Author: Eric

Basically I have too many interests. I like to read, play PC games (ESO and various builder / factory type games), watch movies, listen to music, and tweak PC's, browse the web and read news on Reddit and hang out on twitch and discord. My dayjob is Software Engineer!

The evergrowing gaming backlog

This year wasn’t quite what I expected for gaming. I wasn’t expecting much, except for a few titles. But in the past few months quite a few interesting games have been released, whilst I am still playing some from last year ;).

Heroes on a mission
About to go out on a mission

Currently the big games I am playing are Jedi Survivor, I am about 3/4s in, would be my guess. Very nice game, I didn’t have too much performance issues so far. And the other one would be Marvell’s Midnight Suns from late last year, which I bought for cheap in a sale. The combat and characters are very nice in that game. Turnbased with a bit of deck building. All the drama between all the characters and the story is a little over the top though, and drags on a bit. But I am about 3/4 in now, so I’ll keep on playing ;). I didn’t really check out the season pass and the extra characters, maybe once it’s on sale and I have finished the main game.

About to go on a mission!

Other than that, new DLC for riftbreaker came out this week, and ESO and Oxygen not included are always on the menu ;).

Here is a list of other games I’d still like to start / continue to play:

Actively playing

  • ESO (new DLC coming soon)
  • Oxygen Not included
  • Marvell’s Midnight suns
  • Jedi Survivor
  • Across the storm (a map / mission now and then)
  • Planet of Lana – Short platformer on gamepass
  • Railway Empire 2 (gamepass)
  • Yakuza, like a dragon (started this a while back, about half way, paused for now)
  • Riftbreaker (new DLC!)

Bought but not played yet, or just a little

  • Stranded Alien Dawn – 3d Coloniy building, looks pretty interesting, played the tutorials so far
  • Zelda, Tears of the kingdom (played a few sessions, got off the tutorial island)
  • Everspace 2
  • Dinkum
  • X4
  • Great war western front
  • Sweet transit (trains)
  • Terraformers
  • Spellforce conquest of Eo
  • King Arthur: Knight’s Tale
  • Songs of conquest
  • Domekeeper
  • The last spell
  • Captain of Industry
  • Battle chasers
  • Kynseed
  • Darkest dungeon I & II
  • Cult of the Lamb, started for a bit, not too fond of the combat bit
  • Age of wonders 4 (played a little bit)
  • Octopath Traveller II
Cal in Crossguard stance

Gaming in 2022

The main thing I wanted to change in 2022 (and subsequent years, hopefully ;)) was to actually finish games, instead of playing one for a few sessions and hop on to the next one. The hopping can still occur though, in search for a game I actually want to get stuck in with and finish to the end. On the other hand, I do play a lot of ‘open ended factory / builder’ type games, but the goal in those should be to get to the endgame.

The first two games that I actually finished at the start of the year were Star Wars Fallen Order and Ruined King. Both excellent games. The jedi one will see it’s follow up later this year. I started playing not long after it originally came out, and for some reason moved on to something else. I decided to finish it now though, and it was well worth it. Fun combat and the story was decent as well, though the ending was a bit odd. After the darth vader chase (spolier!) and back on the ship the story just sort of ended.

Ruined king battle
A Ruined king battle
Continue reading Gaming in 2022

My games of 2021

The games of 2021

The games I played will be done from memory since I didn’t take any notes or used any software to keep track of what I played. I should start doing that to keep better track of things, since human memory can be misguided sometimes :). And post here more often !

Bravely Default II

In the past, I split these up by platform, PS4, Switch and PC, but I hardly touched the consoles this past year. For PS4 I only bought one game in a sale, Ghost of Tshusima, director’s cut , sort of my goodbye to the platform. It’s supposed to be one of the best games for it, and it still looks pretty nice. So far I only played the intro, but I am still planning on playing it more at some point. I finally did cancel the subscription for the PS4. I haven’t touched any of the games that come with it for almost 2 years, maybe even more, so even though it is good value for money (although the games were getting a bit weak that came with it) if you don’t use it at all, it’s wasted.

ghost of tsushima ps4

The switch I played a bit more. Checked out Animal Crossing every now and then and listened to the islanders complain about me not being there. They should really stop doing that, it makes me feel bad and not play at all :). I did buy a few games, Bravely Default II and Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword. Loved BDII, but stopped playing it after a while. I should pick it up again. Zelda is good too, but didn’t touch it for more than a few sessions. I think that was about it for the consoles. I also want to continue playing Octopath Traveler which I just remembered when writing this!

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My Games of 2020

Instead of posting this at the end of the year, or as of now, the start of a new one, I should just make a post when I am really enjoying, or have enjoyed a game. My new year’s resolution will be to do just that I guess this ;). Or at least try to.

Anyway, I’ll mention a few games that kept me busy in 2020. And what stood out for me.

