I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
December 30, 2023 - Day 364 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 395
Game: Outward Definitive Edition
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 26, 2019
Installation Date: Nov 30, 2023
Unplayed: 30d
Playtime: 37m
Outward Definitive Edition is a third-person fantasy RPG with survival mechanics.
The problem with any RPG released from here on out is that Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 both exist.
However it's worse for RPGs that were released before 2023, because between these two games, they've raised the bar so incredibly high, that most games are going to suffer in comparison.
Outward Definitive Edition is an updated release of Outward release in May 2022 that includes "quality of life" improvements; given the state of the game, I shudder to think what QoL was like beforehand.
However, in trying to be fair, I looked up RPGs that were released in 2018 & 2019; which means comparing it to games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Greedfall.
Unfortunately, even then it doesn't fare well. It just feels very rough around the edges, and frustrating to play.
As an example, whether you love it or hate it, most RPGs use some kind of encumbrance gameplay mechanic (and if you love encumbrance, I wonder what's wrong with you).
Outward leans heavily into the realism, which means it takes barely anything collected in your backpack before you're encumbered. Better* still, after combat I picked up two weapons from the mobs I'd just killed. One of them left me encumbered. The second left me completely unable to move.
Not that the screen indicated the change in any way. There's an icon that appears onscreen when you're over the encumbrance limit, but no warning to say I'd been completely immobilised. I thought the game had bugged out completely.
There's also a cooking mechanic (because survival gameplay as well) with some recipes, but also "manual cooking". I tried to cook something with fresh water and fresh raw salmon, but instead of boiled salmon, it resulted in "diseased mush". I probably shouldn't have eaten it, because eating it left me diseased, with an icon onscreen, and nothing to indicate how to resolve that.
It feels like the game wants you to work really hard to like it, and I'm glad that I got it in a bundle, because I don't feel bad about disliking it.
You've probably already guessed, but Outward Definitive Edition is a: