Games I played in 2023

Well, I managed to post this about 2 weeks later than last year. I generally start writing in January, but it takes a while to make the time to put the thoughts down on paper. Another year, another list of games played, many on a laptop as I spent more time away from my desk in 2023 than I had in previous years. Not too much to say here so lets get into it:

1. Dwarf Fortress

The entrance to the fortress Torchriver

There are some games (Eve Online is another example) where the stories told about playing the game spread around the internet and get you really interested… but the games themselves are daunting. Dwarf Fortress is a game like this. When Bay 12 Games opted to release the Steam Version, I realised it was finally time for me to investigate a game that I had been wanting to for a while.

My early memories of playing the Dwarf Fortress steam release are like a fever dream because I had a fever. Delirious with my first bout of COVID-19 (having shunned people for two full years) I tried to watch as many videos as I could before purchasing the game. I still went in ignorant of so many systems. After 400 hours I have still yet to find any Adamantine. The learning curve on Dwarf Fortress is steep but the community is great, and the daily questions thread on the Dwarf Fortress subreddit was a great help.

Dwarf Fortress is a colony building simulator, you start with 7 Dwarfs and some supplies, you pick a place to embark and the you strike the earth and attempt to build a fortress. There are many things that prevent you from building the fortress you want, but by far the most dangerous is you yourself. I lost my first fortress when attempting to channel water underground, I learned that water can go through tiles diagonally and flooded the place completely.

There is a lot to dig into in this game. Crafting, economies, agriculture, politics, crime and punishment. The stories it generates are interesting, like the person who had a necromance get into their clothing factory (the necromancer was able to reanimate the wool as the game treats this as a deceased animal body part). The complex simulation often throws up interesting problems that you can try and solve, or just ignore and watch the chaos unfold. The first time a were-gecko arrived at my fort I ended up having to wall off my militia squad, carve arrow slits into the wall and then have my marks dwarves execute the poor infected dwarf when he transformed. Suffice to say everyone got traumatised and no one was happy.

Mebzuth, militia commander and certified bad ass

One thing that I really loved about the game is the soundtrack. Omar Dabbous (Dabu) and Simon Swerwer have produce a wonderfully atmospheric body of work. When I hear the opening strains of “Forgotten beast” I know it is time to lock all the doors, deploy the militia and pray for success. I feel like the music is a big part of what kept me coming back.

Dwarf Fortress is one of the few games I think I could play for several hours at a stretch. Normally I am done after an hour or two, but with Dwarf Fortress I think I could just keep going because there is always just one more job to do. Oh, I should finish those new bedrooms. And learn how to make musical instruments. And streamline the brewery operation. This was easily my most played game of 2023, representing 30% of my total time in steam (although some of that was probably alt tabbed). If you want something a bit more thoughtful, and fancy learning a heck of a lot of things (including some useful facts about geology) then Dwarf Fortress is well worth a look.

Check out this Dwarf Fortress interview by Noclip

2. Rocket League

The heyday of rocket league was a special time. We all sucked at the game, and I don’t think I have ever laughed as hard in front of a computer monitor as I did when we got six people together to play 3v3s. Rocket League is weird in 2023. Lousy with microtransactions yet they are completely ignorable. The game itself is still fantastic, easy to learn yet hard to master. The skill ceiling in rocket league is very high, so where in the past i have played ranked exclusively, i found myself just going for casual matches. In some ways this is harder as there are people in casual who a) won’t let you touch the ball and b) barely ever touch the ground. There are a few wrong ‘uns as well, abuse and toxicity seem to present in just about any multiplayer experience these days. In spite of this, I have a laugh in Rocket League, and it is not unusual to meet a random like minded player, party up and play together for an hour or so. I miss the old days of playing with mates, but I feel Rocket League is always worth dipping into now and again.

3. Project Zomboid

I played a lot of Project Zomboid in 2022, and I guess I did the same again in 2023. I don’t really have much more to say about it 12 months later. I am really looking forward to the B42 update. I played a bit of multiplayer in 2023, but I think I prefer it as a solo experience. Diving deeper into mods has helped keep the experience fresh for me. Mods like 10 Years later, and expanded helicopter events have changed the game enough to keep it fresh. And I still have not been to Louisville!

