Happy New Year everyone and welcome to the digest series!

It is the busy month, with two festivals cramped back-to-back. Due to a lack of funds (and motivation) we basically did nothing except visit family and think about future plans. Nonetheless, I wish you all the best for the next year, and as we Germans say: "Einen guten Rutsch ins neue Jahr"!

Also check out my new idea in the Dwarf Fortress section. :)

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Monthly Bounty

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Children games, yes. The choice my girlfriend was pestering me to take for nearly a year. Luckily, I didn´t own most of the games, so there were only two games I could attempt. But I do need to tell you about those...

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Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl

PC/Windows - Steam
Finished
Time: 46m
Rating: 2 out of 10

Completionators, I need to come clean... . I didn´t play the game last month. It just happened to be one of the games I finished to credits before using completionator and forgot that it existed. I could have started a new run, but the game is so bad that I try to actively avoid it.

Now, why is that? It does sport a big roster of the most iconic characters Nickelodeon has to offer. If you have played one of the Smash Bros. games, you know exactly what you are in for and I do like the gameplay very much. Smash Bros. has been around for a really long time now, so how could All-Star Brawl be this bad? To be frank, it is a clone, it doesn´t bring anything fresh or new to the table, quite the opposite. Either the developers didn´t understand the game mechanics of the Smash series enough or they simply didn´t care. Nothing feels coherent, all the game mechanics are here, but they are not tuned to one another.

The movement feels floaty, the fighting animations are completely off the mark, sometimes they are super long until the damage is applied or way too short and OP. Balancing simply didn´t happen and the stages are super uninspired. When I received the game through Humble Monthly, me and my friends wanted to play against each other. It was horrible with constant lags, jittery animations and teleportation, so we dropped it right away. Maybe it got fixed in the meantime but I highly doubt it. Maybe they get it right with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl 2.

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Pokémon Stadium

Switch - N64 VC
Unfinished
Time at writing: 1h 43m
(temporarily) Rating: ? out of 10

I saw many speedruns and challenge runs on this game and was excited to have a reason to try the game for myself. Readers of my last Digest surely remembered my tangent on why I believe the Virtual Console versions on Switch may have a problem with randomizing content.

Sadly, Pokémon Stadium seems to suffer from this exact problem. Every time something has a chance attached (attacks and status) it enters the realm of impossible odds. Often I find myself on the losing end of this problem, having a fight in which the opponents Pokemon always wakes up the same round and all of my attacks under 90% hitchance never hitting, making the fight extremely unfair. Of course, not to mention that this one opponent always hits his 70% attacks.

After encountering many such instances and ultimately the mentioned opponent, I decided to stop there and wait to eventually own an N64 with the original game, because I feel that the VC Switch version doesn´t do this game justice.

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Misc Games

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Time to play some old favorites. :)

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Dwarf Fortress

PC/Windows - Steam
Lingering/Unfinished
Time at writing: 153h 42m
Time for current run: 10h 15m
Rating: 9 out of 10

I already talked about Dwarf Fortress back in the August Digest. In the meantime, I experimented more and more with the complex mechanics of the game and how the world generator works, which in turn just increased the fun I have with this game. Of course, some updates also helped immensely, such as switching game engines and enabling multicore CPU support. Finally, no castrating the cats anymore. :)

This month, I thought it could be interesting to talk about my fresh run and highlight some of the insanity that will inevitably hit my dwarfs at some point. Also, I thought about telling the story of the fort with little stories when they happen. I don´t know if it is cool or my storytelling is interesting enough, but here is a small taste:

