Way back when, there was this cool game called Uplink. It was a hacking simulator. You bounce your connection off of hacked machines, hide your steps, steal data. It was sort of close to how real hacking works, but it was just different enough and directionless to a point that it was kind of overwhelming. It was a hard game.

Hacknet is something of an Uplink-inspired indie game. It’s terms and tools are much closer to the real world. It’s also quite a bit more straightforward. It’s paced well enough, with a mixture of contract-type hacking jobs, and some narrative missions that lead to a story conclusion. The mission objectives are clear enough that I never failed for incompletion. However, I found some missions were either offered before I had the tools to complete them, or without ever having the tools and forcing me to abort the contract to continue.

To complete missions, you have to combine your tools with your knowledge. An early mission involves a counter-hack. Someone has stolen a file. You need to get on their server, find the file, and delete it. The tools will get you into the server, but you’re on your own for finding the file. Part of it is knowing where to look, and part is knowing what you’re looking for. If you think you’ve got it right, you send a reply to the customer, and get a “contract successful” email. If you didn’t, the game will stop you from replying with a “mission incomplete” screen.

On most servers, there’s no particular danger to browsing around and screwing up. However, some will start tracing your location. If you let the trace catch you, you’re thrown into a minigame in which you have to reset your own IP address by hacking your ISP. It’s on a short timer, so you move from the intense countdown of the trace, to an even more intense countdown before you’re disconnected. It’d make for some really cool moments, if it were a little better explained the first time it happens. I didn’t have a firm grasp on what to do, so I kind of just sat there until I lost. Not great.

But the highs of the game are rather high. It’s fun to try to solve the puzzles getting into servers, doing it under the timer of the trace, and getting out. Some parts are less developed than others, and the appeal might be limited to people who have an interest in computer security, but it’s a good game for a weekend. Or a day, it really only took me 5 something hours to complete.

The Steam winter sale is starting tomorrow. It’s kind of the best time to catch up on all of the games you might have missed in the previous year because it’ll probably be on sale. This year is the same in that regard, but there have been changes to how Steam runs annual sales.

Big annual Steam sales used to be pretty complex affairs! There were daily sales, flash sales, community sales, and sometimes more. Now, there will be just one sale price. Everything that is on sale will be at the same discount throughout the entire sale. In effect, everything that is on sale tomorrow will still be on sale up until the sale ends, and with no further discounts. You can run through your wishlist after the sale starts tomorrow and buy everything immediately with the knowledge that you’re not going to miss out on a cheaper price during this sale. You have a wishlist, right? They’re a great way to keep an eye on the price of games you might be interested in.

That said, I’ve pruned my wishlist and I’m ready. Obviously, I won’t be buying everything off of my wishlist, and not everything will be on sale tomorrow. I’m going to get stuff that I missed this year that really interests me, and stuff that I can keep around for rainy days. Here’s a short list of what I hope to pick up tomorrow.

• Cradle – I love the look and I’m a sucker for a good first-person adventure game.
• The Magic Circle – Many reviews I’ve read said that there is more to this game than what appears.
• Axiom Verge – A metroidvania that’s obviously heavily influenced by the 16-bit era. SIGN ME UP
• Assassin’s Creed: Rogue – I’ll be honest; I kind of hate this series, but I like to keep one on hand in case I need something to fill time until I find something I genuinely enjoy. It’s true, though, that I usually can’t stop playing them once I’ve started.
• Her Story – I keep threatening to make my wife play an adventure game with me, and this one is getting a lot of kudos.
• Volume – I loved Thomas was Alone and I like the idea of a lighter stealth game in small bits.
• Nuclear Throne – Did you play Luftrausers? Because I did and it was fucking rad. I’ll be getting Nuclear Throne whether it’s on sale or not.
• Mad Max – I’m not super interested in it, but it’s got enough going for it that I’ll probably like it if I start it.
• Far Cry 4 – Same as Mad Max. If the price is right.
• Civ: Beyond Earth – One of my fellow contributors at Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together loved it, and it’s close enough to Alpha Centauri.