 

4. Dredge

In 2023 I went through an HP Lovecraft phase. Lovecraft is one of those authors who (like Wodehouse) I hear referenced all the time but who I have not read. Amazon Kindle offered me his complete works for a paltry sum, and I dove in. I quickly realised that what I had was a)just about everything he had ever published and b)in alphabetical order, so not really helpful if you did not know the work already. I skimmed bits and bobs, and read the stuff I had heard about. Cosmic horror written in the in 1920’s, suffice to say it was pretty racist stuff (here is a good article about it if you want to read more VOX - Lovecraftian horror — and the racism at its core — explained).

Dredge is a game I spent 20 highly enjoyable hours with. A fishing game with an engaging cosmic horror narrative attached, it has one of the most defined atmospheres to a game I have seen - a really well established sense of place. You potter around a series of islands in your small fishing boat, catching different types of fish, placing crab bots and occasionally dredging up things from the sea bed. A day night cycle linked to an insanity mechanic, and a host of weird NPC characters mean that you are planning your trips carefully and always have something to do.

Dredge is a game that to me is like Red Dead Redemption 2 in that I really enjoy just being in the world (although they could not be more different in scope and scale). I have not tried the DLC yet but will likely save that for a second play through at some point (hopefully when I have forgotten much of the game in a year or two).

5. Darkest Dungeon

To quote Billy Conolly, for me getting into Darkest Dungeon was like trying to get famous in America: “Bastards won’t let you do it.” I had tried on two separate occasions to get to grips with this game as I knew it was turn based and popular with the XCOM crowd. At the start I found it impenetrable. I did not really understand how to fight, and the YouTube tutorials I watched did not really help. I think reading Lovecraft (and finishing Dredge) were the things that spurred me back to have another go. As an aside, one of the things I have been looking for in games this year is ones that run well on a laptop. I have not always been in the same place as my PC, and having engrossing games available when away from home has been a godsend.

Once I got into Darkest Dungeon, I ended up playing solidly for 3 months and putting in over 100 hours. I will probably go back for another playthrough at some point, and the sequel will get checked out as well when I see it in the Steam sale. Darkest Dungeon is dripping with atmosphere. It pours out of the game in the writing, the narration and the art. Bleak and impressive, it still compels you to press on to the end of the well written story. Urged on by your ancestor cum narrator, you must undertake visits to a series of dungeons to unpick the mystery of what is happening to the crumbling estate you have inherited. All of the Lovecraft tropes are here and well deployed - cosmic horror, abominable fish people, ancient horrors and occult practice.

What took me time to learn was how to use and build your party. Stacked in a row of four, each member has a role to play and there are plenty of synergies between the 18 available hero classes. Once I started to understand the mechanics of the combat, reading further on Reddit started to make the whole thing make sense. In addition to fighting enemies you must also manage the mental health of your heroes. Too much stress may yield unpredictable results, some good, some catastrophic. Managing your resources and your troupes stress while facing encounter after encounter of deformed monstrous enemies is topped off by the narration. "Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit. Unless overexsanguination be considered a virtue." The Narrator is ever quotable. So yes, lots of fun to be had here. I did not get all of the DLC yet so will hopefully revisit this one again in the future.

6. Vampire survivors

I would like to think that I am rarely a passenger aboard the hype train. I often listen to podcasts where people describe wildly popular games, yet find myself coming to them a year or two later. With Vampire Survivors I started playing maybe 4 months after it became popular (and at the urgings of Russ). It did not hurt that this was yet another game that ran well on a laptop.

This was my first ASS (auto survival shooter) game, as I suspect it was for many people. The game has you navigating a character through levels as you spew bullets (automatically) and select power ups whilst dodging vast hordes of enemies. I read (or heard) that the creator had previously worked in creating online casino apps and wanted to apply some of the same design principles of dopamine reward design to a video game. In that, he was successful.

