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Top 15 Games I Didn’t Play Because I’m Not Made of Money

The money tree I planted in my backyard never really payed dividends, so I couldn’t fiscally find a way to play everything I wanted to this year. So in no particular order, here are 15 games I wanted to play but couldn’t, because I’m not made of money.

CALL OF DUTY: MODERN WARFARE

I like Call of Duty well enough, but hearing the positive reception it’s been receiving really ramped up my desire to play it. The original Modern Warfare was responsible for some of my favorite gaming memories with my buddies, and while I know I can’t ever recapture that magic, it would’ve been nice to revisit it.

14.) LUIGI’S MANSION 3

I’ve only ever seen other people play any Luigi’s Mansion game with the exception of playing some terrible mini-games in Luigi’s Mansion 3 with friends. I never owned a Gamecube or Nintendo DS, so I was pretty excited to get the chance to play this newest release on a platform I actually owned. But like most of the games on this list, life happened, and I had to prioritize other things. The reception on this one has been mostly positive with some people taking umbrage with the controls. From what I’ve seen, Luigi’s Mansion 3 seems charming as hell, and I definitely want to check it out.

13.) POKEMON SWORD & SHIELD

Okay, I’m not the biggest Pokemon fan, so I can’t say I was actively looking forward to playing this latest entry at all. But I was curious about what a Pokemon game on a more or less, home console, would actually look like. Not curious enough to drop sixty big ones on, but still curious. With this one, I was more just window shopping.

Combine my mild desire to play a Pokemon game with the very mixed and sometimes angry reception of this latest entry, and I think I’m good on never playing it.

12.) DEATH STRANDING

Despite the miles of coverage on this game, I still just wanted to try it for myself if only out of pure curiosity. Most people are pretty split on it either loving it or hating it, but after seeing some of the stuff floating around the internet, mixed with my general dislike of most Kojima games, I’m 100% positive I made the right choice for me. If you like the game, great, but it doesn’t look right for me.

11.) HYPNOSPACE OUTLAW

I’ve been so close to pulling the trigger on this game 3 or 4 times now, but still haven’t for some reason. It’s this adventure game set in these facsimiles of old 90’s GeoCities pages where you play as a cyber cop that cracks down on infringements and infractions of cyber-law. It sounds great, but I just never found the right opportunity to go through with buying it. Luckily, one of my dear friends gifted me Hypnospace Outlaw for the holidays, which means I no longer have an excuse to not play it.

10.) SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE

I’m not a Dark Souls guy at all, but people told me that Sekiro, while still being tough, wasn’t as brutal as a traditional Souls game. Whether they’re telling the truth or not is pretty subjective, but deep down I knew what they actually meant was that this game would still relish in any opportunity to whip my ass. So I kinda decided to save myself the hassle and just skip it. Looks really cool though.

9.) FIRE EMBLEM: THREE HOUSES

Speaking of games that I definitely wouldn’t be into, the Fire Emblem series is an extremely popular role-playing, turn based RPG with an emphasis on crafting relationships with various NPCs in an effort to make them better fighters… I think. It’s certainly not a game I would enjoy, but all the praise people were throwing at it did make me curious enough to consider throwing money at it. Yet after hearing that the game could take upwards of 70-80 hours, I politely declined and moved on.

8.) MORDHAU

I really wish I had some friends who would’ve played Mordhau with me. I enjoyed games like Chivalry back when they came out, and Mordhau just looked like a more refined version of it which was a very appealing proposal to me. But it isn’t a game I would play unless I knew that I had a crew to roll with. Buying multi-player focused games is a pretty tough sell for where I’m at in life, but if my friends were down, Mordhau wouldn’t be on this list.

7.) CADENCE OF HYRULE

Crypt of the Necrodancer was so cool and unique that I’m surprised it took them so long to make another one. I’m even more surprised it came in the form of a Zelda-themed game. For those who don’t know, just like its predecessor, Cadence of Hyrule is a top down dungeon crawling game that has you move and act to the beat of music to attack and move around and all that. It’s such a neat concept, but I just never got around to picking it up.

6.) THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: LINK’S AWAKENING

Two things basically stopped me from actually picking up Link’s Awakening. The first being that I couldn’t afford it at the time, and the second being that the performance of the game looked really bad. On top of that, people who had finished it were pretty lukewarm on the later game content. I’d still like to try it for myself, but probably never will.

5.) ANCESTORS: THE HUMANKIND ODYSSEY

This is just like Death Stranding to me in that they’re both fairly inscrutable. I really wanted to play Ancestors: The Humankind Odyssey, but after seeing it in action my desires quickly subsided. There appears to be no direction in how to play or progress which isn’t super enticing for me. I was ready to approach this game like I was on a fact finding mission and I would report my findings back to all of you. But yeah, I don’t know that I’m ever going to buy this game.

