Is it modes or moods, I'm not sure, but I had two modes I was in today. One was the mode of chasing after rewards points, the other was playing any old-school-looking turn-based RPG I could find on Xbox's Game Pass.
Mode of Rewards Points:
Conan Exiles:
This game was a whopping 149 GB. I was surprised when it actually finished downloading today. I thought I was going to have to wait until Sunday.
I dove right into a single-player world but with co-op open. The fully online mode seemed a bit complicated, and I just wanted to get my feet wet, see how this game played, and get my easy rewards points for killing one thing.
Conan cut me down from my crucifix at the beginning, and I wandered down a road in the desert until I came to an oasis and then a shoreline. A strange humanoid beast attacked me and I killed it just punching. I got my rewards points but kept going. I came across a campsite and thought to say hello to the two humans there. Bad idea. In this world, you get attacked on sight by anything and everything. The two carpenters (I later found out that's who they were) had some magic and gang stomped me pretty quickly. And that was my Conan MMO experience.
The world looks pretty great and I think I could get into it sometime if I really wanted to.
Battlefield 2049:
There was a special tile listing challenges in MS Rewards for this game today. I discovered that there was a free trial and downloaded it. I only had to play the game and get one achievement. It took longer than I expected, but I wasn't totally upset by that.
What struck me most about this was how stable the game runs. The maps are huge and full of amazing detail. Explosions rip it all apart as you fight, but not once was there any lag even for a second.
Several modes were available. One was all-out war in a city in 2049. I ran around and got shot a lot, but after a while, I started following other people and helping them out. This is a big battle with maybe 50 real people or so. Once I drove an anti-personnel vehicle and another time a tank.
Another mode has you do missions with a small squad. I did terribly at this because I didn't really know what I was doing. I had to fumble around before I even knew how to switch weapons.
Lastly was a mode where people have created their own levels. These were really fun. They were mostly WWII levels based on previous Battlefield games. I played those a lot before I got an achievement for getting to level 5. There were some really funny moments like me getting shot by a tank. I also blew up a tank, once I figured out how to place mines. On one large desert map that is in Algiers during WWII, it was fun to watch the players in airplanes overhead strafing and bombing positions. I got strafed myself at one point.
The realism of the landscape was quite stunning. Often I would crawl up to a crest of a hill or dune to try and snipe down at a position. You can really use the terrain to great effect in this game just like in the real world. I enjoyed it for the most part. Dying a lot isn't my favorite thing though.
Mode of 90s RPGalikes:
Dicey Dungeons:
I played through all 5 characters' first missions trying to beat them. I got the fighter and thief done but the robot, inventor and witch eluded me. Then I discovered a Halloween mode and played the three characters there. I won the fighter levels but not the inventor or witch. The witch is the toughest, and I discovered something about her gameplay I didn't know before that led me to try the main game's first dungeon again. Instead of just using the one spell you start with, you can bring new ones into play from your spellbook (as shown above). I still didn't beat the dungeon.
This is fun game, but I'm up against a wall now, so I'll stop for a while.
Octopath Traveler:
I tried playing this via the cloud on my Xbox console rather than downloading it. I figured a game like this might run pretty smoothly and It did. I played as the daughter of the priest this time. I got shut down by the first boss though. Why does this game have to kick your butt so early in the game? I pulled out all the stops fighting that thing. I used every buff, item, defense, and spell I had but it wouldn't go down. Eventually, it wore me out and I got a game over screen. Weirdly, I didn't have to uninstall anything, I just left it. I think I'm liking cloud gaming as long as it runs smoothly.
Oh, and I love the look of this game as if it were a scale model. Really cool. I will return.
Darkest Dungeon:
I still love this game but darn is it unforgiving. I think too unforgiving. I can't seem to make hardly any progress as I quickly start losing characters to insanity and death. I ended on a party wipe that was pretty funny in retrospect. I had to quest with only 3 characters because all my other ones were either in the temple or tavern getting destressed. My team survived a while until I lost one member in a battle. I tried to finish the dungeon with the last two but had to bail in the middle of a later battle. I got away but both promptly died of heart attacks one after the other. That was a good way to finally end my revisit of this game.
I love the stress system in this game. You never know what's going to happen to your characters. They may just start doing things on their own self destructively. I also love the graphics, music and narration. The heavy gloom of it is so great. I love the dialog too. Even the story, which is mostly in the background, is becoming interesting to me. It's like anEdgar Allen Poe tale. I could really get into the lore of this game, but for right now, like the characters, I need to destress from it too.
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