MONTHLY FAVES: JULY/AUGUST 2023 GAMING TOP PICKS

What we have to say about the games we've been playing this month.

AUG 31, 2023

We decided to roll our July Monthly Faves into our August Monthly Faves after we both caught Covid towards the end of July. But hey, on the bright side, that gave us a little more time with a couple of these games. We are sharing our first impressions of a new game. Victoria finally started a new game file in Skyrim, and she also beat Metroid Fusion! Let's begin, shall we?

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CO-OP TOP PICK

TINY TINA'S WONDERLANDS (PS4)

OUR FIRST IMPRESSIONS

You know when you fall in love with the first couple games in a series, or even the first few games from a developer, and those games set the precedent for your expectations of the games that follow, yet the newer games coming out from the series or developer just keep falling short? Well, that pretty much sums up the gameplay experience for playing Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands on multiplayer. Amazing concept for a game but all the gameplay issues kill the overall experience.

It’s clunky. Things do not load well. Transitions of loading into new areas are plagued with frame skips and stuttering. There are issues with the menus loading in multiplayer or with players not being able to see their full menu. We love the tabletop feel where you are traveling around a board and then enter an area for encounters, but at the same time being on the board currently feels a little glitchy. This could be due to the fact that we are playing co-op. Solo play may not be as glitchy. It feels like the local co-op was an afterthought. As if the developers were too focused on online multiplayer, and then forgot that they needed to include local co-op.

While Zach has been too distracted by the frame rate and lag issues, Victoria has been distracted by the scale of everything. Although Victoria understands that the developers were probably trying to keep the feeling of being a miniature on a game board consistent even in the encounters, it has been frustrating for Victoria for the scale of herself and enemies to feel so small on the screen when playing local co-op where the tv screen is cut in half, already narrowing your peripheral view.

This game has a lot of potential to be really fun, but with the local multiplayer lagging, just like Borderlands 3, it is a little disappointing. We were really hoping that they would have improved the local multiplayer game play issues that arose in Borderlands 3 when making Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands. Whatever they did in Borderlands 2, they nailed the local co-op game play, and that is what we miss. Some of this could be us nitpicking too much, but we’ve noticed that many other players agree with us on the crashing and gameplay issues.

We were ecstatic to have Tiny Tina back to narrate! Who doesn’t want more of Tiny Tina and her shenanigans. But, come on. When Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep was so phenomenal, this one hardly compares. We know this isn’t a Borderlands DLC, but our expectations were that this would be similar to the other DLC content, such as Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon’s Keep or Sir Hammerlock’s Big Game Hunt. Our expectations were for a game that plays similar to Assault on Dragon’s Keep. Victoria was looking forward to returning to Borderlands world after the local co-op gameplay let down that was Borderlands 3, only to discover that Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands was still not up to snuff for local co-op gameplay.

These are just our first impressions right now. We are not far in the game, so we plan to give this another go to see if there are redeeming qualities later on. Zach is nervous about the encounters becoming monotonous. It feels like this could be a wash, rinse, repeat.

Like we said earlier, this game concept has so much potential, but it feels broken. When these developers have produced games that play exceptionally well previously, this has been a bit of let down. It feels like the developers do not care about their game audience that is still playing on older generation consoles such as the PS4. This is frustrating as it narrows down the number of people who could enjoy this game, and for those who have been fans of Borderlands since the beginning, it feels like a slap in the face.

ZACH'S TOP PICK

SKYRIM (PS4)

ZACH'S COUNTLESS BUILDS

This is a title that definitely somehow pulls me back into playing it now and then, always excited to build a new character in the world of Skyrim to have the next grand adventure. Skyrim is a popular game, it is hard to find someone who has never played this game before. Rare but not unheard of, I envy these folks-I envy the experience they can have with a fresh take on the game, having never taken the plunge into the freezing depths of the land of Skyrim. From the snow capped mountains to the swamped valleys, the mountain city of Markarth to the sprawling plains city of Whiterun (very reminiscent of Rohan in Lord of the Rings: Two Towers); there is always something around the corner of this territory of Tamriel to discover.

I focused on two different characters in my play-through of Skyrim this time- a high elf mage that was put through the paces of the College of Winterhold - the esteemed school of magical thought where one can practice their magical craft, in my case necromancy and destruction schools of magic. The second character, a Khajiit thief with a focus on three skills: sneak, lock-pick, and pickpocket. A complete vanilla experience for the mage (no modifications to gameplay), and a heavily modded version of the game that overhauled all skills for the thief.