4.) ASTRAL CHAIN

So here’s the thing about Astral Chain that can probably explain exactly why I didn’t play it. Up until I went to make this list, I forgot it had even come out this year. I’d heard mixed to positive things about it, but I was on the fence to begin with. It looked like a cool action game and reports of the satisfying combat definitely piqued my interest, but it just kind of fell off of my radar so hard and I don’t feel like I’m missing out on anything big.

3.) GREEDFALL

I have wanted to like the games that developer Spiders have made in the past, like Mars: War Logs and The Technomancer, but found them to be clunky and mostly uninteresting. But Greedfall looked like the most comprehensive of all of their offerings and certainly showed well in trailer form. When it came out, the response was pretty mixed, but there’s still a part of me that wants to give it a fair shake. There’s also my weird desire to play a big meaty action RPG even though I know that I have a hard time seeing games through to the end. That is unless they’ve really grabbed me, which is something I doubt Greedfall would have done.

Also, Greedfall? That’s the name that comes out of an idle game name generator. It’s a very bad title is what I’m saying.

2.) DISCO ELYSIUM

A lot of people have been singing the praises of Disco Elysium and even giving it their top honors this year. Since it released that’s kind of been the tenor of the conversation around it, so I was definitely intrigued. But seeing it in action quickly reminded me that it isn’t my kind of game. A CRPG is most definitely not what I’m looking for, and Disco Elysium looks to be a CRPG-ass CRPG.

I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t feeling some sort of FOMO with this game, especially because when I hear it described, it sounds awesome. I just know that Disco Elysium isn’t a game for me.

1.) SHENMUE 3

I just… like… I gotta know. I need to see this stupid game. I need to see if after almost twenty years this game is worth a damn at all. I don’t hate Shenmue games, they were impressive at the time, but they didn’t age well at all. Hearing that Shenmue 3 feels like a game made in the late 90’s but today, is a wild prospect. It sounds like the creator of the game, Yu Suzuki, stopped playing games after releasing Shenmue 2 back in 2001, and decided to make another one without looking at any advancement in the industry since.

Give me infinite time and money, and I will give you the review of Shenmue 3 that you all deserve.

Now even with an unlimited budget, I don’t think I would have had the time to dedicate to playing all of these games anyway. It’s a shame I missed out on some of these games, but I’m not balling out in a way that I can buy them all. Anyway, thanks so much for checking out my list, check back tomorrow for my Game of the Year list.

Blog: Happy Holidays – 12/25/19

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Hey y’all, just wanted to say that I hope this holiday season is going well for you and is relatively stress free. I also wanted to thank you for sticking with The Bonus World and reading our stuff. It truly means a lot to me to know that I’m not just shouting into the nothingness that is the internet, and instead, people are into what I do here.

But that’s not what this is about. What this is all about is wishing each and every single on of you a happy holiday season and a tremendous New Year. By the time you read another one of these it’ll be 2020, which I think we can officially classify as “The Future.”

I won’t belabor the point any more than I already have. So happy holidays and have a fantastic New Year. Now go spend time with your families, or do what I’m probably doing and hide in the bathroom and check social media to see how many other people are doing the same.

My Favorite 15 Games of the Decade

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Alright, it seems like everyone is doing one of these lists right now, so why shouldn’t I do the same? As we round the corner and leave this decade in the dust, I’d like to take a look back at just a handful of my favorite games from the past 10 years. These are in release order, and don’t indicate how much I enjoyed one over the other. Also, I didn’t want to write this article forever, so I limited it to 15. Don’t worry, I liked other games too, but these ones jumped out at me immediately when crafting this list.

MASS EFFECT 2 – (January 26, 2010)

When Mass Effect 2 arrived at the beginning of the decade, I was instantly taken with it. Having never really enjoyed the first one, thanks to its cumbersome mechanics, Mass Effect 2 provided a more streamlined an accessible approach to the action-RPG. With its tight combat and extremely well crafted story and world, there was very little to take umbrage with upon its release. It had its fair share of missteps to be fair, but those complaints drifted into the background pretty quickly. Mass Effect 2 is still a colossal experience to this day, and it also had some phenomenal pieces of downloadable content to provide new and interesting stories in this world I came to love so much.

ROCK BAND 3 – (October 26, 2010)

Rock Band 3 was the pinnacle of the plastic instrument craze that dominated the mid and late 2000’s, providing not only an amazing and diverse set list, but offering people the chance to live out their most rockin’ piano fantasies in the form of a plastic key-tar. It isn’t hard to see why the franchise and its competitors were so popular, but the Rock Band franchise is especially dear to me because without those games, I would’ve have never started playing the actual drums. While plastic guitars don’t really translate to real world musical talent, the fake drums actually taught me a lot about timing and limb independence. That and it had both At The Drive In and Metric on the base set list.

THE WALKING DEAD SEASON 1 – (October 31, 2010)

When the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead concluded, I was devastated. Through its highs and lows, it managed to tell a beautifully morose story that left me teary eyed. It also reinvigorated and reinvented the stagnate adventure game, making it not only a viable genre again, but proving that these kinds of games could tell amazing stories while not requiring you to solve obscure puzzles which had been a staple for so long.

