December 2, 2023 - Day 336 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 355

Game: Prince of Persia

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 10, 2008
Installation Date: Nov 23, 2023
Unplayed: 9d
Playtime: 25m

Prince of Persia is the second reboot of the original Prince of Persia. Unlike the original 2D platformer, this Prince of Persia is a full 3D third-person game, with a few platforming elements.

I lost far too many hours to the original, not understanding why I couldn't make the pinpoint-perfectly-timed jumps consistently.

Fortunately, 2008's Prince of Persia isn't quite as unforgiving. It does, however, suffer from a couple of issues.

The game goes from the being able to control the camera while following in the game world, to occasionally and unexpectedly moving to a fixed camera at some points, to the fights themselves, which I managed to complete several of, but I'm still not sure how, as I was playing with keyboard and mouse, and the movement keys during the battle seemed to change dynamically in relationship to the camera position, and I was never quite sure which key I should be pressing.

The other issue is purely one of age. This is a game that's fifteen years old, and while it's surprisingly playable (especially compared to some other games I've played this year), the evolution of movement in third-person games in the interim, makes movement in Prince of Persia feel incredibly restrictive.

Another issue arises from the age of the game. From some follow-up reading, it appears that this particular version of Prince of Persia was meant to have a follow-up that didn't eventuate. A Nintendo DS game was released that was a sequel, but the storyline kind of just sputtered out.

As I'm finding that I'm increasingly invested in games with a narrative payoff, investing time in a game where time has revealed that this particular narrative effectively just stops dead, feels like time I could invest elsewhere.

Edited, after sleeping on it. It's borderline; I kind of feel like giving it another go, so I'm upgrading Prince of Persia to:

3: OK

#PrinceOfPersia #ActionAdventure #ThirdPerson #3D #Platformer #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 3, 2023 - Day 337 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 356

Game: Little Orpheus

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 13, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 30, 2023
Unplayed:3d
Playtime: 21m

Little Orpheus is a 2.5D sideways-scrolling platform adventure game. This is a remastered version of the iOS/tvOS/macOS game which was originally released in 2020 on Apple Arcade.

The thing about #ADHD and game sales is that I absolutely have to be stoic in the face of FOMO. In spite of having so many unplayed games, and unactivated Steam keys, I still get drawn in by shinies. I bought one game that I'd been waiting months for a price drop. I bought the Prince of Persia bundle that I'd wishlisted at some stage, and which dropped to less than five bucks (and in hindsight may have been a poor choice).

Then there was this game, Little Orpheus. I stumbled across it, and it fascinated me, and AUS$4.12 later (thanks, Fanatical and your 5% voucher!) it was added to my collection of unplayed games.

Zero regrets.

You play as a Soviet interiornaut who has returned to Soviet Russia three years after disappearing on a mission sent to explore the interior of Earth and its suitability for colonisation.

This framing device is a voiceover interview between you and a superior, after your return to the surface, wanting to know where you've been for the last three years, and more importantly, where is the titular MacGuffin, "Little Orpheus", Comrade?

Thus far, it's been nothing but a few environmental puzzles, and some timing-based jumps with a couple of QTEs, with no combat.

If the whole game is like this, I will not mind in the slightest, because this game is a visual and auditory feast. The lighting and environments are gorgeous, and the classical musical accompaniment brings to mind the classic cartoon shorts of my childhood.

It's reminiscent of another platformer that I played earlier in the year that I was somewhat unimpressed with, and the thing that separates the two is the humorous narrative of Little Orpheus has me desperately wanting to keep going to see the story play out. Little Orpheus is:

5: Excellent

#LittleOrpheus #Adventure #Platformer #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 4, 2023 - Day 338 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 357

Game: Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 4, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 1, 2022
Unplayed: 368d (1y3d)
Playtime: 19m

Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered is exactly what it says on a the tin. It's a Remastered version of Ghostbusters: The Video Game, released in 2009, which is effectively a Ghostbusters-themed third-person shooter...ish.

