huh?). It's completely consumed her and basically any time we're both home and want to watch something, that's what we watch.

I'll second Frieren as a top recommendation. It's phenomenal and my favorite new anime in years.

JiuJitsu Kaisen is the anime that I see people recommend the most, but the first season didn't grab me, personally.

1. Brotato

2. Rollerdrome (also available on ps+ this month!)

I seemed to have enjoyed this more than the rest of the group, but I don't think it's anything worth recommending to most people looking for a more traditional city builder. As others pointed out, it's hard not to compare it to the other City Builder that came to Gamepass, Against the Storm, but in reality they are two very different games.

I played Steamworld Build much more like an idle game than a strategic builder. There's not much reason to rush through building in this game and you can kinda just let it keep rolling until something attacks in the mines or you want to expand. I never found the game difficult, or even came close to seeing a failed state, so I'm not sure what even happens if you lose. I would usually just start a city while watching a stream and passively pay attention to it for a couple hours. Occasionally adding expansion areas, or focusing on the mines while I let my city build up resources above. I could get in a pretty calm, zen state while playing, so I did spend a decent amount of time with it at the end of the night to wind down, as well.

I do think the tutorial is too slow, and too long. And the "story" elements might as well not even be there. They don't add anything other than make you think there's more of a time constraint than there is.

All in all, I think it's a fine time, and a good time waster, just don't expect to make any decisions that alter your city's fate, or doom their existence. 6.5/10.

@allthedinos: I have had an opposite progression as you, where I played 10+ hours of this and then recently started playing Against the Storm. Steamworld Build is definitely a more relaxed experience than AtS.

I'm excited to spend more time in Steamworld Build though. So far, I completed one campaign on one of the worlds.

This game was such a nice respite post-holidays. Winter holidays are always tough for me, so having this relaxing two-ish hour vacation was just really pleasant. I ended up playing it on Steam to help clear out my backlog since I have had it installed since release. Playing it in just one sitting, and feeling full from it without the need to see everything just made for an overall really enjoyable experience that I think most people would enjoy. Objectives could be obtuse at times, but the gameplay was so simple that nothing ever got frustrating. Once I reached the peak, I only played for ten more minutes and called it a day. But I am glad for the day I got with it and feel like most gamers would find enjoyment in it. 5/5 feathers.

I'm one month removed from this, but I still wanted to jot down my feelings:

I absolutely adored this game, but I was in full collectathon mode the entire time. I found all but one of the diary entries; the one being from very early in the game before I had really understood what was happening. For the first two-thirds of the game, I was enthralled by the way you are exploring someone's prior experiences and history while seeing the way time had eroded the civilization. The climbing mechanic was merely the tool to explore, not a hinderance to the gameplay.

But then, the game introduced wind and stamina started to matter more, and the frictionless action of climbing actually became something to pay attention to, and my patience with the game started to drain. I never found the game difficult, but I would regularly have to physically rest my fingers while playing. During the final hour, I had to pause the game and take a break a number of times because my hands just couldn't really keep up. This didn't hinder the impact of the story, or the final act though. Once I got to the tower, the climbing went back to being simple.

Overall, I still greatly enjoyed the game, but I should look into the accessibility options before recommending it to people. 4/5 Stars.

1. Steamworld Build

2. Solar Ash

Diablo 4 - I feel a little bad about this, but I don't think I paid attention to any of the dialogue in the game. I know I'll be playing the campaign again at some other point with another character, so maybe I'll listen to it then. But this game really is all about clicking things until they explode and seeing what combinations of power allow me to do that the quickest.

Steamworld Build - this game ended up being more of an idle game than I expected. It's a city builder where you also mine multiple levels below ground to gather your resources to be able to expand your city to gain more resources quicker. It's a really fun loop that's pretty low stakes. I've been a fan of previous Steamworld Games but this one has a replayability to it that their previous games lacked to me.

Teardown - I only started playing this when it got added to PS+ and had the invert look option patched in, but it instantly clicked with me. I do need other noise while playing it though because it just sounds empty until you're actually committing to the run. So it has been the game I'm playing while listening to Giant Bomb's GOTY podcasts.