PORTAL 2 – (April 18, 2011)

Do I really need to explain why Portal 2 is on this list? It’s one of the best puzzle games out there to this day, providing an excellent learning curve, intriguing story, and for being genuinely hilarious. For years people have been clamoring for Half-Life 3 and Left 4 Dead 3, but the correct answer is making Portal 3. I can safely say that I haven’t enjoyed a puzzle game as thoroughly as Portal 2 since its release.

JOURNEY – (March 13, 2012)

The way Journey handled not only its story and world, but its multiplayer component, was a revelation to me at the time. There was this constant feeling of isolation that would encompass everything around you, until a mysterious figure would show up in the distance, beckoning you to come over. They had no name, they couldn’t speak, but they were another player, and they were waiting for me. And it was an incredible feeling to know that while we once thought we were both alone, we were both wrong. Without saying a word, you and your buddy would trek through the entire game together where Journey would finally reveal the name of the player or players that you spent a few hours with. Journey was a beautiful game on all fronts, and everyone should play it.

SLEEPING DOGS – (August 14, 2012)

It’s a shame that Sleeping Dogs never saw a sequel, because it’s a fantastic game. It’s like if Grand Theft Auto had a better story and didn’t rely on shooting everything in sight to progress. It combined all of the fun aspects of GTA, the open world, the vehicles, and the side activities, and paired them with a really good hand to hand combat system in the vein of Batman Arkham Asylum. It was a joy to play, with the least interesting parts of it ironically being the bits where you had to shoot things. Also, Emma Stone was in it and I don’t understand why.

MARK OF THE NINJA – (September 7, 2012)

Okay, so here’s a reference that maybe like 7 people will get, but does anyone remember those old Splinter Cell games that they put out on flip phones like the Motorolla RAZR? They were these 2D stealth games that were way better than they had any right to be. Why did I bring that up? Because Mark of the Ninja scratched that itch for me in the best way possible. It was this 2D stealth action game where you were unsurprisingly, a ninja, who would sneak around and slice fools up. Not only did it play great, but it looked phenomenal. I wholeheartedly recommend Mark of the Ninja to anyone that wants to play a stealth game that isn’t overly complex.

THE LAST OF US – (June 14, 2013)

There’s like 5 or six moments in The Last of Us that still stick with me to this day, and I’m willing to bet anyone who’s played the game can guess what they are. From a gut-wrenching story to tense combat and stealth situations, The Last of Us was a triumph of a game. Ironically enough, my least favorite part about it were the zombies, but I still really loved this game despite their presence. Also, The Last of Us had a really amazing multiplayer aspect to it that I feel was under appreciated.

SUPER MARIO MAKER – (September 10, 2015)

I’ve never been a huge fan of level building games or modes, but Super Mario Maker was so brilliant in its design, using the language of Mario games that I understood so well to empower me to stretch my level building muscles. It was so cleverly designed in a way that made logical sense through the lens of Mario games. If I wanted a large goomba, I’d feed him a mushroom. Want a flying Bowser? Slap some wings on that fool. It took the pieces of Mario we all understand, and made them work in the context of a level editor.

FIREWATCH – (February 9, 2016)

There aren’t too many games that I could say “made me feel things,” but Firewatch was definitely one of them. From the jump you’re thrown into a tragic situation that’s the impotence for the rest of the game. It’s this constant, nagging feeling in the back of your head that reminds you that you shouldn’t be here. “Here” of course being in the middle of the woods working as a forest ranger in a fire watch station. You spend all of your time exploring the wilderness and talking to the voice of another fire watcher who is guiding and directing you while asking you increasingly more personal questions. You’re not only learning about each other, but you’re learning about a mystery lurking in the very woods you’re wandering through. It’s amazing and I can’t say enough good things about it. Play Firewatch.

TITANFALL 2 – (October 28, 2016)

It’s such a shame that when Titanfall 2 was released, it was wedged between a Call of Duty and a Battlefield game, essentially killing any moment it could gather before it had a chance. Like I said, it’s a real shame considering that Titanfall 2 is one of the best first person shooters of the last decade. From toe to tip, everything in Titanfall 2 is crafted with care and attention to detail. The campaign, while not the most interesting story, is incredible from a design standpoint, with each level boasting a new mechanic or idea that dramatically changed how you played. The multiplayer was no slouch either, building upon the chaotic fun that the original Titanfall introduced back in 2014. Titanfall 2 is still worth your time even if you don’t plan on engaging with the multiplayer aspect of it. In fact, I might even recommend just getting it for the campaign at this point.

NIGHT IN THE WOODS – (January 10, 2017)

Night in the Woods is hands down my favorite game of the decade. I wrote a review that goes into my feelings on it in detail, but I’ll quickly summarize what I can here.

