Monthly Archives: September 2020

Blog: Torn – 09/30/20

I think my brain might be busted in a major way because all I can think about is wanting to buy games that I know I’m not going to be into, and in some cases on a platform I know I don’t play that often. I feel stupid because I literally have to have an internal argument with myself every time I see someone praise Hades or Spelunky 2. The problem is that I know exactly how this ends, and it involves me just throwing about $50 into the garbage.

I’ve gone over my distaste for the rogue-like genre of games in the past and for a while it was easy for me to look at something like The Binding of Isaac and think, “Not only is this game visually unsettling, but I can just tell that playing it won’t be a great experience for me.” But here I am staring right at Hades and Spelunky 2, and I’m actively feeling my resolve start to falter.

Just look at Hades and tell me that it doesn’t at least look visually appealing. Every screenshot and clip I see of the damn game makes me load up the store page for it and hover my cursor delicately over the “gimme the cash” button. But it isn’t just a delight for the eyes apparently, because people are raving about every aspect of Hades to the extent where I think the mechanics, visuals and story might be able to outweigh my dislike of its run-based nature. Hell, Dead Cells was a rogue-like and I fucking loved the time I spent with it.

What’s really fucking with me is the desire to buy it on my Nintendo Switch, a console I play so little that whenever I do decide to check on my Animal Crossing town, I have to wipe the dust off of the screen first. So why in the world am I looking into buying Hades on a console I don’t really play that much? My running theory is that Hades is the perfect kind of game for the Switch, and apparently I’m planning on doing some gaming on the go in the midst of this pandemic or something. It’s stupid and I’m pretty sure I’ve talked myself out of buying it on the Switch.

The other game I’ve been contending with is Spelunky 2, a sequel to a game I actively didn’t enjoy but everyone on the internet apparently is wild for. Spelunky as a series are some of the only games where I feel like a genuine weirdo for not enjoying, and while I can’t make specific criticisms about a game i played back in 2008, I just remember hating its overly ambiguous approach to items and objectives as well as its cumbersome controls.

By all accounts, Spelunky 2 is just more Spelunky with fluid dynamics involved, a combination that a lot of people are really enjoying. Maybe with 12 years of wisdom and experience under my belt since the last release I can finally appreciate Spelunky for its true brilliance. Maybe Hades will make me a believer in the rogue-like genre. Or maybe, just maybe, I’ll waste my money on two games I’ll play just a handful of times.

UPDATE: I have bought both games. Somebody please help me.

Blog: More Than Games – 09/23/20

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Welcome to another fantastic edition of this blog where I sometimes talk about video games. Boy howdy are there a ton of video games I want to talk about this week, I’m basically swimming in rewarding gameplay experiences that I’m eager to discuss. It’s hard to convey sarcasm through a written piece, but that was all a big fib. I did a lie. No, this week has mostly been about me reading a book, hearing about how people are enjoying games I know aren’t for me, and watching the slow and steady erosion of our democracy continue unabated. So hell yeah, video game blog time!

Honestly it’s been a week of just reading through the latest Dungeons & Dragons module, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden, and preparing to run that for my group. You can read more about what that process has been like in September’s Master of Disaster feature on “prepping,” but to quickly summarize, it’s been a lot of work and a lot of fun. It’s consuming most of my time these days but I’m enjoying the process of it all.

*Rime of the Frostmaiden – Wizard’s of the Coast (Image Published on IGN)*

Otherwise I’m just kind of watching people lose their collective minds over the release of Hades and Spelunky 2, two rouge-like games that I know aren’t for me. But seeing all of this praise being dumped on these games is making me feel like I owe it to myself to at least give them a shot. I’m really in a holding pattern until next week when Baldur’s Gate III enters early access and the desire to play other games will leave my body.

Oh, and there’s that clusterfuck of a “pre-order” situation that Sony and Microsoft both waded into unwittingly that’s been interesting to watch. For those who don’t know what happened, both Sony and Microsoft had some pretty rough pre-order snafus, with people even ordering the wrong Xbox in some cases. It was bad, and even though I literally just wrote about my wanting both Sony and Microsoft to delay their consoles, I still keep trying to get a PS5 anyway. Like, there’s barely anything to play on launch day as is, but I just want the new shiny thing! I can’t buy a 3000 series graphics card because I’d literally have to upgrade everything else in my computer to accommodate it so I want the funny looking PlayStation instead!

But hey, all of that is small potatoes when stacked up against the deluge of bullshit that’s currently going on in the world. So do yourselves a favor, check your voter registration and make sure you vote on November 3rd. Seriously, it’s fucking grim out there and it’s getting worse every day.

The Master of Disaster: Prepping – 16

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One of the most interesting, fun and tedious parts about being a Dungeon Master is preparing from session to session, but even more of a challenge is preparing a new campaign entirely. My group and I are currently wrapping up our “one-shot” of The Sunless Citadel, a pretty decent Dungeons & Dragons adventure, and are gearing up for our next big campaign. As luck would have it, Icewind Dale: Rime of the Frostmaiden released just as we were finishing up, so we decided that it would be our next adventure. Being that this is my first time prepping a full campaign, I figured I do it as meticulously as possible. Here’s what’s happened.

Considering I’ve always had some difficulty with absorbing the things I read, I had to approach preparing for Rime of the Frostmaiden from an overly redundant and thorough angle. I can’t just read something once or twice and commit it to memory. My brain just never worked like that so I had to bust out old my note-taking methods from my school days in order to properly tackle this behemoth of a book. What that meant was that I had to essentially read the book paragraph by paragraph, rewriting everything I was reading into a notebook.

The notes themselves, while useful, aren’t really why I’m doing all of this extra busy work. The problem I have is that I need to rewrite something to commit it to memory. I don’t think that’s too uncommon, but it definitely adds a lot more time and effort to whatever it is I’m trying to absorb. But I wanted to be as meticulous as possible, and luckily the book is actually really interesting which has fueled me to continue with this overly redundant way of learning.

*Rime of the Frostmaiden – Wizards of the Coast*

Both my notebook and the module itself have tiny little bookmark tabs everywhere that denote all of the important information I might need at a moments notice. I do it in a way that is more granular than the format of the book itself can account for allowing me to quickly access anything from notable characters, town lore, quests, items, hazards and more. On top of that, my notes also point me to whichever page in the book I need to get to, so I’m covering all of my bases to make sure I am never more than a few pages away from relevant information my players might need.

But I don’t want to paint all of this as an exercise in futility or anything, because I’m genuinely enjoying the book on its own. The story in Rime of the Frostmaiden is interesting and captivating as written, and all of my efforts in documenting it are just so I can provide my players with the best campaign I can muster. I get to enjoy the book as is, but my players are relying on me to deliver them an exciting and cohesive story to go along with the actual game itself. If I don’t nail this thing then they might have a pretty lackluster impression of the module, and that would be upsetting on a lot of levels.

Other things that I’ve done in preparation outside of just reading the book has involved making generic encounter maps for the frozen wasteland of Icewind Dale, along with listening to well over a hundred instrumental pieces of music and “soundscapes,” and categorizing them into several different playlists that I can quickly switch between. Is the place they arrived in a happy town? Well I’ll play the happy town songs for them. Is this battle an intense and dramatic one? Got it covered.

*Page 2 of my Character Creation Syllabus*

I even went as far as to make a 4-page syllabus of just about everything they need to know in order to create characters for this campaign. When I say that out loud it sounds truly insane, but they genuinely appreciated me doing that. When I’m head down on preparing for campaign, the thought that I might be more “into it” than my players always creeps into my mind, but their reaction to getting a literal syllabus was overwhelmingly encouraging.

All of the little seemingly superfluous things I’ve done in preparation I do because I know that it’s worth it. I can describe a battle in the middle of the frozen wasteland just fine, but having a generic snow-covered battle map I can toss up for them will help give them a sense of place and another opportunity to tangibly interact with their characters. Picking out hundreds of music tracks and categorizing them by their “emotional weight” seems ridiculous, but music is so damn important to setting the tone and atmosphere that I find it’s necessary to a successful campaign.

Maybe this article is just going to be met with other Dungeon Masters feeling like I’ve just described what they all do all the time, but to me I feel like I’m really putting in the extra effort to make this campaign a success. Like I said, this is my first time truly preparing for something this large and intricate, and I don’t want to mess it up. Luckily my players seem just as excited for this new campaign as I am, so I don’t think my efforts will go unnoticed.