Squishy post-script: The change in the way Steam conducts their sales is (to me) kind of a bummer. I love the annual sales as much for the daily game discussions and recommendations as I do the cheap games. The daily changes to the deals gave me a reason to check the store page every day, every 12 hours, every 8 hours, or however often they changed. It also lent to common topics of discussion as people could talk about what the new sales were. As the autumn sale demonstrated to me, most of the discussion will simply happen at the start of the sale and not really long afterward.

I’m not going to be the guy complaining about a sale. The actual content of the sale is really inconsequential to me. I’m lucky to get another chance to pick up these games at a discount. And the new way in which the sale is conducted is good for people who aren’t obsessive about them like I am. They can check on any day of the sale and get great games at great prices without feeling like they’re going to miss something important. People short on cash don’t need to choose between food and a new game because it’s only on sale for 8 hours and they don’t get paid until tomorrow (sincerely hope no one is doing this, but I know someone is). But I will miss the daily discussions and the excitement surrounding constantly changing sales.

I’m seven hours in, and I’ve owned it since day 1. Given I haven’t had a ton of free time, that’s still kind of telling. I think I put twice as much time into The Witcher 3 at this point. Honestly, I’d probably rather be playing Destiny. Really early game spoilers below.

Seriously, I’m going to talk about my first seven hours with this game.

The start, the world before the bomb, looked good, it was a nice change of pace, but it was totally unnecessary. Unless they’re going to use those assets again somewhere, it seemed like a lot of effort to do something that would’ve been just as well served with a cutscene.

Everything immediately following emerging from the vault moves entirely too fast, and makes the game feel really small. I mean, I was immediately thrown into defending a “good” group of people, handed a suit of power armor and a minigun, and I killed a deathclaw. Thinking back to how hard it was to get those kinds of things, much less kill a deathclaw, in previous games, it feels like Fallout 4 is either trying too hard to make a strong first impression, or showing that these things aren’t going to be as useful in this game as they were in previous games.

Even more pernicious, I’ve already been handed several laser weapons. It’s really hard to determine if I’ve just stumbled upon a quest that’s breaking the game, or these are going to be worthless soon. Again, these are things that were hard to come by in the older games. Also, I’ve already been invited to join the Brotherhood of Steel. Knowing how the Brotherhood has been portrayed in previous games, I couldn’t possibly jump right in without getting more context.

Here we go, I’m going to say it: the settlement stuff feels dumb. I don’t want to play Sim City. I don’t want to be a pack mule to find stuff to make my settlement less shitty. A lot of the tutorial stuff wasn’t particularly well explained either. It took me a while to figure out I could use existing structures. Then assigning workers and planting didn’t make a lot of sense. Doing everything from the first person perspective doesn’t feel good either.

Inventory management, as in most Bethesda games, sucks. When I pick up new stuff, I have to do a lot of comparisons to see if what I got is better than what I have. It’s complicated further by all the weapon mods. Is a glow-sighted hunting rifle better than compensated high-powered pipe rifle? Shit I don’t know. And if it isn’t, I can’t figure out how to remove mods and slap them on a different weapon. Scrapping weapons just gives me a bunch of steel, not the individual parts I’d need to rebuild the mods. It took me a bit to figure out that I’d be better off wearing separate pieces of armor that covered body parts than a whole suit, but the first thing I ran into was a whole suit that was better than what I was wearing. When I got a piece of armor, it wasn’t better than the whole suit so I tossed it. Then I noticed I couldn’t modify the whole suit, but I could mod the hell out of the piece of shoulder armor I had. That was my hint that I should be gathering pieces of armor instead of wearing whole suits.