Night in the Woods struck a real chord with me and even managed to make me genuinely reconsider things in my own life. I know it sounds ridiculous, but the themes, the interactions, the setting, everything about it just rang so true and hit me hard. It’s a hard game to recommend because when I start out by saying, “you play as an anthropomorphic cat,” people tend to tune out immediately afterwards. But for such a visually adorable game, it gets really dark and intense. Adventure games aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I really can’t say enough good things about Night in the Woods.

THE LEGEND OF ZELDA: BREATH OF THE WILD – (March 3, 2017)

I’ve never been the biggest fan of The Legend of Zelda series, enjoying some of them but never really feeling any affinity or passion for the series, but holy hell did Breath of the Wild change all of that. You’re plopped onto this massive and sprawling land mass, given all the abilities you’d need to conquer any and all obstacles along the way. Breath of the Wild isn’t a game about getting stronger, it’s a game about getting smarter by using your skills and the tools you find along the way. By incorporating a system that rewards exploration and puzzle solving in order to maximize your HP or stamina, you were always encouraged to explore the world as opposed to just charging towards the finish line. The only thing that I absolutely hated about Breath of the Wild was its system of weapon degradation. I felt like it didn’t add anything to the game itself, and made me hoard more things that I normally would in games. But that’s barely an issue when stacked up to every other triumph in Breath of the Wild.

MARVEL’S SPIDER-MAN – (September 7, 2018)

Let’s get this out of the way, Marvel’s Spider-Man is repetitive in spots and doesn’t offer a tremendous amount of variety in what you actually do in it. That being said, I’ve never had more fun with a superhero game than this one, and coincidentally it stars my favorite one. Marvel’s Spider-Man, by my own admission, is just a good game. It isn’t great and probably doesn’t stack up to several other games on this list, but it was easily one of my favorite and most memorable experiences with a game in recent memory. It’s one of the only games I’ve felt the need to 100%, despite the repetitive chores I had to complete to accomplish that. Marvel’s Spider-Man just feels good to play, providing a satisfying swinging mechanic mixed with some great (yet repetitive) combat. It’s rough around the edges in spots, but I still love it so dearly.

RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 – (October 26, 2018)

I’m willing to bet that a good percentage of the posts on this site are about Red Dead Redemption 2 in some way. That’s with good reason though. You can read my review, but Red Dead Redemption 2 is such a triumph of a game in terms of story, atmosphere and world building, that I can’t even fathom a game that’s done it better.

Every piece of Red Dead Redemption 2 is crafted in a way to reinforce the Wild West setting, while still providing interesting and engaging story beats. Like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, it does a great job at encouraging exploration. Almost every cottage, structure or cave you stumble upon has something there for you experience or find. The amount of random events in the world that crop up do a great job of breaking up what would be the tedium of riding your horse from mission to mission, while also being pretty interesting for the most part.

I could go on forever about how much I like Red Dead Redemption 2, but I have a review to do that for me. And if you haven’t played it yet, my one bit of advice is that the game is slow. You have to be okay with going at its pace or else you’ll have a miserable time.

The 2010’s have been really great for video games as a product. Less so for the business end of things… more specifically the “being an employee at a game company” part of it. I know we’re going to get some great games in the coming decade, but we need to see real change in the way game companies are run. Here’s hoping for some progress in 2020.

5 Games I Didn’t Finish This Year

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Every year I find myself struggling to find the time or energy to power through a particular game for one reason or another. Sometimes it’s because of a glut of releases, other times it’s just the game itself repelling me from it, but more often than not, it’s because something in my life came up. This year I’d like to highlight the games that I just couldn’t bring myself to finish this year for one reason or another.

THE OUTER WILDS

Okay, so I know that The Outer Wilds is probably high up on a lot of Game of the Year lists for a lot of people, but despite the incredible first impression it makes, it never managed to get its hooks in me.

For those who don’t know, The Outer Wilds is kind of a run based adventure game about space exploration. I say “kind of” because there are story justifications for the looping of time that actually build up a pretty intriguing mystery that involves ancient civilizations.

The problems I ran into with the game however, are less the fault of the game itself, and more my own issues with certain styles of game. For instance, while it’s cool, the looping nature of the world didn’t engage me as much as it repelled me. I like to explore things at my own pace, and while I understand that different events happen at different times during the loop, I just never shook this nagging, pressured feeling.

I also felt that controlling the spaceship was way more of an obstacle than it needed to be. It’s just so unwieldy and hard to control with any accuracy. It ends up getting in the way of my desire to actually follow up on the elements of the story purely because of how bad controlling the ship feels.

The other big thing that kept me away from it, was just putting it down for too long. I stepped away from The Outer Wilds for one reason or another when it released back in May, and I haven’t touched it since.

All things considered, The Outer Wilds is the game on this list that I most consider coming back to and might get around to by the time this article gets published.

