Welcome back to the first Monthly Digest series entry in 2024.

Due to me starting working at a new company and needing a lot of time to adjust to the new shifts, I decided to put January and February together into a double feature. :)

Also a fair warning: The last one of my non AI based text checkers died, so don´t be surprised by random misspellings, wrong words or backwards sentences. If you know a good text-checker website, where I don´t need to sell all of my personal information to, feel free to drop the site in the comments section.

...................................................................

Monthly Bounty

...................................................................

Now, in January we have the new years resolution bounties and February marks the month of Godzilla (and sports games). This may be the first month where I could take a step back because, I don´t own a single Godzilla game. :D

...................................................................

Age of Mythology

PC/Windows - Steam
Ongoing
Time: 8h 8m
Rating: 7 out of 10

Age of Mythology is a game of which I have fond memories of. It is one of the few games of my childhood that managed to keep me interested enough to actually finish the campaign.

So I was more than happy to revisit this old classic for the January bounties. Age of Mythology is a spin off game in the Age of Empires series, same studio and people. But , instead of using historical factions, we are playing as Atlanteans, Ägypts and Vikings.

On top of that, they changed up the usual formula quite a bit. The biggest changes come with the addition of mythical units, which are expensive but quite capable against normal units, with either overwhelming power or special effects, moves, and abilities. Heroes are the second new unit class and are the hard counter against the mythical units, but in return, they are getting hammered by normal units. They can regenerate health on their own, which is really helpful to keep them on the field, but are limited to the player in small numbers (4-5). Also, when they die, they respawn on their own after a cooldown, so they are super useful overall. Another change is the introduction of town centers. In old Age of Empires games, you could place a town center wherever you liked, here you can only build town centers on top of abandoned ruins, which are placed around the map. So no more searching for that one villager who is sneakily building a whole new civilization in another obscured spot on the map."

Graphic wise the game looks amazing, even for today's standards. Age of Mythology uses (for the time) a brand new gameengine which just looks and feels great. The animations of the environment and units are gorgeous and the game looks really colorful.

The campaign is great and was really good for an RTS back in the day. The only problem I have is, its long ... really long. It doesn´t help that I know all the twists and surprises, which made progress for the bounty a lot slower due to another game which hooked my interest.

As a footnote, I played the Age of Mythology: Extended Edition of the game, which adds some nice to have QoL changes, like better resolutions and better unit management.

...................................................................

Worms Crazy Golf

PC/Windows - Steam
Aborted
Time: 1h 47m
(temporarily) Rating: 3 out of 10

Worms Crazy Golf is the only game I own, which was featured as one of the February bounty entries. I got this game as part of the Worms franchise bundle back in 2014 and it is definitely not what I was expecting ... in a bad way.

If it comes to worms I am kinda on the fence. On one hand I have fond memories on playing Worms World Party with my stepbrother on the PS1. We later also played Worms 4: Mayhem on PC for hours and had a blast. But something changed. With me and some friends trying newer entries like Worms: Clan Wars and Worms W.M.D a couple of years ago, it felt flat, uninspired and spongy. First I thought I simply grown out of the humor, but playing Worms: Ultimate Mayhem at the end of 2022 with my friends was genuinely fun. So, with that I started playing Worms Crazy Golf.

Crazy Golf is not what I expected in the slightest. I thought it would be like killing other worms with a quirky twist to how the weapons are controlled. Well, I was super wrong. Turns out it is actual golf with the camera view known from classic Worms entries. You can kill other worms by touching them with the golfball. Like what?!

The controls are, in my opinion, simply not correct. Using all the power you can manage will make your shot fly above your aim indicator, which is just unpredictable. You can pickup crates (which are used as weapon crates in classic worm titles) that unlock "abilities" to help you manipulate your shot midflight. Did I figured that out on my own? No... . After getting stuck on an impossible map, I searched the internet for tips on what I am missing or doing wrong. Turns out there is like a tutorial tab in the menu which brings you to information nuggets on how to play the game. Who does that? Especially when the game does have an ingame tutorial in the first few missions. Also, why the frick can´t you skip the stupid "start-of-the-mission" animation!? Some maps are somewhat tough and you need to restart quite a couple of times, so every time you need to reset you get a free camera tour of the whole map.

