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

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 ;).

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

Gaming in 2022

The main thing I wanted to change in 2022 (and subsequent years, hopefully ;)) was to actually finish games, instead of playing one for a few sessions and hop on to the next one. The hopping can still occur though, in search for a game I actually want to get stuck in with and finish to the end. On the other hand, I do play a lot of ‘open ended factory / builder’ type games, but the goal in those should be to get to the endgame.

The first two games that I actually finished at the start of the year were Star Wars Fallen Order and Ruined King. Both excellent games. The jedi one will see it’s follow up later this year. I started playing not long after it originally came out, and for some reason moved on to something else. I decided to finish it now though, and it was well worth it. Fun combat and the story was decent as well, though the ending was a bit odd. After the darth vader chase (spolier!) and back on the ship the story just sort of ended.

My games of 2021

The games of 2021

The games I played will be done from memory since I didn’t take any notes or used any software to keep track of what I played. I should start doing that to keep better track of things, since human memory can be misguided sometimes :). And post here more often !

In the past, I split these up by platform, PS4, Switch and PC, but I hardly touched the consoles this past year. For PS4 I only bought one game in a sale, Ghost of Tshusima, director’s cut , sort of my goodbye to the platform. It’s supposed to be one of the best games for it, and it still looks pretty nice. So far I only played the intro, but I am still planning on playing it more at some point. I finally did cancel the subscription for the PS4. I haven’t touched any of the games that come with it for almost 2 years, maybe even more, so even though it is good value for money (although the games were getting a bit weak that came with it) if you don’t use it at all, it’s wasted.

The switch I played a bit more. Checked out Animal Crossing every now and then and listened to the islanders complain about me not being there. They should really stop doing that, it makes me feel bad and not play at all :). I did buy a few games, Bravely Default II and Legend of Zelda, Skyward Sword. Loved BDII, but stopped playing it after a while. I should pick it up again. Zelda is good too, but didn’t touch it for more than a few sessions. I think that was about it for the consoles. I also want to continue playing Octopath Traveler which I just remembered when writing this!

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Gaming 2019

The year started off a bit slow for me gaming wise. I think I was a bit burned out by it and mainly watched Netflix series, I rewatched Friends if I remember well. Then in Febuary the Civ VI expansion Gathering Storm came out. After watching a few marbozir videos, I decided to get it and it made me finally ejoy Civ VI. I had tried a few runs before, but never really grabbed me, it didn’t seem like a complete game. In my opinion Gathering Storm made it complete.

In may Total War: Three Kingdoms came out, it was nice, but I found the campaigns / games dragging on a little too long. Also sometimes you got into a stallmate of some kind and the game didn’t really go anywhere. It was cool to see a strategy game in the top 10 most played games for a few days or weeks though. And it is a very good game regardless of my gripes.

Anno 1800

Around the same time, by the end of April, one of my favourites for this year came out, the citybuilder / logistics game Anno 1800 by Ubisoft. I had a lot of fun with this game. The campaign was relatively short, though the story was decent. The sandbox mode is where it’s at. I usually disable the pirates too, since I don’t think the combat aspect is very good. It was more annoying than anything else to find your ships in ruins, because you overlooked a pirate attack.

The DLCs that came after the release, were nice as well, especially the first one Sunken Treasures. It gives you a very large new island in a new region to build on, and a vessel with a diving bell you can use to search for treasure. The second dlc, Botanica was a little underwhelming, bit short of content. The third one, the passage, was pretty big with a new region and a new story. Though I have to admit I haven’t played it much since I have the feeling I have pretty much seen and done most that the game has to offer. I have about 70hrs into it now. The first part of the game is the most fun part to me. Once you have eletricity and people that need it, you need to redesign your cities in order to be able to use the trains and move the oil to your power plant, which is pretty much a pain. All in all a great game and one of the best of the year for me.