Story Start
We are in the world of Inalaelathu ("The Portentous Domain"). In the new year of 2 after new dwarven calendar we founded our new outpost of "Tickglazed" for our dwarven civilization, "The Ordered Mirror". It is a lush mountainous forest with surprisingly few animals. A bad omen, perhaps? "This is it!" our expedition leader Astesh Nobleinks proclaims. Everyone stopped pushing the wooden cart. "Are you certain this is the place?" asked Kib the Miner while walking around the cart to where Astesh is standing. Astesh pulls out a map from her pouch and tips on the big red mark. "Yes, I am fairly certain. This is where our queen wants us to establish an outpost." Kib looks around in disgust: "Well, this would be a dream come true for some of them treehuggers, I guess." He spits on the ground as if trying to get rid of a bad taste in his mouth. Suddenly, a commotion starts at the back of the cart. Someone loudly says: "Come on Melbil, can´t you wait until Astesh tells us what the next step is?". Another, more grumpy voice appears: "Let her do what she wants. The earlier we get these big sticks out of the ground the better." The cart starts to shake and metallic sounds, like someone rummaging through a lot of items, appear. "You guys just don´t get the beauty of wood!" a muffled female voice says. "AHA, FOUND IT!" With that, the shaking and sounds stopped. With a big jump, a bald, slightly overweight dwarven woman with a big axe lands right next to the cart. "HERE I GOOOOO!" she screams while running towards the next set of trees. Kib follows her with his eyes and a slightly concerned look shows on his face. "Do you think it was a good idea to bring the crazy wood woman with us?". Astesh rolls up the map while saying: "Don´t worry, I handpicked everyone of you." After she is done, she turns around towards the cart and yells with a strong commanding voice: "Everyone, listen up!" Three heads appear around the cart, attention towards their leader. "I want you to get crazy. This will be our new home now and I want our entrance there!" She points with her map to an open meadow. "Dwarves, I want you to do your worst. STRIKE THE EARTH!" Her answer a loud "AYE!" from everyone, right before they started walking towards the meadow with determination in their step. She looks up towards the mountains, in the direction their mountainhome lies. She smiles and remembers her meeting with the queen. A single thought goes through her head. "We will make you proud."
Story End

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MechWarrior Online

PC/Windows
Lingering
Time at writing: 158h 35m
(temporarily) Rating: 6 out of 10

Some of the older folks may remember the tabletop Pen & Paper game Battletech. That tabletop spawned a not-so-small amount of video game adaptations, including the Mechwarrior series of games. In Mechwarrior games, you usually control one of the countless Battlemechs to bring your faction or group glory by overcoming other Mechwarriors in hot SFW Mecha on Mecha action.

In MechWarrior Online you do exactly that, only in a Player vs. Player multiplayer only online format. Of course, the game is really old, having been released in 2013, so I am happily surprised that there are still enough players to find lobbies in under 3 minutes. It seems the game is still getting support via patches and content updates, which is really unique in this day and age.

For me, there aren´t many games that give you this heavy, hard-hitting feeling of being inside a colossal giant of steel. Besides other Mechwarrior games, I could only list the Titenfall series and the murdered Hawken, where the game manages to immerse me. Other than that, the combat feels amazing. You can customize your Battlemechs to your liking and different chassis allow for different loadouts, which do matter a lot. The huge selection of weapons is overwhelming for new players, but once you learn what they do individually, it opens up immense potential for experimenting and builds to play around with. In my opinion, there is nothing quite like it in the PvP shooter sphere.

Of course, the game has its drawbacks. For once, the game is running on the long abandoned CryEngine, which did offer impressive graphics back in the day but at the cost of a beefy PC. Still to this day, I cannot play this game at maximum settings ( Hexacore 3,7GHz and NVIDIA 2060) because of optimization problems with vital components the engine uses. Also, many players who are still playing have hundreds or thousands of hours sunk into the game and often run the absolute meta builds, which combined can get you killed in mere seconds without running the heaviest of machines. 

If you want to check the game out, try to find at least one friend to play with and enter the group queue. For some reason, the group queue is full of players who are mostly there for the fun, running all sorts of weird weapons (and being drunk (I dont know either)).

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Cultures Gold

PC/Windows
Unfinished
Time at writing: 4h 1m
(temporarily) Rating: 8 out of 10

Next up: one of my all-time favorites. Cultures Gold is a German-only compilation of the original Cultures and the expansion Cultures: Die Rache des Regengottes which adds a ton of new maps and scenarios.

Cultures offers a comfy Viking village building with a hint of danger and cute graphics, but don´t get too relaxed. Resources need to be gathered and processed. The game is more of a slow burner, yet it still requires you to think strategically and be future-oriented. It has that thing we in Germany call the "Wuselfaktor", meaning you can look at your people working and walking around, invoking the same fun as watching an ant colony do their thing. (Trivia: The game that coined that term in Germany is The Settlers II)

Released in 2002, the game is a little challenging to run on Win10. Some of the game mechanics are poorly explained and to this day I still don´t understand exactly what, for example, the signposts do. Still, I love this game to bits and have found myself playing it from time to time for the last 20 years. It gets a big thumbs up from me!

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Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 40h
Time for current run: 8h 14m
(temporarily) Rating: 8 out of 10

I also started a new playthrough in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.

Bannerlord starts where Mount & Blade: Warband left off. In this game, you experience the happiness and hardships of a clan chief in a medieval-esque world. You start at the bottom and end up creating your own kingdom, conquering whole cities with your armies of hundreds of your loyal men and women. 

The game feels like a straight upgrade over Warband. A new game engine, good graphics, more precise combat, a new quest system, better management of troops in and outside of battle, better simulated economics and commerce. The list could go on and on, but you get the point. 