Well, in the end I managed to play for about two hours. That´s where I got off the bus and started playing something else. It felt boring, unfunny to play and not worth my time. After this game I decided to start focusing more on my challenge list instead of the monthly bounties. (Also, due to the new job I have less time to play now.)

...................................................................

Challenges

...................................................................

At the moment, I challenge myself to play all games ever released by Namco or Bandai or Namco Bandai or Bandai Namco for the Xbox platforms.
Here the Games List.

Sitting at 4 finished out of 132.

...................................................................

Bless Unleashed

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 34h 54m
(temporarily) Rating: 8 out of 10

One of two MMOs on my challenge list. Now that I decided to try and focus more on this list, my girlfriend, a friend and I embarked on this (probably) long journey together. At first my girlfriend just wanted to support my playthrough without getting deeper involved with the game. Well, now she is playing every opportunity she gets and grinds the reputation quests to get all the costumes. :)

Bless Unleashed does have a turbulent past. The first game, Bless Online, didn´t last long before getting shutdown due to "low playernumbers" and not raking in enough money. It was the unfortunate time, where Bandai Namco decided to kill off and delete games which doesn´t make all the money in the world. So, with that in mind, we decided to prioritize starting in Unleashed before it maybe meets an similar fate.

Well, what does the game offer? First off, it does sport a very robust Action-Combat system (like most Bandai Namco games), which feels direct and fluid. Every class have their own action skills, which can be switched out at will. Builds start to matter when you unlock the name-giving Blesses. A Bless gives you special perks and bonuses that enhance different playstyles. "Gear is love, gear is life" is the credo of your character builds. Character levels mean (almost) nothing, most of your damage, armor and health is determined by your gear. Everything revolves around acquiring new gear by doing one of the many activities or crafting. After that you start to upgrade everything with the risk of damaging your item, so it gets exponential more difficult to squeeze every last bit of stats out of your equipment. Of course, there are many more bits and pieces to help you on your journey besides gear, but covering all of the systems in place would be to much for a quick roundabout.

What surprised me is how good area quests are done here. Area quests are like the Fates from Final Fantasy XIV or rifts in Rift, they allow you to gain equipment in a fluid and natural way, which makes sense considering the environment and world the game is situated in. You can find them on the overworldmap and see when it will pop off, refresh, if the monster/boss is present or if it is in cooldown. Also, playing the game with a controller feels amazing, which isn´t really surprising considering that the game was developed with consoles first in mind.

For some reason, the game suffers from , I don´t know how to describe it, randomly missing QoL features. For example: You can see all your crafting recipes in a list, but it won´t tell you If your character already knows the recipe in your inventory or merchant inventory. Like, why not? Another example would be your quest tracker tab: You can decide which quests should be actively tracked, which does work as intended. But, should you complete one tracked quest the game decides to reassign all of the tracked slots after the games default filter. The game is riddled with such little "cracks" which are small enough to not be a dealbreaker, but annoying enough to remind me every time that it´s there.

Well, the game will be staying a little longer on my playlist. We are currently on around 80% completion with the main campaign, which doesn´t mean anything because the game features 5 distinct campaigns , so we are still at the beginning.

...................................................................

Misc Games

...................................................................

While I was playing Age of Mythology, something came around the corner to take hog all of my attention:

...................................................................

Palworld

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 43h 4m
Single Playthrough: * 8h 22m*
(temporarily) Rating: 8.5 out of 10

Who hasn´t heard about Palworld by now? To be honest, at first I thought that it wouldn´t suit my taste based on the promo material and trailers. But after playing it for myself I have to say that it deserves the praise and hype it´s getting. (Despite what Twitter thinks)

The label "Pokemon with guns" isn´t really accurate in my opinion, Palworld borrows from a lot of different games and feels closer to ARK: Survival Evolved.

