August 23, 2023 - Day 235 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 255

Game: Desktop Dungeons: Rewind

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 19, 2023
Library Date: Apr 19, 2023
Unplayed: 126d (4m4d)
Playtime: 23m

Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition in 3D.

Literally.

Gone are the pixel-art bitmaps, replaced by glorious detailed 3D artwork.

The gameplay is (at least at this point) identical.

Like, last night I played through the first map multiple times before I understood it and beat it.

Tonight, exactly the same map, with the same mobs, and the same drops, but all in 3D.

So: Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is an isometric 3D roguelike dungeon crawler puzzle game.

Where last night it was a great example of a game where the gameplay overcomes my dislike of pixel-art games, now the fun gameplay is also pretty.

Still a pretty standard dungeon crawler. Explore the dungeon, attack mobs.

However, each square you uncover goes towards refilling your health and mana. You need to explore the fog of war to find mobs, but if you clear the fog of war and then try and kill the mobs, you're gonna have a bad time.

I cleared the first level with exactly the same strategy I used last night, still hooked. The only reason I didn't keep playing was that it ran into my actual work shift.

Between dungeons there's some resource management and basic city-building going on, but the game is designed to be played in short chunks. No change, just prettier city-building, in 3D!

In a shocking and surprising turn of events, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is:

4: Good

#DesktopDungeons #Isometric #DungeonCrawler #Puzzle #3D #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 24, 2023 - Day 236 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 256

Game: Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 18, 2018
Library Date: Aug 9, 2023
Unplayed: 15d
Playtime: 19m

Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim is a 2.5D mountain bike game. I'm not sure simulator quite fits.

Firstly, I don't know who Sam Pilgrim is, and I don't really care to find out. I assume he's the mountain biker you play in-game.

I got an email for a 5-game bundle from Fanatical a couple of weeks ago, and as I wanted one game in the bundle, and $8.00 for 5 games was cheaper than that game on its own, I bought the bundle.

I have a terrible sense of balance which means that riding a bike is a chore, and pulling stunts or tricks is utterly impossible.

Riding a skateboard (or anything with small wheels) is a non-event. Yet I lost countless hours to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, & 3 (even 4, to a degree).

I also got invited to the Rider's Republic beta, enjoyed it enough to buy the game when it went on sale. In both the THPS games and RR, I've managed to pull some pretty wild stunts and had fun while doing it.

None of that mattered in Shred 2. Shred 2 wants you to pull technically correct tricks... perfectly timed. Fail? Start the level over.

I started a lot of the tutorial levels over. The restart level button on the controller is the Y button, which meant I started more than a few levels over because I hit the wrong button.

When I started playing THPS2, I found it incredibly frustrating, but the risk/reward balance was just enough to keep me in the "One more try" loop, and I kept improving.

This was less of a loop, and more of a grind, and it just didn't feel like fun.

It actually felt a bit like OlliOlli World, but without the sense of humour that underlies that game.

Oddly enough, the closest comparison I can make is Forza Horizon to Forza Motorsport. I own Forza Horizon 1 through 5. I've sunk countless hours into Forza Horizon, and I'll tell anyone who'll listen how it converted me to playing arcade racers.

I also own Forza Motorsport 7. I think I've raced three laps, if that. Forza Motorsport is technically demanding, requiring focus and discipline, and understanding the technical limitations of your car and the track.

Forza Horizon, I just press the accelerator on the controller and steer the car, and have a lot of fun.

Shred 2 feels like Forza Motorsport. If I had excellent hand eye coordination, and the ability to repeat the same bio-mechanical movements over and over, I might be able to enjoy it; unfortunately, I don't and I can't.

For me, Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim is:

2: Meh

#Shred2 #MountainBiking #SportSim #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 25, 2023 - Day 237 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 257

Game: Banners of Ruin

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 30, 2021
Library Date: Aug 9, 2023
Unplayed: 16d
Playtime: 19m

Banners of Ruin is a roguelite deckbuilder in which a mouse and a bear attempt to take back their city from the corrupt folks who stole it.

With two and a quarter hours sleep last night, I figured I'd get in early for a NewPlay and review, because I'm not even sure I'm going to make it through the morning.

Banners of Ruin came in the same bundle as Shred 2, and where Shred 2 felt like a "oh well, nothing lost", Banners of Ruin is a bit of a surprise.

Although it's quite different, it reminds me mostly of Slay the Spire, and while initially put off by the idea of trying to play a deckbuilder and remain conscious, it's actually fun.

The tutorial was well done, but a little bit too loquacious, and determined to hold my hand even after I'd grasped the basic mechanics, but once through the tutorial, I had a fun, if short run.

On the downside, it insisted on starting on a secondary monitor, and we had a fundamental disagreement about which monitor is which. It also supports a quite limited number of resolutions for a game that was released mid-2021, only running up to 1920x1080, but Fullscreen is an option, and the graphics don't suffer at all.

All in all, Banners of Ruin seems to be a fun way to kill 15 minutes here and there, and is:

4: Good

#BannersOfRuin #RogueLite #DeckBuilder #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 26, 2023 - Day 238 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 258

Game: Hero's Hour

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 2, 2022
Library Date: Apr 2, 2023
Unplayed: 16d
Playtime: 17m

Hero's Hour bills itself as "A fast turn-based strategy RPG with real-time combat."

It was included in the Humble Choice March 2023 bundle.

I've repeatedly said that nostalgia does nothing for me, and it turns out I was wrong about that. Nostalgia can piss me off.

One of the growing trends at the moment in gaming is to remake old games. The most important thing about taking a game someone loved and remaking it for "modern" gaming, is to understand what made the game tick, then update the things that were limited by technology of the time, while keeping the elements that made the game tick intact.

For instance: The Quake II RTX "reimagining" took the first three levels of Quake II and made them pretty. Ho-hum.

The Quake II re-release updated the game itself and pretty much nailed bringing an ancient game into the modern era, without losing the character of the game.

I didn't know what to expect going into Hero's Hour, other than the pixel-art that featured in the header graphic, but within a couple of minutes of starting the tutorial, I realised I didn't need the tutorial, because I knew exactly how to play the game.

Describing Hero's Hour as "A fast turn-based strategy RPG with real-time combat." sounds better than "A pixel-art knock-off of Heroes of Might & Magic III".

I sank countless hours into Heroes of Might & Magic III. It might even have been the first "one more turn" game for me.

If you want to create a knock-off of a classic like HOMM3, you need to understand what makes it tick, what gives it that "one more turn" element, and the devs of Hero's Hour clearly don''t.

Desktop Dungeons demonstrated that a great gameplay loop overcomes the limitations of pixel art.

Hero's Hour made the art worse, and breaks the gameplay loop.

In HOMM3, your pixelated hero explores the pixelated map, but when entering a town, each kind of town has a character all its own, that grows as you expand the town.

Hero's Hour has almost-identical little boxes for each building.

HOMM3 battles were a carefully managed hextile-based strategy affair that could leave you elated or exasperated.

Hero's Hour replaces that with chaotic real-time battles that leans into the exasperation, and adds frustration. You can speed them up to 2x, but that still feels like an eternity.

Heck, some of the sound effects during map exploration feel like a straight rip from HOMM3.

Ultimately, Hero's Hour feels like the Temu version of HOMM3, and if I wanted to play a game that felt like HOMM3 without understanding HOMM3, I'd play HOMM VI.

Hero's Hour is an unsurprising:

1: Nope

#HerosHour #TurnBased #Strategy #RPG #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 27, 2023 - Day 239 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 259

Game: Crumble

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 5, 2020
Library Date: Dec 25, 2022
Unplayed: 245d (8m2d)
Playtime: 15m

Crumble is a 3D physics platformer, where you play as a slime, rolling around on, and jumping between platforms, and using your ridiculously long tongue like a web shooter to swing from place to place.

I haven't clock-watched a game for a while. Even Golden Light got 22 minutes out of me.