Focusing on the mage first, who I aptly named Majere (see or read Dragonlance sometime), with primary magical talent for necromancy (in game referred to as Conjuration)- summoning of the dead to fight for you, or more often, summoning alternate beings from the realm of Oblivion-such as the Flame, Frost, and Storm Atronarchs. Later on I further leveled the Conjuration skill of magic to conjure Daedra Princes and the ability to dual summon- or summon two different conjured beings at once, doubling the attack power and defensive capabilities of my character. In order to be more involved in the battles and skirmishes of Skyrim- I also leveled the Destruction school of magic for Majere. This school involves offensive spells such as flames, frost, and lightning-with each becoming more powerful as you level your destruction skill tree and find more tomes with stronger spells. Each spell, whether in conjuration or destruction, has an associated magicka cost- which is a set amount of “usage” points the character has to cast spells, when these points are reduced to zero, no more spells can be cast until the magicka replenishes. In order to speed recovery along, potions can be used to gain magicka back. Also, enchanted pieces of armor or weapons can help reduce the cost of certain spells. By the time my character was in the 30-40 level range, I had already maximized my potential in Enchanting, which involves infusing a piece of armor or a weapon with a filled soul gem and a learned enchanting skill.

With no mods at my disposal, I had to get creative with enchanting to see where I could push the limits to this mage build. I found that by enchanting heavy armor with two sets of enchantments for each piece, I slowly but surely lowered my cost for casting Conjuration and Destruction spells to zero - being free to cast as many spells as I desired and for an unlimited amount of uses. This essentially made an extremely powerful and potent mage character, that was able to summon two beings from the planes of Oblivion, and use expert level destruction spells to aid the conjured beings in combat. It was a lot of work to get there, but I flew through the main story of the game and decided it was time to put this character down for now.

Fast forward to my thief. I added a few mods to the gameplay, mostly one for carry-weight and one to completely overhaul the skill system - many of the original skills of Skyrim were modified in some way to better fit the game and provide a more rounded experience. I specifically targeted guild quests that supported my new thief, such as the thief’s guild quest line, and I hope to do the dark brotherhood quest line as well in the near future. With this new thief build, I focused great attention to the skills of sneak, lock picking, pickpocketing, and one handed weapons. I don’t often commit crimes in these play-throughs, but I wanted to spice things up with this new character and steal everything I could get my hands on in each city. My hope is to restore the thief’s guild to its former glory by collecting all of the unique items to place on display in the cistern of the guild-which houses all of the rarest collectibles that can be stolen from Skyrim’s various city locations. A big change I made to this play-through was dragons. I’m a thief, not a power house of magic or weapons. I sneak around and mostly avoid conflict if I can. If the inevitable conflict does arise, I am confident in my one handed weapons skills to safely navigate my way through those situations. There is also a mod I have installed that allows me to “hack” the Dwemer (or dwarven) automated machines in the dwarven depths and ruins. This hacking ability allows me to safely “deactivate” or “hotwire” these automaton-like enemies to shut down or do some of the fighting for me! It has been a blast to play with this mod-this character is not meant for heavy combat, so this fits my build perfectly.

Dragons though…that’s a problem for thieves, right? Early game dragon encounters for a thief almost always end in the character's demise- dragons are too big and too chunky on health for me to take down. Not to mention the dragons fly around and make it quite frustrating to sneak and hide from the monster, hoping it will just pass you by without realizing you are there. Wrong! Dragons have the most wonderful gift of never ending sight, and the act of hiding is just a feeble “attempt” at hiding. The dragon will find you…and make you its next meal. OUCH.

Not surprisingly (though I just found out), there is a fairly easy solution to this conundrum. For those that have played the game, did you know that if you choose not to progress the main quest/storyline to encounter that first dragon and absorb your first dragon soul-you can prevent the random spawning of dragons in Skyrim. PREVENT! I have not run into a dragon a single time in this play-through, all because I am choosing to never advance the main story objectives. This allows for a play-through unlike any I have ever done - Skyrim with no dragons! It seems silly, but I found that I enjoyed the game MORE since not being forced to deal with these random dragon encounters. What a crazy way to switch up the gameplay.

After these two characters, I had to put down the adventures of Skyrim again. This is how I play Skyrim - I get the itch to make a new character or two, or three…I get my fill of the game by playing through different quests, and then I’m good. There is a certain allure that Skryim will always draw me back in with, but after another set of 10 hours or so, I am ready to move on to another game again. I am not necessarily bored, I just know that I could probably play Skryim forever, always coming up with a new way to explore the region and tackle different quests. I probably still haven’t done everything there is to do in the game, but hey, let’s save that for next time shall we?

