When taking a break from studying at uni today I went to sporcle on my laptop (pro tip: use ublock origin), hopefully anyone nosy enough to spy on me was impressed at my flag-guessing skills. And y9u know what? I’ll do it again tomorrow, maybe I’ll try and name every country in the world again

I’ll be as honest and as thorough as possible. It’s because:

• Game clearly wasn’t as polished as the development team wanted it to be, but ubisoft the publishers know that allows them to squeeze a bit more money from DLCs. So content they would have released on day 1 was moved to dlcs down the line.
• The main campaign ends spontaneously at a stupid point in the game
• The main campaign presents two approaches in it’s second region but they are not balanced
• It had glitches upon it’s release.
• political reasons and woke. Anno 1800 already “went too woke” in people’s eyes by trying to push a vague sense of a society more equitable than it really was in the 1800s - I don’t mind either way because while that’s a good argument, the game is in a fictional world not perfectly resembling our own, so the creators have that freedom.
• How did anno 117 do this? Well it has a female emperor, her daughter does trade which should be illegal for the nobility, and women. And it glasses over slavery a lot.
• compared to Anni 1800 which has 4 years of DLCs (12 large DLCs), anno 117 had less content in release. It already feels like it is nearing 1800 is size, to me, and also that’s a stupid reason to dislike it
• it is needlessly more demanding for your PC. 1800 was already fun to look at. There are diminishing returns on the graphics.

Some stuff that I have a problem with but haven’t seen criticised:

• the pirates are way too tough to handle and make the game not fun
• economy is honestly badly balanced. I’m an experienced anno player and playing it on tough settings makes it really horrible to get big things like military excursions done. I’m pretty sure that only people on easy (aka default) settings are conquering other islands and conquering pirates with ease.
• adding to the economy: game gives you city walls but there is never any reason to build them, they are less effective.

I think the game tries too hard to be polished and ends up being clunky as a consequence. Moving troops, moving ships, placing buildings (especially the special ones like canals and aqueducts) juuuust doesn’t work.

I come back to anno 117 like a failed teetotaller. I’ve had a problem with just restarting each world because “it’s by challenging enough now” or “I want to see what it’d be like to start from…” Or I just lose my thread by expanding too fast. I think this time will be different but I’m going to commit to only playing on the weekends and not in my free periods.

It’s still so time consuming and the pirates are designed awfully, but I think the game is gonna rehab it’s image a bit over the coming years

Oh and I started playing braid to distract from an earache. So good! So challenging. One of the most nostalgic games for me because my dad brought it for me and himself when he first got a steam account; was transitioning me into pc gaming instead of playstation gaming. Thanks dad.

Couldn’t get very far with it as a kid I think but it was swag. Looking back, it’s kind of cool how you can just tell if a game is crisp and good quality. I was instantly bonded with it. Also a bit of a connoisseur with videogames now, like I only play arty graphics instead of flashy graphics stuff.

So, Berlin is being threatened with blackmail by hackers. Or do I just misunderstand how the verb works? I feel like the headline will panic people more than what I put.

which is thought to operate from Russia and eastern Europe

“Say the line, Bart”

Today: Balatro and Anno 117

Also this week: Stardew Valley. Started yet another new save, deleted all my others; this time I will take it from start to finish without starting any new saves. (I’ve reached perfection once already and gotten to ginger island half a dozen times)

SDV makes you feel so good.

Ironically I’m probably not going to choose my favourite games because those are usually just very simple story based games, and can be just as enjoyable to read as a book instead.

The games which instead give the most fun-value and replayability:

1. Balatro (my go-to “I’m bored and don’t know what to do with myself” game.)
2. Stardew Valley. Super good, something is so satisfying in the art, animations and little gameplay loops. I replayed it to death earlier this year and now I’ll try not to think about it again until that time next year.
3. “The Sims Medieval” is one I keep on coming back to, so I’ll definitely add that.
4. Shattered Pixel Dungeon (don’t think this counts as a mod.) Super good replayability, I’ve been playing it intermittently for about 11 years now.
5. Anno 117. Gotta have some strategy games - I’m kind of boring in that I only do anno and not more complicated stuff like city skylines.
6. Fields of Mistria is a new farming sim that I have high hopes for.
7. Pentiment has a lot of replayability despite only being a linear story game.

That gives me enough time to add 8. Minecraft, which I don’t play anymore but it’s a great boredom buster, and 9. Life and Suffering of Sir Brante and 10. Life and Suffering of Prince Jerian - afforementioned visual novel stories which are also fine to enjoy in book form.