The main developer puts it best: The focus of the game is being fun. It doesn´t matter if elements are blatantly ripped out of other popular games such as: The Legend of Zelda: BotW, Rust, Pokemon or Fusionmonster etc. Using game elements from other games is, of course, nothing new, but HOW Palworld puts it together is amazing. Everything is as it should be, nothing feels out of place (with one exception). It is fun to catch Pals, it is fun to explore the gameworld, it is fun to build bases and it is fun to breed your Pals (Fusion).

Only one negative thing stood out to me: Assets in the environment . Don´t get me wrong, the game doesn´t look bad by a long shot, it is just a little ... off. Everything is lightly stylized like the Pals, but trees, bushes, mountains etc. are more on the realistic side which is weird to me. After my girlfriend pointed out, that the game did in fact used to look different in the trailers, I started to wonder why that is. Some time ago I red an article about the project changing game-engines mid development. The project started with Unity and later switched to the Unreal Engine 5. I suspect, due to my own experiences with both engines, that the shaders got broken while migrating to UE5. Which would explain the change.

Now, I am not done playing the game for a long time, so it will probably pop up again in future digests series entries, so stay tuned.

...................................................................

Lethal Company

PC/Windows - Steam
Tested
Time at writing: 1h 37m
(temporarily) Rating: 7 out of 10

A friend of mine gifted me the game to try it out. I didn´t got around to play it thoroughly, but I can already see the appeal. You are an employee for a faceless corporation which wants you to bring them trash from absolutely safe spaces. (May contain wildlife, robots and other harmful dangers)

Gameplay is pretty forward: Choose a planet, collect trash and get out. Every couple of days you need to fulfill the company quota. If you succeed you get paid and get your next quota for the cycle. Should you not meet the quota, well ... lets say HR is showing you the "door".

Earned money can be used to buy equipment and decorations from the corporate equivalent of amazon. Better equipment give you more utility and therefore higher chances of surviving comfortably returning to space.

To maximize fun I recommend playing with friends in Co-op, which is what the game is designed for. On your ship is a computer with a lot of useful functions like tracking teammates, open/close doors, find loot in the vicinity of teammates etc. Finally, the Phasmophobia van dude does have a useful function. :)

Graphics wise the game is intentional kind of ugly and is very limited in visibility due to fog, dark environments and hazards. It does add to the creepy happy atmosphere. Enemy design is all over the place but works, surprisingly.

I had fun in the short time I played, definitely on my backlog for now.

...................................................................

Community Content

...................................................................

My favorites in January:

EffieMeow
#1 - Assassins Creed (2007) | I Played (Almost) Every Assassins Creed Game
- I liked the article, especially felt the section with the frustrating beggars.

AllTheTrophies
The GameCube Gauntlet #015 - Pikmin
- I just love how AllTheTrophies writes his articles and Pikmin is a banger game.

moho_00
Backlog Journey 2024 #01 - The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
-Interesting to read how he experienced the game.

and February:

moho_00
Let's Look at Football Games for Sega CD
-A new video from moho_00, enough said. :D

Cheesyben
You Have 1 Hour #1 - Clubhouse Games (2005)
- Cool kick of to a cool concept, will follow this series closely.

AllTheTrophies
The GameCube Gauntlet #016 - Muppets Party Cruise
-It´s always scary to see what licensed games I never know existed are out there ...

EffieMeow
NFS: Unbound | The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
- Haven´t played the game, but had an awfully similiar experience with Need for Speed gameplay wise.

...................................................................

End Word

....................................................................

New job, new daily schedule, new challenges. I hope that I acclimate to the new happenings soon and the series gets back on track.

Until then, keep completionating. :)