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

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.

Blog: Launcher Hell – 11/13/19

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A lot of PC players tend to get pretty uppity about the fact that companies are trying to maximize their profits and keep closer control over their games by requiring the use of an exclusive launcher. For the most part, I don’t mind having to open a different executable to play my games, but some recent developments have made me shift my stance a little.

Looking at my desktop I have six different launchers for my various games. Steam, Origin, Uplay, Epic, Xbox, and the latest addition, Rockstar. But that isn’t even half of the available ways to buy and launch my games. It seems like it would be a lot to manage, but it really never presented itself as much of an issue to me. That is, until Red Dead Redemption 2 launched and required authentication through their launcher.

Here’s the series of events that transpires when I try to launch Red Dead Redemption 2, a game I know isn’t going to work properly:

I’ll click the desktop shortcut, only to be met with a fatal error because I had the audacity to try and use said shortcut. I’ll then open up the Rockstar Launcher and log in because it never remembers my credentials. I’ll click the big, “Play on Epic” button that appears, because I bought Red Dead Redemption 2 through the Epic Games Store. The focus shifts to Epic for a moment, then back to Rockstar, then a windows notification asking me if I’m truly certain I want to play the game.

Finally the game will launch, I’ll play for 5 minutes before the frame rate hitching becomes enough of a burden, and quit.

It’s like a 5 minute wind up to play a game that doesn’t work. These are two separate issues admittedly, but its enough to make me rethink this whole “everyone has a launcher business”.

I’m also not saying that Steam should be the de facto launcher and be the only player in town. Every publisher wants control over their product, and wants the biggest slice of profits they can get. Sure Epic is doing an 88/12 split on revenue, but if I bought a game available on the Epic store on the publisher’s storefront, that’s 100% of the take right there. The business behind launchers makes sense.

There are two main categories of launcher in my eyes. The first is the publisher specific ones like Uplay or Origin. Then the second are the storefronts like Steam and Epic. I know those last two make their own games, but the volume of third party games on them warrants the separation. So I decided it would be fun to list off every launcher I can think of, just to give you a visual idea of how many of these damn things there are.

PUBLISHER SPECIFIC

Uplay (Ubisoft)
Origin (EA)
Blizzard.net (Blizzard)
Rockstar (Rockstar)
Xbox Game Pass (Microsoft)
Bethesda (Bethesda)

There’s definitely more of these that I can’t think of at the moment.

STOREFRONTS/ LIBRARIES

Steam (Valve)
Epic Games Store (Epic)
Discord (Discord)
Itch.io (Itch.io)
GOG Galaxy (GOG)
Windows Store (Microsoft)
Twitch (Twitch)

Once again, there are more that I can’t think of at this moment.

But take a moment to consider the fact that there are now several different launchers for organizing your various games spread out across different launchers. Seriously, check out this list.

I’m not complaining about having to use different launchers to play different games. It usually requires me to click a different icon and nothing more. But in the case of Red Dead Redemption 2 and Rockstar, all it seems to have done is add more points of failure to the experience, and that’s my biggest fear with this stuff.

If I buy a game on Steam that needs to authorize through Uplay, but Uplay’s authentication servers are down, that’s a hassle. That’s my biggest issue with all of this. I just want to play my games as obstacle free as I can, but with this endless fragmentation of storefronts and publishers, I think we’re just going to have to get used to these hurdles for a while.

Blog: The Bad, The Broken & The Ugly – 11/06/19

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A few weeks back I was pretty high on the concept of playing Red Dead Redemption 2 on my PC, and for the most part that desire hasn’t waned. But upon its release, it was clear that I’d have to wait a little longer to actually enjoy it again.

Red Dead Redemption 2 is woefully broken on PC at the moment with issues ranging from poor performance, regular freezing, infinite load screens, and much more. While I’ve encountered all of these in my 30 minutes of game time, my particular favorite among the glitches has to the be mouse cursor that refuses to stay off the screen, reemerging every time you open a menu, change your weapon, or see a cut-scene. Regardless of if you’re using the mouse or a controller, that cursor is going to show up and remind you of its existence at every opportunity.