There are some games I really want to like. I grew up in the 1980's and vividly remember Ray Parker Jr's Ghostbusters theme, and the Ghostbusters logo being omnipresent for what felt like forever, at least to a ten year old.

I loved the movie too, and saw it multiple times; suffice to say, I've always had a soft spot for Ghostbusters. I somehow missed Ghostbusters: The Video Game the first time around.

On the other hand, I'm incredibly wary of "remastered" games. Sometimes the remaster has been lovingly shepherded by people who understood exactly what it was that made the original tick, and manage to bring a game up to date, while still capturing that je ne sais quoi (eg. Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1+2).

Other times, it feels like a cash-grab, throwing a higher resolution option into the settings menu, and slapping a "remastered" label on it.

This is a spectrum, rather than a binary, and unfortunately, Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered feels closer to the cash-grab end.

This 'remaster' feels like the first run of an agile process, with the goal of just delivering the MVP (minimum viable product, not most valuable player) to fans of the original game, rather than bringing the original up to near-parity/quality with other games of 2019.

As an example, while the game offers an ultrawide resolution, it breaks the UI, while a QHD resolution gets stretched instead of letterboxed.

A couple of years ago I made a meme about RPG designers being obsessed with fishing, and adding fishing minigames to everything.

Here, it feels like fishing IS the game. Tire out the ghost, reel it in, trap it. When I made that mental jump, it kind of pushed me out of the zone.

The final kicker, though, is the presence of Harold Ramis. While all of the original cast are voicing their characters, hearing Harold Ramis again just made me feel kind of sad, and that's very much a "me" thing, that's not the fault of the game.

I think maybe for fans of Ghostbusters, who enjoyed the 2009 original, there will be something in this that recaptures the magic.

Unfortunately, coming in cold to Ghostbusters: The Video Game Remastered just left me feeling a bit:

2: Meh

#GhostbustersTheVideoGameRemastered #ThirdPerson #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 5, 2023 - Day 339 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 358

Game: Liberated

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 31, 2020
Installation Date: Dec 25, 2022
Unplayed: 345d (11m10d)
Playtime: 23m

Liberated is a side-scrolling 2.5D platformer set in a vaguely-cyberpunk dystopian society built around a Black Mirror-ish social credit score called "CCS". The game is -quite literally- framed within a noir-styled graphic novel.

It definitely feels unique among the games I've played this year, with the only other black and white game that springs to mind being Shady Part of Me

The skeuomorphism of the graphic novel itself is very well done, with page turning animations and moving from panel to panel through the narrative being very effective; at one point, the page was illuminated with a vague reflection of the light source showing up the grain of the matt gloss paper, at which point I did a double-take, because it's a computer game!

Unfortunately, the downside of the framing is that even though the "active" landscape frames take up a large chunk of the screen during actual gameplay, the character still feels very small onscreen, relative to the scenery, which is framed by the graphic novel and the tabletop it appears to be lying on.

The game appears to be oriented towards controller-based play, with my initial attempt to play with keyboard and mouse feeling very hit-and miss. I'm not sure if my mouse pointed disappeared because I alt-tabbed out to close some windows on another, or if the game disabled it; this meant at one point I was using a gun with my least favourite targeting device, the right thumbstick.

Once a mouse & keyboard girl, always a mouse & keyboard girl.

I'm also not a fan of QTEs, which so far have featured in the game a couple of times. The game does a better job than some, by clearly showing which button needs to be pressed, but even so, I struggled to mentally map A, B, X, Y to the buttons under my thumb, and blew one run pretty much at the last QTE in the series as I mashed the X button while the A appeared on screen.

The thing that's stuck with me though, is a vague sense of unease that I can't actually place, or settle. There's something about the game I find disquieting, and I think I might need to sit with that awhile to see if the answer reveals itself.

With that said, the narrative pull may draw me back in, so at this point, I'm willing to say Liberated is:

3: OK

#Liberated #SidewaysScroller #Noir #Dystopia #Cyberpunk #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 6, 2023 - Day 340 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 359

Game: 3000th Duel

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 13, 2019
Installation Date: Jan 17, 2022
Unplayed: 688d (1y10m19d)
Playtime: 22m

3000th Duel is a 2.5D sideways scrolling Soulsvania platformer. Controllers on, let's go.

