Reactions

Terraria has long been one of my favorite games. Last year’s Journey’s End expansion, with its inclusion of Journey Mode, saw its popularity grow even more. It came at just the right time when we were all stuck at home and looking for ways to fill our time. I managed to get a few older computers networked together to enable myself and my children to play together. We consistently played for quite a while, but then interest fell off and they refocused on Minecraft....

Game feel Beyond: Two Souls is like a Bond game action scene in slow motion. It has vehicles, a cool underwater base infiltration scene, and you get to save the world from the bad guys. But rather than a playboy with an ever-ready quip, you play an emotionally damaged woman with a unique ability who simply yearns for a normal life. There’s also no penalty for idling (usually) mid-action scene, and seemingly no penalty for doing a terrible job....

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I’ve been playing a lot of story-adventure-exploration games lately (aka “walking sims”), and they really resonate. I played What Remains of Edith Finch with my daughters this summer when it was just us for the weekend, and we all loved it. It tells the story of Edith’s family in journal/diary format that we experience by walking through the protagonist’s childhood home. As we unlock sections of the house, we collect the stories of each of her family members....

This game is beautiful. To be honest I thought the ending was going to be much darker, as the discoveries grew sadder as Lonnie’s departure date neared. Sam kept repeating how she couldn’t live without Lonnie. I’m glad I was wrong. What I found instead gave me a sense of joy and hope. Growing up is hard. Bearing the weight of the world’s and your parents’ expectations is a seemingly impossible challenge....

Who tricked me into playing FFXI again? I’ve been slowly coming out the other side of a FFXI bender. It’s still fun. I like numbers-go-up. But it’s too demanding. This is always the problem I run into with games. I look at ways of optimizing progress, and it turns into me managing a half a dozen or more characters. It was 8 characters this time. I had the idea a couple months in that I should get them all full inventory upgrades so I could hold more stuff....