Blog Features

Steam Replay 2022

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Something that has been floating around the social networks this week is the Steam Replay. I do not remember this existing in past years, so it seems like this is something brand new for Steam and they appear to be taking a page from Spotify which has a similar practice. If you are curious you can look at my full replay here, but this morning I figured I would talk about it a bit. I do my own tracking thing that I am currently working on, but I do appreciate Steam handing me so much information on a platter. I tend to devote a certain amount of time in the last few posts of the year to reviewing the year as a whole and this flows right into that pattern. Steam creates a number of handy infographics ready for you to download and share on social media. The above image is “formatted for Twitter” but they also have a square format for Instagram if that is more your thing.

The first tidbit that I find interesting is just how high my session count is. I think this can be accounted for by two different behaviors that happen to me a lot. Firstly I often get into a game and then something comes up… cat knocks something over… wife needs my help… and I have to bail out of the game quickly. This is entirely why I bounced off Deathloop because that game refuses to let me save out quickly and return just as quickly to what I was doing. After failing to complete a stage three times because I kept getting interrupted I uninstalled the game and move on with my life. The other part of this is that I boot up a lot of games… and then do nothing with them. Sometimes I suffer from the “I have nothing to wear” syndrome where I have so many games but nothing quite sounds right. So before I settle in on something and hyper-focus for several days, I will often flail about trying to find the “right” game to play.

The thing that honestly shocks me with this one is the number of achievements. I realize in January and February I did burn through like twelve games in rapid fire, and honestly, that is probably why that number is so high. That is not exactly my normal pattern because in general, I do not give a fuck about achievements. I say that… but I am now going after a truly stupid achievement in Path of Exile that involves me playing a character up to Hillock and then logging out, and coming back and trying it again after the map resets all for the purpose of attempting to get a unique drop in that first map. I am not shocked that I spent most of my time playing either New World or Path of Exile because those really were the games of “this” year for me. Witcher 3 is so high because I poured into doing as close to 100% of the content run as I could when I was doing my “play everything to completion” thing at the start of the year.

I knew I was somewhat “out of band” in the sheer number of games I play in a given year… but I did not realize I was that far off. If I take this statement as evidence of how most people consume games, it would make me believe that the average gamer just plays a handful of games. The streak is interesting because I am almost certain that is New World, and it in truth should be longer because Steam tracks the Live client and the PTR client as separate games. There was a period of time when I was playing the PTR client every single day, and then when Brimstone Sands launched I switched over to playing Live again. The achievement count again I am certain is because in Dec/Jan/Feb I burned through a lot of single-player games.

This graphic shows how my gameplay stacks up as compared to new releases, recent releases, and what it calls a classic game… aka anything that is more than eight years old. I am sure some folks would bicker about the definition of “classic games” there, but I guess for me it makes sense. I do spend a lot of time jumping on the bandwagon of a brand-new game as it launches, but apparently only about a third of my gameplay is spent in that manner. I would have thought it was higher, to be honest. It does make sense that the bulk of my time is spent on games that release in the last few years because I often miss the launch and eventually get around to checking out the game a few years later. I think this is a side effect of how hyper-focused I can get on a single game and how I mostly push everything else aside when I am in that mode. Then there are just so damned many games coming out each year that it takes me a while to digest that they came out and get around to playing them.

This one confuses me quite a bit. Usually, when I see a graph like this, it denotes something like quadrants that are universal for everyone. This is clearly chosen from the games that I actually played during the year because no one would lay out a personality matrix based on these traits. It makes a lot of sense that MMORPG, Looter Shooter, and Medieval are so high on the list. That little corner seems to be my sweet spot. What I am shocked about is how high the Souls-like games are showing up on the list, but I guess that makes sense as well because I keep trying them… and then bouncing off them. Cyberpunk would be a much larger segment if I actually had bought Cyberpunk 2077 on Steam. I own it on GOG instead which means none of my playtimes is getting logged here. Dark Comedy though… no clue where that one is coming from because while yes I do love that genre I am not sure which games that I played this last year are contributing to that.

I am still working on my larger “Grand Experiment” post that I make each year, in which I have been tracking monthly play patterns since 2012. I thought it would be fun to talk through some of the things on my Steam Replay this year in the meantime. Valve has this bad habit of starting things and not necessarily carrying through with them, but I am hoping that this becomes a yearly tradition. I personally find evaluating my habits interesting, and it has been really cool to see some of the Replays of my friends. What are your thoughts? Did you enjoy the Steam Replay as a concept? Feel free to drop me a line below. I am not exactly sure WHEN I will make my big post, but given the trajectory, it is likely on Friday.