As the unnamed masked character, you find yourself resurrected, with a voiceover telling them you need to fight to find out who you are.

Armoured, and armed with a claymore, you set out to kill everything in sight. Of course.

I found myself getting a little frustrated with 3000th Duel very early. Early on, the game told me to use dash (RT) during fights, and I started using it and getting my ass kicked, because it was a little premature.

Then mid-fight, I was suddenly weaponless. Then dead.

The RT is the dash trigger. RB (the bumper trigger) puts your weapon away, and I'd clipped RB with my finger.

Weirdly, LT is the map button, which found me frequently staring at a map, mid-fight.

Visually, it's OK, with more than a hint of Hollow Knight (which pre-dates 3000th Duel by a couple of years).

However, it does have an inventory & stats system which I don't recall seeing in another Soulsvania (but ADHD Swiss cheese memory, so... could be wrong...)

Overall though, it's another Soulsvania in a year where I've played several very good ones, and in learning to appreciate this particular game style, it means that my expectations have become somewhat higher.

As such, 3000th Duel is a passable Soulsvania, but not one I'm likely to return to in a hurry; it's:

3: OK

#3000thDuel #SidewaysScroller #Platformer #Soulsvania #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 7, 2023 - Day 341 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 360

Game: Wandersong

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 28, 2018
Installation Date: May 14, 2019
Unplayed: 1668d (4y6m23d)
Playtime: 29m

Wandersong is a 2D music-themed rhythm adventure platformer.

As with so many other platformers, the game opens with your character standing defenceless on the left hand side of the screen, and setting out on their adventure.

The game world is rendered in a brightly-coloured papercut stop-motion animation style. It was here that I ran into my first problems with the game.

It's definitely a controller-based game, but the UI for menus is so frustrating that I resorted to keyboard and mouse - and STILL had problems.

I lost close to ten minutes (which I subtracted from the playtime to get the total above) just wrestling with the options UI and trying to get it to commit the resolution I'd chosen.

With game actually running at a reasonable resolution, I set off to the right, to embrace my destiny. A sword! Every adventurer needs a sword!

This is when I encountered what felt like the weirdest weapon interaction I've ever encountered: to use the sword you select a direction for the sword to point with the D-Pad (or left stick, but I recommend D-pad) and then move towards the target.

Enter battle... and immediately lose your sword forever as it flies out of your hands and plummets offscreen.

As it turns out, this is not a fighting platformer, it's a musical platformer.

After some further scene setting, you're into the game proper.

Fights in the game are effectively a complicated version of the memory game "Simon", with a C major scale's 8 notes instead of Simon's 4.

As an example, an early fight with a ghost involves replicating the notes and patterns that the non-vocal ghost is making. This is where using the d-pad is more effective than trying to use the left stick. You need to hit the right notes in the right order, and it's too easy to slide through a wrong note with the analog stick, meaning you need to start the pattern again.

For the most part, it's effective, and the music is quite lovely, but it's definitely a game I'm going to need to be in the mood for.

Part of the reason for that is that the bugginess of the UI extends into the game itself, with the game intermittently pixelating as if dropping to low resolution, and intermittent visual glitches.

During the battles with a ghost, the screen colours invert, and the soundtrack changes accordingly, and usually switches back after winning the battle.

However, after one battle, the colours and soundtrack started inverting and reverting non-stop, making the game virtually unplayable.

Unfortunately, the general bugginess took the edge off a game I quite enjoy otherwise, leaving Wandersong at:

3: OK

#Wandersong #2D #SidewaysScroller #Platformer #Rhythm #Adventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 8, 2023 - Day 342 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 361

Game: Expeditions: Rome

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 21, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 8, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 25m

Expeditions: Rome is an isometric turn-based RPG, which I think is a combination I haven't played this year, or possibly at all.

This is the first game in the December Humble Choice bundle.

[next morning, coffee in hand]

So, where were we?

