I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
January 20, 2024 - Day 385 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 421
Game: Battle Chasers: Nightwar
Platform: Steam
Released: Oct 4 5, 2017
Installed: Jan 20, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 22m
Rating: 4 - Good
Battle Chasers: Nightwar is an isometric RPG with turn-based combat.
It was literally the first game in the spreadsheet, and the name put me off, but I decided to just get it over and done with after yesterday's disappointment.
It's a party-based system, which uses a character switching mechanism while exploring the world, so that you're only controlling a single character at once.
It seems to have a reasonably well developed storyline, and it's kind of fun. Turns out Battle Chasers: Nightwar is:
March 18, 2024 - Day 443 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 478
Game: Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition
Platform: Steam
Released: Oct 28, 2015
Installed: Mar 17, 2024
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 1h30m
Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is an isometric RPG with turn-based combat. It was released by a little-known dev team based in Belgium (pardon my language) called Larian Studios.
Larian Studios released a small indie game last year that few people heard of called [checks notes]... "Baldur's Gate 3"
In all seriousness, though, it was my experience with BG3 that made me wishlist "Divinity: Original Sin - The Source Saga" soon after, which is a bundle of Divinity - Original Sin, Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition, and Divinity: Original Sin 2, which is currently on sale in the Steam Spring Sale for AUD$21.61. Given that it's normally $121.90, the 82% discount was impossible to turn down.
I installed D:OSEE, intending for it to be my game for the 17th, and I encountered something in a game that I've not experienced in years; it took me way back to my early days of gaming.
I started the game, and it hard-locked my PC. Instant crash, everything frozen. Two more attempts, same deal.
I raised a support ticket with Larian. Played A Musical Story instead.
When I woke up yesterday, my troubleshooting kicked in. Hard lock doesn't help much in terms of logs, but there's still some working assumptions I could try out, and it turned out that it's something to do with my monitor setup.
I'm running triple monitors. Main monitor is an AOC 34" Ultrawide, the LH monitor is an AOC 24" FHD, and the RH monitor is my old primary monitor, an AOC AGON 32" QHD.
It seems that as long as I only have one monitor active, D:OSEE will start OK. I'm still trying to nail it down, because it seemed yesterday that once I'd started it successfully and set the options in-game, it worked fine with all three monitors active, but last night I started it again, and another hard-lock.
I now have it set to "Fake Fullscreen" (other games call that Borderless Windowed), and will be running it again after I post this to check.
After all that, what about the gameplay?
It's a slow start, and it feels... slow. It's the story of a corrupted magical force named "The Source", and a two-character party of "Source Hunters", that are completely customisable before the campaign starts.
After 1.5 hours of gameplay, and clearing out what turned out to be a "tutorial" dungeon, I've just reached the first main questline. Still, for a 9 year old game, there are the hints of greatness that are found in BG3.
So far, other than the maddening crashing bug, and the game's apparent inability to display my actual resolution in the list instead of dingbats(!), Divinity: Original Sin Enhanced Edition is: