Gaming | Greendale.tk

2024 Gaming Highlights: Old Favorites and New Discoveries

This blogpost has been in the back of my mind since December 2024, for some reason now, more than 3 months later I decided to pen it down! Anyway, what I played in 2024 were mainly ‘older’ games. The steam replay for 2024 even mentioned this, only 8% of gametime was spent on new releases. What were those release you might ask, well some Tales and Tactic, Deep rock galactic and Last Flame. Some auto battles and Vampire Survivor likes.

The older games I played were a lot of Warcraft and Elder Scroll Online, and of course Oxygen Not Included. They released two content dlcs the past year that I enjoyed a lot.

ESO had a big chapter as they call their expansion, but it might have been the last one as they are now moving over to smaller but more frequent content patches. I had a lot of fun with Gold Road and the new West Weald zone. It was very crowded the first few months, then it started to quiet down a little. But there were also a lot of 10th year anniversary events that brought back a lot of players, even in the usually desolate areas, you ran into players. It was wild!

Morph looking over the new Main City in The War Within, durnogal — Morph looking over the new Main City in The War Within, Durnogal

In Warcraft I played some of the Dragonflight expansion and of course the new one, the War Within that was released in august. The delves were the main new dungeon type instances that were added. And they’re pretty fun, but there being only 8 (and now 2 more after a recent content patch) they’ve grown a little stale. I expect to play wow a bit less now, i’ve seen most of the war within and the recent content patches weren’t that great, so I’ll just level up some characters to 80 and do some of the sidequests I haven’t done yet, waiting for the next DLC.

In October the much awaited dlc for Factorio arrived! Space age! And it was even better than I expected. I should really dedicate a separate post to that. It was pretty much all I played for a few months and managed to even finish it. The dlc added some new game elements, like quality and elevated train tracks, but also as the new suggests, space travel and a few new planets to conquer. It’s definitely one of the best epansions of any game I played!

So that was about it for 2024. There isn’t anything in particular I am looking forward to for this year, currently I am playing some Hogwarts’s legacy, which I picked up for cheap and two point museum! Actually a new game :).

Skilgraad ESO West Weald — ESO Skilgraad, West Weald

ESO: Tenth Year Anniversary

Earlier this month, Elder Scrolls Online celebrated it’s 10th year anniversary! I took advantage of the xp boost and event tickets and played mainly a new Templar character. Though the others saw some action as well! It was very crowded every where and the group quests and events all over Tamriel were very busy.

Here are some screenshots.

Fallout Revival

Thanks to the TV show over at prime video, Fallout is topping the steam charts again! Some of these are even over a decade old. Fallout 76 is making a comeback as well.

After a rocky start the game is much better now and becoming quite popular. It’ll be interesting to see how many will still play in say a month or so.

I have been playing Fallout 76 as well again, after a hiatus of 4 years. My level 13 character was waiting for my return. I mainly wandered around in confusing where I left off in 2020 ;). But it was fun though. The shooting and the modding of weapons is great. So is the base building. And the multiplayer aspect isn’t annoying. The quests are good as well.

And I also picked up where I left off years ago in Fall out 4. not quite sure why I never finished it. I think i am going to focus on FO4 for now, will be nice to conclude the main quest at least and some of the DLC is excellent as well.

https://fxtwitter.com/Okami13_/status/1782120086091829575

Thoughts on Dave the Diver

Earlier this year I finished Dave the Diver. Well the main story line, it’s just long enough to not get annoying. It is a great game but after 30 plus hours I had seen enough.

I assume everyone knows the game by now, but in short, you start taking care of a sushi restaurant, but the catch is that you have to catch the fish for the restaurant yourself. And by doing so a whole story line unfolds where you meet an array of characters. The main game play loop is diving in the sea and catch fish, do some bosses and upgrade your gear so you can dive deeper and catch better fish (as in more valuable for the restaurant).

There are multiple mini games, even new ones are introduced well into the game. The boss fights are not too bad, a few were annoying or I had to look up what to do exactly but nothing I got stuck on.

