Feeling even better today! Definitely pulling out of this thing. According to the NHS track and trace app – with all things remaining constant – I will be able to venture out on Tuesday, just two days away.

To pass the time I downloaded a few games yesterday off of my Steam account, one of which was a gift from my bud Jax. The games include:

• Northgard – a real time strategy game reminiscent of Ages of Empires
• The Legend of the Obra Dinn – stylistic first person mystery
• StarWars Battlefront II – thanks Jax! First person shoot ’em up in Star Wars land
• Pillars of Eternity – Role playing game in the flavor of Diablo

All this, in edition to my currently active game lists of Doom Eternal and the occasional Minecraft excursion.

Ive had the chance to briefly jump into all four of the new games and the one I am most excited about is the Legend of Obra Dinn. Within 5 minutes of playtime I was already sucked into unwrapping a mystery, all in a black and white, 2D setting. At only 1 GB disk size it really goes to show you that its all about content, in the end, graphics really only play a supporting role.

On the other end of the game size scale, there is Battlefront II, a game requiring over 89GB HDD space. I have to say, it looks, sounds, and plays great! But after a couple of rounds I couldn’t help but think this was just a skin on top of Battlefield V. Its fun and all, but even my wife’s seven year old was bored after watching me get repeatedly smudged within 3 minutes of game play. Still though, it is enjoyable and I look forward to the single player mode.

Pillars of Eternity got incredible reviews on Steam, but after spending about 30 minutes with it – so far – Im a wee bit disappointed. The intro is incredibly long, the character customization is far too complex for my tastes, and the voiceacting is a bit too wooden. How will it stack up to Ember? A small RPG game I played last year that was an incredible ride. The sound design on Ember was nothing short of magnificent, the settings were immersive, the characters fun, and the story a worthy ride. Been searching for a game like it since, and Im hoping Pillars will improve as I dig deeper.

Finally, the game that already has around 5 hours of play time (all from last night pretty much) is Northgard. Holy cannoli this game possesses the perfect storm of being extremely addictive, and needlessly tedious. It is also beautiful to look at and has a great sound design. After forcing myself to stop at around 3:30 in the morning, I couldn’t help but wonder about good ol’ Ages of Empires. It was such a beautifully designed game, with all the right checks and balances necessary to keep the game moving forward at a consistent pace. Northgard feels like it is still a work in progress. As a solid performer, a whole lot of fun, and with plenty of room for improvement, I think Northgard could become a classic after a few more updates.

So that’s it, a corona update turned mini game review! Looking forward to manana.

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