That being said, I did not fall as deep into Vampire Survivors as other people did. I failed to kill death, i think i stopped at the first roadblock hard level and did not move forwards. Maybe I was hampered by not looking up builds online, maybe I wasn't motivated enough to do so. I feel like I had a fun 20 hours with the game, and got around half of the achievements (if that is any metric for progress). I would like to try some more ASS games in the future, maybe the Deep Rock Galactic one.

 

7. Battle brothers

This one came out of left field for me. It is my second most played game of 2023, with 200+ hours. Yet another game that runs pretty well on a laptop. I think i had it recommended to me by Steam based on my past interest (obsession? -Ed.) with XCOM. Battle brothers in a turn based hex grid strategy game with a meta layer of trading and faction management. You are in charge of a mercenary outfit in a mid fantasy world. Mid fantasy because while the vibes are game of thrones, there are still Orcs, Giant spiders, magical crones and other fantastical foes to fight.

This game is hard. Like PC games of the 90’s hard. I have spent all this time with it and I still feel like I barely understand how to play. Reading the subreddit does not seem to help either, as they are all obsessed with Fat Newts (Fatigue Neutral characters) and I would not recognize one. So I play on the easiest difficulty settings and the game still kicks may ass all over the map. Your job in the game is to build up a mercenary company, take contracts, win renown, get rich and retire. As you recruit brothers to your company (henceforth referred to as bros) you become attached to them, and of course they can get injured, crippled or perma-die.

Each battle is about several things - positioning your bros, supporting each other, melee defence and morale, etc etc. Each enemy has a certain approach needed, and the process of trial and error is long and bloody. What amazes me about the game is that even if you run company for 200 days, beat a late game crisis, have a full roster of battle hardened bros with good gear… you can still get hammered and annihilated in a fight you thought that you could win, destroying your company and ending your run. I think Battle Brothers may be the most frustrating game that I played in 2023, yet it kept me coming back. I will probably play it again this year. Who knows, maybe I will even improve?

 

8. Horizon zero dawn

It is great to see the Sony first party releases making their way to PC, even if we have to wait a year or two. The next big thing in open world games is likely to be GTA 6, and I am sure the PC folks like myself will have to wait 12 months for that one as well. Hoping to scratch the open world itch, I spent almost 30 hours with Horizon. Unfortunately I bounced off it pretty hard.

The world is beautiful and richly detailed. The running around is fun. Harvesting robotic prehistoric megafauna is interesting, it is far from mindless point and shoot stuff. Yet I think this is maybe what drove me away. Having to keep track of the different elemental weaknesses, what weapons I had, what resources I had, what resources I needed… it rapidly came to feel like a chore to play. I thought the story was good (but not good enough to force me through what I did not like abo

ut the game), the characters well rendered. Maybe this is one I will go back to at a later date (although i said the same about Middle Earth: Shadow of war, but have not touched it since 2018). Perhaps I have been spoiled by open world games such as Red Dead Redemption 2. I certainly found the side activities in that more engaging than in Horizon.I am glad a tried this game, but I am not sure if I will go back. A great game is in there, but it is not for me.

9. MechWarrior 5 mercenaries

The Battletech franchise was always going to be well set up to take advantage of computer games. Created as military sci-fi in the 80’s to accompany a tabletop wargame of the same name, in this future planets and factions settle their disputes by going to war in giant walking machines with individual pilots: Mechs. I have read more of the Battletech books than I care to admit here (there are 154 in total), and whilst some are good, many are not. The HBS Battletech game is my second most played according to Steam (I think Company of Heroes might beat it overall but my time with that largely predated Steam). So I am pretty familiar with the world and its systems.

So I was surprised when I found it really hard to get into Mechwarrior 5. My mistake was trying to play on an Xbox controller. I was having trouble lining up the most simple shots, and straight up had a bad time. Switching to mouse and keyboard for my second attempt to play (I purchased it in 2022), it was like switching on a light switch - suddenly everything made sense and I had a great time.

Similar to HBS Battletech, in this game you are setting up a mercenary company and travelling around the inner sphere and periphery taking contracts, salvaging mechs, hiring pilots and trying to get good. The game is semi tactical - you can wade in guns blazing, but if you want to play smarter you can - staying at range, ordering your lance mates around to daw fire or engage different groups. On my first run through the campaign I skipped mods but for a later career mode, mods like WAR FX and AI enhancements improved the experience dramatically. Also a shoutout to the YAML (Yet Another Mech Lab) mods that seriously expand mech customisation and chassis.