Regularly Playing: October 2022 Edition

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Good Morning Folks. It was this morning that I had the sudden realization that I seem to have let one of my long-term reoccurring segments just completely die. For years I have done this thing where I update my blog sidebar with the games that I am regularly playing, and then create a semi-monthly post talking about where I am with each game and the games that are cycling out of the mix. However, the last one of these that I have done was from March of 2021. Some pretty significant things took place last year that derailed a lot of events in my life, but it would be nice to get back in some sort of regular cadence with these posts as there are often games that I am playing but not really actively talking about.

Generally speaking, one of these posts is broken down into subsections:

  • To Those Remaining – The games that I am still actively playing or at least expect to be playing within the month.
  • To The New and Returning – The games that I am either dusting off and revisiting or are brand new experiences that I am enjoying.
  • To Those Departing – The games that I am finally removing from the list for one reason or another.
  • Ships Passing in the Night – Games that I don’t expect to regularly play but I spent some time with over the month and enjoyed enough to talk about.

Unfortunately given the length of time that has passed I am not sure if any of these really make sense for this “catch-up” post. Instead this time I am just going to talk about the games that I am poking a stick at periodically.

Cyberpunk 2077 – PC

While waiting on the New World patch drop, I found myself in a bit of a doldrum where nothing much sounded good. When this hits, I tend to dive into some sort of open-world game like Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim, or Witcher 3… and more recently Cyberpunk has been in that “nothing else sounds good” rotation. Generally speaking, I tend to play for a few nights and then nothing much comes of it, but this time around I am precariously close to a second complete playthrough. I am also finding a ton of content that I missed the first time around, and I think I am way more attached to femme Nomad V than I was to my original male Corpo V. Judy is without a doubt the best romance option in the game and it ends up being super sweet.

Diablo III – PC

I got a bit of a late start on Season 27, and because most of the conquests are sorta butts this time around… I have yet to finish things up. Essentially I need 3 Conquests to get Set Dungeon Mastery. I need to do this at some point but other things have just been drawing my attention. It is a bit harder than in past seasons because I am mostly soloing everything and don’t have my partner in crime Ace along with me. I need to buckle down and finish things off, but ultimately what caused me to fade for a bit was the severe performance issues that I was having. Hopefully those have passed now.

Fallout 76 – PC

Another game that I have been poking around for a while now is Fallout 76. I am not playing it super often, but at least once a week I dive down into the world of irradiated West Virginia. Right now the AggroChat folks seem to be going through a bit of a renaissance launched by Thalen’s discovery of the game. I need to figure out a time I can join in, but I am way behind in levels due to a reroll recently. I spent some time fucking around in a custom world and it seemed as though I was gaining levels… but said levels did not carry over to the main game.

New World – PC

If you have been reading my blog lately you will know that I am back in New World and created a brand new character over on Themiscyra to experience the game from level one again. The new player experience is so much better and the leveling and balance are much better than it was at the original launch. I am closing in on level 60 without really trying terribly hard, and my goal is to effectively complete all of the quests in the game. For the moment I am filling all of the various stashes that I have access to with materials and I hope to grind up Armoring and Weaponsmithing to 200 so I will have a good start at the game. At some point, I will need to find the various legendary crafting materials that unlock the 600 item-level weapons and armor, but I have plenty of time.

Path of Exile – PC

I’ve wound down the experience of playing Path of Exile Lake of Kalandra league, and I have to say it was pretty frustrating overall. I feel like I chose a bad league to go all in on. I did manage to knock out a number of the achievements and completely unlocked my altas, so I accomplished the things I had set out the do. I am not sure if I am going to be quite so amped to dive into whatever the 1.20 league ends up being, however. I am just not sure if Chris Wilson’s vision for the game fits the sort of experience I actually want to have. I am still interested to see what mobile Path of Exile ends up being like and the 2.0 experience… but my hopes are being tempered greatly by the frustration we experienced with this past league.

Torchlight Infinite – PC and Android

I have to admit I am not playing a ton of this yet, but slowly easing into it. I would greatly prefer that it supported a controller and whenever that patch lands, I have a feeling that it will become my primary phone game. The touchscreen controls are not amazing, though probably better than most mobile games. The game seems way less greedy with its mtx or at least the things that you can buy with real-world cash don’t seem to matter that much yet. I need to try some of the other classes but so far I am digging the “not-barbarian” character. I am not playing much of the game on PC mostly because if I am sitting at my PC… I have other games I would rather be playing.

Tower of Fantasy – PC

I think I am mostly winding down Tower of Fantasy. While I do enjoy it much more than I did Genshin Impact, I find myself in the old familiar trap of only logging in to collect my freebies and then logging right back out. I am not sure why the experience went flat for me, but I just stopped wanting to play it quite as much. I think maybe around the time I was winding this down is when the Brimstone Sands patch landed on the PTR and re-ignited my love of New World. As one star rises another sets, and as a result, Tower of Fantasy was on the losing end of that equation.

World of Warcraft – Dragonflight Alpha/Beta – PC

I played a ton of this game when I first got into the testing. I really liked the more directed testing phases of giving us a new zone to explore each week. I have to admit I ate that up and completed the quests in each of the new areas. Unfortunately when things opened up more and I was given access to play the entire experience from start to finish… I deflated a bit. I think the biggest frustration is that it seemed every single time I logged in, I had to reset my talent points and the profiles that I saved were getting wiped. There were several times I logged in… stared at the wall of talent points and noped out of choosing them and setting back up my bars again.

As far as Dragonflight itself… the pre-patch has landed and I still do not have a World of Warcraft subscription or own the expansion. While I had a lot of fun playing the test phases, I am not sure if it was enough to really draw me back into the game. I have to be honest… World of Warcraft feels like a really old game at this point. A lot of what I have been focused on of late is more action-oriented games, and Hotbar combat just feels weird. Like I never thought I would get to that point but here we are. I still don’t feel amazing giving Blizzard money either… so I guess time will tell if I get caught up in the expansion launch zeitgeist or not.

NDA Game – PC

Then there are games that are bound by NDA that I can’t talk about other than in the vaguest of terms. One I have access to and is eating up a bit of my time, and another I have created an account but have not received the game client. I am torn on whether or not I like NDAs in general because, on one hand, it keeps the players from getting just completely burnt out and bored with listening to news about the game before launch. On the other hand as a content creator, it sucks having a void that you are afraid to talk about. I get to the point where I am almost afraid to cover even public news of a game for fear that maybe just maybe something that ISN’T public knowledge will slip out.

Intentional Downgrade

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Good Morning Friends! This is going to be a bit of a hardware discussion. For the last six years, I have been using an LG 43UJ6300 43″ 4k 60hz television as my main gaming display. In the grand scheme of things, it was an economic way of getting a large display and since I specifically shopped for the lowest latency panel I could find, it was a pretty solid gaming experience. I would not shy away from using a television again in the future because it had a lot of benefits. Firstly the price of a reasonable 43″ 4k 60hz television is roughly 1/3rd of the price of a similarly sized gaming monitor. The other massive benefit of a large 4k display is that it is effectively a 2×2 grid of 1080p monitors, so a ridiculous amount of productivity space.

For gaming purposes, however, I honestly found little difference between running a game at 4k resolution and running a game at 1440p. So while I had the horsepower to run games at 4k 120hz due to my RTX 3080, I never did because I did not have the display to support that. Instead, I was far more likely to run at 1440p 120hz which my display did a fairly good job of supporting even though it seemed to be an “unofficial” mode. The other thing that I noticed over the years is that 43 inches is a wee bit too big to comfortably use at normal monitor distances, and by the end of the day my neck would end up getting sore from gazing upward to see anything I had at the very top of my screen.

Then there was the color accuracy problem. I had been running my LG TV next to a bog standard 1080p monitor, and whenever I moved windows from one screen to the other there was a massive difference in colors and clarity. For a while, my wife had been telling me that my screen was blue, and it was super noticeable any time I attempted to take a photo in my room. However, I had gotten used to it and was seemingly adjusting in my brain to the color shift. What I was noticing however is that my screen kept getting dimmer and the only way to adjust for this was to essentially wash everything out. Modern televisions are just not designed to last anywhere near as long as their tube-based cousins, and eventually, there are going to be problems be they dark spots, color shifts, or in my case global dimming. Last week it was finally time to move on when several times a day the display would just blink off for a few minutes and then go through a series of flashes as it finally woke back up to work again.