KNIGHTS AND BIKES

I wrote about Knights and Bikes a while back and how despite being a very charming looking game, the gameplay was lacking. To quickly catch you up: Knights and Bikes is an action adventure game with a focus on cooperative play. It kind of plays a little bit like a top down Zelda game, except it’s nowhere near as fun or interesting.

So why didn’t I stick with Knights and Bikes? Because life is too short to struggle through a game that isn’t doing anything for you. From the combat to the dialogue, nothing really stood out to me about the game. That is of course, with the exception of Captain Honkers, the very good goose in the image above.

MARVEL ULTIMATE ALLIANCE 3: THE BLACK ORDER

Okay, so let’s just rip this band-aid off. A few months back I wrote a pretty positive Early Impressions article about Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order. I stand by that article considering it was about, my early impressions. Unfortunately, what should’ve been a fun beat-em-up with all my favorite superheroes turned into an all out snooze-fest mixed with a healthy dose of grinding.

I really wanted to like Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order, but the loop of going to a new level to punch beefier enemies just got really tiresome after a while. The main issue I had with the game that ultimately stopped me from proceeding, was that it never fulfilled the power fantasy of being a superhero. I was always outmatched no matter what combination of heroes I threw at the endless horde of enemies.

And ultimately it just stopped being fun to play. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order felt too long for its own good while never adding enough to shake up the formula to keep things interesting.

REMNANT: FROM THE ASHES

Remnant: From the Ashes is a game that people said was a manageable Dark Souls-esque experience if you were to go at it alone. Those people are clearly better at video games than me and I’m okay with that.

I really liked my short time with Remnant: From the Ashes, but I just never had the desire to come back to it. I have some friends who have the game, but even that wasn’t enough to keep me engaged.

I genuinely don’t know what’s stopping me from jumping back into Remnant: From the Ashes, but I suspect it has a lot to do with my general lack of enthusiasm for the, “hard” game genre where games like Dark Souls, Sekiro and The Surge live.

I would love to come back to it, but let’s be honest here, it isn’t going to happen. It’s just another example of a game that you spend enough time away from, that going back to it seems like an ordeal.

AFTERPARTY

Lastly on the list is the most recent example of a game that I said, “I’ll get back to that one later,” and never did. Afterparty is a game that I was so excited for ever since it was announced, and then when it finally dropped in late October I found myself strapped for time.

By the time my schedule cleared up, 2018’s game of the year, Red Dead Redemption 2 was released on PC and consumed every free moment of gaming time I had left. Do I regret not playing a new release for a game I beat twice already? A little. Do I care? Absolutely not.

Afterparty as a game didn’t do anything to repel me from it, the problem was that it got buried under the weight of the cowboy simulator. It isn’t a very long game from what I’ve heard, so I might try to bang it out over the winter break.

So there they are, 5 games I didn’t finish this year and probably wont ever. Check back in tomorrow at 3pm ET for another Game of the Year article. And to answer your question, yes, this list exists in an effort to explain why certain games aren’t on my Game of the Year list.

The Master of Disaster: Adapting – 08

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While I always feel immensely satisfied with the work I put into crafting and delivering our various DnD sessions, when I look back on where we started versus where we are now I can’t help but feel like I missed endless opportunities along the way. My Dungeon Mastering started by following the Waterdeep: Dragon Heist book in an attempt to get my sea legs under me. I had always intended to stray from the book and its story, but never did I expect it to be such a dramatic departure.

I’ve gone over that transition once or twice already, so I won’t retread that yet another time. No, the crux of this The Master of Disaster is about adapting on the fly and how important being able to do it effectively is.

One of my players is currently in the midst of crafting a one-shot game for us as a way to get comfortable with being a Dungeon Master for a future campaign they’ll run. He recently came to me and let me know that he was a little behind and needed more time to hone it. That’s completely understandable, considering that putting together even a one-shot is a tremendous amount of work. But I wanted to impart my limited knowledge upon him and maybe help him prepare for the stuff that you can’t script out.

I don’t know if I was effective in portraying that message, but hopefully this can help him along with other first time Dungeon Masters.

The first thing to understand is that you need to give your players a reason to do something. I’ve struggled with it in the past and it led to a couple of moments with me breaking the fourth wall and just saying, “you’re going there cause that’s where the rest of the game is.” There was more context to that statement, but it doesn’t matter because that’s just a bad way to handle the situation. I either needed a better motivator or a better way to express that this was the direction the party should head in.

The second thing is to know your NPCs. You don’t have to make bespoke character sheets for every NPC you craft, nor do you need to name every citizen in a town or village. That path leads to nothing but insanity. What I settled on was making sure I had an understanding of what the named NPCs knew and what that information meant to them. Maybe the party would have to earn that information, maybe the NPC was easily intimidated, maybe they were a good Samaritan, or maybe they just don’t know something. You can’t plan for every question or line of dialogue cause you never know what your players are thinking.