Even in vanilla though, I had a really good time with MechWarrior 5 Mercenaries. It's odd because I would say objectively Horizon Zero dawn is probably a better game. I think the mindless violence of MechWarrior, soundtracked by butt rock guitars, is just what I was looking for. Stomping across a lunar surface at top speed with 90 degree torso twist as you ripple fire SRMS into an opposing mech is just good dumb fun, and I am here for it.

 

10. Read Dead Online

I just read last years post and apparently I did not play Read Dead Redemption 2: Online (RDO) in 2022. I could have sworn that I dip into it around once a year, but there you go. The older you get the less reliable your memory becomes. RDO is at this point abandonware, the unloved second child or Rockstar Games who constantly lavish attention and updates on its older, more successful sibling, 2013’s GTA5. Yet RDO provides a richer online experience in may ways, despite not having had a serious update in years now.

Something about the world of RDO is just pleasant to spend time in. I could not really recommend RDO to other players as a great experience. It works for me, and I made it work better for me by blocking some ports on my firewall. This means that when I play RDO I am in a solo lobby without any other players, just leaving me in the world by myself. Sounds crazy right? There are a couple of good reasons to do this.

By and large the RDO player base are cool people. Tip your hat at another player as you pass on the street and you will likely get a wave in return. If a player sees you working with your hunting wagon, they might just drop off a nice carcass for you. However a small percentage are innately hostile and will shoot on site. Griefers. RDO tries ato address this with features like parley mode and passive mode, but they don’t do it for me - I would rather remove the griefer element altogether. Another benefit of the solo lobby is the legendary animal system - they spawn more frequently if you are the only person on the server.

The gameplay loop of a solo RDO lobby is pretty basic. Log on and check the daily tasks, decide what you want to do. Do some hunting fro Cripps around your camp (in a solo lobby you can pretty much pick your precise camp location). Maybe do some bounties or treasure hunting, perhaps tasks for Harriet the Naturalist. Within an hour you are done. It is about the least stressful game I have played, and that world is a fun one to relax in.

11. Xcom chimera squad

Another game snapped up in a Steam sale and consigned to the backlog. My love of XCOM started with the 2013 Enemy Unknown and since then I have played loads, including the Long War, Long War Rebalance, and Long War of the Chosen mods. According to Steam, that is over 1,300 hours of XCOM. Going in, I knew Chimera squad was going to be different. Gone are the guerrilla warfare tactics, in their place is a SWAT style breach and clear assault game. Chimera Squad are a law enforcement unit on post invasion earth comprised of human and alien members. Think Alien Nation meets the SWAT films and you get the idea.

I found this to be a perfectly serviceable XCOM game, but after 24 hours of play time I was done without the need to go back to it. The campaign is fine, and I find the reuse of assets from the first two games to be both nostalgic and (hopefully) a smart money saving move. The meta layer is interesting but not engrossing, and the witty dialogue between team members gives the game a Saturday afternoon cop show feel. I’m glad I played it, I had an ok time, but next time I feel the XCOM itch I will be back to XCOM Enemy Within Long War Rebalance - maybe the best XCOM has ever been for me.

 

Games I played in 2022

Have you ever had that feeling that you forgot to do something… like update your blog in the last 10 years? Maybe I will go back and see if I can chart a history of what I played over that time. My last post on this blog was 2012. Day Z was hot shit, and I had just purchased a reasonably powerful gaming PC. That machine is still under my desk, now relegated to photoshop and video editing. I really love that PC case though, looks a bit like an abstract storm trooper according to Dina. Anyway, here (in chronological order) is what I played this year.

 

Frontier Pilot Simulator

The way this game feels in it’s interface takes me back to flight sims on the Amiga and PC in the 90’s. It’s a mix of being a bit basic, combined with not being well explained. Sometimes a game being slightly obscure can make it more interesting. Frontier Pilot Simulator (FPS) is a flight game based on flying cargo hauling VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) aircraft on a newly colonised planet.

