12 weeks, 12 games, year 3, weeks 6.

   Ah, half way. Before I go on to this weeks games, I've got to look to the future, and beyond the games I talked about last week (Witness, Far Cry, Just Cause). Turns out this week both Unravel and Firewatch came out to much aplomb. That's 2 games almost perfect for this as they're small contained games and both very good (or so I read). On top of that there was a Steam sale last week so I picked up a few games on there as well (most excitingly (for me anyway) Saturday morning RPG for 66p after I was going to pay £5 for it, deal of the week!). Plus of course The division is out in a few weeks (though I've not made a decision on that yet) and however many other potentially dozens of games that will leap out at me and not forgetting PS Plus and Games with gold of course. Where is the time supposed to come from?

Xcom 2

   After so much excitement it finally arrived, but of course it was always going to be difficult to live up to all the hype I was giving it. So first things first, I'm terrible at this. I got about 10 hours in at great pains and got well and truly stuck. I will be the first to admit that strategy games aren't my forte, the first game in this series (the 2008 re-boot, not the 1992 original) was the first turn based strategy game I ever played for more than an hour, and I loved it. Since then I've played the likes of Chroma Squad, massive chalice, X-Com enemy within and maybe more so I figured I'd be pretty good at it by now, but no. When I look back at it now I remember how difficult I found the original but I'd forgotten that before I picked this up.
   Point was though that I restarted it on easy. I realised which upgrades I should be picking and made all the right decisions and started flying through, so much so in fact hat it seemed too easy. However, It has got more challenging now so I've been proven correct about restarting because I assume it would have gotten impossible for me when I'd gotten to this stage on medium. There is a major issue with restarting though and that's the added time. If howlongtobeat.com is to be believed (as I often do) I should've finished by now with the combined play time. You might wonder why this is annoying me but I'll tell you. As touched upon a few weeks ago I'm starting to enjoy shorter games more and longer games with a constantly repeating gameplay loop get boring to me after a few hours. I'm now at a stage where every random encounter that pops up while I'm trying to do some research is like a hot poker in my buttocks. I was enjoying it, I really was, now though, I'm bored.
   Oh right, what is it? Turned based strategy where you have to reclaim the Earth from alien invaders who have taken over (like the NWO). To do this you have to find gear, research upgrades and budget manage. It's some tricky resource management to say the least as there's constantly something you want and as soon as you've got one thing you want, another 3 pop up that you want, and then a UFO crash lands and you have to recover it which drags you away. There is a lot to do, arguably too much all in 1 go. You get the point I hope. As I said, I was loving it but got bored after 30 or so hours (It could be argued I could play it less intensely than 30 hours in 6 days but, meh). If you're more patient than me then get it, but be warned, it's a long one (again).

   I finished Gauntlet as well btw. That winded up being alright while having half of my attention elsewhere on music, podcasts or whatever. That last boss though, my God. Yet again, I hate bosses, always have, and this one took multiple playthoughs that got infuriating. I managed to snatch a win from the jaws of defeat when I was about to die. Thankfully it's over now though but it left a sour taste from a game I'd enjoyed up to that point.
   That was it for this week though, we'll see how Xcom goes, see which of the Steam games I potentially start or maybe one of the others mentioned in the first paragraph, we shall see.

Completed

Transformers: Devastation
Unmechanical
Pneuma
Killzone: Shadow Fall
Killer Instinct
Teslagrad
Defy Gravity
Cibele
Oxenfree
Out There Somewhere
Breath of Death VII
WWE 2K16
Gears of War 3
The Deed
Her Story
Gauntlet

Underway

Xeodrifter
Xcom 2