VICTORIA'S TOP PICK

SKYRIM (PS4)

FINALLY STARTING A NEW PLAY FILE

When Zach proposed the idea of us doing a simultaneous solo play-through of Skyrim, I was giddy with excitement, but I was also at a crossroads. Do I start a new play file on the PS4 with its faster load times and infrequent crashes, or do I continue to chug forward on my original game file on the PS3?

For some people, *ahem, Zach*, this might be a no-brainer to make a new file. I, however, am not like Zach. I do not jump at the opportunity to make a new character build. I am more of a completionist. I had wanted to platinum my original play file, but alas, there was no hope of me being able to accomplish that due to the glitch in the PS3 game where if you finish the Dawnbreaker DLC before getting the trophy for all the Daedric Artifacts, that trophy won’t ever pop. And so, I made the difficult decision to start a new game file - to start all over on my quest to platinum this game.

It had been so long since I had played through the first part of the game, that it almost felt like experiencing the game for the first time all over again. Of course, I had to stay true to my original character and create a new Bosmer Elf (wood elf) that would specialize in archery with a little magic on the side. While I still miss my original play file with all the achievements, armor, weapons and upgrades I had worked so hard to get, I have found it exciting to replay this game with a more clear focus as to my character’s build in this play-through. In my first game file, I was dumping perk points into so many various skill trees, whereas this time, I definitely have a more concise set of skill trees I am investing into. Whereas with my first playthrough, I was trying to heavily focus on archery, destruction magic, healing magic, sneak, speech, blacksmithing, alchemy, and lockpicking, this time I am focusing primarily on archery, sneak, and speech. I am only putting a couple points into destruction magic, and I only care to level up blacksmithing to a certain point to craft specific items.

I could play this game endlessly if I allowed myself to. There are so many quest lines to play through, thrilling DLC content to become enthralled with, and limitless build styles to try out. Skyrim is a game that sucks me in. It’s a captivating world that I can immerse myself in for countless hours if I am not careful. During one of our play sessions, Zach got a good little laugh because I was so absorbed into the game that I didn’t realize he was talking to me. I know how this game draws me. I know how single minded I become when I play this game, which is why I do my best to limit how often I play this game throughout the year. My original game file on the PS3 is probably 6-7 years old, maybe even 8 years old. The world of Skyrim is massive, and there are hundreds of quests you can do in this game, which makes it easy to sink hours upon hours into this game. Even with all of that, I am not sure many people have been playing on the same game file for that many years. The reason it takes me so long to get through this game is because 1.) I am trying to platinum it, but 2.) because I know the draw this game has on me. I know how easily I can get absorbed into this game, and if I am not careful, I start to shrug off or neglect other responsibilities. So, I limit how often I play this game.

Who knows, maybe I will platinum this game file in less than 5 years now that I have a more clear and concise plan of attack on this play-through.

RETRO GAME TOP PICK

METROID FUSION (SWITCH)

So, we know you guys already know a little bit about Metroid Fusion from our last Monthly Faves blog post where Victoria talked about her first impressions. Well guess what! Victoria finally did it. She beat Metroid Fusion, so now let's wrap up her final thoughts on the game and get Zach’s input as well.

If you remember, in our last post, Zach talked about Metroid Dread, which included multiple themes from Metroid Fusion, such as the X parasite. The opening of Metroid Dread shows an X parasite, indicating that this is a direct sequel to Metroid Fusion as it is the only other Metroid game with X parasites. Zach dove into Metroid Dread quite blind, with zero story expectations. Upon completing Dread, Zach felt compelled to return to the game that started his obsession with the Metroid franchise on the Gameboy Advance- Metroid Fusion.

The creative and difficult bosses in this game really hit the spot for Zach, which Victoria, coincidentally, struggled immensely through most bosses on her first playthrough. Victoria’s experience with games she played as a kid didn’t have as many different bosses as the games Zach played as a kid. With Sonic, it was always Dr. Robotnik, and you knew that he would be in a machine that you would have to jump on a specific number of times to defeat him. With Pacman and with Mrs. Pacman, you are always facing off with the ghosties, and with each level, the speed increases.

There are no cute ghosties in Metroid Fusion. No simple mechanic for defeating the grueling X parasite bosses. Each boss is a mimicked manifestation of a larger creature but with extra tricks up its sleeves to test your abilities. Each creature boss in this game is going to test any newfound abilities Samus has learned in her journey so far, and getting the hang of this mechanic can be challenging for a first time player. Verbal tips only go so far for Victoria, and Zach would do his best to give advice when she was becoming frustrated. Being a visual learner though, Victoria did best with visual examples of how to tackle the beasts-tips that will present themselves naturally while playing through.

