Category: Video Games

Looking At The Most Popular Games On Steam Deck

Published August 19, 2024

I’ve written two articles so far about the popularity of certain games on the Steam Deck, one in which it was based on information from the official Steam Deck Twitter account and the other being based on a list Valve released showing the most popular Steam Deck titles over a one year period. However, Valve have gone above and beyond and have now added a Steam Deck section to their stats page which updates on a daily basis and shows the top 100 games being played on the Steam Deck either by week, month or year. With that being the case, I thought it worth looking at some of the most popular games on the Steam Deck.

Looking at the monthly statistics, the top 10 don’t seem to be terribly surprising and fall in line with the information we’ve had before. The most played game of the past month has been Elden Ring but that makes perfect sense to me as the DLC just came out recently. Stardew Valley, Balatro, Baldur’s Gate 3, Hades, Vampire Survivors and GTA V are mainstays while Fallout 4 has been bolstered by the recent TV series, No Man’s Sky has received a new major update and Dave the Diver has also been updated along with a recent sale.

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Why You Should Check Out Gamedle

Published August 5, 2024

I can’t quite remember the specifics of how I discovered Gamedle but I do know that it was through a recommended video on YouTube and it clearly intrigued me enough that I decided to go check out the website itself. Little did I realise how addictive I would find it and that is predominantly due to a particular game mode. Since I’ve been enjoying it so much, I thought it might be interesting to take a quick glance at what Gamedle is, what I like about it and why I think you should check it out.

Gamedle can be roughly divided into four game modes (with a fifth one on the way) with a few variations. The most prominent mode is what is affectionately referred to as Classic. In this, you are given an image of a video game cover which has been highly pixelated in a 3×3 grid. One part of this grid is clear from the beginning and each guess that you make clears another section, giving you more information steadily. However, guesses are limited and you won’t be able to clear the whole image before you run out of chances. Additionally, you’re informed about whether the games you’ve guessed are part of the same franchise or saga as the answer. For those wondering what the difference is, I’m going to use the Mega Man series as an example. All Mega Man games would be part of the same franchise but a Battle Network game would not be part of the same saga as the Mega Man X series.

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King Yama And Japanese Popular Culture

Published July 22, 2024

I was watching Ultraman Taro when a kaiju, Enmargo, appeared that caught my attention. Bearing a sword and shield, his crown adorned with the kanji for King and his chestplate reading Great King, I immediately recognised the influence for this kaiju, King Yama. Of course, the only reason I recognised this in the first place was because of his prevalence in Japanese media. However, I thought that, at least in the West, knowledge of him was obscure enough that I should take a look at who King Yama is as well as some of his appearances in Japanese popular culture.

Let’s start by taking a look at who King Yama is. Yama has his origins in India, specifically within Hinduism, where he serves as the god of the dead. As Buddhism spread from India, he, along with numerous other deities, were similarly dispersed and reinterpreted by various regions and cultures. The Buddhist interpretation of Yama made him a dharmapala, a wrathful deity, who presides over Narakas, the Buddhist hells. When he reached Japan, he was named Enma, often King Enma or Great King Enma. As a result, his impact on Japanese culture with regards to the concepts of hell should not be overlooked.

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My Issue With Celebrities In Video Games

Published July 15, 2024

It was with sadness that I saw an article recently stating “Embracer has closed Alone in the Dark studio Pieces Interactive“. The amount of layoffs within the video game industry currently is, quite frankly, disgusting and it’s sad to see the effort to revive an important franchise destroy an entire studio. However, I will admit that I had a problem with the way the game was marketed, that being with such an intense focus on the celebrities starring in it. Besides the fact that I didn’t immediately know who David Harbour or Jodie Comer were, I have problems with this strategy and the mindset in general. Therefore, I thought that I should take this opportunity to discuss my issue with celebrities in video games and why I think it’s a much bigger problem than most people realise.