After 4 minutes in this game I was watching the clock.

I spent a further 11 minutes trying to get past one single section of platforms.

On the first level.

The thing is, when you get your momentum up, and have things to swing from, I can understand where this might almost achieve something that could be described as almost, but not quite, entirely unlike fun.

With apologies to Douglas Adams, whose name I have besmirched just by associating his words with this game.

At its core, this is part platformer, part grappling game, and the grapple requires momentum to function.

There's no "reel-in" function to the grapple-tongue, to allow you to build up momentum, either (a la Just Cause et al.).

If you can't get momentum up, and your timing & coordination isn't almost perfect?

Well, sucks to be me.

At least you can target the grappling point, right? Why do that? It might add some sense of fun and enjoyment to this torture. The tongue wants what the tongue wants, and rarely did the tongue and I agree on what it should stick to.

In addition, even when I was close to getting something resembling success, the camera would suddenly clip through the environment, and I'd be disoriented as to where I was trying to go.

When I added it to the bundle in Christmas, it seemed like fun. Poor, delusional, past Allie. The most joy I got from this game was "Quit to Desktop".

People have, miraculously, completed this game. Maybe, in the eternal words of Detective Roger Murtaugh, "I'm getting too old for this shit."

Crumble is a crumbly:

1: Nope

#Crumble #3D #Physics #Platformer #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 28, 2023 - Day 240 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 260

Game: Candle

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 11, 2016
Library Date: Jan 15, 2023
Unplayed: 225d (7m13d)
Playtime: 15m

Candle is a 2D adventure puzzle-platformer. The graphics are beautiful; the lush backgrounds and characters seemingly hand-painted.

You play as Teku, on a quest to save a tribe member from another tribe that has captured them, armed with the titular candle.

The illumination & lighting in the game is gorgeous.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When I load the game, it opens at a resolution of 1280x720, a full screen jagged square in the middle of my widescreen monitor. I set the resolution to 2560x1440. I turn off fullscreen. The window jumps off the screen. I kill the game, restart it. It starts at 1280x720. There is no way to save the resolution. This is foreshadowing.

The game opens with a cinematic, the narrator setting the stage for the world in which Teku lives.

A narrative technique attributed to Chekov (Anton, of the famed "gun", rather than Pavel, of the USS Enterprise), is "Show, don't tell". The devs seemingly disagree.

The narrator's tale continues...

...and continues...

...is he STILL going?

He is still going.

He does eventually stop talking, but he will be back to over-explain everything after I complete the first level.

My eyes come to rest upon Teku, becoming conscious in the middle of his burning village.

Teku stands. I move the control stick left. Teku walks. Slowly.

The game encourages me to press the left trigger to get Teku to run. Teku moves noticeably faster than Teku's walk, but to describe this as "running" is stretches the definition of run to near-breaking.

Teku reaches a ledge. "Press X to climb". I press X. Teku does not climb. Repeat. Same result.

I nudge the control stick. Teku moves a couple of pixels. I press X. Teku climbs.

I press on.

I am faced with an icon of a cube. Text appears onscreen.

Not to tell me what the cube means, but to tell me to open the menu to read the instructions to tell me what the cube means.

Show, don't tell.

I start encountering puzzles. The few clues available are frequently inscrutable.

Don't show, don't tell.

Several of puzzles require quick movement & precise timing.

Teku is neither.

Death comes frequently, & frustratingly. A tunnel that I have just exited, and can re-enter, becomes inexplicably inaccessible during a puzzle, with no indication of this.

I solve the puzzle. I start to climb. I reach a ledge. I am immediately killed.

I try again, repeatedly.
I die again, repeatedly.

Tired and frustrated, I quit to the desktop.

I really wanted to like Candle; it is gorgeous, but it feels like all of the love & care was given to the visuals, with little left over for things like UX, controls, or gameplay.

Sadly, Candle has been snuffed out with a disappointing:

2: Meh

#Candle #2D #Adventure #Puzzle #Platformer #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 29, 2023 - Day 241 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 261

Game: Hellblade: Senu'a Sacrifice

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 8, 2017
Library Date: Jun 29, 2019
Unplayed: 1522d (4y2m)
Playtime: 31m

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a third-person action-adventure game, in which you play as Senua, a Viking-era Pict warrior, on a mission to enter Helheim, and save the soul of her dead lover.

The game opens with a mental health warning that it features representations of psychosis, with good reason.

Senua is experiencing psychosis, and hears voices.

I immediately found this challenging. I have lived with mental health issues for all of my adult life. While I have not experienced psychosis, I felt... a familiarity... with the game's expression of psychosis.

The game opens with Senua in a canoe paddling into a horrifying gorge in which bodies are floating in the water, and are impaled on stakes along the riverside, as the narrator speaks of Senua in the third person.

Senua is paddling into Helheim.

This tableau, however, is not an expression of Senua's psychosis.

The narrator is.

As the Senua paddles on, the narrator joins with a cacophony of other voices challenging, attacking, and goading Senua.

This is discomforting.

As Senua makes landfall, and progresses on foot through an environment that is no less harrowing than the river, light appears and fades; the screen distorts, the voices rise and fall.

The weight of this presses down on me. On Senua. On us.

Memories explode into view, and then fade.

Senua reaches the gates of Helheim, and engages in her first battle, which is frightening, and devastating in turns.

This has been a difficult and long review to write; the way in which the game shifts between the mental and physical is both visceral, and somehow weightless.

This too, feels familiar. It makes this a complicated game to play.

On a technical level, the visuals are excellent. The sound design is is something else; it lifts this game to another level.

There is no HUD, no health bar. No instructions on what to do.

With keyboard and mouse, the game relies on the standard WASD + F to use. Swordplay and blocking felt instinctive.

This game is only a few months newer than yesterday's game, yet almost perfectly embodies "show, don't tell". The attention that was seemingly lacking for gameplay in yesterday's game, is seen here in buckets, and the game is better for it.

However, these reviews aren't entirely a review of the quality of the game, but also whether I want to invest my gaming time in a particular game.

That is far more complex, because while this IS an excellent game, it's a difficult one for *me* to play; it is affecting on a level that I need to assess further.

As such, for me Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is:

4: Good

#HellbladeSenuasSacrifice #ThirdPerson #ActionAdventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 30, 2023 - Day 242 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 262

Game: Dead Bits

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 8, 2014
Library Date: Jun 11, 2018
Unplayed: 1906d (5y2m19d)
Playtime: 16m

Dead Bits is a voxel-based FPS platformer, that is somehow less than the sum of its parts.

The game starts out with something that almost resembles a storyline, and then you find yourself in a series of brightly-coloured maps or dark tunnels with a torch, facing a a barrage of identical enemies whose health is represented by a number set in typeface from one of those "Free Font Downloads!" websites.

The platforms are hard to judge, and every death sees an unskippable cutscene as monsters gorge on your dead voxel body in black and white.

Your weapons are whatever each level sees fit to give you, and collected weapons don't carry forward between levels. There is no loot.

The melee weapon is an undefined chrome-wrapped long thing.

Guns are gun-ish shaped things.

The only goal is to kill enough monster shapes to get to the next level.

The absolute kicker was when quitting the game, it hung. As it had set itself to the front-most window, and prevented anything from being in front (like Steam, or the task manager!), I spent several minutes on top of that 15 minutes just trying to quit.

Dead Bits is nothing more than trading card fodder, a big:

1: Nope

#DeadBits #FPS #Voxels #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 31, 2023 - Day 243 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 263

Game: The Ascent

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 30, 2021
Library Date: Aug 31, 2022
Unplayed: 365d (1y)
Playtime: 67m

The Ascent is a cyberpunk-themed isometric action-shooter RPG, with an oddly annoying control scheme.

This is not, technically, the first time I've played The Ascent. I played a short part of it -on PC- when it was on Xbox Game Pass. I remember being annoyed by the controls then, but forgot I'd installed it.