I haven´t found any major flaws yet. It is immensely fun and addicting. Probably a must-buy for all Mount&Blade fans and a solid choice for everyone who likes commanding big armies but doesn´t shy away from being on the front lines him/herself.

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Factorio

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 41h 5m
Time for current run: 4h 17m
(temporarily) Rating: 9 out of 10

Factorio is the ultimate automation simulation in game form. Build mining equipment for resources, build factories to process them, build more to create machines, guns, ammo and more until you leave the planet.

For everyone not familiar with the game: You are an engineer who crash-landed on a strange planet. Build up your base and scale up your production to climb the tech tree until you can build your escape craft to leave the planet again. But be warned, the local wildlife doesn´t like smelling your stinky factories and will get agitated until they attack you. If that happens, your only option is to exterminate, because you don´t want to find out what harmful chemicals in the environment do to your neighbors when exposed for prolonged periods of time...

The game sports a unique 2D isometric look and detailed animations, which are gorgeous and interesting to look at. It feels incredible fluid and natural to expand your base, always wanting more, always working towards the next small goal. In the end, you have an industrial complex of such magnitude only you will be able to understand. Don´t try to show off your gigafactory to your friends, they will only see you as the crazy guy standing in front of a whiteboard with bloodshot eyes. Only chosen individuals who played the game will understand. Once you understand, you are welcome to join the hidden society of people in the know.

Is the game good? Yes, yes it is.

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Medieval Dynasty

PC/Windows - Steam
Unfinished
Time at writing: 41h 18m
Time for current run: 35h 24m
(temporarily) Rating: 7 out of 10

Onto the last game. Medieval Dynasty recently dropped the coop update, which prompted my girlfriend to be somewhat yandere and ask in a "only if you want" kind of way to play this game together with her. At the beginning, she said that her only goal was to go and hunt the wildlife with bow and arrow. I, of course, should play the janitor at our village, managing the needs of our people, deciding on which buildings to build and manage produce. Well, now I am running around collecting berries and killing bunnies while she is running around the village with a hammer and building material to repair houses. Also, every time I return, suddenly some flower pots magically appeared, but I don´t know. :P

Medieval Dynasty tries to be a medieval simulator. You need to collect every resource yourself, funnel everything through long process chains until you have a little wooden basket. It is ultra complicated and takes quite some time to get used to. You can invite NPCs to your little village and let them work for you in exchange for food, water, a place to live and warmth. Building your village is fun. It feels cool to see everything grow in size over time while working on the next project.

But I really dislike the menus and UI of this game. It feels like the developers looked at menus for gamepad primary games and menus of keyboard and mouse primary games and thought: "HeY, wHY doN´t We dO bOth?". Ending up with a frankenstein monster, which is annoying to use for me with my mouse and keyboard, needing to do awkward keyboard inputs, while my girlfriend is constantly searching menus for their input on her gamepad while also needing to make awkward inputs. WHO LOOKED AT THAT AND THOUGHT: "Ahhhh yes, this is perfect!"? 

Other than that, the immersion is somewhat broken due to a lack of, for example, animations for NPC workers in most workplaces. Hunters just stand inside the hunting log, magically spawning meat from the void while trash-talking you for not giving them a work order. Also, the game is somewhat yanky all around, like animations glitching out, wolves getting stuck in your hitbox and killing you in seconds of getting unwanted multi-hit combos, tree logs bouncing around, killing you sometimes instantaneously while standing somewhat near it, multiplayer sometimes not recognizing returning players, etc.

Now, do we have fun playing in coop? Yes. Could the game use some more polish? Definitely.

To their credit, the developers are still actively developing the game, bringing constant content and having a roadmap for everyone to see. If you can stomach some yank, the game is worth a look. Otherwise, maybe wait a bit longer until the game is feature-complete.

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Community Content

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The Annual Completionator Community Top 10 is here! Check it out if you haven´t already.

Arc's 2023 "In-Betweens" happened, too. Hopefully Arcinia publishes his worst games, also. Really exited to read about the worst he played last year. :)

There is a blogpost from AllTheTrophies coming in hot in the last minute, but I didn´t have the time to read it, yet. So it will probably be featured in the next Digest.

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End Word

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There goes 2023. Personally I hope 2024 will be a better year, because 2023 was a b***h for my career and financially. The amount of time I can spend on playing games in February will probably also take a huge hit. A new work contract with more hours means to work more often and having quite awkward shifts. So be prepared that the series will probably get shorter. (Well maybe until I can change to home-office, but that will take some time)

See you next month. :)