Time to Loot Journal: February 2020

A leap year post! The next time I get to do one of these, this blog will be five years old. Crazy. I’d like to believe that Time to Loot will be alive and well at that point, but imagining that far into the future seems nigh impossible. Even though this has been a tougher month in some respects, the feeling that this place is different to the blog’s I’ve run before.

Or more likely, I’m different from those earlier attempts at livin’ the blogging life. That plus a better understanding of my motivation for doing this thing.

In any case. The time-warp effect of the new year I noted last month seems to have passed for the most part. Just a normal month.

Albeit a month where for the first time since I started creating gaming goals I didn’t achieve any of the goals I set for myself. Whoops.

Gaming Goals

February’s Goals

• Finish the ‘Elsweyr’ story content in Elder Scrolls Online.
  By which, I’m not including the ‘Trial’ (a raid) necessarily, but certainly all the solo and small-group content. I’m almost done with Northern Elsweyr in this regard as I have in fact completed the main story chain for the zone. But I do still have a few more side quests to complete before I run off to Southern Elsweyr.
  
• Finish my ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’ playthrough.
  Probably not quite halfway through, and it appears to be a longer game than Hellblade. Even so, it fell off my play-rotation when Monster Hunter World: Iceborne barged in like a Diablos in heat and destroyed everything else in its path.

So… Yup. Didn’t do either of these things.

I’m going to put ESO back on the shelf again for a while. As much as I tend to enjoy it in the moment, there’s just… something… which means I don’t ever latch onto it for long. Having said that, I did finish Northern Elsweyr in full. Main and side story quests. There is still Southern Elsweyr to go at some point before I jump into the Greymoor content when that comes out later in the year.

As for ‘A Plague Tale’, I’m going to try set the same goal again for March. I came close to loading it up any number of times, but every time I came close some other distraction arose. Given how long it took me to finish Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, this doesn’t really surprise me overly.

March’s Goals

• Finish my ‘A Plague Tale: Innocence’ playthrough.
  Probably not quite halfway through, and it appears to be a longer game than Hellblade. Even so, it fell off my play-rotation when Monster Hunter World: Iceborne barged in like a Diablos in heat and destroyed everything else in its path. Take two.

• Play ‘Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2’ and blog about the experience for #MaybeInMarch
  During #loveyourbacklog week, I noted that Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is the game that has, if not actually spent the longest amount of my time on my backlog then is certainly the one that has spent the longest time there while still being thought about from time to time.

Games Played in February

Welp, holidays well and truly gone now. Total gaming hours returned to a much more normal 75.7, down 45 hours from January where I had until the 13th of the month off.

Wolcen no doubt would have seen more play, if not for the various launch issues and boss bugs. I am at least pleased to be able say that the worst of these are now over. The servers seem fairly stable and the freezing boss bug of act 3 has been resolved. Perhaps time for more end-game this month! :)

Games 5 through 8 were all from this month’s Humble Choice too. Book of Demons is likely to see some more play time in the future too, I quite enjoyed it. And like the comments noted on the Humble Choice post, it is nothing like Slay the Spire beyond the fact both employ a card mechanic.

Book of Demons has much more in common with Diablo (1, in particular) than it does Slay the Spire. Even after the relatively short time with it so far, I feel like I have enough to say about it to populate a post. So I’ll hold off on too much more for now. :)

The Blog

I published 10 posts this month (including this one), down 2 from January. With the additional family drama this month, this isn’t too surprising. There are any number of times where I might’ve done a post but was otherwise occupied.

Overall? Up to 224 published posts. Just one off the halfway mark to the next milestone of 500 posts.

I’m not sure if my post rate will be any higher this month, so I still expect the 500 mark to fall sometime after Time to Loot’s second birthday.

Most Viewed Posts

1. Transport Fever: Things I Wish I Knew When I Started
2. Humble Choice: February 2020
3. Humble Choice: January 2020
4. Love Your Backlog Week — 2020
5. Very Much NOT Up at Five

And just as a quick update on the sleep goal setting? Well, I didn’t quite get up early on Day 3 (Friday) either. But it seems that Saturday is going to be the day. Like last week, I found myself wide awake and rearing to go at five. Of course on a day where it is completely unnecessary. xD