The first time I ever thought about this issue was when I played Dishonored for the first time back in 2019. I knew that there were at least a few celebrities in the cast but I was quite surprised when I reached the credits and saw how many of them there were. However, a particular part of the credits ended up rubbing me the wrong way, that being the mention of a company called Blindlight and the specific term “Celebrity Acquisition, Casting And Voice Production”. When I saw this, it made me think about how these people had been sought out rather than being cast in a more typical manner. What did this mean? How much were they paid to star and, more importantly, how much did they ultimately contribute to the experience?

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The Obsession With Video Game Graphics Must Stop!

Published July 8, 2024

I was perusing the news recently when I saw a headline from PC Gamer called “Oof: Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League lost Warner Bros. $200 million—which is $25 million more than the original 2016 movie cost to make“. This didn’t really surprise me as I could tell player enthusiasm was poor and that the game felt like a malicious attempt to milk consumers for money but there was one particular quote that stood out to me as being particularly infuriating. In the last paragraph, it notes “Despite the internal concerns among frontline workers, executives from Warner Bros. kept reviewing demonstrations of the game and sending laudatory feedback, praising the graphics and saying they expected Suicide Squad to become a billion-dollar franchise.” While I’ve touched on the topic in the past, I’ve felt compelled to write about how I feel the video game industry has an unhealthy obsession with video game graphics and why they need to stop!

Let me start with my personal issue with this quote and what it represents. I’ve found that when it comes to video game criticism, one of the easiest topics to discuss is the visual presentation. Ask nearly anyone who has only a passing interest in video games about their thoughts on a particular title and, in all likelihood, the first thing they’ll bring up will be the graphics. To some degree, this is understandable. You don’t even need to play the game in order to comment about its visuals and there exists an unfortunate tendency to break the old proverb “don’t judge a book by its cover” by judging games purely by graphics. If the biggest takeaway that these executives had was that they liked the graphics then it signals to me that they don’t have any clue when it comes to game design or what people look for in games.

I think the lesson to be learned about Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League is that game design should take precedence over graphics and spectacle.

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Sony’s Stupid Decisions With Their PC Strategy Is Enraging Me

Published June 10, 2024

I’ve been talking about Sony and their PC releases for over four years now. What was once optimism has slowly decayed over the years into despair, bafflement and anger as Sony continues to make mistake after mistake. I thought this had peaked last year with Sony’s terrible PC port of the The Last of Us Part 1, their poor marketing for Returnal and Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart and their steadfast refusal to port the game that PC gamers really want from them, that being Bloodborne. However, Sony have somehow managed to top themselves with the debacle that erupted over the past month and, as of the writing of this article, have not fully rectified. Therefore, I thought it time to explain how Sony’s continually stupid decisions when it comes to their PC strategy is enraging me.

When it came to PC this year, Sony actually started off surprisingly strong. Their first major title to be released on PS5 and PC simultaneously, Helldivers 2, was released near the beginning of February and turned out to be one of the megahits of the year with Sony stating that it has become their fastest selling PlayStation title ever! With PC sales making up a majority, it was perhaps the clearest sign that Sony should take the PC market seriously and make significant changes to their strategy in order to both satisfy PC gamers and to become more profitable. Additionally, people were quite happy to learn that Ghost of Tsushima was being ported and, while it was nowhere near the megahit that Helldivers 2 was, Sony’s release of Horizon Forbidden West on PC proved quite successful.

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When Games Make Me Rethink Game Design

Published May 20, 2024

I would like to think that I’ve played more games than the average person. Therefore, it would make sense that I would gradually grow used to the way games within specific genres are designed so that I can easily expect what type of game I’m about to play. However, there are times when I come across a game whose game design catches me off-guard. Depending on the game, this can either be a good thing or a bad thing but, in the situations where it’s good, they can cause me to look at the individual elements within a game in a brand new way. Given that, I thought I might share some of the times where games have made me rethink game design and what those elements were.

