2023 game plans

[Funkycorm]

Re: 2023 game plans

Hell yes…..lived in Baulders Gate way back when.


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Awesome!

Besides Civilization 2 Test of Time and Diablo 2, the original Baldurs Gate was the third ever game I played on PC. Still 3 of my favorite games to this day.

(Besides the obvious stuff like Oregon trail and such.)

Don't know if you know but they have the enhanced versions of 1 and 2 on steam.

[KSUowls]

Re: 2023 game plans

Hell yes…..lived in Baulders Gate way back when.


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Dark Urge is truly the best

[JoshC1977]

Re: 2023 game plans

Man, this year has been dry from a new game standpoint for me. Octopath Traveler 2 was an absolute gem (easy Top-5 all-time for me). But aside from my sheer addiction to MLBTS 23, Final Fantasy XVI is the only game in my immediate queue that excites me. Hoping that one is good, otherwise there's nothing exciting (to me) releasing until Winter 2024 (the next FFVII remaster). I have a few other JRPGs sitting in the collection (Live A Live is probably next in-line, but the lack of female lead characters is preventing me from wanting to dig-in).

I did play through Star Trek: Resurgence. Fantastic storyline and characters, but one with a dated technical implementation. Still though, as a serious Trek fan, it was the best Trek video game I've played since the 90s and one that truly captured the essence of the TNG era.

[ClassActFan]

Re: 2023 game plans

I've been staving off the temptation of buying Remnant 2. I have never played a souls-like game before, but I hate obnoxiously difficult games. Still remember playing Ninja Gaiden 20 years ago and internally losing my excrement over it because it took me forever and a day just to move past the first level. However, Remnant 2 looks like a ton of fun. Hopefully it will come to Game Pass next year sometime.

The temptation truly existed because I've been trying to find a game to tide me over until Madden, Starfield and 2K. Oh, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre game looks like it could be fun if, y'know, people actually get on the mic and aren't toxic. Looking forward to the new Forza Motorsport as well, but I definitely prefer the Forza Horizon games more.

The weather is soon to cool down, football season is upon us and the pounds are about to be added to the ol' physical frame between gaming and sitting around during football games while watching teams score on my Rams and obliterate my Virginia Tech Hokies. Dadbod season, yo.

Been playing Rocket League lately. It's a game I casually played with my wife and sister-in-law over the course of the last seven years, but recently I've been playing solo. Talk about a toxic community. Enjoyed myself overall, but there's times when I just say, "Alright, that's enough" and close out of the game after a match or two. Still, it's a blast to play a few quick games in just 30 minutes or less.

I started Pentiment finally.

I can't believe I put it off for so long. When I got my Series X last November and got back on Game Pass for the first time in years, I saw it and read where people were hyping it up, but I mentally pushed back on it. I thought, meh, visual novel? Meh. But goodness gracious it's so much fun if you are into history and a good story! Playing through it now and I'm enjoying it so much. It's not for everybody, though.

[Armor and Sword]

2023 game plans

Ok August update:

Sports Games Currently:

MLB 20
NBA2K23
Madden 16

Non Sports Games Currently:

Horizon Zero Dawn Frozen Wilds
Aliens Dark Descent

In the que:

Horizon Forbidden West

Planned 2023 purchases:

Baldurs Gate 3 (PS5)
Madden 24
Star Wars Jedi Survivor (may hold out till available on EA Access)
Dead Space (ditto on the above)
Final Fantasy XVI
Legend Bowl


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[whosgotcha]

Re: 2023 game plans

Currently playing:
Dying Light 2 (turning into a great game once I got the hang of it)
Callisto Protocol Final Transmission (Good game after the updates)
Dead Space 2023 (Great from the beginnning)

Upcoming:
Madden 24. (Let’s go!)
Starfield (Looking for that Mass Effect)

[Swiftymcvay]

Re: 2023 game plans

My plans are simple finish the games u bought in 2022.

[Armor and Sword]

2023 game plans

Currently playing:

Madden 24
MLB 20
NBA 2K23
Baldurs Gate 3

This is the rest of 2023 and most likely 2024 LoL!!!

Nothing in the que for the foreseeable future.

2024 planned purchases:

NCAA College Football 24



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[Heisman]

Re: 2023 game plans

My plans for right now

MLB the show 22
Madden 23
NBA 2K24

I have a Dodgers franchise on the show that I’m really attached to. After winning a franchise record 111 games IRL last year and losing to the Padres in the playoffs I’m trying to change that dark spot in history.

Last year was Josh McDaniels first season as Raiders HC and Derek Carr’s last. I’m giving Carr one more chance to right the ship before I build the team in my image. Last years Madden cycle was so bad I waited to the very last roster update and patch before I started playing.