Blog: Super Mario 3D All-Stars Feels Scummy – 09/16/20

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I’m almost certain this has been covered by other folks before, but as we creep closer to its release I find myself feeling worse and worse about Super Mario 3D All-Stars as a whole. You’d think that a package containing one of the best video games of all time would be a more exciting proposition, but there are so many little upsetting nuggets of information that keep cropping up that have effectively killed any enthusiasm I had for the collection.

For those who aren’t aware, Super Mario 3D All-Stars is an homage to the original Super Mario All-Stars on the Super Nintendo that contained the likes of Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels, and Super Mario Bros. 3. It was an incredible package that is still held in high regards today as one of the best deals in games. Super Mario 3D All-Stars does not seem like it will be anywhere near as revered as its predecessor.

*Super Mario 64 (the best game in the package.) – Nintendo*

The first issue comes down to the game selection itself. Super Mario 3D All-Stars contains Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Galaxy all for the “reasonable” price of $60. The exclusion of Super Mario Galaxy 2 is suspect to say the least, especially when you realize that one of the three games in this collection is a big ol’ stinker. That’s right folks, we’ve entered the portion of the blog where I dunk on Super Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Sunshine is a game that doesn’t feel good to play, has some of the worst levels in Mario history in it, and steals the focus away from Mario and his cool jumps in favor of using a dumb water-gun jet-pack thing. It also inverted the camera controls on both the y and x axes which is an insane thing to do as is, but they took it a step further and disallowed the ability to un-invert it at all. You either had to reprogram your brain to play this bad video game, or do the smart thing and stop playing it altogether. Super Mario Sunshine is a bad game and shouldn’t be considered an “all-star” of anything.

But aside from suspect game choices, there isn’t any real work being done to these games. Both Super Mario Galaxy and Super Mario Sunshine are now presented in a modern 16:9 aspect ratio, but Super Mario 64 isn’t for some reason. None of the games are getting graphically retouched or injected with new content or accessibility features beyond the ability to mitigate some of the motion controls in Super Mario Galaxy. It just seems like a mediocre package meant to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Mario.

But the scummiest and grossest thing that Nintendo is doing with Super Mario 3D All-Stars is making it a limited release, both physically and digitally. I get limited physical releases, especially in this day and age where more and more of us are just buying things digitally, but to put an end date on when I can purchase this package digitally is wild. For reference, from the time it goes on sale at the end of this week you’ll have until the end of March 2021 to snag this overpriced collection of mostly good games.

At first the decision just seems like that classic “Nintendo is out of touch” thing, but the more you think about it the more your mind starts to craft these conspiracy theories and underhanded schemes that you could totally see Nintendo doing. My take on the situation is that Nintendo is trying to create a false scarcity for these revered games to boost their sales over the holiday season in lieu of having a big marquee game release. The artificial scarcity makes both physical and digital versions of the package seem like must have collector pieces, while also bolstering their fiscal 1st quarter earnings by guaranteeing that the sales can only hit during a specific period of time. Totally unrelated piece of information, the first fiscal quarter always ends on March 31st, just around the time when Super Mario 3D All-Stars will no longer be available for purchase.

But after you look at the blatant attempt to boost profits in a time period where a marquee game would normally come out, it’s important to remember that Nintendo has another incentive to cut off sales of Super Mario 3D All-Stars. There’s a reality in which Nintendo breaks the collection up and allows you to buy each game individually for a slightly inflated price. The collection itself feels like your chance to get the “best value” price before they break it up into 25 or 30 dollar chunks. But if I’m honest, it is Nintendo and they’ll probably try to make you pay full price for an untouched version of Super Mario 64.

*Super Mario Sunshine (a bad game) – Nintendo*

Super Mario 3D All-Stars would be a no-brainer for me if it was graphically retouched, or also offered the 3DS remake of Super Mario 64 on it. To me, I thought the bare minimum would be to just make these games run in 16:9, but Super Mario 3D All-Stars even falls short of that by only providing that “upgrade” to two-thirds of the games included. I think that Super Mario 3D All-Stars is bad package that Nintendo is trying coerce its fans into buying it by telling them it’s a limited time offer. The worst part however is that it’s totally going to work and Nintendo will make a boat load of money off of it. Or maybe the inclusion of Super Mario Sunshine is the worst part of this entire package? Who can say?