But here’s the real enthusiasm-killer for me: Fallout 4 doesn’t look or feel particularly different, or even better, than previous games. Combined with other Bethesda RPGs, like Oblivion and Skyrim, it feels like I’ve played this game before, several times even. The stuff that’s new (weapon mods, armor mods, settlements) doesn’t feel good, and the rest feels way too familiar. It hasn’t done anything new yet that I like.

I bought Fallout 4 on a whim, really. I didn’t follow its development much. When the release day came up, I decided to buy it outright. It’s only the second full $60 brand new game I’ve bought this year, the other being The Witcher 3. Ever since Fallout 3 and Oblivion, I’ve held the opinion that I should wait on Bethesda RPGs to get cheaper, or all the DLC is released and there’s a complete edition of the game. I didn’t stick to it, like at all, but I didn’t buy Skyrim or New Vegas without waiting at least for a sale. I really enjoyed those games and I definitely got my money’s worth. I likewise loved the hell out of Fallout 3, and I bought the super special edition of that game.

So why would I hesitate to buy Fallout 4 on release day? Because it leads to this exact kind of post-purchase questioning. I was way into Destiny when Fallout 4 came out, and I still had a handful of games I wanted to play. A game like Fallout 4, where I’m not entirely sucked into it immediately, would do better for me when I’m bored, not when I’m swimming in fun games to play. I’m certain I’ll put more time into Fallout 4, and I’ll enjoy myself, but I’ll probably put it down a few times, and play other games instead. I could’ve waited on this one.

Hi. Less than 2 hours ago, I ordered an Xbox One bundle off of Amazon. We’ve had a run of good things happen and my reward was a new console. Katie told me I could get whatever Black Friday slash holiday deal I wanted. After giving it some thought, I decided on the Xbox One. It wasn’t a hard decision and here’s why.

The Xbox One has the exclusive games I want to play on it. The ones that aren’t going to be on PS4, probably not on PC either. There’s one game for PS4 right now that qualifies as exclusive to the console and something I absolutely want to play, and that’s Until Dawn. Pretty much everything else it has is multiplatform, or not interesting to me. I’m a huge sucker for Halo; Xbone has Halo. I’m a huge sucker for Gears of War; Xbone has Gears of War. Rare Replay is on Xbone. It’s not necessarily a deal-maker, but it’s something I’m very interested in and can’t get on any other platform. If they come to PC, I’ll be surprised. Thrilled, but surprised.

I want the new Rock Band. My plastic instruments for Xbox 360 are all trash, so I’m looking at the whole band-in-a-box. All of my Rock Band songs are on Xbox. There’s no chance in hell I’m buying a PS4 and Rock Band and all of those songs all over again. I know Guitar Hero Live is probably a better game. It won’t fit what I want Rock Band to fill. I want all of those plastic instruments, not just guitar and vocals. I want my whole Rock Band song library. If I have friends over, I want them to have a choice of instrument. I want a choice of instrument. If I feel like getting Guitar Hero Live, I can do that and it’s not like I’m losing my whole Rock Band library. I can’t do both on PS4 without spending a shitload on Rock Band songs. Again.

I’m a Windows guy, and Xbone is a Windows platform. I’m going to know how it works. It’s going to work with my PCs. I’m not going to have to fiddle with any janky PS4 interface that kind of works or doesn’t. Streaming Xbone games to my PC sounds cool. I don’t know if I’ll ever use it, but I know I can’t do that with a PS4. I don’t own a Vita, so I’m not really glued to the Playstation platform. The Xbone will fit in better.

I know that when the new consoles were announced, I was pretty much ready to write off the Xbone entirely. It sounded like a pile of bad ideas. I even pre-ordered a PS4, which I canceled months before it came out because buying any console on day one is dumb. But this is why I wait at least a year before I buy any console. I couldn’t have made this decision on day one. I would’ve owned a PS4 and I would’ve found ways to enjoy it, but it wouldn’t have solved these problems. I’d still be looking at buying an Xbone for the exclusives and Rock Band. The PS4 is still a cool console, and I still want to own one some day, but it’s not what I want right now or for the foreseeable future.