Along those lines is the third and arguably the most important thing a Dungeon Master can do, and that’s being able to adapt on the fly. Improvisation is a required ability when leading a session or campaign, that’s why it’s important to have the previous two skills down because it makes this third one that much easier.

For example, you might have a quest line involving a corrupt king that’s been enjoying the benefits of their royalty while their people live in squalor. Why should the party care? Well, the easiest reward is money or treasure, but if you have players who actively role play, you can tap into their characters minds and appeal to their nature. The lawful good guy isn’t going to be too keen on an neglectful and abusive king. You can reinforce this by having citizens who voice their disdain and dissatisfaction to the party, or an event that shows the kings brutality. These can help propel the party in the direction you want them to go.

But you never know if they’ll take the bait or be as invested as you want them to be, and that’s why you need to be able to improvise and think on the fly. Maybe the party is looking for a diplomatic approach even though you planned for a big battle. Don’t squash that effort, embrace their decisions. Even if you had this elaborate fight planned, you need to know when to let it go and let the party succeed. There will be plenty of opportunities for other fights.

You can apparently buy this screen here

But let’s say you really want them to fight anyway. Okay, I guess if that’s how you want to play it, you have to justify it. The king might be okay with the negotiation, but maybe a group of his personal guards aren’t to keen on giving up their power. Things like that can allow the players to feel like they’ve accomplished something without making it too obvious that you just wanted to fight.

Although one thing I’ve learned is that it’s usually better to just let your players take their victory in circumventing a battle because it makes them happy. But maybe now you’re in a position where suddenly a battle that could take up half of your session is just gone and you’ve got nothing planned. Using the previous example of the king, you can have the guards jail the king for betraying them or the throne or something and have it end up as a big brawl between the citizens and the guards that remain.

That actually accomplishes a lot because your players feel like their plan worked, but there were unforeseen consequences of their actions that rippled throughout the town. Now they’ve got to clean up their own mess, and now they’re invested.

Like I said, I’m not perfect at this Dungeon Mastering thing, but I have figured out a decent way to keep my players engaged and excited most of the time. Sometimes it’s fun to make a quest that plays their alignments against each other, or that one players character would be really invested in and see how they convince the rest of their group to follow along.

I guess to sum up everything here into one tight sentence, it would be this; Don’t say no to your players, instead offer up alternatives, goals and challenges to their requests and attempts, even if it goes against what you’ve planned for.

Blog: End of the Year Stuff – 12/18/19

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Pardon the self serving post, but I just wanted to get out in front of what’s coming up next week. See, every year I try to compile a list for Game of the Year and that’s worked for me so far. Yet this year, I’ve found it a little harder to build that list. There were a lot of external factors that made it tougher, but I won’t bore you with the details.

The point is that somewhere in my brain I decided that because it was difficult this year to make one list, I made four. What that means is that every day next week there’s going to be something to peruse on the site. I’m really proud with how it all came out and I hope you all enjoy it as well.

The lists are pretty self explanatory, so I won’t go into it here. But yeah, for as much work as all of it was, I’m very happy with the results. So yeah, short blog this week, but it felt necessary to keep you all in the loop.

Happy holidays, and I’ll see you next week.

Blog: Early & Confirmed for 2020 – 12/11/19

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Next year is going to be a big year for video games, with a lot of hotly anticipated games due to release in the run up to the next generation of consoles. New consoles are nice and all, but what about the 11 months between now and their release? There are a ton of games slated for next year, but I’ve selected a handful of the ones with confirmed release dates to talk about.

That being said, there’s a lot of games that don’t have concrete dates that I’m excited for, but decided to not put on this list. Anyway, here’s 6 games confirmed for the first half of 2020 that I’m personally excited for.

DRAGON BALL Z: KAKAROT – JANUARY 17th

Look y’all, Dragon Ball Z fever is back and people all over the world are charging up energy blasts and screaming at each other for hours on end. After 2018’s Dragon Ball Fighter Z released, I feel like I’ve heard more about Dragon Ball as a franchise than ever before. I guess with its swell in popularity, the decision to make a game based off of the most iconic arcs in the series was an easy call.

Enter, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, an action RPG where you’ll play as the worlds worst father himself, Goku, in what seems like the first few sagas on Dragon Ball Z. It looks like the more classic Dragon Ball 3D fighting games with some RPG and exploration elements sprinkled on for good measure. On paper, it all sounds really cool.

Out of the few games on this short list, this one is easily the one I’m most cautious about. I don’t think it will be a bad game, but I do think it’ll be incredibly polarizing for people like myself who only really enjoyed Dragon Ball Fighter Z, which is a 2D fighting game, and never really played the 3D fighters.

ORI & THE WILL OF THE WISPS – FEBRUARY 11th

When I think back to my time with Ori & the Blind Forest, I can’t help but remember its beauty in both presentation and story and its good, but not great, platforming gameplay. It wasn’t a bad game by any stretch, but more of a less refined experience than I was looking for. Some of the exploration based stuff felt a little tedious and not worth the hassle.