It’s a real shame. I loved Red Dead Redemption 2 when it released last year, and even awarded it my Game of the Year in 2018. But in its current state, it’s completely unplayable. Rockstar support has been inundated with support tickets as evidenced by their Twitter account responding to every tweet with “Please create a support ticket so we can investigate this matter. http://rsg.ms/support.”

Rumors of emergency patches are being hurled around on Reddit, which while I’d love to play the game I paid for (again), I don’t want to see a repeat of the crunch that happened leading up to Red Dead Redemption 2‘s initial release.

In summation, it sucks that Red Dead Redemption 2 is so busted on PC, but I know they’ll get it to where it needs to be as soon as possible. Rockstar would love to have another endless money maker on PC like they have with Grand Theft Auto V, of that I’m sure.

Blog: Visit The Outer Worlds – 10/30/19

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Happy almost Halloween everyone. I don’t have anything spooky to talk about, just video games. Specifically The Outer Worlds, a game that I have no business enjoying, but still am.

The Outer Worlds is the latest Obsidian release, reminiscent of games like Fallout and oddly enough, Mass Effect. The Outer Worlds sets you on a planet-hopping adventure around the galaxy in order to save colonists who are stuck in perpetual cryo-sleep, on a ship floating through space.

The other important thing to note about the world of The Outer Worlds, is that everything is controlled by corporations… but more overtly than we’re used to. You quickly find out that the ship full of passengers you’re trying to save, has basically been shelved by a corporate entity and marketed as a mysterious disappearance to garner sympathy. Or at least that’s what I took away from it.

Playing The Outer Worlds involves you doing the standard running around, exploring the world, and helping people so they’ll help you. You know, the basic RPG stuff. If you’ve played a Fallout game in the last decade, you know how The Outer Worlds plays. Skill trees, companions, perks, dialogue trees, it’s all there and it’s all well realized.

Now, I’m pretty confident I’ve gone on record by saying that I don’t really enjoy The Elder Scrolls that much, and enjoy the Fallout series even less. I’ve found them to be clunky, aimless, unappealing and broken to varying degrees. But weirdly enough, I’m having a phenomenal time with The Outer Worlds despite how it treads on this well-worn ground that I’ve grown to dislike over the years.

Maybe it’s because everything in The Outer Worlds is more appealing to me than any of the games it pulls its inspiration from. The story is engaging in its own right, but the added layers of a corporate run dystopia backdrop and some stellar writing makes it all click into place for me. Almost every character I’ve met so far, from companion to random quest giver, has been interesting in their own way. I also really enjoy how instead of being thrown into a massive open world, you travel to different planets and explore those zones individually.

The Outer Worlds is mechanically sound as well. The guns feel good to fire, the companion abilities are fun to deploy, and I’ve built out my character in such a way that I can basically talk my way out of everything. Even better, I don’t have to engage with the systems I don’t want to. For instance, you can eat food and consumables to gain temporary buffs, and I have never once done that and have had no issues with the game.

I know that none of the things I’ve praised are new developments in the game space. But The Outer Worlds does them in a more mechanically sound and accessible way than the other games of its ilk, and that’s kept me engaged from moment to moment in a way games like Fallout failed to.

The Outer Worlds is a game I didn’t expect to enjoy as much as I am. Maybe it’s the setting, or the gameplay, or the lack of glitches and bugs that are really keeping me invested, but I find myself wanting to keep coming back to it.

I’ve heard it isn’t a long game either, which is great news for me considering I didn’t want a game that was going to take 40-50 hours to beat. Any complaints I have about The Outer Worlds are relegated to things like, texture pop-in and the occasional frame rate hiccup. There are some locations in the game that have that Fallout grime on it that I’m not a fan of. You know, where everything is covered in trash and people have shit smeared on their faces? But it’s more tolerable here. All I’m saying is that in either of those games, you think someone would grab a fucking broom and clean some of the shit off the floor.

