Gaming Dilemma: The Struggle of Choosing from Must-Have Releases

A College Gamer's Confessions on Balancing Passion and Budget

Nick Pasta

May 11, 2023

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Sigh…..

It seems that every time I feel that I have a modicum of financial stability a bunch of games come out of the woodwork and threaten my very existence with the need to play them.

As a college student in my 20’s and I have neither the money, nor the notoriety to even fathom purchasing all of these games. Considering my limited budget, I have absolutely no right to be purchasing any of these games with the expectation of reviewing them.

It is with a heavy heart that I write this article to express my sorrow at the list of games that I will desperately be fighting myself not to buy.

Age Of Wonders 4

I would not dismiss you for not knowing what this game is, or anything about it. That’s fine. The elevator pitch is that AOW4 is a Civilization like game with a little bit more of an RPG bend. Giving it a vibe similar to Total War: Warhammer, but without the Total War parts in favor of a more Might and Magic style combat. Somehow landing itself exactly in ‘My alley.’ The main draw for me is the extensive race creation screen reminiscent of Stellaris’s race creator.

All of that means its a civilization management game that takes place on a big grid in a fantasy setting where you get to create your own fantasy race, create armies, and fight simulated battles on a turn based grid.

I’m very down.

Legend Of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

Yes, yes it goes without saying. The biggest release of the year… probably a game of the year contender. The game I’ve been looking forward to for eons.

My relationship with the first game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, is counter to what the online consensus is. People online really liked the first game, but had a lot of caveats with the way many of the systems work. The weapon durability system was something that received a lot of flack.

Perhaps for me it was just timing or circumstance, but I really had no issues with the original Breath of the Wild. I really liked basically everything about it as far as I can remember. I found the hidden temples to be repetitive and slightly tedious, but other than that, I loved my time with it.

As a result of that I have tried my best to remain as spoiler free as possible for this new game coming out. I stopped watching trailers and pre-release footage of the game in order to go into the game knowing as little as possible.

One of those things that you only get a couple opportunities in your life to do. I suppose my issue, being so closely related to games, and games news, is that innevitably things slip through the cracks.

News articles with spoiler screenshots that I cannot unsee. But I can only assume it will be worse after the game comes out. News articles will be quick to upload guides for how to beat the entire game.

Looking forward perhaps the only way to preserve my current state of awareness about the game is to buy it at launch and avoid gaming news until I’m done with it. Which puts this as the only game on the list I’m really, really considering buying.

Darkest Dungeon 2

This is one of the few games on the list that I actually already own.

For those of you who are unaware Darkest Dungeon 2 is a sequel to a very good, and possibly genre-defining game of Darkest Dungeon. Darkest Dungeon 2 has just released on steam. So how is it that I already own the game?

Well the game, was, in early access…. on the Epic Games store. I would not blame you for not knowing about the games early access period, as it was hard to find. Very few people that I know actively search the Epic Games store of their own volition, so I assume that the early access period was not on most people’s radars.

However, now that the game is released it is available on steam! Yay! From what I played a while ago it was very good, I recommend giving it a look!

Silica

WOAH there. Old person alert!!! BEEP BEEP BEEP!

I am an old gamer. That’s not entirely true. I started playing games on the computer as a child, I grew up with a Nintendo 64, and I slowly grew into playing PC games from watching early youtubers showcase them on “FREE GAMES” youtube videos.

That means that I was exposed to a lot of experimental games as a child, some of which went on to be very successful. Like: Minecraft, for example. While others crashed and died, and I haven’t seen attempted for a long time.

This actually is a shame, because their death said nothing of their quality. Many of these game genre’s that died were actually a lot of fun. They failed due to their inability to capture enough of the market to stay afloat.

One such genre is the RTS/FPS hybrid. What does that mean? RTS/FPS is an older more experimental hybrid genre of two different games smashed together into one thing. Like chicken and waffles. Yet like chicken and waffles, I very much enjoyed this combo.

RTS games are a top down “Commander” style game where you control an army against another army.

FPS games are games where you play a soldier on the ground shooting other soldiers.

What if you put them together? One person plays the commander, and everyone else plays the soldiers. Sounds pretty neat. Which it was.

The main issue with these games is command hierarchy. Only one person being randomly in-charge means that the quality of the games varies greatly depending on the commander skill level. Its inherently new-player averse. Meaning it heavily punishes anyone who doesn’t know what they are doing.

More modern FPS games with more strategic elements have slowly distributed this power up among the soldiers to make command a little bit more even. Allowing the games to evolve more emergently instead of having the teams fate decided by the skill of a single individual.

Think of Rainbow 6 Siege. This game shares some elements of an RTS and FPS, but each player is in charge of their own unique set of skills that they contribute to their team. So if one player is better than another they can make up for the worse persons lack of skill… sometimes.

Silica aims to bring back this older style of FPS/RTS hybrid, and its being done by a reputable studio. Bohemia Interactive. From what I’ve seen it’s pretty jank, but for such a niche genre I hope it does well.

VoidTrain

AHHHH! Its a game I mentioned in a previous list from earlier this year. SEE THAT HERE. It just came out in early access…. to… middling reviews.

Sad to see for sure, but honestly somewhat to be expected for an early access game. I was definitely looking forward to this one, and still am to a certain extent.

LET THEM COOK!

is where I’m at for Voidtrain at the moment. My wallet can only handle so much.