A few years have passed however, and the sequel is on the horizon. I’m excited to see what Ori & the Will of the Wisps brings to the table both in terms of new features and refinements to the existing platforming and Metroidvania formula of its predecessor. Ori & the Blind Forest was a great foundation that a proper sequel could really build off of in some exciting and interesting ways. Here’s hoping.

ANIMAL CROSSING: NEW HORIZONS – MARCH 20th

I’m not a big gardener, or interior decorator, people person or the general outdoorsy type. In fact, if I was in a real life Animal Crossing scenario, I might physically and mentally break down. That being said, I’m beyond excited to do all of those things I usually hate in the latest game in the storied Animal Crossing series, Animal Crossing: New Horizons.

Just look at how dang adorable this game is. It looks like its turning up the complexity of its mechanics ever so slightly with basic crafting mechanics, which I’m normally not a fan of, but it seems like a good way to increase the playtime in a game that’s basically a short, daily checklist. Crafting seems like a decent way to artificially pad out how much time you can spend in a given session, making you have to consider the condition of your tools and make more of them to progress.

Like I said, Animal Crossing as a concept should be something I hate, but its just so darn cute and relaxing that I can’t help but be smitten by it.

CYBERPUNK 2077 – APRIL 16th

Remember all that cutesy baloney I was spouting in the last blurb? Well forget all that, cause Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out shortly after Animal Crossing: New Horizons and it’s gonna be so extreme that I’m preparing now by funneling cans of Mountain Dew into my face as we speak.

I can’t wait to dive into a hyper connected, cyberpunk dystopia and chop it up with my main man Keanu Reeves. We’re gonna drive our cyber car to the cyber store to buy cyber arms that have cyber guns in them, and it’s gonna all have a cool synth-wave vibe to it that’s absolutely my aesthetic.

I don’t know why I took such an aggressive stance with this description, Cyberpunk 2077 to my knowledge, hasn’t had any Doritos or Mountain Dew integrations announced for it… yet.

All jokes aside, the game looks like its right up my alley on all fronts. My only trepidation is the fact that it looks like it’s gonna be a hefty game, and I don’t know that I have the time in my life anymore to dedicate to a game like that. As much as I want a big, cyberpunk themed RPG in my life, it might be an overwhelming prospect. We’ll see though.

MARVEL’S AVENGERS – MAY 15th

Man, this game doesn’t look great, but I can still hold out hope that we’re getting a good Avengers game in the near future.

Everything about the online structure and live service nature of Marvel’s Avengers scares me just a little bit. While I would’ve preferred a more traditional single player experience with the option to group up with my pals in a cooperative campaign, I won’t balk at an Avengers game without giving it a fair shake.

The story seems interesting enough, the gameplay looks fun enough, but part of me is worried that the live service stuff is going to compromise a lot of the positive things this game has going for it. Fingers crossed.

THE LAST OF US PART II – MAY 29th

I don’t know if I can handle another 20 hours of being repeatedly punched in the emotion glands of my body the way that The Last of Us did back in 2013. Actually scratch that, I think I can handle it, but I just don’t know if I have the patience for more zombie stuff anymore.

I stand by the assertion that the worst parts of The Last of Us were the parts where the zombies were involved. I get that the story revolved around curing the virus and how people survived in that world, but every single time a clicker was on screen I just wanted it to be over.

It was much more interesting and fun to square off against the horrible humans that inhabited the world instead of having to sneak around these one-shotting zombies, hoping I had enough shivs to dispatch those who would inevitably see me.

I’m excited to see the next chapter in terms of the gameplay innovations, story telling and presentation, but I’m less excited about fighting more zombies.

So that’s just a few cherry-picked releases from early next year that have confirmed release dates on them that I’m interested in. There are still a ton of games that are confirmed for 2020 that don’t have dates that I’m curious about, but we’ll get to those eventually.

Blog: Big December Energy – 12/04/19

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It’s probably the lowest hanging fruit of a joke to complain about the deluge of holiday shopping ads that blanket everything in December, but it’s still worth discussing. Not because I’m trying to build you some “Holiday Gift Guide” or whatever, but because I know how stressful this stuff can be, especially when you’re pinching pennies.

This stuff can wreak havoc on your psyche, at least, it gets to me a lot. Seeing what the world or more accurately, what marketers expect people in my demographic able to afford can take a lot out of you.

We see the same stupid car commercials, where family surprises their dad or something with a new car that has an oversized bow on it. It’s so dumb and idiotic, but I can’t help but look at that stuff and think, “is that where I’m supposed to be?” I know it’s an unrealistic standard to hold myself to, it’s part of the constant anxiety people in my generation feel.

And it’s all compounded when you see people on social media posting their best moments of their vacations and how great their lives are. I know that’s just a slice of their lives, but it still makes me feel inadequate and like I’m not doing enough. But that’s another issue entirely.