So when I got my replacement, I unintentionally chose another LG product not necessarily for any real reason other than the price to specs seemed to be the best deal. Instead of going with another 4k display, I “downgraded” to 1440p 165hz which could be debated as an upgrade instead. The higher refresh and supporting Freesync are both big bonuses. Having HDR10 which is a published standard instead of the jank HDR support the previous display had. The thing that I was not really prepared for is just how sharp and crisp everything looks. I am not entirely certain I realized how fuzzy everything was on the television and that everything essentially had a bit of a halo around it. There were a lot of times I had trouble reading things, and I just assumed it was my old man eyes getting the best of me… but instead, it seems that maybe the text itself was nowhere near as sharp as I thought it was.

The thing that I was not quite prepared for is just how my screen real estate I lost. Remember before I said that a 4k panel is an equivalent of having a 2×2 grid of 1080p monitors. The above image is the proportions of a 1440p screen with a 1080p black square in the upper left corner. I have more height and width than a normal 1080p screen but it isn’t a ton of it. My hope is that I can get used to this, but it is going to be an adjustment. I was used to having three or four windows open and arranged on screen at the same time where I could see and work from them all. Editing the podcast this week was the first time I noticed the big difference because often times I would be working on something in photoshop while my audacity window was sitting beside it and hot swapping between both of them while each was visible.

It does make me wonder if I am heading towards just adding a second one of these 32″ 1440p panels and calling it good.

Ten Favorite Slasher Films

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Good Morning Friends! As we are well into the “season of spoop”, this morning I am picking up a series that I started a few weeks back where I talk about my favorite horror films. The problem with that undertaking is that horror as a genre is too broad to ever boil it down to a comprehensive top-ten list. Instead, I am tackling things by various subgenres, and to date, I have covered Zombie films and Vampire films. This morning I will rip the bandaid and get this genre out of the way because I have to admit slasher films are not exactly my favorite. There are gems in the genre, but my preferences tend to align more towards dark fantasy or films with a clearly defined monster and some deep world-building. That is not to say that I do not occasionally enjoy watching some villain tear through a bunch of drunken college kids.

I am saying this ahead of time because my favorite slasher films are likely not going to align with someone who is really into that genre. This is probably the most “your mileage may vary” that we are going to get with this series of listicles. Again these are not necessarily in any particular order.

Halloween

We have to start things off with what is maybe objectively the best movie on the list. Halloween is a master class in suspense and leaving the worst parts unseen. It also introduces what is potentially the most relentless hunter that does not dip down into the supernatural. Jamie Lee Curtis will always be the queen of horror movies in my book, and this movie highlights why. The Michael Myers appearance is reportedly a cheap William Shatner mask, but the end result leads to one of the most creepy and soulless killers out there. There are a handful of sequels that I have enjoyed, but nothing will beat the original.

Friday the 13th

When looking at Friday the 13th it is impossible not to think about the deeply derivative number of sequels this movie has had. I think to date there are twelve different movies in this series, including the truly dumb Jason X which is set on a space station. However, the original movie is a truly creepy film and I think deserves our respect. As far as villains go, Jason is known for being this relentless force that will track you forever but the first film didn’t even need the supernatural to lean on. While I really dig some of the later films like Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter, I still feel like the first film is the best.

Nightmare on Elm Street

Continuing the sequence of bringing out the great slasher baddies, let’s talk about Nightmare on Elm Street and Freddie Krueger. If you were a child of the 80s… we all wanted that glove. Sure Robert Englund did an excellent job bringing this bloodthirsty oneiromancer to life, but the glove… that is the part that made everyone love Freddie. Again you have a series with many sequels… some of which are not all that good but I think the first film is probably objectively the best. That said I really loved dream warriors as a kid in part I think because it gave the “victims” way more agency.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre

One of my core problems with the slasher genre as a whole is that so often it devolves into torture porn. That really is not my jam as far as films go, so you are unlikely to see any movies of the Saw series on my list. That said every so often there is a movie that is ABSOLUTELY torture porn, but it is delivered in such a compelling manner that it has to be respected. For me, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is one of those films and while it is legitimately hard to watch at times, it presents a world that is deeply disturbing but also extremely unique for the time in which this was released. Not only is Leatherface an iconic villain but the fact several of elements from the movie are lifted directly from the life of Ed Gein makes it even more traumatizing.

