Well, here we are again. It's the weekend, I'm not sick anymore and there are WRUP things to discuss.
Did any of you out there get into the hype that came with, The Day Before? I myself never even heard of it, but it looks like a sort of cross between The Division and Day Z. A survival shooter that actually looks, visually, pretty marvelous. Game play it seems was not so good. Early access on Steam launched and soon reviews were mostly negative. The title was fraught with delays including one "indefinite" delay for consoles after saying it wouldn't happen until full PC release. Part of this set of delays was due to making the move to Unreal Engine 5. Others include trademark disputes and interoffice troubles. All of it and more added up to a disastrous release in early access. It's almost never a good idea to support early access by the way. Developer, Fntastic said soon after launch that the game had "...failed financially". This lead to Fntastic being closed as a studio and all development being stopped for The Day Before. According to GamesRadar, there's no word on whether refunds will be issued but servers are still live for now and The Day Before can still be purchased from its Steam store page. Do so at your own risk though.
I have 854 hours in SnowRuner and I still have four expansions to play through. I'm constantly impressed by the longevity of this game, it's ridiculous how much content is out there. Now there's a spin-off game coming out called, Expeditions: A MudRunner Game. MudRunner, of course was the precursor to SnowRunner and before that was Spintires. Expeditions seems to be a little smaller scale and focused more on exploration challenges than lumber and material deliveries. New environments and tools and one can assume new vehicles as well are put on display in this recent release date teaser from Focus Entertainment. From the look of it this appears to be the same engine as SnowRunner and that's both good and bad. The physics of SnowRunner are pretty excellent but there are some silly things that can happen in that game. E.G. an orange cone flipping an eighteen thousand pound vehicle. I'm sure it'll be something I fall into when it comes out on March fifth next year.
Speaking of release dates we finally have an idea of when the mech based farm sim, Lightyear Frontier is coming around. As luck would have it, also March 2024. Of course this is an early access date, so I'm not so sure I'd count it as released. I won't get it in early access. I've been burned before and of course there's the example given at the beginning of this very WRUP. But Lightyear Frontier is a game I'm looking quite forward to. Using a stompy tractor to build, plant, harvest and maintain sounds awesome to me, but there's also a fun looking exploration story line to follow on the alien world you inhabit. Check out the teaser here
Lords of the Fallen has a new free content update for the holiday season. You'll get some new spells, new quest lines, armor and weapons, plus snowballs. There's also an addition of unlocking boss weapon abilities which is something I feel should have been done at release. Part one is out now, Offerings to Orius with part two, Trial of Three Spirits coming on the 21st this month. I plan on jumping into it soon myself. If you're playing, make sure you're backing up those save files. Here's the info from GameInformer
What's on the list this weekend?
AJ: I just acquired a custom physical Genesis version of Daze Before Christmas, the incredibly festive, previously Australia-only, Mega Drive game. I also downloaded Have a Nice Death for the PS5, so I will likely be playing both of those a bit.
Scrooloose: New free seasonal content in Lords of the Fallen and More SnowRunner.