As much shit as I give Baldur’s Gate 3 for being a mess that is overly reliant on community testing efforts to produce a playable game rather than hiring enough staff to test it themselves, the person they’ve hired to write their patch notes does a great job. They’re clear, humorous without being distracting, and convey a great deal of information. A wonderful example of good software update communication, if you ask me. Still, as much as I enjoyed reading the notes for the latest patch and I REALLY want to get into the game again, the idea of slogging through a whole new pile of bugs and whatever is going to turn into the next community bug report meme fills me with dread. That said, the latest patch seems far more geared towards stabalization and pushing the mechanics closer toward the desire end-goal the developer has communicated than previous patches. And they even released a new class as well!

Finally, now that Barbarians are an option, I’m ready to attempt a melee play-through (I’ve been doing Warlock and Rogue play-throughs since none of the other characters reliably hit hard enough to satisfy my craving for violence). There’s nothing quite like having a giant axe and just smacking a whole bunch of people with it. And, sure, Fighters can do that if you build then right, but apparently Barbarians get to throw people if the person is light enough and the barbarian is strong enough. Reading that one note convinced me to give the latest patch a try. Once another week or two (o eight) has passed, anyway. Gotta wait for a couple bug fixes to come out and Horizon Forbidden West is going to be taking up most of my time once I finally settle down to play it.

After a couple years of struggling to find new games I wanted to play, I’m very excited by the prospects of 2022. Pokémon Legends: Arceus got this year off to a great start, Horizon Forbidden West came out last week, there’s a Kirby game coming out in just over a month, and that’s just the first three months of the year. We’ve still got a potential Legend of Zelda game later this year and a whole pile of other games I’ve specifically made myself forget about so I don’t get too wrapped up in the hype to enjoy myself in the mean time. I mean, I know there’s a couple games off the latest Nintendo Direct that I’m looking forward to playing that I’ve made myself forget, if nothing else.

I used to play a lot of Destiny 2 and the latest updates for that are interesting enough that I’m having trouble resisting the urge to get back into it. I don’t enjoy the endless grind of Destiny, but some of that might have to do with how often I was playing alone when I made my last attempt to get and stay current with the game. If I get back into it this time, one of my friends is a leader in a group of players, so I’ll have people to play with most of the time and the opportunity to actually try getting decent at it again (I get too frustrated if I’m just playing alone).

I’m sure there’s plenty more to come this year. As I’ve said multiple times now, I made myself forget everything I heard about games coming out in the future since I can’t stand the hype train and know myself well enough to acknowledge that I’d begin obsessing over every detail I could get my hands on. This is better for me. Plus, it has the added benefit of being able to turn bad weeks around because I’ll suddenly realize a game is coming out this week that I was excited about but forget when it was releasing. Which is exactly what happened with Horizon Forbidden West (the day I wrote this, a week ago). Good times. I hope this year of games is as exciting for you as it is for me!