Anyway, The Outer Worlds is great and you should play it. I’m playing it on the PC through Xbox Game Pass, but it’s available on the consoles and through the Epic Games Store as well.

Blog: A Mild Year – 10/23/19

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Since starting The Bonus World, I’ve always tried to get some sort of end of the year wrap up article together for game of the year season. Usually by this time in the year I can start constructing some loose amalgamation of a top ten list. 2019 happens to be the first year in a while where I’m having a tough time building that list.

That isn’t to say that the games I’ve played in 2019 have been disappointing or bad, I just found that a lot of what came out this year didn’t really resonate with me. Things like Kingdom Hearts III and Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice were received positively, but once again, not my kind of games. Then we also had some real clunkers like Crackdown 3 and Anthem release early in the year and fade away into obscurity.

I think a lot of it has to do with developers gearing up for the next round of consoles along with the fact that early next year we’re going to be blitzed with some big titles like Doom Eternal, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Dying Light 2 and Cyberpunk 2077 to name a few. 2019 just feels like the gap year between the bombastic 2018 we had with Marvel’s Spider-Man and Red Dead Redemption II to cherry pick some of my favorites, and the swan-song, end of the generation year of 2020.

Like I said, I don’t think it was a bad year for video games, but when compared to last year and what’s coming up next year, it’s definitely lacking something. But hey, the year isn’t over yet, so I could eat my words on this. We’ve got The Outer Worlds and Call of Duty Modern Warfare dropping this Friday (10/26), and games like Luigi’s Mansion 3, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, Pokemon, Death Stranding and of course, Shenmue III in the very near future, and any of those games could be great.

But let’s be real here, I’m probably just gonna play Red Dead Redemption II on the PC obsessively and let the other games just slide into the background.

Blog: The Ole’ Double Dip – 10/16/19

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You know what’s fucked up? The fact that Red Dead Redemption 2 was recently given the PC release date of November 12th, and somehow it has once again become my most anticipated game of the year.

I played the absolute hell out of Red Dead Redemption 2 on my PS4, uncovering everything I could, doing every side quest I could find and just lounging around in that world for as long as I possibly could. I spent dozens and dozens of hours just yeehawing and giddyup-ing, and now I’m gonna do it all again.

It’s even worse knowing that a few days after Red Dead Redemption 2 drops on PC, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order comes out. This game, my game of the year for 2018, is coming back to monopolize my time for the second year in a row, and I’m going to embrace it like a chump.

This might be a different conversation if I was more excited about some of the upcoming games for the remainder of the year, but I’ve found that I haven’t really been wowed by too many games this year. But I suppose I’ll get into that in a different blog.

Part of me thinks, “fuck it, I can enjoy what I want to enjoy,” whereas the other half is saying, “you can literally see your copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 on the shelf next to you, you idiot.”

Now, Rockstar has successfully reached into my wallet several times before with the various releases of Grand Theft Auto V, a game that I own 3 times, so you’d think I wouldn’t fall for this shit again. But here I am, like a putz, getting my credit card out and buying a game I own, once more.

I look forward to Red Dead Redemption 2 on the PC, and I can’t wait for the eventual third release of it in 2020 when the new consoles hit store shelves. That’s when responsible and restrained Ari is going to show up and wag his finger disapprovingly I bet.

But man, it’s gonna look so good on PC you guys, those horse balls are really gonna be a floppin’ around.

Blog: More Apple Arcade – 10/09/19

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Apple Arcade has been out for a few weeks now, and I’ve gotta say that I’ve really been enjoying my time with the service and its offerings. You can check out my initial impressions of the service here, but right now let’s look at some of the other stuff I’ve been playing.

