What Are You Playing? November 2023

Oh no, the thread that I get to reflect on the past month briefly and set myself up for failure by not accomplishing anything I'd love.

Looking back at last month quick, I finished all the Timewalking dungeons each week to get my achievement in Dragonflight, so that was great. I finally installed and played Forza Motorsport and have had a few peaceful hours of cruising Spa, Silverstone, and Suzuka. No F1 2023, but we're at the end of the season now with Brazil, Las Vegas, and Abu Dhabi left, so I know the itch will need to be solved by going back to the game. No Payday 3 at all. RIP.

This month I'm hoping to close out my Oracle of Seasons run and start Oracle of Ages. I may or may not have gotten stuck at one point, requiring me to experience an old school zelda title's feeling of exploration, which was something I hadn't felt in a long time. Apparently, I don't remember the games perfectly :D 

Warcraft Rumble will also be touched every night for 10-15 minutes to build experience with the game - plus it's just a bunch of fun. I've been playing Rumble now for a little over a month and it has been exactly what I wanted from Clash Royale. Plus, Warcraft stuff so that's awesome.

Dragonflight will be played. I'm not really sure what I want to do in it, but everything has been fun to do so dabble I shall!

ARK: Survival Ascended came out and I've already got the boat built so my friend and I went on our first expedition this week to the Northern peaks. On our return trip, we caught a couple of Argentavis which are going to be great for transporting metal around, a resource we so desperately need. ARK is probably going to be the main game for me for November. We've also got half a dozen Trikes, an endless number of Dilos, and only a few deaths to the Alpha dinosaurs that keep interrupting us at our base.

November 30, World of Warcraft Season of Discovery begins and... yup I'll be playing. I might start a guild for it too, it would be nice to have at least a group of 10 to play the new Blackfathom Deeps raid.

It sounds like I have a lot to play this month, but I don't even know how much I'll end up being able to play games. There is just so much stuff to do- new staff to onboard, site updates to deploy, the Hearthstone expansion launch, the never-ending daily news to cover. I've always joked about wanting to clone myself, and I think I might need to seriously figure this out.

The start of this month had a lot of games I was exciting for dropping.

I've already gotten my grubby little mitts on Thirsty Suitors and For The King 2 which have both been pretty fun. I'd highly recommend Thirsty Suitors. I know what the game sounds like, but it is filled to the brim with style and charm, on top of being absurdly funny. I don't know how Annapurna Interactive finds games to help publish but my god are they great at finding them given that they've also published Sayonara Wildhearts, Outer Wilds, Neon White, and Solar Ash which are all games that I've loved playing. As for For The King 2, singleplayer has been pretty fun but unfortunately the multiplayer has been pretty broken so far, but the developers have been pretty fast to hotfix a lot of the issues so hoping I'll be able to jump in and complain about whiffing 80-90% hits with my friends sometime later in the month.

Risk of Rain Returns is dropping on the 8th which I'm so stoked for. The original is up there for my favorite multiplayer games of all time but having to use LogMeIn Hamachi made it such a pain to get other people interested in giving it a shot so I'm hoping this. Already made plans with my brothers to play it when it comes out so looking forward to that. Also helps that I finally get to go back to boar beach which is always pretty nice.

I've also been very slowly going through my 3rd Baldur's Gate 3 with some friends. My character was an Owlbear cursed into being a druid halfling, resulting in her either A, spending all the time as an Owlbear or B, throwing and breaking things in the background of my friend's cutscenes because she doesn't know how to speak. It has been without a doubt both the most scuffed and cursed playthrough I've ever had, with us somehow despawning important characters, saving the Tieflings only to have them suddenly cease to exist and appear dead later on, having the corpse of Lae'zel just appear at random points in time, and accidentally abusing the AI and circumventing some difficult battles in act 2 by accident. It's the type of thing where if it was our first playthrough, it'd be upsetting but since all of us have finished the game at least once, it's just funny at this point. I've also discovered my favorite detail in the game, that being if you are wild shaped into something and sit in a chair, it looks incredibly goofy.

New Hearthstone expansion also looks pretty cool, don't know what I'm going to play yet but it'll probably just be whatever I open up thats cool. Probably leaning more towards Coin Rogue or Naga DH because I love playing 400 cards on my turn, but highlander DH, highlander Paladin, and Sludge Warlock all seem pretty fun as well.

Last things I'm probably going to be playing is just a bunch of random 4-5 dollar indie games that I've slowly accumulated a backlog for. Probably also going to reinstall the Echo Point Nova demo or Severed Steel and play through them again because they are just such endless adrenaline rushes and I want to do kickflips on people.

Edit: Told myself constantly that I'd play through Thirsty Suitors slowly to be able to enjoy it and that did NOT happen. Besides somethings being a bit clunky here and there, game was incredibly good. Pretty much exactly what I was expecting for a game all based around generational trauma and over-the-top psychodrama therapy. Highly recommend it, albeit its a bit short.