December 2020
It has been a good month to end the year with. I got a RTX 3080 from Microcenter and thanks to gift cards I received for Christmas I’m also getting a new power supply & nvme SSD drive on the way. My old power supply is making a coil whine sound with the new GPU despite the PSU having enough raw wattage capacity. Rise of the Tomb Raider is likely the most GPU intensive game I have since it uses both RTX and DLSS, which benchmarks beautifully with my GPU at 1440p and I plan to play not long after I finish Tomb Raider.
In the next few days to weeks I’ll post a 2020 Year in Review that includes pics & build details of my new PC rig, cover the best & worst of what I’ve played in 2020, look at my overall backlog stats over time, and my game priorities for next year.
Stats
Made notable progress and marking some more games as won’t play, though the changes in stats reflect changes since October since I didn’t jot down stats from November.
985 games (+27)
74% never played (-1%, +5, 726)
5% unfinished (-1%, -9, 49)
12% beaten (+1%, +7, 115)
2% completed (+0%, +1, 16)
8% won’t play (+1%, +18, 78)
On-Going Games
Enjoyed getting more loot including finally getting res scrolls, some challenging battles got harder, got source collars off, escaped Fort Joy. I'm on a boat.
I haven't played this since the first DLC came out because I wanted to wait for the rest of the DLC to drop, and I finally got around to returning to it. I'm not restarting my campaign as I dont want to "lose" all the progress I've made. Its somewhat of a learning curve all over again, and after beating my first mission back with 3 restarts, I still had one pilot die, and they overhauled stats so I have to repick them and refigure out the tactics that come with that. I'm disappointed that no matter what the FPS is near (but not locked) to 60 FPS at 1440p regardless of graphics settings, but maybe that was just on my GTX 1060, which I've upgraded since.
Beaten
It is a great space combat roguelite that I recommend to anyone who doesn't hate roguelites or 6DOF games (e.g. Descent, Overload). It even has a story unfolding with some characters and some questlines as you progress to and beyond your first complete playthrough of the 6 space sectors, each with multiple locations. I appreciate its visuals that run at high FPS on high (but not epic) settings at 1440p on GTX 1060, and very much look forward to its sequel.
A masterclass in PC platforming. So polished with great controls, a fun story, fun to collect stuff, and good bosses. The metro DLC is awesome plus Online Party, but Seal the Deal was weak as it starts with a 12 fragment hourglass (ugh!) and no checkplint even after 5 pieces. Also the hardcore-type badge/mode on StD was pointless for me because the base game was a substancial challenge.
I've only played a few rhythm games on PC, and this is my favorite thanks to the progressive challenge and somewhat unique maneuvering to the beat. The story of the ship pilot is okay but somewhat charming. I was only really into a few of the DJ's hits, but there wasnt a song from this game that I didnt like.
Rock of Ages: Roll a round rock down the hill to breach a castle gate, and build up defenses to slow down your opponent from doing the same to your castle. Amusing and entertaining through and through. Look forward to playing the sequel in the not too distant future, and hope to get the third one in a game bundle sometime.
Playing
Picked this up again now thay I have my RTX 3080, and I got unstuck from the firefight after gaining flaming arrows. I guess frames do in fact win games! Looks better than with my GTX 1060. Still enjoying this but I'm spending somewhat less time on getting collectibles. My guess is thar I'm half to two thirds of the way through the game.
Rock of Ages: Roll a round rock down the hill to breach a castle gate, and build up defenses to slow down your opponent from doing the same to your castle. Amusing and entertaining through and through. Look forward to playing the sequel in the not too distant future, and hope to get the third one in a game bundle sometime.
A game seemingly designed for mobile, but this one is a puzzle for rescuing sheep that you make hop around between islands. Am using Steam Link to play this one from my phone.
West of Loathing: Amusing US western themed 2D RPG with polish. May play this further on mobile. Feels like overkill playing it on my RTX 3080.
Janaury 2021 Preview
-
GRIP: Combat Racing
13 hours playtime
13 of 35 achievements
-
Tomb Raider
19 hours playtime
11 of 50 achievements
-
West of Loathing
7 hours playtime
1 of 28 achievements
-
Divide by Sheep
2 hours playtime
2 of 19 achievements
-
Titanfall® 2
0 minutes playtime
0 of 50 achievements
-
BATTLETECH
141 hours playtime
34 of 128 achievements
-
Divinity: Original Sin 2
50 hours playtime
2 of 97 achievements
Dang, they must’ve overhauled the stats by a lot since then (or you just got really unlucky) because I only had two pilots die throughout my entire campaign (and one of those was on the last mission). I will say: the game doesn’t make this clear, but the protagonist can’t die, so you can use that knowledge to protect your other pilots somewhat.
You can also just talk to the Mech Bay engineer to read about aspects of combat you might’ve forgotten.
You might wanna play that game a bit more before you try summarizing it. ☺
P.S. Clicking on the GRIP spoiler opens the Rock of Ages spoiler instead.
They did, as I hadnt played it since DLC came out, as I was waiting for all the DLC before picking it up again.
I figured the protagonist cant die, but good to know that for sure. My particular mission didnt have her, so I wouldnt have been able to leverage that this time.
…and any new ones from patches & DLC, great tip!
You are right, I left out a little something in later levels of the first area/group. Consider it a surprise.
They’re panes for mini reviews/progress, not spoilers. In any case, I cant get that pane to expand at all on mobile chrome. Will have to fix that sometime when I’m not on mobile.