Horizon Zero Dawn
Still not a fan. I find it very generic and soulless. Very pretty and robot dinosaurs but at the same time also very empty. One of those „find the colored ledge where the devs want you to climb - and nowhere else!“ games, had me run around a cliff a dozen times already. SPOILERS: That in the end they made an AI to fix extinction by AI to be screwed over by another AI again was funny tho lol. Anyway, gonna beat it now, I‘m basically at the end anyway, might as well. Forbidden West is practically off the table for me.
Schedule I
My gf wanted to try it so I said yes. What all the reviews don‘t tell you: If your connection is not top notch stable, the game loves to desync and eat your inventory without telling you at all. We had days where other games were fine but Schedule I would desync and/or dc every 2-5 minutes. When it works it‘s fun though. My gf loves cooking if you know what I mean.
I keep chipping away at Octopath Traveler (chapter 3s) and Titan Quest (works criminally well on Deck for being stitched on gamepad support) on my Deck before bedtime.
I kind of enjoyed the story of Horizon.Gameplay was meh.
I played The Stanley Parable for the first time this week. I wasn’t a PC person back then, so now I’ve picked up the physical copy of the Switch version. Fascinatingly weird.
More spoilery thoughts on the game
I got most of the endings I think. Did the obvious routes and a couple I happened on, then I looked up the old lists of endings. And at least got the ‘Epilogue’ for the Ultra Deluxe stuff.
At the opening, it’s so interesting. It feels like a game that has a lot to discover. It turns out though that the joke is kinda that there isn’t. It has tons of little hints that lead nowhere. Still, I smiled and laughed like an idiot a few times when it called out my expectations.
The other games route was cool, but I wish it were still Minecraft and Portal instead of Firewatch and Rocket League; the latter two I have no strong feelings for.
I’ve been sick so all I’ve been playing has been a bit of Animal Crossing New Horizons. Saw Celeste again, so that was cute!
Halo: Reach
So I finished up the campaign on Monday and it’s still as great as I remember. Noble Team :(
Satisfactory
Not normally my kind of game but my wife wanted to play together and it’s been fun. Our base is a mix of tidyness (her) and absolute mess (me)… So the perfect match.
Halo Reach is so good. It’s been a while since I’ve played it all the way through, I really should give it a shot again soon.
Dying Light 2 has been my go-to for the last few weeks, so I’ll probably play some more of that.
Gothic
First clear of 2026! Gothic is a game I played many times in the past but never really finished - until now. It still plays and feels really good and I’m pretty happy with it for the most part, I did however completely forgot how unfinished it is. Very limited side content which doesn’t really expand past chapter 2, a bunch of partially implemented or just empty areas, characters that seem like they should have something going on with them. There’s a lot but it didn’t really affect my enjoyment.
I played the game using OpenGothic, project technically focused on Gothic 2 Night of the Raven but it does support the first game as a bonus. Having the ability to play natively on Linux is pretty cool and the whole thing was rather promising early on but the longer I played the more issues cropped up. Some of the problems I’ve encountered include:
- Missing visual effects (barrier) and minor rendering issues (mostly water, especially waterfalls).
- Forests feel less threatening due to longer draw distance and lighter ambiance inside.
- Static rivers - when swimming in rivers in the original water current moves player appropriately, this isn’t the case in OpenGothic.
- Some quests end without removing brought quest items.
- Rare quest trigger/advancement issues, ability to trigger things out of order.
- Various NPC problems, including:
- Enemies wouldn’t loot player if won in combat (fixed with the latest release).
- Enemy combat AI can be really wonky.
- Two-handed weapons are stowed sideways on NPC’s backs (introduced in the latest release).
- Female characters keep spinning in place.
- Not really a problem but I don’t really care for the updated visuals and feel they take away from the art style at times.
I’m not sure how many of these have to do with OpenGothic in general and what’s the fault of me playing G1 rather than 2 (as I said, support for the first games is just a bonus). I’m sure some of them were also present in the original but I don’t remember enough from G1 to pick them out. Thankfully, none of these problems were game breaking but I think I’ll play Gothic 2 the normal way (whenever that happens).
All in all, it was a fun ride but it also reminded me why I spent waaaay more time with the second game in the past.
Short follow-up to last week's recap
After writing my end of the year recap I thought it could be fun to try and come up with the first completion date for as many games in my library as I can. I have a spreadsheet with all of them already so all that was left is to try and figure out the dates. It was easy with some and harder with others but I managed to come up with results for 151 games, with the oldest completion date going as far back as 2003.
Why bother? It’ll make another recap easier to write, simple as that. I also like organising things so the process was fun in its own way and gave me a chance to look back at my gaming habits throughout the years.
Does the open source Gothic engine have any options to modernize the camera and movement controls? That’s what killed my interest in the first two despite them being on paper the perfect games for me (and I enjoyed 3 and Risen despite them being considered a step down in quality from the first two).
It’s been ages, but I remember one of the first things Gothic 2 has you do is navigate down a narrow spiral staircase that resets your camera and walking direction any time you brush against the walls. It’s as if the developers wanted to warn you ahead of time about the control issues.
Just checked with G1 and 2, the issue is still present for both. The reason it works like this, I think, is because both games can be played entirely with keyboard which makes sudden turns a bit of a pain compared to the mouse. It’s pretty much an assist feature if you will.
But yeah, regardless of the reason for its existence it’s still there.
RoboCop: Rogue City is a pretty fun game, even if the character models can keep people up at night.
I just finished God of War Ragnarok and I’m about to start on Mafia: The Old Country