Victoria was caught off guard by how limited the resources the player utilizes in their epic space journey are in this Metroid game that Zach grew up playing as a kid. There are recharge rooms in certain areas, but these become scarce and defeating smaller enemies is the priority to gain health and missile ammunition that is vital for Samus’ success in survival and investigation of the ship. The difficulty and skill level are quite different from the Sonic games Victoria grew up playing.

Part of the fun gets lost in Metroid Fusion because you get stuck trying to move forward in areas with all the hidden walls or hidden access. When Victoria would hear how many bosses she had left to face off with, it brought a sense of dread as it felt like the game was going to take forever. Zach found this funny though- Victoria’s play sessions of Metroid Fusion would knock out several bosses in one sitting, impressive!

Bosses that Zach found more challenging, Victoria sometimes found to be easy and vice versa. Earlier on in the game, when Zach would say things such as, “oh, just wait until you get to [insert boss name here]. They’re really challenging!”, it would fill Victoria with dread because if the bosses Zach found easy were challenging for her now, how on earth could she possibly hold up against the bosses Zach found difficult? It was quite hilarious to discover that some of the bosses Victoria found easy, such as the Nightmare, are some of the bosses that many players find to be extremely difficult.

As Victoria progressed, her encounters with bosses picked up speed. The overall pacing of the game shifted to a quicker pace in comparison to the first half of the game, which helped boost Victoria’s motivation to finish the game.

Zach enjoys revisiting Metroid Fusion for nostalgia and to challenge himself with how quickly he can beat the game. For playing it on the switch for the first time, he feels he completed it in his average time as he decided to challenge himself with more of the puzzle rooms versus doing a speedrun of the game. His next play-through of the game will be another crack at the completion record, or a challenge to see how far he can make it without all of the nice upgrades to health and missile capacity.

Although the game tried Victoria’s patience on countless occasions throughout her play-through, she still loved the game. It is a phenomenal game, and it’s not hard to see why so many people are drawn to the Metroid games in general. They are challenging, but they are truly innovative games. It is no wonder that these games sparked an entire new genre of Metroidvania games.

TABLETOP GAME TOP PICK

HORRIFIED

Horrified, the delightfully horrifying game by Ravensburger, is a strategic game with an alluring co-op experience. We enjoy many video games that incorporate co-op gameplay, so finding tabletop games that also offer a co-op experience is always a joy, especially since it is just the two of us playing together at home.

We admire the level of teamwork required to thwart the plans of the common enemies - instead of playing against each other, we are tasked with surviving the dreadful night by utilizing our unique skills and saving villagers. While we only just discovered Horrified last year, we immediately fell in love with the game play. This is a game that has quickly become one of Victoria’s favorites.

In Horrified, you will come face to face with the most iconic horror film monsters - Dracula, Frankenstein and the Bride of Frankenstein, The Wolf Man, The Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Invisible Man, and The Mummy. Each monster has its own abilities and requirements to be defeated or cured. No two game plays are alike.

We won’t lie - the first time we played, we lost to the monsters. After gaining a better understanding of the game style, we were able to save the town from being overrun by monsters. Every time we have introduced this game to friends, we have lost the first round because we want our friends to figure out on their own how they want to play. We do our best to not heavily influence their game decisions. Victoria is always fascinated by the choices other players make and how their choices might differ from what she would have done. It is entertaining to see how other people approach each challenge and to see if all of the different ways each player approaches the game can work together to save the town in the end.

We love that, although we are both more experienced players, the game is still challenging. The game has become, we don’t want to say necessarily easier, but more so that the difficulty has become more manageable as we have mastered the mechanics of the game and as we have learned the play style of each other.

Starting to find that the game is becoming too easy now that you have mastered playing against two monsters? Guess what! You can increase the challenge level by adding an additional monster, and you can just keep adding them if you’d like. But beware! You must complete each monster’s task before the town’s terror level reaches its maximum and before the monster deck runs out. If you don’t, you lose and the town will be overrun by the monsters. While you don’t necessarily have to follow the rule, it is highly recommended that you randomly pick your character and the monsters, which forces you to adapt your strategy to the situation you are in. This adds a layer of complexity and challenge to the game, you never know how exactly the game will play out!

Horrified can play 1-5 players, ages 10 and up. It's an innovative and easy to learn game with varying levels of difficulty that will keep you coming back for more. We feel this game is perfect for a game night with friends or a family game night.

Do you dare to face off against these horrifying monsters?

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So there you have it - the games we have been busy playing this month. How many of these games have you played? What game(s) have been your go-to games this month? Let us know in the comments.