Pacific Drive

 Pacific Drive is a game about about exploring and upgrading with a car in a chaotic world gone wrong.

The map you drive through gets progressively more chaotic as anomalies and storms interfere with your exploration, eventually resulting in a radiation storm to force you out one way or another.  

The nugget of idea it is very solid, and this could probably have been a great game if they had figured out a decent story to tell with it, and made the map a little ... more ... meaningful?  The story delivery was all through the radio and various tapes you would find somewhere in the world, and honestly was a bit ham fisted - drive to these places and flip some switches to stabilize something.    I'm being both sarcastically vague and 100% accurate.

I didn't have anything more to unlock or a reason to play beyond the credits rolling when they did.  Because .. I drove somewhere and flipped the switch to stabilize something.

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

Expedition 33 is art.  Quite literally.

67 years ago the people of Lumiere found themselves cut off from the world where a mysterious god, a Paintress paints an ever decreasing number of a cliff.  Everyone of that age or lower turns to dust - and each year an expedition sets off to try and stop the Paintress.  You are Expedition 33.

The story is truly a masterwork of fiction, the world you are in and beyond is both beautiful and intriguing and the Paintress is just a small part of the story.  The tragedy, the heroism - it was alldone amazingly well, I felt for these characters - I despaired when they did.

In the end you are presented with a sort of moral dilemma in how to resolve the ultimate conflict.  I feel like I made the right decision, but it felt like a punch in the gut doing it.  So good!

Fallout 76

There is a sweet spot when to play a game.  I missed that sweet spot with Fallout 76.

The game was fairly buggy and sparse on release, but at least the story made a bit of sense.  Since that time, there have been multiple expansions and content patches, so that now in addition to the main story quest you have NPCs giving you all of the additional content quests they've added.   

For an efficiency gamer this is fantastic, I can go to one area of the map and knock out 5 quests.  But doing that is akin to binge watching multiple shows simultaneously.  I have only a general idea what's going on -- I'm not "on" any of those quests, I'm doing the tasks of them.

I'm not going to say it's bad ... there are people still playing who are level 791 and such, obviously people are enjoying the silent world of reading decrepit old computer terminals for log entries.  It's a well crafted world ... I'm just bored exploring.

Star Trek: Resurgence

The Telltale engine works pretty well to help emulate the pressure situations you might face as a captain of a Star Fleet vessel - you're put into critical situations and forced to make snap decisions before a timer expires and chooses for you.  Oftentimes there is no clear "right or wrong" as well.

In between is a bit of tediousness that is common to Telltale titles as well, and even a fan of the show will eventually tire of "press 'w' to lift hatch".  Towards the end, some of those events felt tedious as I was just looking for the right thing to click.

Great experience.

Monster Hunter Wilds

What can I say?   I love hunting impossibly huge monsters.   And what Dark Souls does to realistic combat with amazing hitboxes, Monster Hunter Wilds does to the sense of being an anime badass while fighting.  Giggity.

The Monster Hunter franchise does a fantastic job making each weapon not only feel completely unique in how to utilize it, but uniquely badass.   I kept to the hammer because there's something so fulfilling about a big bonk ... it is underpowered, more about knocking a creature out than damage - but satisfaction level maxes out at 100% when you clobber noggin just right.  Giggity giggity.

I think I'll keep it installed to enjoy the updates.  The franchise has a huge library of monsters that they can bring as flavor/hunt of the week.  Giggity giggity goo!

Road 96

Road 96 has you playing as a series of teens trying to make it to the border while learning about the dystopian land that is keeping you held hostage.  It draws pretty strong parallels to todays politics and abuses of power, but ramps it up to 11.

In the world of Petria, Tyrek is the president exploring ideas for a third term - kids are attempting to flee the country, but crossing the border wall is a crime punishable by being sent to "the pits", which is apparently some sort of work detention camp that teens don't return from.

The gameplay incorporates a series of episodes along the road where you decide how you're going to take the next leg of the journey and attempt to refuel enough between those trips by eating and sleeping, or earning enough money to travel in style.  Crossing the border wall is the difficult final step -- and each of your characters has the chance to make it, get caught or die trying.  

All but three of my characters made it -- two were arrested (once while unaware of game mechanics, once because I like to maintain a perfect record of SAVING PEOPLE WHEN PROMPTED), and one died in self-sacrifice for a friend who was transporting some vital information.

A really great way to tell a story.

Prey

Prey is a game that has a lot of potential, it's a remake of something that was apparently pretty amazing and they did this in lieu of making Prey 2.   While the engine might be technically better, while the story might be something amazing and full of nostalgia, for someone coming to it new -- it didn't feel any different than every other game like this I've ever played.

It's painfully sparing on ammo, and involves hunting around the station doing some puzzle solving in order to progress while avoiding these big oily alien entities.  

I stopped playing a while ago and just never got back to it .. might be worth watching a Let's Play for the story, but I'm at that grim point of "far enough in not to be able to get back into it" so it's getting shelved.