Wot I’m NOT Playing

Those games I’m surprised I’m not playing…

This is a counterpart to the Wot I’m Playing: 2022 articles, featuring 10 games on my list. Part 1 of that list is available to read here , and part two of the list will be out sometime tomorrow.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here. This is indeed the OPPOSITE of those 10 games I talk about earlier… These are the games that I’m surprised that I’m not playing, for whatever reason. Could be my gaming priorities have changed. Or could be the game is disappointing to me. Or that it just needs more time in the theoretical gaming oven. For whatever reason, here’s the games that I’m NOT playing.

Again, all these games are PC Games based.

Total War: Warhammer 3: This one would shock past me. The third installment of the gaming tour-de-force offers the forces of Chaos, Ogres, Cathay, Kislev, and even a Daemon Prince you can customize for your own style of gaming. Yet it’s barely hanging on to the sizeable amount of my SDD that is currently holds. Why?

Because a lot of the factions play very much the same. Or the Campaign that comes with TWW3 is a bit of distraction from the game’s core gameplay. Or the fact that all the factions in TWW3 are new, and old favorites won’t be available until the Immortal Empires beta comes out (currently planned for August of this year). The bugs. God the bugs.

I’m pretty sure that once Immortal Empires is released, this game will rocket off this list and onto the Wot I’m Playing list, but you only get one chance to make a first impression, and for a game as hyped as TWW3 was, it’s a pretty blah start.

Baldur’s Gate 3: Ok. Mea culpa. I really should have taken the warning that this was a sliver of the game in early access, and it would be quite a while before release. I didn’t think it would be THIS long, however. I played a bit when Early Access started, but I decided with the low number of levels and classes available, that this game would best be enjoyed fresh upon full campaign release. Of course, that is almost definitely 2023 or (gulp) later. Solasta: Crown of the Magister (which was in Part 1 of the Wot I’m Playing list) has filled the fifth edition D&D niche for now

Blood Bowl 3: I was hyped to get into the Closed Beta, but I bounced off this game a bit. Why? Because it focused on a style of Multiplayer that I don’t like. Random games that don’t mean anything in a league basis. I’ll be playing BB3 when it comes out, but likely 95% of it will be in singleplayer, so this beta told me nothing on how the Singleplayer AI will provide a challenge. Wait and see.

Back 4 Blood: A lot of this is on my gaming tastes changing a bit. “Left 4 Dead style gameplay, updated to modern graphics? SOLD!”. I forgot that Left-4-Dead style gameplay requires Left-4-Dead style AI, or worse yet, Left-4-Dead style PLAYERS. Yeah. After my second attempt ended with people yelling at each other, I uninstalled the game, and I don’t think I’m going back.

Out of the Park Baseball 23: Past me is again screeching at me through the time-space continuum… “What? You’re burned out on OOTP????? Where’s the “Oh, let’s sim a league for a hundred years” type fun you loved the game series for, providing a baseball universe?” The problem is that OOTP seems to have caught the lootbox bug, and spent hundreds of hours on multiplayer gameplay, loot boxes and auction houses. Maybe it’s because they’ve crammed every feature that they think worthwhile into the single-player experience. Maybe the money from lootboxes and Auction Houses is too much for anyone to resist. However, while I’ve bought it, I haven’t opened it in a few weeks, and I’ve made a conscious decision to avoid Perfect Team completely this year.

So tomorrow, we’ll look at “Wot I’m Playing” Part 2, and after that it’s a look forward at the games I want to play going forward in the future.