Time to pause (or cancel?)
I just went ahead and cancelled. I've been buying the monthly ever since the first one a few years ago (I'd pause it now and then) but recently it feels like I'm considering pausing more often or I'm just less satisfied with the ones I did buy. And while this bundle isn't too bad, I'm absolutely not paying for an Origin key when the platform itself may be deprecated or just dead in the future.
I finally crawled past the finish line in Dying Light 2. I have nothing good to say about the game anymore. It is completely unfinished and gets progressively worse the further you get into it. I remember writing in a previous post that I hadn't faced any technical issues up until that point... that changed dramatically in the second half of the game. So many glitches and bugs and scripting errors and crashes. My friend who just got a brand new 3080ti started experiencing stuttering after a recent patch. The writing was awful throughout the game and it somehow got worse at the end. The ending is insanely stupid. I also remember saying that the graphics were pretty nice but I couldn't even take screenshots because some overworld icons got bugged and stuck to my HUD. I literally spent the last 15 hours of the game with useless icons on my screen at all times because there was no way to get rid of it. I actually feel like leaving a negative review for the game on Steam out of spite for how frustrating it was to play.
I'm generally not one to play games at launch and honestly, I need to make this into a conscious habit and choice going forward. The last 3 games I've played at launch have been Deathloop, BF2042 and now Dying Light 2, and all of them were just shipped unfinished and broken. Deathloop wasn't as bad as the other two, obviously, but I still remember having issues with the game. They did fix them in a couple of patches within 2 months and they also added so blatantly obviously missing features like DLSS, but by that time I was done with the game. Nothing needs to be said about the state of 2042 and now Dying Light 2.
In other news, I finally reached level 50 in Lost Ark. Steam says I've played 80 hours but in reality a lot of time was spent on the character select menu to avoid the server queues. It seems like Amazon has given up on trying to resolve the EUC server congestion problem and they're just waiting for enough people to give up on the game so that it fixes itself. I'm on the Kadan server which I think is one of the most popular ones which means it'll also be one of the last where the issues are resolved. On the bright side, I'm still enjoying the game a lot and taking my time with it. I just reached the Arthetine continent and the steampunk aesthetic is really cool. I like how the different continents all have a very different aesthetic and self contained stories. I know there are at least 2 more continents of story stuff I have to do before looking at the end game stuff so that'll probably take me at least another week or so.