Another weekend is upon us. The second Saturday of 2024 and it seems to have come in pretty fast. Sneaky, like a thing that sneaks. Anyway it's a cool morning out, not too terrible but there could be some snow coming in later on this afternoon. Nothing like my buddy in Colorado, he told me this morning it's -11 there. That is unacceptable and I refuse. Anyway, here we are again and we're not too far out from some new releases... releasing. Let's look at some.
Expeditions: A MudRunner Game, is coming to all platforms except mobile, thankfully, on March 5th. I've mentioned this one recently because I've been ass deep in SnowRunner again nearing 920 hours of my life, in fact. Expeditions looks to use the same game engine as SnowRunner and have lots of the same type of game play but with a little different focus. Instead of carrying heavy materials to rebuild infrastructure of a fictional region of a non-fictional place in the world you'll be roaming largely uncharted semi-fictional places to complete exploration based objectives. There are some extra quality of life improvements added, for instance using a winch in Snowrunner is a one way action, you can only attach to a usable surface and pull. While in Expeditions it looks like you can not only carry ground anchors to place anywhere and attach to, but you'll also be able to pay out winch rope to lower a vehicle into an area as well as reel yourself in. There also seems to be an inventory of sorts for vehicle loadouts to suit your objectives. The ground anchors would be carried there, as well as things like a depth finder for water crossings and metal detectors, drones etc. Expeditions looks like a good time to me, here's a link from the Focus Entertainment website so you can see for yourself.
Lightyear Frontier is something I've been paying attention to for a while now. A cozy title where you'll hop in your mech style tractor to explore and farm a colorful alien world where a story line will also unfold. Stomp around and use your mech suit to build your farm then water and harvest your alien crops while wandering around and discovering secrets? Sign me up. Unfortunately this March release will only be one of early access. For the record I don't like that. I'm not into paying production companies and developers to beta test their games that could be cancelled at any moment, perhaps without a refund guaranteed. Still this is a step closer to a real release later, perhaps much later. We just don't know yet. Here's some info from the official site.
Pacific Drive is another one that caught my attention in the past year. If you were to think about a world similar to something like that of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Fallout or even Half Life with weird abandoned locations and anomalies in which you place yourself in an old station wagon that you'll need to customize and upgrade in order to get around and figure out what the hell is going on around here... that's what Pacific Drive is. This take place in what the game calls "The Olympic Exclusion Zone" somewhere in the Pacific northwest and it looks pretty intriguing to say the least. Here's a look from Polygon. Pacific Drive is set to get weird on February 22nd.
That's all from me this weekend guys. Have a good one and stay dry/warm or maybe wet?/cool depending on which hemisphere you live in. See you next time.
Okay what the hell is going on around here?
AJ: This past week, I was finally able to download Hi-Fi Rush on my new Series X (I'd heard good things), and I also just recently acquired a custom physical reproduction of the legendary Sega Genesis shmup, Thunder Force III (since I'd had some trouble finding an original copy in the wild). Odds are good that I will be enjoying both of those over the long weekend.
Scrooloose: I've been just wallowing in SnowRunner lately, but I also reinstalled 2017's Prey and I may just restart that. I remember stopping because holy shit what an info dump that game is, but it's also quite good.
Greywolfe: still saints row 2022. it goes slowly, because i only check in every couple of days. still in my "starting" phase with it. have the right car, now and the right bike. but there's one last set of clothes i want to buy and that's stupidly expensive. otherwise, making my way through roguebook. i /think/ i have a plan that might beat the third boss, but we'll see. [and that's technically "the end" of the game as best as i'm aware.]