Mars: War Logs

I was pretty much out of new games to play outside game pass and thought that I should buy The Technomancer, the Spiders game I had skipped. However, before getting to play it, I read that another, even earlier game by the developers was set it in the same universe. The story of Mars: War Logs is not directly related to The Technomancer, but I reckoned I might as well pick it up too since it was cheap and going back to an older game after playing a later entry in a series is rarely pleasant.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I didn't expect to be back on Ubisoft+ so quickly but another month for 1€ was too great an offer to pass. During the month I played Assassin's Creed Valhalla, which I had previously dismissed because:

1. I hadn't played AC Origins yet,
2. I expected it to barely even run on my PC (the game's performance turned out to be about the same as AC Odyssey's though, meaning just about playable 45 FPS with a mix of medium and high settings), and
3. The game's not fully done yet, still receiving updates and DLC.

One title update during the month even introduced an immensely annoying bug with the constantly appearing player avenge quests, making every interaction with any world object to constantly re-accept the quest (show the text and play the associated sound effect). 

The Ascent

As the actual last game to finish off my game pass summer, I chose to play The Ascent, the freshly released (at the time) debut game of Neon Giant. It is a cyberpunk twin-stick shooter whose strong suit is its presentation although I found its other aspects adequate as well.

I bounced pretty hard off Solasta: Crown of the Magister

I was looking for one more game to play during my summer with game pass and ended up on Solasta: Crown of the Magister, a game on my wishlist. However, I didn't get far into it before I uninstalled it.

Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

With Obsidian Entertainment now under Microsoft, the Pillars of Eternity games being on the Game Pass is hardly surprising. Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is even available as the full, Ultimate Edition. I wasn't expecting it to be a huge improvement from the mediocre first game due to this one's reception having been pretty lukewarm as well, but I was still looking forward to continuing my character's journey.

House of Suns

I had put House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds on my list of readings based on a recommendation I encountered on Youtube. Why it had been recommended and what the book was even about I had already forgotten by the time I finally got to it. Thus I got to dive pretty much blind into this science fiction novel.

Torchlight III

The story of Torchlight III began with the founding of Runic Games back in 2008 by brothers Max and Erich Schaefer (co-founders of Blizzard North and creators of Diablo) and Travis Baldree (creator of Fate), plus others not relevant to this post. Runic released the first Torchlight in 2009 and its quite successful sequel Torchlight II in 2012. In 2014, Baldree and Erich Schaefer left the company to found Double Damage Games. I remember thinking that it was a considerable loss and a bad omen for the action RPG series. And indeed in 2017, instead of continuing Torchlight, Runic released Hob, an isometric action-adventure game.

Assassin's Creed Origins

To get more value out of my 6€ Ubisoft+ month, I decided to play Assassin's Creed Origins as well. Origins is not quite as content-bloated as AC Odyssey which came after it but I still barely managed to complete it before the month was up. You really start feeling Ubisoft Open World fatigue when you finish two of such games at 100% completion back to back.

Death's End

死神永生 (Sǐshén yǒngshēng), the final volume of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy has a slightly different name in English than it has in Finnish. Google translate says the squiggles mean 'death immortality' so I'm not sure which is more accurate: Death's End or Kuolema on ikuinen ('death is eternal', or maybe 'death is forever' like how one James Bond novel by John Gardner is titled and translated). A character in the novel does say death to be the only lighthouse that is always lit so I'm kind of favoring the Finnish name.

Immortals Fenyx Rising

Getting a month of Ubisoft+ maybe wasn't the most optimal course of action while also having an active 3-month Game Pass subscription going. But it was offered for a lowered price and I didn't know how long that offer would last. And most importantly, I wanted to play Ubisoft's colorful action-adventure game from last year, Immortals Fenyx Rising.