Five Game Challenge – Day 10: Looking Forward #1
Last year during the Five Game Challenge, every week or so, I posted a ‘Looking Forward’ piece that aimed to identify the games that were in or entering my sphere of awareness that threatened to knock me off the path of the challenge early. Looking back over those posts now I realise I had it easy last year.
It must’ve been a really quiet month for releases. I ended up repurposing those posts to simply ‘things I want to remember to take a look at once November is over.’
Not so this time!
In the span of two days I’m going to be up against the following temptations:
Assassin’s Creed Valhalla
It’s out. Right now. Today. I own it. I could be playing it.
Instead I’ve been making do with an inordinate amount of Let’s Play watching. Well, I say ‘watching’ but so far more accurate to say, ‘On in the background’ just as I’m going about my business.
I loved Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey though. I counted it as pinnacle of the series to date, even finishing it and then continuing to play on further. Something practically unheard of when it comes to me and single player games. It was also the game that brought me around on games having ‘photo modes’ as a semi-important feature.
And even though I didn’t end up writing about it in the end — I finished up the DLC, and have well over 100 hours in the game.
I was excited for the Assassin’s Creed with Vikings concept from the time it became rumour; especially given the additional context of a two-year break between Odyssey and this release.
So even as I write this post; I’m not entirely convinced I’ll remain resistant to the lure of this game.
But even if I do? Two days later…
Godfall
As a single-player experience, I’m far less excited for this one than Valhalla. Could resist this one easy-peasy in that context. No worries! Pffft. My resolve is STROOONG!
But as noted earlier (I am just now realising how similar this entry to Looking Forward is to that post, ah well) — the single-player aspect isn’t the main draw. As is generally the case with these looter genre games, it’s the co-op elements.
I might be safe though for now.
Friends are interested — but they’re still awaiting their GPU upgrade of choice (be it still on a stock wait list for a 3080, or awaiting the AMD equivalents to be available early December). And having seen the AMD RX6000 series Godfall showcase video, I can understand the desire to wait.
The PC experience shown in that video looks *so* much better than anything we’ve seen from the PS5 videos so far.
So this should work out for me!
However, there is one final temptation in this two day span that I’m currently aware of:
Borderlands 3: Designer’s Cut DLC (Kick-off of Season Pass 2)
This one is also out today actually. I had no idea it was so close until I just happened across the news somewhere.
Similar to Godfall, I can easily hold-off on this one were it just me looking down the barrel of a single-player experience. But it’s much more likely that Borderlands 3 will make a co-op return while new GPUs are awaited and this DLC landing now essentially cements the fact it’ll happen.
This first DLC (of two, the second being Director’s Cut) of the season pass brings the ‘Arms Race’ gamemode highlighted in the video above which seems to be some unholy mix of The Division’s Survival Mode, The Dark Zone and the wider play on Battle Royales. Although this one isn’t a PvP experience at all — it’s all against NPCs and can be done as a co-op experience (of course).
It also brings another skill-tree for each of the classes which you can take a bit of a peak at here:
I’ve been almost exclusively a FL4K main for Borderlands 3, and the option of having a Loader Bot pet is appealing.
So yep… Lots more to tempt me off the path than there was last year.
Of the three, I think if Godfall somehow got picked up this month — that’d be the greatest risk to me adhering to the challenge. Valhalla even single-player a very close second however.
And these are just the ones I’m aware of right now. Hah.
