Regularly Playing: March 2019 Edition

We’ve passed the official first day of Spring this week and with it will come a lot more engagement with the out of doors and less sitting at home and playing games.  As a result over the spring and summer months this list tends to dwindle down to significantly fewer titles.  For the uninitiated I do this thing where I semi-monthly update my blog sidebar and talk about the games that I am regularly playing.  During the month of March I am being honest with myself and allowing several titles that have been holding on by a thread to drop down to inactive status.  However anyone who has read my blog for any length of time will realize that I regularly revisit older titles when I am feeling nostalgia or otherwise restless.  I am notoriously bad at keeping up with series, however this marks three months in a row!

To Those Remaining

Anthem – PC

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While I am taking a little bit of a break this week because there is an upcoming patch landing on Tuesday that should increase drop rates, I am still very much enjoying Anthem.  March more than anything has been about me championing the cause of this beleaguered game.  There is so much that so many people dislike about it, but I am consistently impressed at how fast we are seeing patches being released to address these issues.  At the end of the day it is player fantasy about me flying around in a Robotech style mech suit.  It’s a good game brent.

Destiny 2 – PC

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You sir are hanging out by the slimmest of threads.  In fact I didn’t have any modern screenshots so I had to pull back into the annals of the blog to find something to use.  The Season of the Drifter appears to largely be a dud and I am not entirely certain how engaged this whole era of “No DLC” is going to be.  I liked the story driven stuff, as limited as it was.  I’ve popped in several times but have struggled to engage.  As much as it saddens me, my time in Destiny may be waning.

Dragalia Lost – Android

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I swear Dragalia Lost is the poster child for how you do reoccurring engagement in a game…  and I sorta wish that all of the MMO-lites that I enjoy would take note.  In general you have roughly two weeks with an event going on, so plenty of time to earn whatever rewards you want without feeling pressured to play constantly.  Then within days of the finish of one event a brand new one starts causing you to engage all over again.  Because it is Nintendo and they purposefully limit that sort of thing… there really isn’t much in the way of excessive monetization either.  You just have a pure diablo-lite experience with a character collecting gacha mini game.  Sure it feels super bad when you waste your five star pull on a wyrmprint, but I keep coming back for more.

Pokemon Go – Android

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Another game that is sorta holding on by a thread is Pokemon Go.  If it were not for the fact that I was getting credit for walking from my watch… I would probably not be interacting with this at all right now.  As it stands I spend most of my time hatching pokemon… and even then I have like 3 eggs ready to hatch and I can’t seem to be bothered to open the damned app and do that.  However with spring and better weather I might be spending more time out and about and reinvigorating my use of this game.

To The Returning and Brand New

Baba Is You – Switch and PC

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This puzzle game is so good, and I have not talked about it much yet since we are probably going to talk an awful lot about it on the podcast.  However it is probably seriously in the running for me for game of the year honors… and we are only in March.  You hack reality to help you get to the “Is Win” condition.  It is one of those things that is really hard to explain but once you grasp it you find yourself thinking in “IS” statements.  So part logic puzzle part programming language.

The Division 2 – PC

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To be honest I was not terribly certain how I would feel about this game, but it has been taking up most of my game time since release.  The Division 1 was a setting without any semblance of hope… and The Division 2 has lots of hope.  Instead of helping out a government that is dying…  you end up helping out the communities of survivors trying to struggle to make it in the post biological apocalypse future.  Division 2 is everything about the first game but more finely detailed and expanded upon.  This is what a game sequel should feel like.

To Those Departing

Assassin’s Creed Origins – PC

I more or less got it out of my system when I became frustrated with what exactly the ending of the game would entail.  I have a feeling at some point in the future I will force myself to finish it, but for now…  I am just letting it slide away.

The Elder Scrolls Online – PC

I know without a doubt that I will return to this game because I always seem to, but for now that just isn’t the style of game I am interested in for the moment.  I seem to be enraptured with the whole MMO-lite emerging genre because I can drop in and out of them really easily and don’t ask an awful lot of me in the process.  ESO is a game of excellent storytelling and questing, and I just haven’t been in the mood for that.

Final Fantasy XIV – PC

I am literally one dungeon away from finishing the Stormblood storyline and I could not seem to push myself across that finish line.  For now Anthem and Division 2 have stolen my attention, but I am certain I will be returning at some point soon.  However due to the rules of this game, I did not play it during the month of March and as such it is leaving the list.

Magic the Gathering Arena – PC

Another game that I did not expect to leave the list, but is doing so anyways.  Still very much love this game and what they are doing with it… and will probably return soon with the upcoming patch that adds a bunch of additional functionality.

 

Monster Hunter World – PC

This one saddens me quite a bit, but I have not logged into Monster Hunter World in a really long time.  Again this is just a problem of limited play time and Anthem and Division 2 stealing my focus.  This will absolutely return to the list and potentially sooner rather than later given there is a high quality texture patch incoming on April 4th.

Summary

This was a month with a lot of movement, as I allowed things that were hanging on barely to slip by the wayside with the release of two back to back juggernauts.  Most of the things that are falling off the list will return and probably soon.  However for the sake of the way this post is supposed to work they are getting removed for the time being.  This is absolutely the shortest my sidebar has been in a really long time.

1 thought on “Regularly Playing: March 2019 Edition”

  1. ‘Baba is You’ is one I heard someone else mention today and I took a look on Steam and ended up quite intrigued to try.

    But I have so many things I want to play at the moment (Sekiro and DMC5 both came out recently) that I just don’t see how, especially with Division 2 being fairly all consuming of my gaming time at the moment.

    I haven’t logged into ESO for a wee while now, nor even FFXIV which I’m still pretty dang hyped for as well and don’t want to let go yet! But at least in the case of FFXIV, it demands a subscription to keep active, so if I’m not going to touch it again for a while, I should probably concede defeat (for now).

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