All in all a very enjoyable experience, that I would recommend to anyone. There is still some stuff to do, upgrade the restaurant, finish catching all fish etc, but since I finished the main story line I haven’t had the urge to go back to be honest. There is more content coming soon, so I’ll keep an eye on that.

IGN review is pretty spot on.

https://www.ign.com/articles/dave-the-diver-review

2023 in Gaming

The main goal for this year in gaming in general was to actually finish a few games, and lo and behold, I actually succeeded (a little bit) ! I finished Marvell’s Midnight Suns, but not the gamepass content. I’ve seen enough of the game for now. The soap opera regarding all the characters got a bit too much at the end, but I persevered and finished the final mission. The gameplay is great, all the drama around it should be toned down a little.

One game I started and played quite a bit was Yakuza like a dragon. Its a spinoff of the other Yakuza games and this one has turn based combat, its pretty good. Maybe I’ll pick it up again. Got almost 20hrs in it so far.

In april however, Jedi Survivor came out and I focused mainly on that, you can see my comments in another post. Right before I wrote this I went back in the game a little bit, it’s still great fun to just run around and killing imperials for an hour or so, then I am done again for a while. Sadly the game runs much better now than on release. All in all if I had to pick my game of the year this would be it.

Right after the summer, Starfield came out, which I already wrote about, so I wont add much here, except that its just a shame the game is a little outdated, and feels like it should have come out a few years earlier. A lot of lost potential. And I don’t think ‘mods will fix it’. It’s no longer 2011 ;).

Wartales is another one I played a bit, could pick it up again one of these days (on the infamous backlog !). Novalands was a fun factory type indie game I enjoyed quite a bit. Furthermore a lot of smaller games I dabled in a little, Age of Wonders 4, Spellforce EO, Cosmoteer, Soulstone Survivors. And of course the usual suspects, Eurotruck Simulator 2 and American trucksim, Oxygen not included and Factorio! I did a vanilla run with QOL mods in Factorio and the past few monhts Krasstorio 2 w/ QOL mods as well. Quite a lot of fun, definately looking forward to the expansion next year.

So that is about it, currently am enjoying ONI again with a weird Metallic Swamp run, and Dave the Diver which I picked up in the end of year sales! And no I didnt play Baldur’s Gate 3, its a bit too large for me, I doubt I ever go through the whole thing. I’ll keep the blog updated hopefully so these end of year summaries are a bit easier!

Thoughts on Starfield

According to Steam I played Starfield for over 70 hours! And basically in a time span of about 6 weeks or so, until I moved on. Which wasn’t even a conscious decision, the interest waned and I had seen enough of the game. Although I’ll still pop in every now and then and at least finish the main quest.

So what did I think of the game ? Well it’s definitely entertaining for what it is. It played a little sluggish performance wise, I had to turn off most features even on a 3060 and a modern cpu. Sadly the ‘performance’ patch that was released recently (nov 2023) was way too late, this should have been in the game all along. Especially since they’ve been working for years on this. Although that doesn’t really show to be honest.

I loved the Akila (wild west) and the UC story lines. Especially the UC story, that should have been the main quest. The way it builds up, the scary first part of the mission in the dark with the horrible Terramorph that scared the shit out of you! Then some interesting decisions by the end of the quest line. It was really well done.

A lot of side quests were entertaining or at least fun to do as well. The shooting part of the game and the collecting of various weapons I liked the most. Didn’t really care much for the space combat. The outpost building was completely pointless and frankly quite annoying, so I didn’t bother with that anymore after trying a few times. The shipbuilding is pretty cool, although also here the interface is a bit of a let down.

What I didn’t like was the main quest and the whole restarting again in NG+. I assume everyone by now knows what the main story is about, and I don’t like a multiverse story. I doubt I’ll ever try a NG+, all the stuff you collected and decorated, all gone after a new game, no, thank you very much.