Then it dropped in the August 2022 Humble Choice bundle, and I uninstalled it from the Xbox app and installed it on Steam, and promptly forgot about it.

Turns out that was *exactly* twelve months ago.

When starting it tonight, I remembered my annoyance with the controls, and turned on my controller.

This is a game that feels like it was designed to be played with a controller. On a controller, and an isometric* game, moving with the left stick feels natural. WASD feels odd, because you're using two keys at a time.

But targeting with the right stick feels like playing in glue. Maybe if it had snap-targeting, but it doesn't. Targeting with a mouse feels natural and particularly during the first frenetic boss battle, if I'd been trying to target with the controller, I'd probably have given up.

My only other critique is that "isometric*" above. A lot of isometric games handle being behind an object by making it transparent, or outlining your character.

The Ascent puts a circle on the ground, which can be a little hard to keep track of when you're behind a large fixed object during a frenetic boss battle.

On top of this, it's isometric until it isn't. Suddenly, the camera is behind you for a while, but not when it might be helpful, like when you're behind a giant object during a frenetic boss battle.

The gameplay and atmosphere are excellent. It nails that gritty cyberpunk feel. The mobs suddenly popping up out of nowhere give just the right amount of chills. The first level in the bowels of the city feels -and sounds- like you're underneath everything.

The visuals and sound design when you complete your first major quest getting a machine running is great.

The Ascent is a game that overcomes its weaknesses pretty damn well.

The Ascent is:

4: Good

#TheAscent #Isometric #ActionShooter #RPG #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 1, 2023 - Day 244 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 264

Game: LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 3, 2008
Library Date: Nov 27, 2021
Unplayed: 643d (1y9m5d)
Playtime: 79m

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is a Traveller's Tales LEGO game, which is [X] IP turned into a LEGO-based adventure game.

Looking at my remaining games; there are a lot of them, but many are sequels to games I've already played, or games like this, where it feels a bit like "If you've played one, you've played them all."

Therefore, I wasn't going to review any more LEGO games, I was just going to play it for a bit to see how it held up, which means I'm now reviewing it.

Traveller's Tales have been making this kind of LEGO game since 2005's LEGO Star Wars, and LEGO Indiana Jones was their first non-Star Wars IP-based LEGO game.

Time has been weird to it.

I grew up with George Lucas and Steven Spielberg as part of my movie lexicon. Star Wars and Indiana Jones.

As a child, I didn't think about the underlying themes in the same way I do now. Some of the tropes in the original movies haven't aged well; even in the 15 years between 2008 and 2023, it's hard not to think of most historical archaeology as stealing shit from people in other countries to put it on display in a museum.

That makes it harder to just relax and play.

But even putting that aside as much as possible, the game itself makes it hard to play.

Being 15 years old and still able to run in ultra-wide resolution is pretty impressive, but later LEGO games have refinements that are missing here.

I started the game and sat through the intro video and keyboard/mouse were set as primary control. I picked up the controller and attempted to play, and it immediately put the game into two-player mode. Get the controller set as primary controller, still can't get out of 2P.

Quit out, restart, sit through the same unskippable intro. Indy can jump over gaps using his whip. Get to a point that requires Satipo (the other character), Satipo keeps falling into a chasm instead of following. Thinking it's bugged, quit out, restart, sit through intro, same bug. Can't even complete the first level.

Google it.

If V-sync is off, the characters can't jump properly, which feels like a hall-of-famer for "weird game bugs".

Enable V-sync, sit through the unskippable intro again, I can finally move on.

Controls are a bit twitchy, and I die a lot from undefined edges where Indy doesn't bother grabbing on even when I'm mashing the button.

I finally clear the level (having lost most of my studs), and sit back.

If you REALLY like Indiana Jones, AND enjoy LEGO games, then you might get a kick out of LEGO Indiana Jones.

If you're just into LEGO video games, maybe play one of the newer, more refined iterations.

LEGO Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures is (barely):

3: OK

#LEGOIndianaJones #LEGO #Adventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 2, 2023 - Day 245 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 265

Game: Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 25, 2013
Library Date: Feb 20, 2014
Unplayed: 3481d (9y6m13d)
Playtime: 21m

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is a top-down pixel-art-styled stealth heist game.

I'm not sure what I found more surprising: that this game is over 10 years old, or that it's been in my library unplayed for 9.5 of those years.

In this game, you break out of prison, and assemble a team of thieves, with the goal of pulling off a heist.

It apparently has co-op mode as well, although I only played in single player.

When I started this project, I was openly hostile to pixel-art games. What I've learned over the past 8 months is that while pixel-art based games can be the product of lazy devs, or devs who are hopped up on caffeine and nostalgia, a good game can overcome my feelings about pixel-art (and lazy devs can be just as lazy using vectors, voxels, Unity, or Unreal).

On that basis, I think I'm done commenting on pixel-art, other than to mention if it's the art-style of the game.

With that said, Monaco isn't a true pixel-art game. Even though the environments and characters are pixel-art, the lighting and UI elements are not.

Monaco is a lot of fun. Even though each of the characters you embody is only a small blob of pixels, each has their own skillset, and even in the early stages of the game, can see how they'll fit together for "the heist".

As a stealth game, the lighting is used to great effect throughout, and and having your area of vision lighting up a room and suddenly spotting a guard is nerve-wracking.

Making it through the level undetected and making a clean getaway give a great buzz.

Monaco: What's Yours Is Mine is:

4: Good

#MonacoWhatsYoursIsMine #PixelArt #TopDown #Stealth #Heist #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 3, 2023 - Day 246 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 266

Game: The Entropy Centre

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 3, 2022
Library Date: Nov 6, 2022
Unplayed: 301d (9m28d)
Playtime: 35m

The Entropy Centre is a first-person puzzle game. It answers the question "What if the Portal gun controlled time instead of space, in a lab environment built by the architects of the Oldest House?" This is a game that capital-L Loves the brutalist architecture of Control.

This is not -technically- unplayed. I played the demo before it was released, then almost immediately purchased it, and forgot I'd purchased it.

That's not a bad thing; The Entropy Centre appears to have received a number of updates since it was released, so much so that it felt like I was playing it for the first time.

You ("Aria") wake up in a remote and overgrown and deserted lab, with no idea how you got there, or even *where* you are.

Upon starting your exploration of the facility, you encounter a gun that can rewind time, within a specific set of circumstances.

Given the sheer weathered and damaged state of the lab, this provides an in-game explanation for why it can only rewind some things, and not others.

Much like Portal, you have to make your way through test labs, and move boxes around to open doors.

Also much like Portal, there's an AI assisting you, but instead of being a disembodied voice, the AI ("Astra") AI is embodied in the gun itself.

Unlike Portal, though, you have to think in four dimensions, and frequently need to think through the solution, then reverse engineer it to work in reverse-time as well as in space.

As someone who enjoyed Portal and the many variations on the theme (Q.U.B.E. 2, Relicta), I also am enjoying this game.

It's just unfortunate for The Entropy Centre that my kids gave me Starfield for Dad's day, otherwise I'd be throwing the cubes around for the rest of the day because The Entropy Centre is:

5: Excellent

#TheEntropyCentre #FirstPerson #Puzzle #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 3, 2023 - Day 246 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 267

Game: Starfield

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 6, 2023
Library Date: Sep 3, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 6h30m

Starfield is a first-or-third-person space-based RPG set in a post-Earth universe... but you probably knew that already.

I'm aiming for no spoilers here.

My kids bought me Starfield Premium as a Dad's Day gift, which meant I spent far too much of yesterday sitting in front of my PC.

I will spend far too much of tonight doing the same thing, in all likelihood.

Todd Howard, Executive Producer at Bethesda has described Starfield as "Skyrim in space", which is ridiculous, because I'm enjoying Starfield.

My entire playtime for Skyrim (the original 2015 edition) was 5.8 hours.

When the Skyrim Special Edition was released, I started over. I completed 6.3 hours.

I essentially got to the same point each time and got bored; it's not that I *dislike* Skyrim, it just didn't grab me and make me want to keep playing.

I do wonder whether more than a decade playing WoW just burned me out on fantasy RPGs.

I sank far more time into Fallout 4, but gave up on that because 50% of the time my 130+ hour save game crashes on load, and Bethesda's response was "start over".

Uhhh... no.

So Starfield feels more Fallout 4 than Skyrim to me, but YMMV.

Which is another interesting thing, now that I think about it. Fallout 4 and Skyrim feel like they have a lot more in common with each over than with Starfield, particularly when it comes to the UI.

Starfield feels... different.

The two games it most reminds me of are Star Citizen (thanks for the free weekends reminding me not to spend money on it!), and No Man's Sky.

However... there are a couple of things that have surprised me so far.

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.” - Douglas Adams

In No Man's Sky, space *feels* big. Overwhelmingly so. (Total playtime, 13.9 hours).

In Starfield (so far!) not so much. You open a star-map, choose a planet, choose a location, and effectively fast-travel there (launches and landings are cool though).

Then there are the space battles; I have a T.16000M HOTAS (thanks, pandemic!). I love to kick back in Chorus and shoot down a bunch of space bad guys.

In space, no-one can hear you scream in frustration at the mouse & keyboard controls for space battles. I assume it works with a controller, but thrust into an unexpected battle, I didn't get to the point of trying that yet.

That's the extent of my critiques. Starfield's launch is everything Redfall wasn't, and Starfield is:

5: Excellent

#Starfield #FirstPerson #RPG #Space #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 4, 2023 - Day 247 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 268

Game: Ring of Pain

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 16, 2020
Library Date: Sep 25, 2022
Unplayed: 344d (11m10d)
Playtime: 22m

Ring of Pain is a roguelike card game, written by a Melbourne-based dev.

Because it's Melbourne, and I know people who know people, it would make me nervous to say anything bad about it.

It's helpful then that I don't actually have anything bad to say about it.

It's a weird and decidedly creepy roguelike, in which a half-human half-bird creature has summoned you to a nest (I think), where your goal is to survive.

I actually played it for longer than I intended to.

Even though I'm not a huge fan of card-based roguelikes, Ring of Pain is:

4: Good

#RingOfPain #Cards #Roguelike #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 5, 2023 - Day 248 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 269

Game: Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Anniversary Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 6, 2011
Library Date: May 29, 2015
Unplayed: 3021d (8y3m7d)
Playtime: 23m

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Anniversary Edition was released in 2021 as a free update to Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine, with all of the previously released DLCs and add-ons included.

The game is a third-person shooter-hack-and-slash combo.

A few minutes after starting the game I found myself thrown straight into combat as an Ultramarine Space Marine(?), with the game throwing multiple combinations of mouse button and key presses at me, as a barrage of Orks attacked me.

Such frantic combinations as "Press f then mouse button 5 then e". My dude, I have no idea which button on my mouse is mouse button 5. I can't even tell my left and right apart most of the time, let alone which of the other seven buttons on my mouse beyond 1 & 2 are which.

Even the G Hub software just calls them "Forward" and "Back". It took a torch and a minute of trying to find the right viewing angle and distance for my 49yo eyes to work out which button had "G5" stamped into the plastic ("Forward", for the record).

Trying to remember which of the buttons are which in the middle of a pitched battle was a lot, particularly when - on top of all this - the mouse view is bizarrely restricted, even with my mouse set to 3200 DPI.

I had to pick up my mouse, move it, and put it down again more than once just to do a 180 degree sweep. I don't think I've had to do that since mice were functionally male.

After surviving that mission, and slowly starting to mash the right buttons in the right order, I started to feel like the game was making sense.

I was slamming my way around the map, Orks getting splattered by my big gun, and my big knife making short work of any Orks who got too close.

Unfortunately, as with many other games that have a few years on the clock, there are games that have been released since that provide a similar gameplay experience with a better user interface and/or user experience.

In practice, if the Warhammer 40k branding were stripped away, the battle gameplay feels a lot like Outriders, but less refined; unfortunately for the game, I have no emotional bond to Warhammer or 40k, so there's not a lot to keep my interest.

If I'm in the mood for "big weapons make enemies go splorch", it's probably going to be Outriders or Gears of War before this.

Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine - Anniversary Edition is:

3: OK

#Warhammer40K #SpaceMarine #ThirdPerson #Shooter #HackAndSlash #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 6, 2023 - Day 249 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 270

Game: Astral Shipwright

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 12, 2022
Library Date: Sep 2, 2023
Unplayed: 4d
Playtime: 45m

Astral Shipwright is a spaceship building and trading... game.

I added this to my Steam library after the dev who created it and another game decided to shut down his game development studio, and made them both free, and open-sourced the code.

There's absolutely no intro, no tutorial. You're just in a space dock and you start building your ship.

Once you've built a working ship, and you're ready to fly, you discover that you've got no money left to buy fuel, or hire crew, or buy resources to sell elsewhere.

You delete your save, start over, build a smaller ship, buy that stuff, and spend a lot of time clicking on things in the process of buying something here, flying there, selling it, buying something else, selling it elsewhere, and slowly upgrading your ship.

It's pretty bare-bones; it feels more like a demo than a completed game, yet strangely compelling. The bones of something interesting is there, and for free, the price was right.

Astral Shipwright is:

3: OK

#AstralShipwright #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 7, 2023 - Day 250 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 271

Game: Mirror's Edge Catalyst

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 7, 2016
Library Date: Nov 26, 2022
Unplayed: 285d (9m12d)
Playtime: 24m

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is a first person parkour & melee game.

Today I also learned, after giving in and playing it without playing Mirror's Edge first, it is not in fact, a sequel. It's a reboot.

I use a Logitech G13 Gameboard for my gaming, which has a terrible design flaw in the thumb button, which causes the activation lug for the microswitch to snap off.

I have the thumb button set to "jump".

I've had some replacements 3D-printed, but they usually don't last more than a few months.

This one didn't last the game.

The thing about this game (which looks gorgeous!) is that learning each of the moves feels a little bit frustrating to try and pull off, but once I started to "get" it, it felt good.

When I managed to start stringing them together it felt great.

But then when you get into that flow state, where you start anticipating the moves just before you need to pull them off, that feels amazing...

...until the jump button stops working.

Anyway, looks like I'm pulling my G13 apart again tomorrow to swap out yet *another* activation lug.

Mirror's Edge Catalyst is:

4: Good

#MirrorsEdgeCatalyst #FirstPerson #Parkour #Melee #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 8, 2023 - Day 251 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 272

Game: Synced

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 8, 2023
Library Date: Sep 8, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 1h4m

Synced is a free-to-play third-person post-apocalyptic sci-fi co-op PvE or PvP looter-shooter with roguelite elements.

Today's apocalypse is brought to you by [spins wheel]... nanotechnology!

This is another Tencent game. Fans of Ring of Elysium (a F2P battle royale set for shutdown on December 1st) assert that Synced is just Tencent recycling game assets, but as I never played Ring of Elysium, I cannot verify this.

I have, however, played Synced.

It feels like a game designed by sticking a bunch of post-it notes with gaming-related words on a wall, and throwing darts while blindfolded until a set of ideas was assembled to wrap around the core gameplay element.

Of course, being a Tencent game, the core gameplay element is microtransactions.

The tutorial puts you in the shoes of "Deadcut", a "runner" (yeah) who's a gambling man with a sarcastic running commentary.

Joy. I get to play as a man. I never managed to enjoy pretending to be a man in real life, I prefer not to play one in a game.

The basic tutorial lays out the story, introduces you to your... familiar? Nano tank? Nano pal who's fun to be with?

During each level, you can weaken a nano mob to the point your can "Sync" with it (thus 'Synced') and... then it lives in your nano-infused arm except when you need it?

Once introduced to the basic gameplay loop of killing mobs, collecting power-up goop, and trading that goop for power-ups at regular "exchange stations" that offer "random" power-ups (the roguelite bit), you then make it to "Haven".

The sassy leader of Haven declares that you must be something special to make it there all by yourself; she sends you off on your choice of 3-person PvE or PvP quest... with two other players with identical avatars. I feel so special.

There's a touch of PUBG to the looting, with a much smaller weapon selection; you fight your way through the nano mobs, and nano minibosses to the nano boss of the level as "the surge" (yes, really), grows in strength until it reaches 100%.

There's a safe zone around the mini bosses & bosses when they've zoned in, and if you're outside the eye of the storm... erm.. in the surge, you'll be taking constant damage.

Finish this part of the tutorial, and suddenly you can become one of the other two F2P "runners", or pay for the battle pass (nobody expects the Battle Pass!) to increase your choices.

I assume that much like Ring of Elysium, Synced will last for a few years with a handful of whales paying for the Battle Pass, until Tencent rebrand their studio and release their next big microtransaction-looter.

I'm really not sure who this mashup microtransaction engine is aimed at; Synced is just:

2: Meh

#Synced #ThirdPerson #ShooterLooter #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 9, 2023 - Day 252 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 273

Game: Rock of Ages 2

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 28, 2017
Library Date: Feb 2, 2019
Unplayed: 1680d (4y7m7d)
Playtime: 15m

Rock of Ages 2: Bigger & Boulder is a bizarre tower defence boulder-racing game.

There's a bunch of games that never made it to being reviewed this year. Many of them were multiplayer games; some of which are still on sale, but invariably had no-one to play against, other than bots or the bizarre individuals who get their kicks from hacking a game and then killing anyone who tries to play.

There's another group of games that didn't make it. Frequently ancient, wouldn't run on Windows 10. Alas, their time has come and gone.

Rock of Ages II is a little weirder. It's just over six years old, but absolutely refused to load.

Load > Crash. Load > Crash. Load > Crash.

[Tech support mode on]

Event viewer is recording the crash, but not making it clear what's at fault.

To the Googles!

One fix says to disable networking.

That... actually works. Not a good solution, but it must be something new in Windows 11 network code, right?

Actually, no.

I went through a stage of this project where I just started all the games for a minute to shorten my "year" list for unplayed games.

When I started ROA2 previously *before* I upgrades, it had worked fine without crashing.

Digging into the Steam discussions: "Changing this global OpenSSL variable fixes it!"

No, thank you. I don't think I will.

A bit more on the Googles leads to a page on Intel's website, that explains that certain versions of UE4 contain an older OpenSSL library, that triggers a crash on 10th Gen and newer CPUs, and by setting that OpenSSL variable, it tells UE4 to ignore the SHA extensions.

However, it only needs to be set in the launch options for the game, not globally.

We're off to the races.

Literally. This is a game in which you play Sisyphus (I think?) and roll a boulder through an obstacle course towards the castle of your AI opponent (who are various historical figures acting in decidedly non-historical ways).

Inside your castle, workers are quickly carving your boulder from a solid rock. While this is happening, you frantically set up your various defenses to try and knock the AI's boulder off course, while they are doing the same.

As soon as your boulder is ready, you roll it towards their castle, and try to smash down their door. Boulder hits door, does damage, rinse and repeat.

First one with a smashed door loses. All of this is wrapped in a classical music soundtrack with Pythonesque graphical stylings.

I lost, beaten soundly by Joan of Arc (!)

I think, if I were in the right mood, Rock of Ages 2 would be:

3: OK

#RockOfAges2 #TowerDefense #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 9, 2023 - Day 252 - PlayOn Bonus Review 2

Game: Tina Tina's Wonderlands Chaotic Great Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 24, 2022
Library Date: Oct 26, 2022

Playtime: 10h42m

This month's Humble Choice bundle dropped on Wednesday morning AEST, and in an unsurprising turn of events, the first game in the bundle, the "AAA game" is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands Chaotic Great Edition... which I already own.

So y'all get a PlayOn review. I opened it up for a few minutes to show my 11yo ("no, that's not the kind of game I like")... and I was still playing an hour later.

I have a weird relationship with the Borderlands games, and the ad campaign for Borderlands 3 typified my problem. "Guns! Guns! More Guns!!!"

I... don't care. There comes a point that trying to manage and juggle all those weapons becomes frustrating. "Do I keep this gun or this one with slightly different specs?" Which guns do I keep, which do I sell?

It just becomes overwhelming. I've spent almost 45 hours in Borderlands 3, and it feels like about half of that was just inventory management.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is essentially Borderlands 3 wrapped in a fantasy setting, so a fantasy-themed action-RPG first-person shooter.

The conceit of the game is Tiny Tina (Ashly Burch) from Borderlands is Dungeon Master for a tabletop game called Bunkers & Badasses (wink wink), with you, and two other players, Captain Valentine (voiced by Andy Samberg(!)), and Frette (a robot voiced by Wanda Sykes(!!))

The villain of the campaign is the evil "Dragon Lord", voiced by Will Arnett (!!!)

Honestly, it was the voice cast that got me across the line for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, and I have no regrets.

Yes, the inventory management is just as frustrating as Borderlands 3, but the switch to the "fantasy" environment and the humour of the interactions between the characters makes it a lot of fun.

If you enjoy the humour of the Borderlands series, and enjoy fantasy games, then you'll probably enjoy TTW. If not...

If for no other reason, if you don't already own TTW, it makes this month's Humble Choice bundle a steal, whatever else is included.

Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is:

5: Excellent

#TinyTinasWonderlands #FPS #Fantasy #ARPG #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #PlayOn

September 10, 2023 - Day 253 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 274

Game: Dragon Age: Origins - Ultimate Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 27, 2010
Library Date: Apr 21, 2015
Unplayed: 3064d (8y4m20d)
Playtime: 47m

Dragon Age: Origins is a third-person fantasy RPG that was released on November 6, 2009. The "Ultimate Edition" was released almost a year later, containing all of the DLCs that had been released for the game.

I'm not sure how this ended up in my pile of shame. As I mentioned in my Starfield review, I feel like WoW burned me out on fantasy-themed games, and I don't feel like I would have bought this intentionally.

But here it is. I wish I hadn't waited quite so long to play it.

DA:O is almost 14 years old. It's been sitting in my library for 8 years. Graphically, it feels like a like a game from 2009 (although it supports ultrawide screens out of the box!). It *really* needs a FOV slider, because that's a lot of field of view.

The character creator is pretty good, particularly for a game of this age, but the character animations feel a little wooden.

But... the story. It just hooked me straight in. I was invested in the relationships between my character and her family almost immediately. I looked up, and almost 45 minutes had passed.

Looks like I'm going to have several RPGs on the go at once. I've also read commentary that says that DA:O has a lot in common with Baldur's Gate 3 (on my wishlist), so at this rate, I'm never going to get to the end of my Pile of Shame.

Even at this early point in the game, Dragon's Age: Origins seems very:

4: Good

#DragonsAgeOrigins #RPG #Fantasy #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 11, 2023 - Day 254 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 275

Game: Deceive Inc.

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 22, 2023
Library Date: Sep 11, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m

Deceive Inc. is a first-person multiplayer PvP hide-and-seek extraction shooter mash-up. It's the second game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and I'll admit that I was a bit disappointed to see it.

I'd looked briefly at Deceive Inc. on Steam in the past and added it to my "Ignore" list, because it didn't really seem like my kind of thing, and having played it now, I was right.

Deceive Inc. does seem kind of unique. It's part Among Us, part Midnight Ghost Hunt, part extraction shooter, with bit of Deathloop's swagger, all by way of Fortnite's graphical styling...

...as well as Fortnite's monetisation model. It seems almost impossible to release a AA game now without including a battle pass of some kind.

It feels like so many games want to be the next Fortnite, and I don't want to pay for a battle pass in any of them, particularly a paid game (*cough* Diablo IV *cough*).

As a game, it's stylish (in that Unreal Engine 4 way) and the gameplay is OK.

The biggest problem for me is that I despise solo PvP extraction shooters [exasperated sigh in the direction of The Division 2's Dark Zone], and I just don't enjoy hide-and-seek style games that much, and mashing them up like this is like offering me peas and corn as a meal.

It might be that if I played one of the 2v2 or 3v3 modes with friends, I might enjoy it more, but if I was already down to play something with friends, this probably wouldn't be on the list of options to begin with.

Deceive Inc. is:

2: Meh

#DeceiveInc #FirstPerson #PvP #ExtractionShooter #HideAndSeek #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 12, 2023 - Day 255 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 276

Game: The Forgotten City

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 28, 2021
Library Date: Sep 12, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 3h42m

The Forgotten City is a first-person narrative-driven adventure involving time loops, and an ancient Roman city.

It's the third game in this month's Humble Bundle, and if you're a fan of narrative adventures (eg. Firewatch) or time travel gameplay, this might be the game for you.

It was a bit slow at first; I was 10 minutes in, and I was thinking it wasn't really a game for me.

...and that was three and a half hours ago.

The graphics are pretty good, the sound design is great, but the narrative is excellent.

However, I'm not going to write a longer review. The problem with this game, and it's highlighted upfront by the devs is that to say too much about it spoils the game for those who haven't played it.

Thus, please consider my three and three quarter hours of straight playtime, and having reached one of four endings my way of saying that The Forgotten City is:

5: Excellent

#TheForgottenCity #FirstPerson #Adventure #TimeTravel #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 13, 2023 - Day 256 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 277

Game: Aces & Adventures

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 24, 2023
Library Date: Sep 13, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m

Aces & Adventures is a fantasy RPG deckbuilding roguelite using poker mechanics.

It's the fourth game in this month's Humble Bundle, and the first where, in spite of a tutorial, I had no idea what was happening half the time.

I don't know. I'm still not sure exactly what happened.

You play as one of several classes, each of which (other than the first) you unlock by playing. I completed playing "Spring" as a dwarf warrior and unlocked the rogue class.

It's turn-based combat, in which you have three decks in play simultaneously. The attack deck which is a standard 52 card deck, a second deck of ability cards, and a third deck of upgrade cards.

At least I think that's what was happening. Admittedly, I'm very tired right now, which might have stunted my understanding of how to play, but I muddled my way through to completing the first... section? Quest?

In any case, I think I need to give Aces & Adventures a pass this time, and blame it on myself, so for now it's:

3: OK

#AcesAndAdventures #Fantasy #Roguelite #Deckbuilder #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 14, 2023 - Day 257 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 278

Game: Patch Quest

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 3, 2023
Library Date: Sep 14, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m

Patch Quest is a top-down 2D twin stick roguelike-metroidvania-monster catching bullet-hell mashup.

This is the fifth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

With cutesy cartoonish graphics, you run around a "patchwork land" armed with a lasso and a gun-that-is-not-a-gun-but-really-it-is-a-gun, to capture monsters and ride them while you shoot others with the not-gun that makes them "fall asleep" and disappear.

Unlike last night's game, it's not that I'm too tired too understand it, it's just that it just all feels kind of bland.

There's a basic story to try and provide a reason to want to care about this odd maze full of monsters and give me a reason to catch or not-kill them, but I was kind of glad when I was done.

Patch Quest is just kind of:

2: Meh

#PatchQuest #TopDown #Twinstick #Roguelike #Metroidvania #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 14, 2023 - Day 257 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 8

Game: Aces & Adventures

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 24, 2023
Library Date: Sep 13, 2023

Playtime: 52m (1h16m total)

Aces & Adventures is a fantasy RPG deckbuilding roguelite using poker mechanics.

Yeah, when I woke up this morning, I decided to give it another shot over coffee to see just how much of my ability to understand the game had been clouded by exhaustion.

Turns out, pretty much total.

When I played it this morning, it all made a hell of a lot more sense, both the way that the various kinds of cards work, and also the synergy between them.

In addition, I could actually remember a bunch of poker hands that evaded me last night.

Essentially, each round presents you with one or more cards with a bunch of hitpoints, health points, armor, etc etc. The cards also might have certain abilities.

You get one attack per round, but triggering abilities doesn't count as an attack, so if you can clear the board before your attack, you do that.

This morning's run had a card with first strike, and another set of three cards, that each time you kill one, the rest get stronger, so it helps if you have an ability card that synergises with your draw that enables you to hit all enemies for three damage at once.

Which I did, and required two spades to trigger.

During the attack round is when the poker hands come into play (pun intended); you play your hand and then the AI attempts to defend.

If you play a single Ace, for example, the best the AI can do is block that with an Ace. Play a King, and the AI can block it with a King, or trump it with an Ace, which means you take damage.

But a poker hand? Double or triple your damage, particularly if you've collected some upgrade cards that stay with you until the end of the round. Maybe you pick up a card that's +1 damage per spade played.

It's a nice damage addition when you drop a single spade, but when you drop a straight?

That won me the round against a boss mob.

So with some sleep under my belt, it's fair to bump Aces & Adventures up to:

4: Good

#AcesAndAdventures #Fantasy #Roguelite #Deckbuilder #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #RePlay

September 15, 2023 - Day 258 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 279

Game: Foretales

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 15, 2022
Library Date: Sep 15, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 15m

Foretales is a card-based narrative adventure game. This is the sixth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

Once again, I'm exhausted and facing another card-based game.

You have two characters who are off on an adventure through your fairly typical anthropomorphic fantasy land. Vorelain is duckbill and a thief, Leo is a lion and an archer.

Each has attack points and defense points, and a set of cards that you can play as either character each turn to move through the narrative.

The quirky thing is that the game is designed in such a way that you can completely avoid combat and defeat your opponents by other means.

The game has a narrator, and it was all making sense until the audio suddenly went into overdrive and the output just became a wall of static. I was able to coax some vaguely useful sounds out of the speakers by turning all of the volume controls in the game (there are five!) down.

However, one of the casualties was the game's narrator, which made the rest of the level (a "region") a little uneven.

There's an option to save and exit, however this warns you that you'll be restarted at the beginning of the current region, and I was still in the start region, so... I muddled my way through to the next region.

It feels like there might be an interesting story there, but that audio bug was wild.

Tentatively, Foretales is:

3: OK

#Foretales #Fantasy #Adventure #Cards #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 16, 2023 - Day 259 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 280

Game: Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus?

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 19, 2022
Library Date: Sep 16, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m

Over the last 279 games, I felt like I'd played every type of game that's available. I've played games I would not normally choose to play.

Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus is a FMV murder mystery, and the seventh game in the September Humble Choice Bundle, and the first FMV game I've reviewed this year.

The video quality is good, the actors are OK, and Uncle Marcus is played by Andy Buckley, arguably best known as David Wallace in the US version of The Office.

I won't spoil the storyline, but you're presented with choices to make which leads to a branching decision tree as you try to solve a murder in one night.

If you like Andy Buckley, and FMV games, you'll like this. If you don't like either or both, this probably won't be your cup of tea.

In any case, I'll probably end up playing this through, because I'm a bit meh about FMV games, but I do like Andy Buckley (he was great in Avenue 5 too).

Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus is:

[3: OK] [4:Good]

#WhoPressedMuteOnUncleMarcus #FMV #MurderMystery #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 17, 2023 - Day 260 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 281

Game: Autonauts vs Piratebots

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 28, 2022
Library Date: Sep 17, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 41m

Autonauts vs Piratebots is a 3D base-builder survival strategy programming game. It's the last of this month's Humble Choice games and not an entirely bad way to end the bundle.

You're sent to Rigel VII (I guess the devs are Star Trek fans?) after your base of Autonauts is attacked and destroyed by Piratebots.

The survival comes into things with the good old "build stuff from blueprints by despoiling the world around you".

As an aside, even with what we know about climate and the environment, it's kind of wild how many games just fall back on "cut down or dig up the environment, and kill things" as the basic gameplay loop.

With that said, Autonauts vs Piratebots actually makes you build sustainable forests to cut down trees once you get started; it's just something I got to thinking about while playing.

The tricky part is that once you can start creating the bits you need, you can create robots to cut down the trees. Then you program the robots how to cut down trees.

However, their axes break, so you teach another robot how to make an axe, and program it to make an axe, and wait until the axe is taken before making a new one.

Cut down a tree? Someone has to gather the wood. It has to be put somewhere. Program the bots! Run out of bots? Build a bot factory.

41m in I'd worked my way through the basics of the tutorial, but just like programming in the real world, doing it when you're tired is going to lead to mistakes and debugging, like wondering why the bot won't do what you asked because you completely missed a section of the programming.

It's more scripting that programming per se, but you get the general idea.

Anyway, Autonauts vs Piratebots is:

3: OK

#AutonautsVsPiratebots #Strategy #BaseBuilder #Programming #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 18, 2023 - Day 261 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 282

Game: Journey to the Savage Planet

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 28, 2020
Library Date: Sep 12, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 20m

Journey to the Savage Planet is a first person comedy sci-fi adventure game.

FOMO is a curse, and when it comes to a games wishlist, it's self-inflicted. I started using tracking sites like IsThereAnyDeal and GG.deals after missing out on one-too-many ridiculously cheap games that I'd wishlisted.

The downside is that it's not necessarily the best choice when that mixes with ADHD impulsivity.

"After all, why shouldn't I buy another sci-fi game nine days after I got Starfield?"

Oops.

In Journey to the Savage Planet, you find yourself in a company exploratory ship that's "landed" on the aforementioned planet.

Unfortunately for you, the company is less Weyland-Yutani and more Jupiter Mining Corporation by way of Planet Express.

The snarky onboard computer walks you through the first steps of the tutorial, including a cheesy intro video from the founder of Kindred Aerospace, "the 4th best interstellar company!"

You've been sent out to survey this planet as a possible option for human settlement. but you're basically stranded on this planet until you can find your way off, with the help of your trusty on-board 3D printer, and "Glob", which is both food and critter bait.

When you're teleported outside your ship (because no doors means no airlocks), you discover a planet that looks like it was designed by Jack Kirby on a bender. You might not want to play this game if you're prone to acid flashbacks.

Your job is to walk around this deserted planet and scan it.

Your first available weapon is a backhanded slap, but if you hold the attack hey, it's a *hard* backhanded slap.

The first critters you encounter are delightfully rounded little birds, who the scanner declare "love you", which makes it even harder to slap a few of them into oblivion to collect resources for your 3D printer, but there don't seem to be any other options.

Twenty minutes in and structures that appear to already exist on the planet indicate that this planet might not be as deserted as the initial scans appeared, and the message from Kindred's CEO upon this discovery seems to indicate that he's not quite everything he seems.

After 40 hours of Starfield, Journey to the Savage Planet is an amusing palate cleanser; it's:

4: Good

#JourneyToTheSavagePlanet #FirstPerson #SciFi #Adventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 19, 2023 - Day 262 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 283

Game: Lies of P

Platform: Xbox Game Pass PC
Release Date: Sep 19, 2023
Installation Date: Sep 19, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 32m

Something a little different today. A review of Jodie Whittaker's Australian accent.

OK, not really (although it's passable, and justifiable with her backstory of having been living in the UK and returned to Australia).

As far as I remember, this is the first time I've reviewed an Xbox Game Pass game, which means I get to play Lies of P without dropping A$100 or more on it.

Lies of P is a third-person soulslike set within a retelling of the Pinocchio story. You play as P (ie. Pinocchio), who's suddenly awakened, seated in a train, in what very much appears to be mostly-human form, with the exception of a mechanical arm.

A voice calls to you to meet her at a hotel, but to get there, you first need to escape the train station, which is full of mechanical people determined to kill you.

You're presented with one of three initial playstyles, and I chose the one with the (seemingly) most straight-forward attack style (and the most HP).

Lies of P is set in the Belle Époque era. I had no idea what that was, but it's basically late 19th Century Europe through to WWII. The environment is beautiful.

One of the most lessons I learned the hard way, is don't make the mistake of skimming each of the tutorial pop-ups. Turns out they're kind of important.

Even so, by the time I hit the 32 minute mark, I'd traversed the same set of mobs five or six times, and died on the first boss repeatedly.

Blocking is incredibly important, both for restoring energy, and for staggering the mobs. Unfortunately, it requires very good timing, and I don't quite seem to be able to pull it off yet.

This is where XGPU is most useful to me. If I put in another couple of hours, and it's not a game I'm going to improve at (some of them aren't, thanks hand-eye coordination!), then nothing lost.

Not quite sure what I'll do when I have to start paying full price for XGPU, but that's a problem for 2027 Allie.

For now, Lies of P is:

4: Good

#LiesOfP #ThirdPerson #Soulslike #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 20, 2023 - Day 263 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 284

Game: Aliens: Colonial Marines

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 11, 2023
Installation Date: Sep 11, 2022
Unplayed: 374d (1y9d)
Playtime: 17m

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a Sci-fi survival horror FPS, and two out of four of those categories are games I don't like to play.

I wasn't sure what 2022 Allie thought she was doing with buying this, so I looked it up. It turns out it was part of a bundle, and for some reason I decided to install it?

That was my first mistake. The second was playing it. Technically, I only played it for twelve minutes, because the first five minutes of the game is basically a movie setting up the game as a follow-on from Aliens.

I probably don't need to explain further. Be a marine. Enter the Sulaco. Dark environment, Kill or be killed. Get killed.

There's absolutely nothing in this game that makes me want to even attempt to keep playing. Not my thing.

Aliens: Colonial Marines is a:

1: Nope

#AliensColonialMarines #FPS #SciFi #Survival #Horror #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 21, 2023 - Day 264 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 284

This Play Intentionally Left Blank

September 22, 2023 - Day 265 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 285

Game: In Sound Mind

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 28, 2021
Installation Date: Aug 31, 2022
Unplayed: 387d (1y22d)
Playtime: 20m

In Sound Mind is a first-person psychological survival horror game, and that's a three out of three for a express train to nopeville.

I tried to give it a fair shake. The atmospheric design is pretty much exactly what you'd want in a horror game, as is the audio.

The environmental design is considerably more frustrating, with the things you can use being highlighted with an icon, and everything else just being... there.

You play as a psychologist who appears to be going quite mad, having woken up in the basement of a building in a completely flooded town.

You need to solve some puzzles, as the atmosphere got increasingly tense, I was less and less inclined to keep going.

For complex reasons, I get no enjoyment out of horror games, and this game has not changed that.

I'm sorry, In Sound Mind. It's not you, it's very definitely me, saying:

1: Nope

#InSoundMind #FirstPerson #Psychological #Survival #Horror #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 23, 2023 - Day 266 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 286

Game: TOEM

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 17, 2021
Installation Date: Sep 13, 2023
Unplayed: 10d
Playtime: 56m

TOEM is a cozy black-and-white hand-drawn photography isometric photography game.

It doesn't sound like much when described like that, but it's absolutely lovely, particularly when coming off a couple of days of horror games.

You wake up in your grandmother's house, on the day of going to see the TOEM. Not sure what the TOEM *is* exactly, but it appears to be a coming-of-age journey within this world.

You explore the game, and you're given quests which are things to find and take photos of.

That's it. That's the gameplay loop.

Within the game there are also collectibles, and cassettes which you can play in your in-game tape player.