NBA 2K24 I believe is just ground breaking in the modern era with proplay. I’m happy mjwizards is doing rosters again this year so I can dabble in those older eras, but the main focus will be getting Lebron another ring and after that the Clippers their first championship. I will be playing commissioner, but I will wait until the opening season ATD roster and draft classes before I get started. Hopefully we will get all the city jerseys and courts with custom rosters. Having rosters with cross platform sharing is huge. Forgot to add that I will definitely be doing a WNBA commissioner franchise. It’s an underrated part of 2K imo.

That’s my plan for sports gaming. But also installed on me ps5 is

Cyberpunk 2077
Gran Turismo 7
Farming simulator 22
Ghost Recon Wildlands

Cyberpunk will be my main RPG. I’m glad I waited because patch 2.0 is supposed to overhaul pretty much everything and the phantom liberty dlc looks good.
GT7 is just plain fun.
FS22 is my chill game.
GRW is my shooter. After I finish this I will move on to GR breakpoint.

I need to buy a SSD because I had no man’s sky but had to uninstall because of space. But I respect the devs for the constant updates.

Now I was going to buy Xbox series X for Starfield.. but I’m holding off.. I might pick up one for Christmas, but Microsoft flight simulator 2024 is a must have. That game looks amazing.

Only other game on my radar is baulders gate 3.. but will probably get that after Cyberpunk 2077. It’s tough because I want to play Witcher 3 and a few other games. So that will be tough to fit in. Obviously college football is a must have in 24. Hopefully Madden fixes their issues with draft classes by then and we don’t get any game breaking bugs with importing players over.

Forgot Way of the hunter is installed on ps5. It is the best most realistic hunting game you can play. The devs did a fantastic job with the dlc maps and I’m looking forward to even more updates.

[Executor]

Re: 2023 game plans

Summer / Early Fall Update Part 1

Started but quickly lost interest / deleted tier

Train Sim World
Subnautica
Metro 2033
Dragon Age: Inquisition
GTA V
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

I bought Train Sim World only because it had the Caltrain line from San Francisco to San Jose (and back) included, and to be able to re-live every once in a while the route which is so dear to my heart was good enough to try it. I ran the route once, but then eventually I decided it is not worth the space on my disc so I deleted it.

Subnautica was a game I never really felt like playing, but since I love ocean life and the game was completely free for a couple of days during the first pandemic wave back in 2021, I said what the heck. However, after trying to give it a go rougly two years after initial purchase, I decided base-building games are not for me and got rid of it, too.

Bloodstained is the next sample of the genre I never really inclined to (2D platformers) but at some point thought I could give it a try, but after literally couple of seconds (well, maybe minutes) of trying to get the controls down, I again lost patience and threw this one out the window as well.

Metro 2033 is objectively a fine FPS shooter with exactly the kind of great and grim story that I usually like, but gameplay-wise it turned out to be a grind/slog from the start. So when I inevitably got to a mission I had no idea what I was supposed to do in, I finally ran out of patience, rage quit and never looked back. It's a shame, I have no idea how deep into a story I was at the time, but if the game had more user-friendly difficulty options, I would have 100% finished it.

Dragon Age: Inquisition was another game I waited quite long to even fire up, and it did look and play better than I expected - for a while. Then, I ran into a same problem that caused me to shelve Fallout 4 indefinitely last year - on a routine mission in a supposedly safe area I ran into enemies that absolutely destroyed me despite my build, level, party I was with and whatnot, and I rage quit this one too. Plus, despite a story that kept being quite interesting, I constantly felt like the world (it's history, number of quests and sidequests, items, crafting materials etc.) is already too big for me (getting old) at this stage of my gaming; like I simply can no more keep track of everything the game requires you to know, do and master to progress through. Which is ironic, because open worlds which you can totally loose yourself in were the primary reason I came back to non-sports gaming couple of years back.

GTA V proved very quickly that me and Rockstar games will probably never be friends. With no difficulty settings and my middling stick-skills, I failed on the very first car-driving mission and when I realized there is no chance that the game could or would help me, I said 'screw it' and moved on. Hell, in RDR 2 which I shelved last year, I was at least able to put a couple of hours in, mainly because riding a horse in a wide-open prairie is probably easier on a console controller than driving a car through a downtown Los Angeles or whatever, but I do not plan to return to that game anytime soon either, so... yeah, me and Rockstar simply do not seem like a match at all.

[Executor]

Re: 2023 game plans

Summer / Early Fall Update Part 2

Visual Novels tier

Heart of the Woods
The Language of Love
The Legends of Thalia: Arcadia
Worldend Syndrome
Dating Life: Miley & Emily
Synergia
Starlight Shores
Nowhere Girl

I have to admit I keep getting very lucky with my picks from the visual novels genre. I have currently around 20 of them in my library with around 10 already played. The stories, art, music and very often underlying meanings keep to range from being very, very good to downright fantastic and often heartbreaking.

Of the list above, only two (The Language of Love and Arcadia) do not have multiple endings and branching storylines (which I prefer my VNs to have, but these stories were nonetheless very soothing and amazingly dark, respectively). As for the others, I played Heart of the Woods, Worldend Syndrome and Synergia (which btw is a must-have for any VN fan) in close succession, and while I got a tolerable (not great, not terrible) ending in HotW, I also got the worst possible ending in WES and a bad one (and there may only be two, the bad and the good) in Synergia.

Kind of shaken, I decided to have some good, light-hearted fun with Dating Life, which is actually a dating sim and kind of an outlier to what I usually look for in VNs, only to promptly get the worst possible ending as well.

This actually got me thinkg what kind of person I am - for a while. I mean, when I play these particular games, a.k.a. VNs with optional routes, branching dialogues etc., I usually go with my gut, feelings or mood, and never aim for specific ending or to be a good boy (or girl) in a situatiuon where an option presented to me is not the one I feel like choosing.

And what say you, after couple of months off VNs I finished another two this past month (Starlight Shores and Nowhere Girl, the latter similarily to Synergia being on another level from the rest), and while I did not get the worst possible ending in any of them, I sure as hell did not get the best ones either.

Overall, though, these games can really be a balm for the soul anytime you need one. They are all deep, lovable, disturbing, inspiring, unsettling... and FUN.

[Executor]

Re: 2023 game plans

Summer / Early Fall Update Part 3

The games I actually finished tier

Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Assasin's Creed: Odyssey

My Lara Croft experience is finally over, and SotTR had all the good and the bad from the previous titles, as I had expected. The combat felt easier, kind of more responsive, the ambushes and onslaughts were not as frequent and not as hard to manage as I remember from previous titles. The story was good, not great; at the beginning it had potential to be very interesting and very dark but kind of fizzled out in the end, which I thought was a shame. The final boss fight, however, was pretty epic.

The aspects of gameplay I hated in previous two games (and games like Uncharted and TLoU as well, for that matter) - a.k.a. when a game forces you to play certain way no matter you stick-skills, reflexes etc. - were still there even though may be not as frequent, which I appreciated. Graphics were top notch, as they were all series, even though the enviroments were not as varied as in previous games... perhaps?

However, this game did not change the fact that what I liked absolutely most from all 3 Lara games, was the first DLC in Rise of the Tomb Raider, the one where Lara gets to explore the Croft Manor only to uncover more about here family and past and whatnot. That was an awesome addition to the story and for me, it will remain by far the best part of the whole series.

Odyssey is a game into which I put around 130 hours (promptly becoming my longest-played game behind only my two Elden Ring playthroughs), and I still only got the end of the main questline and have yet to hunt down the Cult and delve into the Fate of Atlantis DLC. But for now I am content with what I did and may return to the ancient Greek world much, much later.

I always liked ancient Greece and the game does a good job of getting you there. Visually the game is obviously gorgeous, the atmosphere is kind of believable and the characters - good, bad, side-characters - are mostly interesting and colorfull. The world itself is absurdly vast and stunningly detailed, can't imagine how much work you have to put into something like this as a developer. Good grief.

What I did not like all that much was the overall setting, first the Peloponesian War (I loved ancient Sparta from childhood and really hated it when the game forced me to go against Spartans in this game - one of the reasons I did not finish the Cult's storyline, btw), the Cult itself (maybe that's an underlying theme in all Assasins' games but I don't know, never played one before), and finally, the sci-fi element that permeats all game, both the main storyline and - if I guess correctly - the DLC I've yet to play.

Contrary to my frequent visual novel experiences, I got probably the absolute best ending in this game - which, ironically, felt like the least believable given everything that happened on my journey.

The quests ranged from great to tedious to hilarious to fun to tragic to whatnot. Manytimes, the side quests were much more engaging than the main storyline - or maybe not the storyline itself, but what the quest required you to do. It got to a point when I rushed what I felt must have been the quests that would finally get me to the ending, so much so that when the ending actually arrived, it caught me completely off guard and despite the happy nature of the ending itself, it left me... Sad? Sorry it's over? Definitely an interesting mixture of feelings which I will long remember.

Of course, one of the coolest aspects of the game is undoubtedly romancing. Playing as Kassandra, of around 10-12 romances I stumbled upon, only two were with men, and while my Kassandra experienced at least three (two of them kind of tragic) full-blown, true love stories, it was the last romance near the end of the game which got me the most, because it was the least expected.

Overall maybe 8.5/10 - great game but many things could have been made differently... and for the better.