Starting off with the small, nippy Scarab, you can progress through the mid-sized Ox to the jumboesque Behemoth. The flight controls really remind me of Zarch, the 80’s game where you controlled the thrust of a small ship with mouse presses to burst or feather the throttle. A 360 pad makes the process much easier, and the inertia, weight and wind make the flying interesting. When you are carrying a full load your craft is sluggish, sometimes being too heavy to successfully hover. Whilst the flight model is detailed, this is not a full on hardcore sim, more sitting halfway between arcade and simmy. Reminds me a bit of Dropship United peace force, that PS2 ode to the dropship from Aliens.

Frontier Pilot Simulator has you flying round a large map, completing jobs for various interests on the planet, from mining people through to scientists and tourists. You can take jobs that allow you to build out certain locations to have more facilities. This is a pretty chill experience, one to slap on that 70’s play list (maybe the soundtrack to Air America?) and enjoy your space trucking.

 

Pine

I got ill at the start of 2022, and was off work for a couple of months. Not feeling too great, I wanted something easy and chill to play, and Pine fit that bill really well. I have not had a console since the PS3, so I feel I miss out on some games. I was really interested in Breath of the Wild when it came out. I love the adventure of an open world. I mean, I really do want to go over there and climb that mountain, that sounds like a good time. Pine feels like it has been influenced by Zelda games, but as I have never played a Zelda game, I feel like I might be missing out on some of the cues and nods they are providing.

I really enjoyed the running around in this game. The way you interact with the different factions in the game, endearing yourself to them or aggravating them according to what you are trying to do is really interesting. The combat system has a bit too it, but I did not really engage with it too deeply. The world design and music are really well done, and what they have created is a world that is really pleasant to visit.

Given that more and more games are layering in RPG elements these days, I can see this being a good game for younger people to start to get to grips with light RPG mechanics. I had a really pleasant time with Pine, and it did not overstay its welcome. After 30 hours I had seen the main story through and done a chunk of side stuff. A really great game to play if you are recuperating and want something light.

 

PUBG (Player Unknown’s BattleGrounds)

Whilst I was recuperating, I also was wondering if I could still play “real” video games. My reactions felt thick and slow (although let’s be fair, I was never what you call a twitch gamer). When it came time to get back on the horse, I chose PUBG as the vehicle for seeing if I could still do it. PUBG in 2022 is in a weird space. Brendan Greene near single handedly created the Battle Royale genre, springing from the fervour that surrounded DayZ and ArmA2. I think in the 10 years since I last posted, I have easily played over 2,000 hours of ArmA2 and 3. I remember playing Battle Royale in ArmA3 (I was always more partial to Sa-Matra’s wasteland), and it did not hook me although it did have the hallmark of later PUBG – it was terrifying! Jeff Gerstmann (from the Jeff Gerstmann show) described PUBG as a horror game and I think he is spot on.

Anyway, 2022 PUBG is now split between ranked and casual, with casual being full of AI controlled BOTs in lieu of real players. Unsurprisingly, this makes it a hell of a lot easier for clunkers like me who cannot keep up with these damn kids. In a typical casual match, I think the split is about 75% bots and 25% people. This suited me fine, and I was even able to get the occasional chicken dinner. Dropping into a match with 100% real people is obviously much tougher, I can maybe get a kill or two but I can’t really put the whole package together to be super competitive.

Regardless, I enjoyed my time with PUBG. Running round Erangle is like visiting your old home town. New additions like mortars and drones are fun to mess with. Hurtling across the landscape on a motorbike trying to pull backflips will always be fun to me. I can’t say that I love the smaller maps, but I know they need to keep the player base ticking. It's not the kind of thing I could do daily, but it’s nice to see PUBG still trucking.

 

Xcom2 LWOTC

XCOM! Long War! That's XCOM baby! Etc etc. 2013’s XCOM:EU/EW was transformational for me. Not since playing Nobunaga's Ambition on my little sisters game boy has turn based combat completely grabbed me like this. Oooh, and Space Crusade back on the Amiga. I often lean away from grand strategy (I find it overwhelming) and more into small scale, tactical stuff. Long War is the incredible mod for the 2013 game that turns the main campaign into a longer, deeper and richer experience. There's a brilliant quote from XCOM Lead Designer, Jake Solomon, in which he says: "We're basically a 20-hour tutorial for Long War, and that's okay." (Thanks Eurogamer!)