Gut Check: Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2

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It’s rare when something that’s so clearly playing off of your nostalgia actually delivers and makes good on all of those memories you have of a game instead of just reminding you how flawed your brain is. It turns out that the original Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series was phenomenal and Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 brings everything you loved about the series into the modern era extremely successfully.

From the start you’re immediately struck with the first wave of nostalgia in the form of a compilation of skate footage starring the characters of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2, set to Guerrilla Radio by Rage Against the Machine. I also enjoy that none of the footage was reused from old games, and instead it’s just modern footage of new and aged skaters doing sick tricks. It’s one of the first examples of this game knowing exactly what it is and who it’s for.

When you get to the main menu you can choose between playing the first or second Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, along with a third option for online and free skate which I admittedly have not engaged with yet. There’s a pretty decent character and board creator that you unlock more options for by completing in-game challenges across both games, as well as a park creator that I also have not touched yet. The challenges can get pretty wild too, asking you to make specific combos over certain gaps and such, but luckily Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 allows you to track specific challenges if you like.

But that’s all ancillary stuff we’re talking about, the real magic is in the gameplay. As far as I can tell, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 feels just like I remember those originals feeling. It’s fast and snappy and borderline infuriating when you over rotate and fall on your ass, just like I remember. Even better is Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2‘s decision to include various accessibility options that allow you to toggle certain game features on and off along with certain cheats like unlimited special meter an perfect grind balance.

For example, I don’t believe the revert was in the first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater, but it is when you use the default gameplay options. If you really want that first Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater experience though, you can change the feature set to what was available in that first release. I don’t know why anyone would do that but the option exists if you want to have less fun.

The weird thing about talking about the mechanics of Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 is that if you’ve played those original games, you know how this one plays too. It’s the game you remember except prettier. It retains all the good and bad about those first two games, including the one or two bad levels you had to slog through to get back to the fun ones, but I genuinely forgot how much I hated some of these levels until I was confronted with them once more.

Aside from the game itself, I think the most pleasant surprise for me was just revisiting the soundtrack once more. It’s weird to return to the place where a lot of your music tastes were cultivated nearly over two decades ago, but in a good way. I can’t remember what song played in the main menu in the original, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 immediately starts playing Superman by Goldfinger because they know exactly who their audience is and what song jumps to mind when they think of that first game.

There’s always the worry that you’re remembering a game being way more fun and memorable than it actually was, but Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 validates all of that nostalgia by delivering a truly fantastic remake of a those classic games. It’s also hilarious to me that they aged up all of the skaters from the original game allowing us to finally see a man in his mid fifties do a 900 off a rooftop only to get hit by a car that’s whipping around corners at breakneck speeds, and I think we could all use a little more of that in 2020.

Blog: Console Bore – 09/09/20

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As of writing this, Microsoft finally saw fit to confirm what might be the worst kept secret in the gaming industry, in announcing the existence of the Xbox Series S, the all digital and budget model of their next console. I could talk about how odd and wildly different from the upcoming Series X it looks, but instead I’d like to add to the cacophony of voices asking, “Should these boxes just be delayed?”

Honestly, I think they should be for a multitude of reasons. First, it’s 2020 and things are a fucking mess with a lot of folks (myself included) out of a job and unable to justify buying a $500+ video game machine. Things are tough out there with people not only possibly being unable to afford the thing, but supply chains being what they currently are might make for a difficult production and distribution pipeline. It’s like if Rolex was trying to pitch me on their newest line of expensive watches where normally I’d say “no thank you,” but trying to sell it to me in this economy is just fucking wild.

But maybe you’re Captain Moneybags, sitting upon your throne of gold coins and job offers with plenty of disposable income to throw around. First of all, how about throwing some of that cash my way, and secondly, what are you gonna play on these boxes anyway? Launch lineups are generally pretty forgettable, but this time around it’s downright miserable.

Sony has Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales coming day and date with the PS5, but that’s kind of it. Without a doubt both Microsoft and Sony will get some sports games, some sort of dancing game and an Assassin’s Creed, but that doesn’t seem worth the price of admission to me. Sure I’ll play Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and the Spider-Man game, but the first one I’ll be able to play on my PC or PS4, while the latter is more of an expansion pack that’s built on the same bones as its predecessor. That’s not a dig against these games but there’s nothing that’s jumped out and made me eager to buy a new console.