[Executor]

Re: 2023 game plans

Summer / Early Fall Update Part 4

The crown-jewell of them all tier

Dark Souls Remastered

The legend that started it all (well, it was actually Demon's Souls but I am only about to play a Remake of that one if I ever get a PS5), this game only confirmed what I suspected for a while now - that my interests are heavily shifting from large, immersive open world experiences to certain soulslikes... if they are from FromSoftware or very carefully and expertly crafted by their peers.

Even after plowing through Code Vein and Elden Ring, for a long time I still somehow resisted the Dark Souls series, especially I and II, mostly because of outdated graphics and missing QoL additions of later FromSoft games. But once I managed to finish Bloodborne as well, I knew I am lost and since I hated the idea of playing DS3 (which in terms of graphics, mechanics and gameplay appeared pretty close to Elden Ring, at least from streams I saw over the last couple of years so I had it already long installed) without knowing the lore of DS1 and DS2, I cave in and bought these two as well.

Well, turned out the remastered version of DS1 looks pretty great, and the combat is awesome as well. An incredible experience with some of the most legendary bosses of the genre. It also kind of confirmed what I already suspected based on my previous soulslike experiences - that I was able to develop a certain formula on how to get through these kind of games, and amazingly, it again worked.

Also, for the first time in a FromSoft game I went with a quality build, which turned out to be a fantastic decision and allowed me to almost exclusively plow through the much of the game with probably my most favourite weapon - a claymore.

But the most amazing part for me was to uncover how certain both subtle and very obvious aspects of DS1 (and later supposedly DS2 and DS3) slowly seeped their way into the giant that nowadays is the Elden Ring - from basic weapons (Claymore, Morning Star etc.) through enemy desings (the basic Capra Demon enemy from Lost Izalith transforming into an Omenkiller in ER) to something as subtle yet important as weapon art (the moveset of Knight Artorias serving as an obvious inspiration for the Lion's Claw ash of war in ER).

It took me around 72 hours, which is around half as long as usual mortals need to finish this kind of game, and in that regard well in line with any previous soulslike I played. However, I may really be getting better overall as I never felt as the game was as hard as many people made it out to be. Sure, I took my time and progressed very carefully, very methodically - but even some of the most legendary areas (Blighttown, Anor Londo) and bosses (Ornstein and Smough, Manus of the Abyss) weren't enough to scare me away from this gem of a game.

[Executor]

Re: 2023 game plans

Summer / Early Fall Update Part 5

Currently playing tier

Far Cry 5
...and a visual novel I'll just keep to myself for now, lol

As with the Tomb Raider / Uncharted series "suffering" from some of the gameplay features I hate, same can be said about FC4 (which I generally love) and FC5 (which I might, once it's over, but we'll see). I just hate scenarios where the game throws something at you no matter your build, skills, current equipment and whatnot and goes like 'hey, now deal with this!'. If there is a point I'll rage quit during my latest adventure, this would be it.

It took me a while to get used to a first-person open world shooter but once I settled in, it got better (same experience as with FC4, btw). The world is very nice, and I love the setting, these Montana folks are super cool. Liberating outposts is usually pretty fun, but some of the quests are... man, hard, even on easy setting. If there is an extensive, time-consuming flying mission later in this game, I might just never finish it.

I needed two weeks to get out of (and liberate) the first area, the Holland Valley, and in the end it felt like I was more exhausted than after any of my two Elden Ring playthroughs (and the shorter of them took 160 hours). I seriously thought about giving myself a pause, but then I reconsidered...

...and man, I'm glad I did, at least for now, because now I am slowly working myself through the Henbane River and oh geez, Faith Seed is AWESOME!!! I mean, I have no idea how that particular part would turn out but so far her story and her cutscenes alone want me to scream 'best game ever!' but of course, I know better, so we'll see.


Soulslike hell / can't wait for it tier

Ashen
Sinner: Sacrifice for Redemption
Lies of P

Fearing I might soon run out of soulslikes, especially with no PS5 in sight, I looked around and found Ashen, which almost immediately captured my attention and soon after, my money. The only thing I am worried about is the fact that the game features only 6 bosses (including a DLC) which is pretty sad considering the game is supposed to be an open-world and the one or two bosses I glimpsed in streams appeared to be amazing.

Sinner: SfR is a boss-battler (didn't even know such genre existed) with obvious soulslike elements and inspirations, but no exploring. It looks and seems to play good enough to be given a shot once I inevitably run out of everything else.

And Lies of P... well, can't wait for this one. I mean, I know it's already out but first, I am on FC5 now and really want to get as far as I can before I inevitably tire out, and second, while I always suspected LoP would be my second game ever I dole a full price on (Elden Ring of course being the other), I still might wait for an usual patch or two, or maybe even the slightest of Christmas discounts, until I pull the trigger. But once I do, it will be a hell of a ride.

[Master Live 013]

Re: 2023 game plans

My update is that I haven't made any progress since like March, so all games roll over for next year...again. :P