I didn’t encounter any game breaking bugs, my main annoyance was with the companions. The only one I kind of liked was Andreja, the rest I didn’t care much about, Sam was especially annoying and whining with that weird kid of his. Sadly he died at the Lodge (cough cough). They were also very buggy. They started shooting at everything that moved, wandered off doing their own thing and then warped back to me, if they weren’t standing in the direct line of fire.

So all in all it was a little disappointing, since it was a highly awaited Bethesda title, but some design choices were really weird. So many cut scenes in between traveling, or just warp from one part of the universe to the other end if you already discovered a city / town. And the weird bugs where you think, did anyone actually test this ? You’d expect better from a large studio after that much development time.

But I got a good 70 hrs out of it, and it was pretty entertaining. Next year when mods will be supported, it’ll be interesting what the community will come up with. I’ll keep an eye on that and maybe play the game again ;).

Thoughts on Jedi Survivor

A while back I finished the game, and I figured I’ll type some thoughts here about it. First of all, I don’t actually finish a lot of games, so it’s a statement in itself that this one was fun enough to actually finish. The story was decent overall, and you sort of want to know what happens in the end. I like the links to the High Republic Era. Your main enemy is the Dagan Gara (at first 😉 ) who was a Jedi Knight in those days.

The graphics are gorgeous and it’s just fun to run around and use your (customized) light saber to mow down enemies. Except for some of the outdoor areas, I didn’t suffer too much from the performance issues. I turned down some details, which helped I think. Though some open world areas couldn’t really be improved.

The puzzles were decent as well, except for a few where i had to consult the IGN online guide, mainly the one where you were on a timer to get the ball rolling. The overall difficulty was doable, I am not very good at these type of games I have to be honest, the middle difficulty was doable, but I don’t have all the time in the world to play to about half way through I turned it down a notch so enemies just died a little quicker. Also some boss fight were just damn annoying, I didn’t really want to spend an entire afternoon trying to kill one boss. Some people might get some enjoyment out of that, I am not one of them.

I didn’t really want to spend an entire afternoon trying to kill one boss. Some people might get some enjoyment out of that, I am not one of them.

Star Wars Survivor meeting Turgle — Cal meets Turgle

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The evergrowing gaming backlog

This year wasn’t quite what I expected for gaming. I wasn’t expecting much, except for a few titles. But in the past few months quite a few interesting games have been released, whilst I am still playing some from last year ;).

Heroes on a mission — About to go out on a mission

Currently the big games I am playing are Jedi Survivor, I am about 3/4s in, would be my guess. Very nice game, I didn’t have too much performance issues so far. And the other one would be Marvell’s Midnight Suns from late last year, which I bought for cheap in a sale. The combat and characters are very nice in that game. Turnbased with a bit of deck building. All the drama between all the characters and the story is a little over the top though, and drags on a bit. But I am about 3/4 in now, so I’ll keep on playing ;). I didn’t really check out the season pass and the extra characters, maybe once it’s on sale and I have finished the main game.

Other than that, new DLC for riftbreaker came out this week, and ESO and Oxygen not included are always on the menu ;).

Here is a list of other games I’d still like to start / continue to play:

Actively playing

ESO (new DLC coming soon)
Oxygen Not included
Marvell’s Midnight suns
Jedi Survivor
Across the storm (a map / mission now and then)
Planet of Lana – Short platformer on gamepass
Railway Empire 2 (gamepass)
Yakuza, like a dragon (started this a while back, about half way, paused for now)
Riftbreaker (new DLC!)

Bought but not played yet, or just a little

Stranded Alien Dawn – 3d Coloniy building, looks pretty interesting, played the tutorials so far
Zelda, Tears of the kingdom (played a few sessions, got off the tutorial island)
Everspace 2
Dinkum
X4
Great war western front
Sweet transit (trains)
Terraformers
Spellforce conquest of Eo
King Arthur: Knight’s Tale
Songs of conquest
Domekeeper
The last spell
Captain of Industry
Battle chasers
Kynseed
Darkest dungeon I & II
Cult of the Lamb, started for a bit, not too fond of the combat bit
Age of wonders 4 (played a little bit)
Octopath Traveller II