Animal Crossings New Horizon

This was probably the game I put the most hours in, in 2020. Especially the start was a lot of fun. Getting a bigger house, more animals living on the island. Decorating the place … etc. Then it got a little stale and the events so far were not much to write home about. I still check in every now and then though, but it lost the initial sense of wonder. Maybe a future expansion or DLC can breathe some new life into it.

New Year’s eve in Animal Crossing
Fishing in Animal Crossing. I cough a large Sunfish :).

Snow Runner

I was watching a few streamers on Twitch play this and wondered what the fun was in this game and it seemed like an annoying version of Euro truck sim, but once I tried it myself, I really got into this. It’s a lof of fun, especially unlocking new trucks and new equipment for your trucks. Although I enjoyed the initial maps more than the later (Russian and Alaska) ones.

I haven’t checked out too much of the new ones released later in the year, but what I saw so far, they tried to add some new gameplay elements, which is nice.

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Gaming 2019

The year started off a bit slow for me gaming wise. I think I was a bit burned out by it and mainly watched Netflix series, I rewatched Friends if I remember well. Then in Febuary the Civ VI expansion Gathering Storm came out. After watching a few marbozir videos, I decided to get it and it made me finally ejoy Civ VI. I had tried a few runs before, but never really grabbed me, it didn’t seem like a complete game. In my opinion Gathering Storm made it complete.

YouTube player

In may Total War: Three Kingdoms came out, it was nice, but I found the campaigns / games dragging on a little too long. Also sometimes you got into a stallmate of some kind and the game didn’t really go anywhere. It was cool to see a strategy game in the top 10 most played games for a few days or weeks though. And it is a very good game regardless of my gripes.

Anno 1800

Around the same time, by the end of April, one of my favourites for this year came out, the citybuilder / logistics game Anno 1800 by Ubisoft. I had a lot of fun with this game. The campaign was relatively short, though the story was decent. The sandbox mode is where it’s at. I usually disable the pirates too, since I don’t think the combat aspect is very good. It was more annoying than anything else to find your ships in ruins, because you overlooked a pirate attack.

Screenshot of a town in Anno 1800

The DLCs that came after the release, were nice as well, especially the first one Sunken Treasures. It gives you a very large new island in a new region to build on, and a vessel with a diving bell you can use to search for treasure. The second dlc, Botanica was a little underwhelming, bit short of content. The third one, the passage, was pretty big with a new region and a new story. Though I have to admit I haven’t played it much since I have the feeling I have pretty much seen and done most that the game has to offer. I have about 70hrs into it now. The first part of the game is the most fun part to me. Once you have eletricity and people that need it, you need to redesign your cities in order to be able to use the trains and move the oil to your power plant, which is pretty much a pain. All in all a great game and one of the best of the year for me.

Continue reading Gaming 2019

The Office and Seinfeld

Last month or so I finished rewatching The Office, all 9 seasons. Before that I rewatched Seinfeld again, think I started that run somewhere in the later months of last year. Both can be found on Amazon’s Primevideo service. At least here in EU. The length of the episode (about 24mins give or take) makes it very easy to just squeeze a show in here and there.

YouTube player

In my (humble) opinion, these two are the best comedies made. With Seinfeld being a little more groundbreaking than The Office. It’s also notable that the internet doesn’t play any part in Seinfeld, and only slightly in The Office. The dunder mufflin personnel watches a few youtube videos, and there is an episode where Andy keeps looking at the comments on his banjo video, but there isn’t much more than that.

It’s pretty weird to realise that a lot of scenes and situations would have been different, when the characters would have had the opportunity to look at the blind date’s facebook page or just been able to email, instead of calling or stopping by. Watching these episodes again, makes you realise how much life has changed even since the late ’90s, simply because of the internet.

Continue reading The Office and Seinfeld

The most Cynical Brit

In 2010 his Cataclysm videos, talking while playing the game, made him more and more popular. I am assuming he wasn’t the 1st let’s player, but he certainly made the genre big. And with this newfound audience he started the excellent WTF IS series.

In the early 2000s he started to do shoutcasts for his beloved Starcraf 2 as well, he was easily the best SC2 announcer with Apollo and Day9. Easily being the best voice in Esports for a long time to come !

Apollo || Shaun Clarke on twitter posted some nice pics from the past :

 

Sadly in 2015 TB tweeted the news that he was diagnosed with cancer. Strangely enough my dad was diagnosed with lymphoma not long thereafter, it was all a bit much. TB battled the disease well up till the point where the chemicals didn’t work any more. Last month, in april he tweeted it was pretty much over and he didn’t have long to go. On may 24th he passed away.

His passing leaves me with a big feeling of sadness. It’s not like a celeb you read about in the paper, this seems more personal and a more profound feeling of loss. Especially since he was still in his early 30s. TB you will definately be missed by many, he singlehandedly changed the game of youtube commenators / game critiquing, reviewing and shoutcasting to boot.

LUL
Total Biscuit’s emoticon on Twitch LUL

One of my fav series, TB and Jesse Cox play Terraria