When XCOM 2 dropped in 2016, it was great, and the mods for it were fantastic and varied. But it took a long time for Long War to come to XCOM2. The expansion Wrath of the Chosen made the process more complicated, and when you add in the complexity of everyone running a bunch of other mods as well… it’s a lot. Eventually Long War of the Chosen came out, and this was my third attempt at trying to play it on normal difficulty, the previous two attempts having failed (that’s XCOM baby, as they say on Reddit).

LWOTC adds a much deeper strategy layer to XCOM2. You are thinking about:

·         What territories am I operating in

·         What missions am I discovering

·         What are my infiltration times

·         What are my upgrades

·         How much am I raising Advent’s awareness/hostility

·         What are my resources and tech vs what are their resources and tech

·         Do I have scientists and engineers?

·         Oh and the bloody avatar project (Yeah Bradford, you told us)

There is a lot to learn and a lot to manage. In my first two playthroughs, I was managing OK on the tactical level but was so behind on the strategy layer that Advent were starting to field units that I could not effectively kill. In this playthrough I paid much more attention to making sure I was always current on my weapons and armour tech. My usual approach to XCOM is to use a lot of custom characters based on some folks I know (hey Where’s My Demo and Warhawks lads). I then populate the rest with movie folks (Aliens, Predator, 80’s action movie staples). I love the bit where after you complete a mission you get to make a propaganda poster, but in previous playthroughs I spent too much time doing that, so for this run I just left them mostly on default.

Overall, finally finishing a LWOTC campaign was really satisfying. However, the definitive Long War experience is still 2013’s XCOM EU/EW. During the pandemic, I played LWR (Long War Rebalanced) mod, and that was the best I think Long War has ever been for me.

 

Warhammer 40,000: Sanctus Reach

I have been interested in this game from 2017 for a while. I think the team set out to try and translate the WH40k tabletop game to a video game. Army Points Totals, weapon ranges and weapon loadouts were very familiar from my forays into the strange world of WH40k in the 1990’s. I played through the main campaign with most of the DLC and was pretty much done after 50 hours or so. Sanctus Reach is good but not great. If you are interested in WH40k, there are loads of other games that do more with the lore and the richness of the universe (more on this in a mo).

The turn based approach with large armies and pretty basic graphics does mean the game is not demanding (both mentally and computationally). The kind of thing you can leave running in the background, make some moves and then step away again. Whilst I think I played about 50 hours, the GOG client tells me I had it running for 150, so it was obviously on in the background a lot. I think there are plenty of other offerings for big battle Warhammer scenarios, so this is one only for the deeply interested.  

 

Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor Martyr

So this year saw me reading a lot of WH40k books. I had previously enjoyed Dan Abnett’s Inquisitor books, and when I saw there were new installations in the series (the Bequin trilogy being well underway) I decided to reread them all. I often find that I want to play games that align to whatever I am reading, and this coincided with the Warhammer Skulls sale over the summer. I snapped up Inquisitor Martyr, Battlesector (which I have not touched yet, as I had just finished Sanctus Reach and was not ready for more of the same straight away) and Space Marine Anniversary Edition. I had very little idea of what to expect from Inquisitor Martyr. ARPGs had largely passed me by, I never played any of the Diablo games when they were popular, and so my only experience with ARPGs was Torchlight (and some of Torchlight 2). 

Inquisitor Martyr provided me with 100 hours plus of fun. It helped that by the time I came to the game it was 4 years old, meaning there was plenty of additional content to explore. Playing the crusader class, I messed with a bunch of different builds and weapons. The story itself is not bad, but the setting is fantastically grimdark, and that combined with the enemy variety and satisfying gameplay loop kept me coming back. The support for controller on PC was well appreciated, as I spent more time playing it on the couch than on the desktop. The endgame void crusades were rewarding to mess around with, and whilst I did not use them, the co-op features seem like a nice touch. The amount of action they were able to cram onto a screen was seriously impressive (it can get hectic), and there is depth aplenty in the classes. And sure, an Inquisitor murdering hundreds of millenia old chaos marines is a bit cheesy, but it's a video game - the suspension of disbelief was not hard to come by. This has really got me thinking about taking a look at Diablo 4 next year (especially if it comes to Steam).