Then you look at Microsoft who basically just has third party stuff coming out with nothing else to show especially after Halo Infinite got delayed into next year. Like the PS5, they’ll get some sports games, some Ubisoft titles and the next Call of Duty, but they’ve got even less going on than Sony does. Sure they have Game Pass which will allow users to play a variety of stuff, but you can already play those games right now on your current generation of Xbox or a PC.

Maybe by the end of the month both companies will announce some super amazing games that I just have got to play on day one, but as of now there’s like one thing I want to play that’s exclusive in Spider-Man and that’s it. Personally, I wouldn’t mind a cool March release for these bad boys, or even just a full year delay. But it’s expensive to just store product in a warehouse for a year, and it’s unwise to do that with what will be rapidly aging technology. A delay could see a drop in price and a better lineup though, which is something I’m into but these companies certainly will not be.

Gut Check: Spiritfarer

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You’d think that a game about aiding the souls of the recently deceased in completing their various unfinished businesses would be a downer, but Spiritfarer just might be one of the most pleasant gaming experiences I’ve had this year.

I Spiritfarer, you play as a young child who has been tasked with taking up the morose mantle of being the new Charon, or as you might better know them, the ferryman of the river Styx. You and your adorable magic cat, commandeer a massive boat in the hopes of collecting the souls of the departed and helping them find peace in the afterlife. The boat serves as your primary play space, where you’ll have to fish, cook food, grow vegetables, smelt metals, spin yarn and more in an effort to keep the recently departed happy.

All of the souls onboard your vessel have their own specific tastes and desires, from dietary restrictions to more personalized dwelling spaces. As time goes on you’ll start balancing several objectives at once, like taking food out of the oven or watering plants, all of which give the impression of urgency without actually being stressful. It’s extremely low stakes with the notable exception being whenever your passengers exhibit a change in moods, which is when I as a player will hurl food and affection at them until they smile again.

I mean that fairly literally as well. In Spiritfarer, the main ways you raise the mood of a disgruntled passenger is to either give them food they like, build them a room they want, or to just hug them. There’s a hug option for each of the passengers which is great, but it’s also the most crushing feeling in the world when they say that they’re good on hugs for the day. It’s so brutal.

But that brutality is lessened by the gorgeous artwork and animation in the game. The way the plumes of light cut through the gaps of buildings on your boat at sunset is truly something to behold. Even when you disembark from your boat and head onto an island, Spiritfarer displays some truly jaw dropping vistas.

But Spiritfarer isn’t just a pretty looking management sim, it’s also got some light platforming and adventure elements that hold up as well. The platforming isn’t going to blow anyone away by any stretch, but it feels fairly snappy and responsive enough. It only really became an issue when I would try to be faster than the game could really contend with. For instance, there are these lightning storms you can fly through, and during that voyage you can race from point to point in an attempt to collect some lighting in a bottle, which I’m pretty sure is either money or a crafting resource. When you’re trying to be fast and precise, the platforming in Spiritfarer doesn’t really hold up.

That’s fair though. Spiritfarer isn’t an action game as much as it’s an adventure game. In between managing your relationships with passengers, growing crops, and crafting things, you also have to find more lost souls and complete objectives for the ones already onboard. Sometimes it’s about revisiting a childhood home and confronting the memories that linger in there, and sometimes it’s about being a union representative for spirits that are being taken advantage of by their boss.

One of the only issues I have with Spiritfarer has a lot to do with completing these quests. You have a mission log where you can refresh yourself on what someone wants, or where you should go, but the souls that require you to travel around and collect or build something for them before they join you lack any indication of where that person is.

For example, I found a spirit that wanted me to bring back their lost sheep. One of these overly rambunctious sheep happened to be on another island which I managed to find fairly easily, but the mission log didn’t tell me where the spirit who wanted the sheep actually was. This was a problem because it had been two days between finding the sheep and wanting to bring it back to the spirit. After some searching, I caved in and just consulted the internet which revealed that I was nowhere even close to finding the spirit.