I’m going to skip the early years when I was discovering video games for the first time as the key word in this article is “rethink”, something which requires a basic understanding before it can happen. I spent many years playing games with some of my fondest memories being when I first discovered JRPGs, a Christmas morning with a new console and game and meeting my best friend because I overheard her talking about a game I had played. However, I think the first time I ever had to reexamine how games were designed was when I played a game called Dark Souls.

A promo image for Dark Souls Remastered.

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Insanity Difficulty Made Me Appreciate The Gameplay Of The Mass Effect Trilogy

Published May 6, 2024

I recently picked up Mass Effect Legendary Edition, a rerelease of the Mass Effect trilogy, and decided to play through the three games, something I was excited to do since I’d never played the third game before. Upon glancing at the achievements, I noticed that there were achievements for completing the three games on its highest difficulty setting, Insanity. Since I’d have the option to switch difficulty midgame if I found it to be too challenging or unpleasant, I decided to give it a try and I’m glad I did as insanity difficulty made me appreciate the gameplay of the Mass Effect trilogy in a way that I didn’t before.

I should start by saying that I had played both Mass Effect 1 and 2 at their lowest difficulty in my youth, a practice that I wouldn’t shed until years later as well as playing the Soldier class which basically just meant that they’re a weapons expert. I was looking to change things up for this playthrough so, after some brief research, I settled on the Infiltrator class as they specialised in using a sniper rifle as well as some tech abilities. This decision was probably the right one for insanity difficulty as I’ll get onto in a bit.

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My Current Plans For Streaming Video Games

Published April 15, 2024

About a year ago, I released a blog post called “A Harmless Bit Of Self-Promotion” which covered much of the content that I’ve been producing as of late. However, besides a few things that I can’t talk about yet, something new that I’ve been trying lately is to stream myself playing games. Now that it’s been a couple of months, I thought now was as good a time as any to take a look at my current plans for streaming video games, how you can access the content I’ve already made and what you should expect in the future.

Let’s start, of course, with where and when you can find me streaming. I’m currently streaming games on Twitch every Sunday (or, if circumstances prevent me from doing so, Saturday) at around 2pm IST. I’m a variety streamer with the games I’m choosing to play being titles from my video game backlog with one caveat, I’m currently staying away from games with an excessively long playtime, as determined by HLTB, as I don’t want to spend too long playing a single game this early on as I think I can catch more people’s attention with a wider range of titles.

The three games I’ve streamed so far as of this article.

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A Look At The Top Played Games On Steam Deck Last Year

Published April 8, 2024

I remember the days when people would loudly declare “Single-player games are dead” and, thankfully, this has not come to pass. I touched on this well over a year ago when I compared the most popular games on Steam with the most popular games on the Steam Deck and found that single-player games were thriving on the handheld. As part of their Spring Sale, Valve have released a list of the top 100 games on the Steam Deck from March 2023 to March 2024 in order of highest daily active player count. While I certainly won’t be going through the entire list within this article, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the top played games on the Steam Deck last year, discuss some that stand out to me for one reason or another and why this list signals that single-player games have a long, healthy and prosperous future awaiting.

Let’s start with which games from this list that I’ve played on my Steam Deck within the past year, thus contributing to their ranking. Working from the bottom up, the first game from these top 100 that I played on my Steam Deck within the last year is Middle-Earth: Shadow of War. I had enjoyed the first game enough that, already owning the second due to Humble Bundle, I decided to give it a chance. I didn’t really feel like it did enough to distinguish itself from the original and, while certainly enjoyable in a braindead manner, I was more than ready for the end when I finally finished the game. I’d played Monster Hunter Rise before March of last year but I picked up the Sunbreak DLC this year and played through that recently. It was nice to return to Monster Hunter but I will say that I thought there was a bit too much repetition of monsters from the base game throughout although particularly at the beginning. Finally, the only other one I played on the Steam Deck in the past year was Vampire Survivors. I knew of this game for a long time but I got it as part of a charity bundle on Fanatical and decided that I should give it a shot. It has proven to be a surprisingly addictive experience and I love how the achievements continually unlock more and more content.

The top 22 games (it was the most I could fit and still have it be readable!)

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