Just like last year when I wrote something similar, I want to remind everyone of how easy it is to spiral out of control in this holiday season. I’ve overextended myself before in an effort to give the best gifts possible while putting on my best laissez faire appearance I could muster, and I’m quite literally still paying for that today.

The holidays are meant to be a time of coming together and appreciating one another. You can read a million other articles about how capitalism has destroyed the holidays and it’s all about stuff, and while that isn’t untrue, it isn’t the crux of what I’m saying.

If you take away anything from this, I hope it’s the idea that you don’t have to bury yourself in debt or feel bad because you’re not buying everyone a Nintendo Switch. Appreciate what you have and the people you can share it with. I know that’s easier said than done, but consider your own mental health this December. Hell, consider it all the time. Because at the end of the day, if you’re not doing right by you, then what’s the point of any of this?

Happy Holidays everyone, and thanks for sticking with The Bonus World.

Blog: Black Friday Sucks – 11/27/19

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I know it’s usually video games and Dungeons & Dragons on this site, and we’ll get back to that next week, but right before we head face first into the deluge of holiday hell, I’d like to issue something of a PSA to everyone. In lieu of GameStop announcing that they’ll be open on Thanksgiving, don’t justify this extended Black Friday bullshit.

For over ten years I toiled away in retail hell, in a mall that was so callous towards its own employees and clientele that was exceedingly entitled. From towing employee cars that weren’t parked far enough away from the mall, to inviting local police to come and ticket any car with an expired inspection. It was some real salt-in-the-wound shit that would happen after a long day of getting screamed at by people who thought they were owed something.

I remember when the mall started make more aggressive and less employee friendly choices by making it mandatory that stores open at 10pm on Thanksgiving, fining any store several thousands of dollars for every hour they were closed. That eventually shifted to opening at normal hours on Thanksgiving, and not closing until 10 or 11pm the following day.

It was hellish. I know there are worse places to work and that so many people have it worse, but this is something that doesn’t need to happen, and that you as a person can actually make an impact on. Stay home for the holiday and don’t support this nonsense. If you’re going to shop, do it on Friday during normal hours of operation. You’re never getting as good of a deal as you think you are. It just isn’t fucking worth it.

The amount of time I’ve wasted selling jeans on Thanksgiving wasn’t worth the money I made, or the family gatherings I’d missed. I gave so much time to a company that didn’t give a shit about me, and was verbally assaulted by indignant assholes who thought they were owed the fucking world because they felt like going shopping at an outdoor mall at 3 am in November.

I still have nightmares around this time of year, about how I’m going to get fired because I’m not going into work, or how someone is yelling at me at 4 am because our sale isn’t good enough. Working in retail sucks enough as it is, but adding this layer of garbage really makes it a more dehumanizing experience than it needs to be.

They’re people too. They have families. And I can assure you, they don’t want to be there. No matter how bright and bubbly they may seem, they’d rather be anywhere but there. So stay home and enjoy the fact that you can do that during the holidays.

Oh, and before anyone feels compelled to throw the, “if they don’t like it, they can find another job,” line at me, please do the world a favor and go fuck yourself with the thorniest object you have handy.

Blog: Reevaluation – 11/20/19

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For the past year or so that I’ve been running The Bonus World, I’ve tried to provide coverage on all of the games I’m playing to the best of my abilities and shed some insight on the latest games. Lately, that’s proven to be pretty overwhelming.

It’s not that I don’t want to write about games anymore or anything like that, quite the opposite actually. I love writing this stuff and would continue to do so even if nobody was reading it. I just enjoy this whole process too much to give it up.

But it’s been hard trying to cover all of these games with my limited amount of time and money. Along with that, there are games that I want to play more of that I end up feeling guilty about when I do.

For instance, Red Dead Redemption 2 recently dropped on PC, and while it’s functionally busted, I’d rather spend more time with that than any of the other new releases this year. I’ve played that game to death on console when it released last year, but I just want to experience it again.

Alternatively, I’ve got Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order installed, and while I’ve dabbled in it and put a few hours in, it hasn’t grabbed me in a way that’s made me eager to hop back in. It almost feels like I’m playing with the hopes that I’ll have something to say about it for an article.

And that’s kind of the issue. I fell into this trap years ago when I did more video work and had a YouTube channel. I would always try to find games that would translate into good videos, and rarely play the things that I really wanted to. I don’t want to do that again.

So I’m reevaluating some things about how I run The Bonus World, and might try to narrow the scope of what I’m doing. I can’t say there’s going to be a hard cutoff point, or some massive difference in content, but I have to think about myself and what makes me happy too.

But none of this means the blog stops, or features like reviews and The Master of Disaster stop either. It just means that there might be other things on this site that are easier for me to write instead of me trying to scoop up every game I can in order to write small features on.

Regardless, thanks for hanging with us for as long as you have. Or if you’re new to the site, thanks for dropping in, I hope that no matter how you got here, I can keep providing you with reasons to come back.