Time to Loot Journal: December 2019

And so the final day of the final month of the first year of my return to blogging comes to a close. It has been a blur of a month. A month of two parts. The part where work was still going on (right up until the 20th) and the part after, where holidays begun and kicked off a period of (relative) freedom.

The holidays have seemed to last an age already, and yet still flicker by in a heartbeat. I return to work on Monday 13th Jan, so I have a little over a week and a half remaining.

In terms of the year that has been — I don’t think I’ve really been struck by any particular insight to summarise how it went. Nor do I feel any particular change in the air over the year now ending in a different number.

In terms of gaming, after the 5 Game Challenge of November, I went a bit nuts on variety for a wee while. 18 different games played this month, and it wasn’t really until picking up Remnant: From Ashes again that I really settled anywhere. And that was just since the holidays started!

So I guess there is a good as any point to start. :)

Games this Month

Last month was the shortest list ever. This month has to be the longest (so far).

Not listed is Outer Worlds, ManicTime still can’t seem to track it through the Xbox file/process security. I would imagine I played it for 2 hours or less though, so I’m not going to put an estimate in for it.

So that aside, I played games for 81.72 hours over the course of December. Up 5.4 hours from November. Perhaps not as large a jump as I would have expected with the time off from work.

Overall PC time was 256.6 hours, up 31.9 hours from November.

December sat with gaming making up 31.9% of active time, down 2.1% from last month.

I’m not quite sure what I want to do with this display going forward. Start a new year? Keep it rolling into a mega chart akin to what Belghast does? Something else entirely?

Unsure! I’ve only started collecting this data since March, but it has been interesting to have. Keeping track in spreadsheet form exactly what games are played (like Bel) and even what games I acquire in a given month could be interesting for posterity too. We’ll see. :)

Gaming Goals

December’s Goals

• Warframe: Complete the restoration and build of my Railjack space craft, ready for when the patch comes that’ll let us fly that sucker.
  
• Transport Fever 2: Play enough to get a good feel for the game, and write an Impressions style post before end of month.
  
• The Outer Worlds (Optional Bonus Goal): Go back and finish this thing!!

Well… The song goes two out of three ain’t bad. Does the same apply for one of three? How about one of two, if we don’t count the bonus goal? No…? Ok, I thought that one might be a bit of a stretch.

I did get my Railjack built and flight ready. Even taken it out a time or two. But Railjack feels to be to be severely undercooked at the moment — so it’s probably going to be a while before I spend any serious time with it. It has a lot of potential… But it is unrealised potential at this stage.

With Transport Fever 2… Well, I suppose I can give myself half marks for this. I did write an impressions post of sorts. But as you can see above, I didn’t give the game a lot of time. When it became clear that it hadn’t significantly moved on from its predecessor in any gameplay sense, I decided it was best to just put it aside.

Outer Worlds likewise is being shelved. I just can’t get into it as much as I would like to. At surface level it seems to be everything I should love. I just… don’t. Mayhaps one day I’ll return to it as something once bounced off and later loved.

January’s Goals

Errrr… Well, I finished Remnant: From Ashes earlier today. So it seems a little silly to set it as any kind of goal now.

But beyond that I don’t really know what’s next. I think one of the friends who used to be very anti-Dark Souls has come around to being willing to give it a try after finishing Remnant with me. So there might be something there.

But unlike Remnant which relishes in co-op, and welcomes it with open arms for entire play sessions — Dark Souls is incredibly surly. It is first and foremost a Singleplayer game which begrudgingly allows short stints of co-op. Ended immediately upon completion of an area boss or death.

They each require use of a limited consumable to allow the host to summon in other players. I don’t know if this will last, as hot as they are on the idea right now.

So!

I think this month I might just set a single, singleplayer orientated goal:

• Finish my Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice playthrough.
  I am perhaps halfway through, maybe a little over. My excitement for the sequel is very high — so it’s probably a wise idea to actually finish the first one before it arrives!

The Blog this Month

I published only 11 posts in December, down 20 from last month. But last month I ran through another challenge of posting (at least) once every single day.

That brought Time to Loot up to a total of 201 published posts (yay, past the 200-post milestone) at the end of December. This will be 202. :)

Most Viewed Posts

1. Transport Fever: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started
2. Humble Choice: A Review (+December 2019 Titles)
3. Humble Monthly: December 2019 + Humble Choice is Here!
4. Heart of Rage: Tips for the Monitor
5. The Game Trailer with 53 Million Views

Later this month — I will for the first time pass the year mark for a blog, where I have also been consistently posting to it over that year. I’ve had a few blogiversary’s in the past, but typically with large gaps dotting the way there.

Here’s to hoping this lasts for more years to come! :)