Warhammer 40,000: Space marine anniversary edition

So I saw the trailer for the new space marine game coming in 2023, this went on sale and since I was already neck deep in WH40k games I said why not. This game was unusual for me in that I played 10 hours and was done, but I had a good time for those 10 hours. I am pretty sure I turned the difficulty down as I was having trouble getting the combat system down, and honestly it never occurred to me to turn it back up. This is an OK game (An OrK game? -Ed). WH40k Orks are always a bit of a laugh. Some of the sequences in this are great, like wielding a thunder hammer with a jump pack and smashing large groups of enemies. The shooting is pretty basic. I will probably check out Space Marine 2 when it goes on sale.

Warhammer 40,000:Mechanicus

This is probably the best WH40k game to date, the game I enjoyed most in 2022, and is perhaps my favourite game music of all time. Released in 2018, I had grabbed it in a steam sale at some point but not started it until this year. This game immediately hooked me and dragged me in. At its core it is an XCOM clone, turn based combat with a neat feature whereby action points (called cogitation points) are not a given, fixed resource but must be harvested - from computers in the world, from enemies, and eventually from techno spiritual abilities. It is a neat dynamic that took me a while to learn. When you add in to this the difficulty curve of Mechanicus (starts harder, shifts to easier as you get more powerful) I can understand why some people may bounce off this.

But if you persevere, there is a real gem of a game here. You can upgrade your party of Tech Priests and their support teams. You can acquire loot and build loadouts and spec out priests to fulfil different roles - as it’s WH40k, walking close to the enemy and smashing with a large axe is always an option. You are presented with choices throughout each mission. Do you explore more but increase the enemies you will fight? Do you stop to help beleaguered troops from your ship? Every action can have a consequence here. There are senior tech magi on your ship whose goals do not always align. The story is good, the atmosphere is great, and all of this is further enhanced by Guillaume David’s phenomenal soundtrack. Blending deep heavy synth bass sounds with choral chanting and industrial percussion, he really pulled out all the stops (pun intended) for this one.

Being able to play with a controller on a TV was a key part to why I enjoyed my time with this game so much. It was also one of the few games that I replayed fully twice, completing the whole thing to see two different endings. If you like WH40k, or if you like XCOM style turn based combat, this is a must play.

SnowRunner

Some games can be super intense, demanding concentration, planning, situation awareness and so on. SnowRunner is not one of those games. It is a game I liked to play to chill out. Throw on the 60’s/70’s playlist on Spotify and just drive this truck along these muddy tracks, picking up or dropping off logs. SnowRunner adds a lot to the previous iterations of the game (SpinTires and MudRunner). Some of the interfaces are more streamlines, there are more tucks to buys, more jobs to do, and bigger, linked maps (they feel bigger anyway). Truck modifications and upgrades are now a thing, and mod support remains a great way to enhance the game beyond the base content. SnowRunner is at its best as a multiplayer experience though. It is undemanding, and having a mate come and winch you out of a ditch makes the game much easier. Grab a beer, get on Discord, and get trucking!

Project Zomboid

In the last two weeks, project Zomboid broke into my top ten most played games of all time on steam (at 230 hours total). It was my most played game of 2022, accounting for 19% of the time I spent on Steam. It is funny that I started this blog talking about DayZ, because whilst the way you play this game (isometric camera view, very zoomed out) is completely different, this game gives me really strong DayZ vibes. 

