Best Games I Played in October 2023
A little bonus content from your friendly neighborhood gamer witch
Hello, happy November, and SURPRISE! I don’t normally send out a Wednesday newsletter, but since I missed Monday this week I thought I’d try a little something different to start off a new month.
Over at the old book blog, I do a monthly recap of the best books I read each month. You can check that out here if you’re curious.
However, now that it’s my actual job to play video games and write about them, I am playing a wider range of games every month as well. I thought it might be fun to round up what I’ve been up to gaming wise. It’s an experiment, so if you hate it, please let me know (gently—I’m sensitive).
Okay, here are the best games I’ve been playing this past month!
Baldur’s Gate 3
This is an obvious one since its wormed its way into the newsletter the last several weeks, but my gosh is this game fun. For those who don’t know, this is a Dungeons & Dragons game where you build a character and play as a whole party of various companions making your way through the story.
It’s also an incredibly thirsty game where you can romance basically everyone. Some of them simultaneously. Some of them, as I learned the hard way, not so much.
Dave the Diver
This game is so cozy! By day, you dive into the sea and catch fish. At night, you serve them up in a sushi restaurant. It has a nice sense of humor and fun pixel graphics as well.
I probably wouldn’t have picked this one up if it wasn’t for work, and I’m so glad I did. It’s super fun. I have been playing on PC, which my old Yoga can barely handle, but it also recently came out for Switch.
Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
Another one I might not have picked up if not for work. This one is fun with a little bit of similarity to the PS2 game I loved back in the day. You play as both Peter and Miles and it’s very heavily story driven, which is both fun and a smidge railroady at times.
I am exceptionally bad at it, as my husband likes to remind me every time I play. But I do enjoy slinging around the city fighting crime. Alas, no delivery of pizzas or saving of small children’s balloons so far. (These were both staples in the Spider-Man 2 video game from the aughts, which featured Tobey Maguire aka the One True Spidey).
Pokemon Sleep
Okay, this is barely a game, and I have several complaints about it. But Pokemon Sleep is just so darn cute, I’ve become addicted. It’s a sleep tracking app where you study Pokemon’s sleep styles by raising a Snorlax to attract sleepy Pokemon while you sleep at night. You feed Snorlax 3x a day and then you track your sleep at night.
My main issue is you have to have the app on all night to track sleep, and it doesn’t allow you to listen to other sounds. As someone who needs to lull her anxious thoughts into submission with podcasts, this isn’t ideal. And yet I can’t resist making sure I wake up to some sleepy Pokemon to study and befriend. What can I say?
And that, in a nutshell, is what I’ve been up to video game wise the past month or so! Let me know if this was at all interesting to read, as I’m thinking about trying to make it a monthly thing.