First of all, Happy New Year.
Entertainment
- Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – It wasn’t as terrible as some made it out to be but it also wasn’t good. It’s a very pretty but problematic movie. The CGI is well done, for the most part, but seems to serve as a crutch. The plot seems nonsensical yet predictable. I would say it’s ok but you don’t have to rush out and see it. For barely giving a rise… 2.2/5
Games
- Phoenix Point – I really wanted to like this game since I adore the XCOM series but it just didn’t work for me. The gameplay was good but all the other systems were just overly complicated. I gave up when I was trying to load a mission but it kept telling me that my weapons weren’t loaded without giving me any direction on how to do so.
News
- Nothing – It’s the holidays and nobody was doing anything otherwise.
Closing Arguments
I decided to do this post because I’ve decided to end this blog. Not that it takes a lot of time to through up the one post a week I do but there is just little to no return on it. If it provided something more engaging or rewarding I would continue.
Therefore, unless there is some surprising groundswell of support, I’m shutting this place down effective immediately. It took a lot of thought and inward searching to make this decision but ultimately I think it is for the best.
I’m looking forward to a lot of things in 2020 and unfortunately this blog just isn’t one of them. If anybody is interested in collaborating or looking for some background assistance, feel free to reach out. To anybody reading this post or has ever read any of these posts, thank you.
Paul Novak
Owner, Proprietor, Typer of Words, Gamer, Jester
A self described Polish ninja toiling away as an IT professional but more into gaming and writing. Physically existing on the western side of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania yet existentially flowing with the ether of the Internet.
2019 is almost over. HOLY… $#*%!!! It was an ‘interesting’ year for games. I played a lot of games throughout this year but not many that were actually released this year. I’ll run down a quick list of games I played and a quick thought or two about them but I’m only going to award games released from the year proper.
I just started playing it and haven’t finished it. So far the controls are bad. The graphics are ok as well as the story. If it had not been part of Game Pass I would not have even played this game.
I also did not finish this game after several hours in. I liked the environment and most of the gameplay. The framerate was not good on my pc even after turning everything down in the video settings. I quit when the combat started because it was bad.
It boggles my mind how bad this game was when it came out and the state that it is still in. This was EA’s flagship game for the year and it was seen by many to be their answer to Destiny. The game did not play well and it was buggy. On top of that it was uninteresting. I have EA Access on Xbox One so I had up to ten hours to try it out. I made it through about half of that time and walked away from the game. It was glitchy, which has been somewhat fixed, but the story was boring and the game play just didn’t feel good. It’s sad to think about the expectations that this game had on it versus the results. The fact that it is already part of the EA Access vault is telling that EA can’t just drop support but also can’t get people to buy it and the only way to get people playing it to give away access to it. I still haven’t played since it was added to the vault and I truly don’t plan to either.
It was a novel concept to make a shooter that was run based. I didn’t much care for the run based aspect and felt like it screwed you into playing the same part of the game over and over. That’s not to say it was bad but rather it just wasn’t something I wanted to play. Others really took to the game and enjoyed it, good for them.
I really didn’t have an interest in this game and honestly would not have played it if it had not been included in Game Pass. It felt like it was well built but it also felt like a game I just didn’t care about. The shooting worked well but somehow felt weak. Melee combat felt better but more risky. The story seemed a bit confused and after a while I didn’t quite get what I was supposed to be doing or why. After ten plus hours I turned it off never to return and I’m ok with that.
Basically you go around hunting monsters to get parts and such. It was fun for a bit but the endless loop of going on a hunt just seemed mundane. Going through the exact same environments to kill the same monsters over and over just wasn’t my jam. The game worked well and ran well on every platform I played it on but overall it was just dis-interesting to me. I hope other people keep playing and enjoying it.
As much as I loved and played the original game, this one did not hold up as well. I played regularly for the first few months and then trailed off. When I went back it still felt like it was not balanced properly and I could get mowed down by random enemies. Even though I bought the higher end package I never went and played out the additional story missions just because it didn’t seem to matter. With Underground and Survival never coming back this game it was good but just fell flat.
This was a short but clever game. Making your way through hell to out party the devil is a good enough concept but the game pulls it off in very entertaining way with some subtle twists and turns throughout it. Highly recommended since it is fairly short but very entertaining.
Reviewer Discretion 