Outside of that however, Spiritfarer has been an utter delight to play. It has that insidious “just one more thing,” quality about it that routinely has turned hour long game sessions into 3 hour affairs. I cannot sing its praises enough and wholeheartedly recommend you give it a shot if you’re looking for that pleasant oasis in this desert of misery we currently live in.

Blog: Games-tember – 09/02/20

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I cannot believe that it’s already September. This year has simultaneously felt like it’s taken forever and vanished in the blink of an eye. I personally love the fall and can’t wait until this muggy, humid, miserable heat fucks right off for a few months. Along with that shift in weather however, the fall comes bearing oh so many highly anticipated video games along with new consoles that arguably should be delayed. But let’s focus on the games for now with this short list of my most anticipated games of September.

NBA 2K21 – 09/04/20

I wanna just get this one out of the way and get it over with. NBA 2K21 releases in a few days here and I’m all in for it. I don’t expect anything to change too dramatically in this latest entry, considering they never actually update the modes that I play. but in lieu of any real update to the modes I normally play, I end up buying every entry in the series just because I love basketball. NBA 2K21, like its predecessor, will be a game I end up dumping hundreds of hours into over the course of the year. For instance, I’ve put almost 700 hours into NBA 2K20, so I’d say that I can definitely get my moneys worth out of these games. I don’t expect it to be markedly better or worse than previous entries, I’m just a sucker when it comes to basketball games.

*Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 – Vicarious Visions*

TONY HAWK’S PRO SKATER 1+2 – 09/04/20

I genuinely don’t know if I even have dexterity to play Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater anymore, but you can bet your ass that I’m going to try. Like a lot of people in my age group, the Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater series holds a special and borderline sacred place in my heart. I can still remember some of the mission specifics and optimal routes from certain levels in past games, and am especially eager to hear that classic soundtrack once more. Cause the only way to listen to Goldfinger’s “Superman” is during a two minute chunk where you’re trying to find a fucking secret tape. I look forward to revisiting these games for the first time in over a decade even if I’m destined to be terrible at them.

MARVEL’S AVENGERS – 09/04/20

I’ll be honest, I did not come away from the beta for Marvel’s Avengers with many positive things to say, but it’s just one of those things where I need to see how it turns out. I like the Avengers as heroes and would love nothing more than to play a good Avengers game that appropriately captures the feeling of working together as a super powered team. Do I think this game is going to capture that feeling or even be good? No, not one bit. But I would love to be pleasantly surprised and proven wrong. I’m definitely going to wait and see how people feel about it before I make a purchasing decision, but I’m still lured in by those big beefy lads and lasses in tights and fun costumes.

SPELUNKY 2 – 09/15/20

Look, I did not, do not, and probably never will understand why people enjoyed Spelunky so much, but I am curious to see how those people receive the long awaited sequel. Spelunky is often called one of the best games in a genre that I don’t enjoy (rogue-likes), so it’s not hard to understand why it was never for me, but I’d like to give it a shot and potentially see what all the fuss is about. Maybe Spelunky 2 will be the game that makes me a believer, or maybe it’ll be a big disappointment for all of the fans of the first game. I guess I’m mostly just trying to mentally prepare myself for when everyone I follow on Twitter starts posting nothing but videos and screenshots of how good they spelunked or whatever you actually do in that game.

BALDUR’S GATE III – 09/30/20

I’m pretty sure I’ve written 2 or 3 different articles about why I’m jazzed about a game that is historically part of a genre of games I usually hate. Like my previous features about Baldur’s Gate III posited, I just really like Dungeons & Dragons 5e and am eager for a way to get that fix on a more than weekly basis. I feel like I’ll also be more comfortable with this Baldur’s Gate III because I already understand the rules and mechanics of Dungeons and Dragons, so the learning curve won’t be as insurmountable. I never would have predicted that I’d be excited for a game like this, let alone consider it one of, if not my most anticipated game to come out this year. I have to temper my expectations however, because Baldur’s Gate III isn’t officially releasing this year, it’s just entering early access.

So that’s what’s on my radar for this month. Despite the large amount of delays that have cropped up this year, there’s still a lot to look forward to. But with the new consoles coming out within the next few months, September might be the last month big games can come out without being in the shadows of Microsoft or Sony’s shiny expensive boxes. Or maybe they’ll delay the consoles like they probably should, but that probably won’t happen.