Set in Kentucky in the summer of 1993, the game sees you thrust into a full on Zombie outbreak. The game starts by informing you “This is how you died”. A neat touch, as death in zomboid is as inevitable as taxes. At the start you  are in your home which is randomized each time, could be a trailer in a trailer park, could be a nice detached two story house, could be an apartment in a busy city. The early phase of the game is gearing up, going around looking for weapons, stocking up on food, and watching TV shows to gain skills. Sometime over the next 30 days, power and water go out, which makes cooking food and storing food much harder. Fail to prepare and you end up crouched in the woods, sharpening sticks and eating raw squirrels.

The zombies in Zomboid are legion. Individually, they do not pose a big threat, however when they are in groups they are far more dangerous. They are drawn in by sound, so whilst there are guns in the game, their use is highly situational. The difficulty of the game varies a lot, with the default apocalypse difficulty making avoiding combat the best bet. I ended up playing on survivor difficulty most of the time, which makes combat more manageable.

The zombies can bite, lacerate or scratch you. Bites are 100% fatal - you will die at some point over the next few days, whilst the other two carry percentage chances to infect you - and infection with the knox virus is 100% lethal (can be altered by mods, I chose not to). There are a million ways to die in Kentucky. Some memorable bits include:

• Nearly getting Wilfred killed when he stood on a burning fireplace and could not run. Camped out in the woods drinking rainwater for a week.

• Losing Wilfred after 4 months and 2400 kills to a single zombie when he failed to push them away whilst looting a police station and dying to a scratch on the hand

• Losing a 1 month character who fell off a roof due to a misclick

• Losing Edmond after two months, just after he had secured the gas station in Muldraugh (got sloppy in combat)

• Losing a survivor because a companion (superb survivors mod) pushed them into a zombie mob    

Once you pick a place to stay and secure it, the late game becomes about farming, trapping, fishing, water: standard survival game stuff. I think the game keeps me coming back for a few reasons. I really love the setting. The jump scares still get me, even after 200 hours there is a genuine feeling of terror when you open a door to find that the bathroom has 20 zombies in it. Any time I do die in the game, it is my own fault. You can chose to spawn a new character into an existing world and reclaim your old base, but I prefer to wipe the slate clean and start again.

I recently started playing with mods, and it has added a lot to the game for me. The main thing has been fixing some annoying bugs. When you design a character, you can take positive and negative traits. Negative traits award you points to spend on positive traits. I often take smoker, but in the base game you can only light a cigarette with matches or a lighter. Not a campfire or a barbeque though. So a mod fixes that, allowing me to light tabs from an oven, or a car (all cars in the 90’s had cigarette lighters, come on). I tried the splendid survivors mod for a while that adds both friendly and hostile NPCs to the world, but have turned it off for my latest run. It is nice having people chop wood for you, but ultimately I started seeing more survivors than zombies, so I turned it off. NPCs are on the developers roadmap. Speaking of which, Zomboid has had over 10 years of development - it really shows the labour of love that this game is to the team who make it. Project Zomboid would be my game of the year for 2022. 

Battletech

I have been playing HBS Battletech since 2019. While I have never played the tabletop game, the mechwarrior games were an early part of my PC gaming experience. Rather than putting you in the cockpit, Battletech pulls you out to a turn based strategy layer as you control your mercenary lance on a variety of missions. The running of your own mercenary company is a big part of the hook for me here. Hiring and firing pilots, salvaging mech’s, upgrading your ship - there is a lot to do here. You can fly from system to system (there are hundreds to visit if not thousands), pick and choose your contracts, build faction rep, and participate in special scripted flashpoint missions for greater rewards.

Whilst the base game is fantastic, the mod support is nothing short of incredible. The battletech universe is supported by reams of fiction (much of it churned out in the 80’s when military science fiction was riding a wave - think of the Aliens movies for example). There are many total overhaul mods. Having previously played the BEX (Battletech extended) mod that focused on lore and adding more Mech’s. I decided to try the BTA (Battletech advanced) mod that overhauls the gameplay and adds new vehicles as well as new mechs. One of the thing I really liked about BTA is how it handled evasion (how hard a mech is to hit based on how fast it is going). This increases the viability of the light mechs you acquire in the early game, making them more viable into the later game.

Something about Battletech makes it scratch the same itch that XCOM does, which is probably why I passed 1,000 hours in the game in 2022. That makes it my second most played game on Steam, after ArmA 3.