Childs Play

I love this movie for entirely the wrong reasons. In the 80s there was this toy called “My Buddy” and the commercial was played so often during Saturday morning cartoons that the theme song drilled into your brain. The Chucky doll is a play on this and what if this object of safe childhood play… went horribly wrong. The BEST version of this is the Simpsons Treehouse of Horrors Krusty Doll satire, but the original Child’s Play movie is still a pretty solid outing. I love the world that got built around this movie and more specifically the phenomenal performances that Jennifer Tilly has given as Tiffany the girlfriend/bride of Chucky.

Wrong Turn

This is another film that borders on torture porn but still is extremely interesting. City folk especially have deep-seated fears of the unknown in the undeveloped green wastes of our world. I come from “Rural America” and even then there are always the weird people that come to town very rarely, and largely live off the grid. This movie dials this up to eleven and presents a clan of highly deformed mountain folk who prey upon outsiders. There are multiple versions of this film, but I think the 2003 rendition is my favorite. It feels like it draws heavily upon the banned television episode of the X-Files called “Home” from 1994. It is a disturbing watch to say the least.

Happy Hell Night

I can pretty much guarantee that this film is not going to be on anyone else’s list, but it means a lot to me personally. Once upon a time, there was a movie rental place near me called Video Giant, and they had this 20 movies, 20 dollars, 20 days deal exclusive to effectively “B Movies”. My friend Kaleon occasionally comments on this blog and I would go over there, each get 20 movies, and then swap back and forth until it came time to return them. There was many a treasure unearthed through these adventures and one of my favorites was Happy Hell Night. It features a very young Sam Rockwell and Jorja Fox and is not likely something they specifically promote on their resumes. Everything about this film is “not great” except for the villain which is this demonic priest that has a “catchphrase” of a sort each time he kills someone. He does not really speak at all other than uttering things like “No Sleep”, “No Sex”, or something similar with No and something relevant to the context of the killing. Something about the absurdity of it all made me fall in love with this film and recently I tracked down a DVD so I could rip it and add it to my digital collection.

Happy Death Day

Also in the absurdist sub-sub-genre is Happy Death Day. Essentially this movie is what if you combined a slasher flick with groundhog day. It is Tree Gelbman’s birthday, and at the end of the night, she is going to die. Each time she dies… it resets the loop and she wakes up in a dorm room after a one-night stand each day she has to live out a walk of shame… and a sequence of events leading up to the same conclusion. Essentially she has to figure out how to solve her own murder so that she can avoid it… close the loop, and live to see another day. The movie is definitely not your standard brain-dead slasher fare and is extremely funny in the process.

Candyman

I love Clive Barker and this is his ode to the slasher film genre. What this has that so many other films lack is this rich mythology that is built up around the titular villain the Candyman. Into the narrative are woven statements about social class structure and racial violence, that make this far more than just a tale of the boogeyman. The brush chosen to paint this story however is borrowed from the Bloody Mary style mythos where someone saying a name three times in the mirror summons forth a demonic presence. Like pretty much everything that Barker has been involved in, it is both compelling and terrifying at the same time with a palpable sensuality. Sweets for the sweet.

Scream

Scream is a great film… full stop. It is a satire of the slasher film genre, while at the same time being one of the best and most competent examples of it. While this gets watered down greatly over the course of a series of movies, the first film is still phenomenal. The Ghostface killer also walks this line between being one of the most generic-looking villains ever but also summoning forth an iconic appearance at the same time. What I find so interesting about it and that will not be understood by future generations… is the mask used in this movie was like the cheapest of cheap Walmart discount bin costumes for years. Much like Michael Myers gave new life to a discount bin William Shatner mask, Scream made this awful ghost mask design the stuff of legend. If you have never watched this film I highly suggest doing so.

More to Come

This is probably going to be one of the more controversial lists that I have released in this series because in creating it… I left out a lot of fan-favorite slasher films. That said this is “my” list of favorites not designed to be universal. I think next up we are going to tackle Werewolves, which moves us back into more of my favorite sub-genres. Like I said before, Slasher flicks are not exactly my favorite in the genre but I wanted to tackle them just so I could talk about Happy Hell Night, a film that I think more people should appreciate for its absurdity.