It was exactly the tonic I needed yesterday, and a great wind-down game.

TOEM is:

5: Excellent

#TOEM #Photography #Cozy #BlackAndWhite #HandDrawn #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 24, 2023 - Day 267 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 287

Game: Dirt 5

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 3, 2020
Installation Date: Sep 9, 2023
Unplayed: 15d
Playtime: 34m

Dirt 5 is an arcade off-road racing game developed by Codemasters.

I don't normally talk about who developed a particular game, but today is a little different.

I've always had a bit of a love-hate relationship with racing games. Mainly hate; from 1987 (Test Drive) through until 2019 I tried to like racing games, but I just didn't. Racing with keyboard/mouse is awful, and I couldn't "get" racing with a controller (PS2 / Gran Turismo).

That changed with the Xbox One controller and Forza Horizon 4. It finally clicked for arcade racing. I still don't enjoy technical racing sims.

Dirt Rally & Dirt Rally 2.0 were both an exercise in frustration. I'd heard that Dirt 5 was different, and I had a key for it, so I installed it.

They were correct. Dirt 5 is a whole different exercise in frustration.

As a racing game, it's proficient, and feels a lot like a rally cross between The Crew and Forza Horizon games.

Dirt 5 was released by Codemasters in 2020. Codemasters was purchased by Electronic Arts in 2021. Which explains a lot about why Dirt 5 has been almost impossible to play since 2021.

There is a literal gamebreaking bug, in a game that is less than three years old and remains unfixed. Quite simply, my initial start of this game was a fluke, because after that, it crashed every single time.

It's a known issue. It is unfixed. I put on my technical support hat, and went hunting. It appears that older DRM (Denuvo in this case) does not get on with the e-cores in 12th and 13th gen Intel CPUs.

Gigabyte released a workaround patch for 12th gen Alder Lake CPUs that parks the e-cores to enable compatibility, and I located an app (ParkControl) that will allow me to do the same, and it works consistently.

This is for a game that EA *still* sells.

The Steam forums have multiple posts about it crashing on startup, as do the EA Dirt 5 forums (for Xbox Game Pass PC and Steam).

EA just doesn't appear to care, which is no surprise at all.

Dirt 5 is:

3: OK (for racing)
1: Nope (for EA & DRM)

#Dirt5 #Racing #Rally #Arcade #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 25, 2023 - Day 268 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 288

Game: Planet Alpha

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 15, 2018
Installation Date: Oct 14, 2019
Unplayed: 1442d (3y11m11d)
Playtime: 22m

Planet Alpha is a 2.5D sci-fi platform puzzle game with stealth gameplay mechanics.

You are a tall, slender astronaut in a fishbowl helmet, who awakens on an alien planet, and sets off on a left-to-right journey of survival.

The game initially opens at the resolution of your main monitor... on your leftmost monitor.

Since my main monitor is an ultrawide, and my leftmost monitor is a FHD monitor that's up and to the left, this is... irritating. Only made worse by the fact that the game doesn't allow you to specify which monitor to start on.

Oh well. WIN+Shift+Right Arrow, and it's on the main monitor. And away we go and... crash.

For the third time this month, I spend more time troubleshooting a game than playing it. This turns out to be the same issue as Rock of Ages 2. Using a version of Unreal 4 that has a buggy version of OpenSSL that triggers a crash on >10th Gen Intel CPUs. Add a start-up command, and finally we're off.

First off, this is a gorgeous looking game. The alien environment is truly alien, and lighting is used to great effect.

It is completely wordless. There is no explanation as to why you're there, or what your goal is. No obvious backstory.

At first there's a lot of climbing and jumping, and getting timing right.

Then you're introduced to the fact that you apparently have the ability to control day and night, and move the environment backwards and forwards through the day-night cycle at will...ish. When the game lets you, for specific puzzles.

Dev forbid you should use the ability for the stealth puzzles.

Ah, stealth mechanics. The gameplay mechanic I love to hate.

There are particular contexts in which I'm OK with it. This is not one of those contexts.

A few minutes after encountering the day-night magical power, you find yourself in a room that makes the whole game even more confusing. I'm not sure what it was trying to communicate, but the angry robots who smashed through the walls and started hunting you certainly seemed unhappy about it.

How do you avoid them? Stealth mechanic. Does it work? Sometimes. The game's 2.5D environment means I'm never quite sure whether they can see me or not, until they shoot me and I die. Several times.

This is one of those games where I *don't* like the stealth mechanic. There are also no save points, just "chapters", but no clear indication as to where chapters start and finish.

In the end, while the game is SO very pretty, there's just nothing to motivate me to keep pushing right on the controller.

Planet Alpha is pretty:

2: Meh

#PlanetAlpha #Platform #Puzzle #SciFi #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 26, 2023 - Day 269 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 289

Game: Rage 2

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 14, 2019
Installation Date: Nov 22, 2022
Unplayed: 308d (10m4d)
Playtime: 32m

Rage 2 is an open-world post-apocalyptic FPS.

Do you like things that go "splorch" when you shoot them? If you answered 'yes', Rage 2 might be the game for you!

Rage 2 is a sequel to Rage, a post-apocalyptic FPS. I played 27 minutes of Rage back in 2022, and found it a bit repetitive and grindy, and visually it was many shades of brown, grey, and black.

Rage 2 is BRIGHT! There's a woman with a blue mohawk and white facepaint screaming out of a pink and yellow background on the Steam header, like an escapee from Mad Max Fury Road.

The game is set about 30 years after the end of Rage, and the antagonist from Rage who wanted to take over the world is back, and he's pissed.

...and mostly robotic. He's been living underground and has amassed a ragtag army of mutants to... take over the world.

Where Rage felt grindy and repetitive even within the first 30 minutes, Rage 2 felt more... fun. However, I've only really completed what is essentially the intro, and gotten my first vehicle and a handful of quests, so maybe it will turn out to be less fun as time goes by.

In any case, I now have an alternative post-apocalyptic shoot-and-splorch game to Outriders.

Rage 2 seems:

4: Good

#Rage2 #FPS #OpenWorld #PostApocalyptic #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 27, 2023 - Day 270 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 290

Game: Tunche

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 3, 2021
Installation Date: Aug 9, 2023
Unplayed: 50d (1m19d)
Playtime: 21m

Tunche is 3D-ish brawler/roguelike set in the Amazon jungle.

Playing as one of five characters (one of whom appears to be Hat Kid from A Hat In Time??), each with their own backstory and reasons for being there, you attempt to make your way through the jungle, wildly mashing buttons and brawling with whatever pops out of the repetitive jungle screen to clear levels and collect whatever pops up.

No matter how I tried, I couldn't mash the right buttons in the right order, and even though I made it through all the way to the first boss, I got mashed by the boss, and didn't feel any desire to try again.

Tunche isn't really my thing, just a bit:

2: Meh

#Tunche #Brawler #Roguelike #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

September 28, 2023 - Day 271 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 291

Game: Void Bastards

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 29, 2019
Installation Date: Sep 25, 2022
Unplayed: 369d (1y4d)
Playtime: 19m

Void Bastards is a cel-shaded FPS roguelike, in which you play a reconstituted criminal, raiding successive space stations to collect spare parts on behalf of the AI controlling your stranded prison ship, so that it can be repaired, until you die. At which point you'll be replaced by another reconstituted criminal to continue the job.

Literally reconstituted, as it seems that in this universe, prison means being freeze-dried and powdered and placed into storage.

Each space station presents different challenges to overcome, while trying to collect parts, food, and fuel (to make it to the NEXT space station). You're also collecting equipment to build yourself upgrades, while trying not to get dead, but at least upgrades survive each death.

The next couple of weeks of reviews will probably be pretty short, while I'm on leave.

Void Bastards is:

3: OK

#VoidBastards #FPS #Roguelike #MastodonGaming #Gaming
#Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay