Monthly Update: February 2017

Wow, January was quite a month.  Good things happened, bad things happened, annoying things happened.

After listening to the first episode of My Brother, My Brother, And Me for 2017, I decided to take their advice and zagged a bit within my own bubble by starting up Ubisoft's street racer The Crew, a semi-realistic street racing game.  I am typically not the kind of person that goes towards realistic street racing games and instead tend to play racing games more akin to Mario Kart or F-Zero, but the fact that I have put in over 15 hours into this game is a testament that I apparently have something in me that really enjoys and open world racing game that also happens to be an MMO of sorts.  Fully expect an article in the coming weeks.  And continuing with the Ubisoft and Uplay news, if you visited our site over the last week, you will have seen that I was able to participate in the initial closed beta for the Ubisoft title For Honor, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about the stability of the game (at least for me and my computer) going into the open beta starting next Thursday (2/9 - 2/12).

Earlier in the week, after The Crew crashed on me three times in under 10 minutes, I booted up I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream, a point-and-click game released in 1995 and based off of a book of the same name written by Harlan Ellison.  I have had this game sitting in my GOG Galaxy queue now for a number of years and after playing a number of games that were released in the last five years, it feels good to play something that is not so graphics heavy.  I am also a sucker for a good point-and-click game as I do not think I have played one in a great many years. . .Shadowgate on the Game Boy Color maybe?  Anyway, I enjoyed the short story much so I am looking forward to being appropriately disturbed by the game.

On my 3DS, I picked up (via Christmaskkuh gift card from Beardsnbourbon) the downloadable copy of Ultimate NES Remix, a game that began to interest me after playing through a lot of WarioWare: Touch last year.  I know the game has received some negative reviews, primarily from people who thought they were purchasing full versions of the games pictured, but knowing that this was not the case, I feel that the game I purchased is nearly exactly what I was hoping what it would be.  I am also nearing the third act in Chrono Trigger and either the game is much shorter from what I remember it being when Dr. Potts and I played in on the SNES, or I am missing events; or because it is more accessible on a portable device, it just seems shorter?  Either way, Chrono Trigger continues to be the masterpiece that it was when it was first released 22 years ago.

In the physical realm, our Dungeons & Dragons group had our monthly meet up and I thought it went very well.  The group was able to explore a number of floors in the subterranean tower they have found themselves in over the last couple of months.  As the DM, I was able to knock out one of the players twice, although they were able to be resuscitated both times before death set in.  I was 6 hp short of dealing 150% damage though to the character in question, which would have outright killed them, so I am glad that that did not happen, but was still able to instill a bit of fear..  Additionally, with a number of our D&D group, we were able to play a couple rounds of Pandemic, although we failed to save the world both times.  Maybe we should try playing games where there is not such a frequent chance of us losing?

Here on our site, I started a new article titled "Game EXP" which I discussed previously.  I am hoping that with this in mind it will take some of the pressure off that I know Dr. Potts and myself place upon ourselves when we sit down to type out an article about a game we are playing.  The title of course may change if we come up with something with a bit more zazz, but for the time being, I am happy enough with Game EXP.

Looking towards February, I feel like it will be a bit more of the same.  And leading towards the March 6th release of the Nintendo Switch will add quite a bit of excitement, although I will be waiting a bit before thinking about picking the system up because of financial reasons.  It also does not help that Fantasy Flight games has released their first full expansion/DLC for Mansions of Madness 2nd Edition titled "Beyond the Threshold."  At least I am employed with semi-steady income now.  Right?

Sigh.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Give Me Time I Will Do Better