Two Point Madness

The Steam holiday sale has been in full swing for well over a week and despite the fact that my wishlist has expanded, I'm happy to report that I've managed to quell any impulse buys.  The one and only purchase I have made has been the "Close Encounters" DLC for Two Point Hospital.  It had been quite awhile since I had last played TPH and I excitedly downloaded it onto my new(ish) PC.  I figured that once it downloaded I could hop right into the alien-infested madness of the new DLC, but there's where I was wrong.  Periodically I get irritated at the fact that the cloud save feature on Steam can be slow and so I've occasionally turned it off (before I decided the new PC was going to be a reality).  Welp--long-story-short...I had disabled those saves about midway through my initial completion of the game (I three starred every hospital because I am obsessive).  Since TPH is one of my favorite games, I wasn't too upset about having to re-play much of it and I've been putting my improved hospital administration skills to the test.

ALIENS!

I've read some very mixed things about TPH, but there's just something about it that manages to always pull me in.  I love micromanaging the details of my staff and hospital and trying to keep things running smoothly.  There's always a better way to do something and it's my goal to figure that out for every hospital.

Besides managing hospitals, I've been keeping my eyes on the 12 days of free giveaways on the Epic Store.  In various Epic giveaways I've snagged some interesting titles that I fully intend to check out at some point.  The 12 days games haven't been bargain bin rejects by any means--I grabbed Superhot and Hyperlight Drifter--a couple of quality games that I have wanted to play, but haven't necessarily wanted to buy.  The giveaway has also featured some awesome titles like Ape Out, Celeste, and FTL.

I've also found myself bouncing around into various games for brief stints.  I did some more lawyering in Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney, but I can only handle its goofiness for so long (I still have one last part of the trilogy to play).  I also found myself venturing back into Borderlands 3--a game that I felt has seen improved gameplay, but is still just more of the same--and starting up a new playthrough with a different character.  This time around I decided to go with FL4K and despite being underwhelmed at first, I'm starting to enjoy the playstyle.  FL4K can summon a variety of beasts to accompany it and, since I'm playing solo, it's really nice to have a critter that can tank and soak up bullets while I stand back and fire away.

And, on an almost completely un-gaming related note, I've been enjoying Netflix's The Witcher series.  I had very low hopes for it and have been pleasantly surprised.  I've seen some people commenting on social media that "it's the best video game adaptation I've seen!"  I would hesitate to call it an adaptation of the games as the series has largely followed the storylines in the books.  The first episode started off a bit slow, but I've enjoyed the very obvious nods to the books and some of the backstory that has been built into the show.  I've particularly enjoyed Yennefer's backstory and can see how it is also somewhat linked to concepts in the books--it's mentioned that sorceresses use glamours to alter their appearances (and make them all very beautiful) and there is a moment in the books when Geralt jokes to Yen about how all sorceresses probably look under those glamours (hunchbacked, traditionally hideous and witchy)--and then the show went there and gave Yen those very traits.  I'm a little sad that they changed Dandelion's name though :(