DOWN IN BERMUDA

Down in Bermuda is a cute little puzzle game about a pilot who crash landed on a mysterious island. You’re basically helping him get home by solving a series of puzzles and collecting various knickknacks that allow you to advance to the next island.

Each island is basically its own diorama that you’ll be rotating around to find different objects to tap on and collect. The puzzles aren’t particularly hard or challenging, but the main obstacle is just hunting around for stuff you can interact with.

It isn’t the most robust game out there, and at the moment there are only 3 levels in the game. But it had enough charm and style to keep me playing for the hour or two it took me to beat the included levels. The level select screen also indicates that more levels would be added soon, so I’ve got that to look forward to.

PATTERNED

Following in the puzzle game genre is Patterned. In Patterned, you’re presented with several pictures comprised of, you guessed it, patterns that you need to reconstruct. Each level starts with showing you the completed version of the image, then sucking all the color out of it, leaving a black and white representation of the pattern.

You have a bunch of puzzle pieces that you need to drag into the appropriate location on the pattern, where it will lock into place and regain its color. It’s very simple and remarkably fun.

It isn’t without its flaws though. Some of the patterns are so difficult to parse that you just end up dragging pieces all over the screen until it clicks into place. Even more infuriating is the play space. While the pattern fills the entire screen, you can only place pieces on about half of that. Considering it’s a repeating pattern, it shouldn’t make much of a difference. But when I can see exactly where a piece goes and can’t place it there because it’s not in the half of the screen I’m allowed to interact with, it can be pretty annoying.

That said, I did complete every level currently in the game because I have no self control.

PILGRIMS

I think Pilgrims is an adventure game, but I can’t be sure. Sure it has all the trappings of an adventure game in terms of me collecting objects and using them on literally anything I can see, but it lacks that narrative drive of an adventure game.

Let me back up. In Pilgrims, you play as a mustached man who wants to charter a boat down the river. In order to do that however, he needs to get the captains bird back. But before that he has to help literally everyone else in the land by doing things like, cooking them a hot meal, or kidnapping a priest you got drunk, or even making the princess realize that she totally can have a loving relationship with a dragon.

It’s all card based, but that’s more of a presentation element than a mechanical one. You have cards for your various party members and items all of which can be combined at will. For instance, I had an old lady and a burly man in my party alongside the card for a sword. When I had the old lady use it, she couldn’t even lift it in an attempt to be threatening, whereas the burly man had no problem threatening people with a sword.

According to the description on the Apple Arcade page for this game, it’s suggested that you don’t play to beat the game, but rather just play around with it. That means seeing what all the combinations of items and characters can do I suppose. It’s a good approach when it comes to Pilgrims for sure, but I don’t know that I want to play it again just to see all the animations I missed out on.

I like Pilgrims a bunch, but I’m glad I played it on Apple Arcade as opposed to purchasing it on Steam for the $4.99 it’s listed at. It isn’t a bad experience at all, just not one that I would’ve played unless it was on Apple Arcade.

THE ENCHANTED WORLD

I can’t really speak to where The Enchanted World goes because I admittedly haven’t played a lot of it. But based on my limited time with the game, I’m cautiously optimistic about where it goes.

In The Enchanted World you play as a little witch with the power to move the earth, and hopefully more as time goes on, because as of right now it’s just an aesthetically pleasing slide puzzle game. Which in all fairness, hasn’t been too difficult up to the point I’m at, but I have minimal tolerance for slide puzzles, and I could easily see myself deleting this game in a fit of rage.

That said, you tap and slide pieces of the ground around in an effort to make a path for your little witch to walk through and reach the next part of the level. Presumably, there will be another slide puzzle there, but I sure hope something else pops up soon.

And that’s it really. I beat Sayonara Wild Hearts which I wont get into here, but as time goes on, I continue to be happy with Apple Arcade as a service. There aren’t really any bad games on the service, just ones that I know aren’t in my wheelhouse.