I started up the game, and was faced with a character creation screen. The game is set in Rome, circa 80 BCE (I'm estimating the date based on the age of one of your in-game companions; some guy named Gaius Julius Caesar. Yes, that one.)

The framing is that you're the youngest child of a senator who's just been murdered, and your mother has spirited you out of Rome.

You can choose the gender and name of your character - at which point the game explains the structure of Roman names; First name, Family Name, Nickname.

If you choose to play a female character, the game prevents you from choosing a first name, explaining that women in Rome did not have a given name, just a family name, and nickname.

Playing as a female, the NPCs within the game reflect the patriarchal attitudes of the setting, reminding you of your "place" in society, and the expectations upon you.

You're fairly quickly thrust into battle, at which point I was disoriented. I was faced with hex tiles, and choices on how to move the characters in my party.

"This is a turn-based tactics strategy game?"

Throughout the year I've found myself caught out trying to categorise some games.

I have no experience with table-top RPGs; I grew up in the middle of the "Satanic panic", and was taught that D&D was evil; when my only friend at high school was spending his lunch breaks playing D&D, I was on my own elsewhere, reading.

If I had any experience with TTRPGs, I would have immediately recognised it as a turn-based RPG; instead, with my history with first- & third-person action RPGs, I just didn't recognise it as an RPG, and it felt unique to me.

Even in reading up this morning, and having that "a-ha" moment, I recognised that I *have* played another turn-based RPG this year—Honkai Star Rail—but didn't connect the two, due to Honkai being third-person.

If I'd played the official Game Of The Year, I also might have recognised the gameplay (Santa, please leave Baldur's Gate 3 under the tree).

As such, it's hard to rate Rome: Expeditions comparatively; I can only really judge it on whether I enjoyed it, and... kind of? The graphics are very pretty, the voice acting is OK. I found the combat a little clunky, but maybe that was my lack of experience.

I'll probably give it another shot, (at least until I get BG3), so I'll say Rome: Expeditions is:

3: OK

#RomeExpeditions #TurnBased #RPG #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 9, 2023 - Day 343 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 362

Game: Midnight Fight Express

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 24, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 9, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

Midnight Fight Express is an isometric brawler.

This is the second game in the December Humble Choice bundle, and is published by Humble Games.

Two isometric games in a row? OK then. The game opens with your amnesiac character, "Babyface", in a police interview room, questioning him as to who he is and why he's been on a crime spree across the city.

There's mention of a talking drone, and then the screen fades to black, taking you back to your apartment where it all began; a large box is delivered, containing said talking drone.

"Droney" (yes, seriously) bursts out of the box, and tells us we need to start killing to prevent the city collapsing to a crime spree during the night. Droney gives the game more than a little of the "My Friend Pedro" feel.

...and away we go.

On the plus side, the game handles the isometric controls well for keyboard play. Unlike Expeditions: Rome, Midnight Fight Express has a fixed view isometric camera.

Unlike most of the fixed isometric view games I've played this year which use ordinal keymapping for WASD (mapping W to "true north"), essentially requiring the use of two keys to move "forward" (or "northeast"), relative to the gamespace, Midnight Fight Express rotates the directions 45 degrees clockwise, resulting in the W key moving "forwards" (or NE).

I loaded up a few of them after playing this, and then went back to Midnight Fight Express again to compare the controls.

I think I prefer this approach, given how frustrating I found The Ascent when needing to use two keys at a time to move (or maybe just provide an option to switch that on and off).

As best as I can remember, I've never played an isometric brawler before.

With some games, the narrative is little more than a device to support the gameplay, while others use gameplay to tell a story. While I think Midnight Fight Express is definitely in the former category, when I went back into the game to compare the controls, I ended up playing for another 16 minutes.

I wasn't initially sure felt, but I think Midnight Fight Express might be growing on me, so I'm going to say it's:

3: OK

#MidnightFightExpress #Isometric #Brawler #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 10, 2023 - Day 344 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 363

Game: Elex II

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 2, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 10, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 52m

Elex II is a third-person open-world "sci-fi" ARPG; it's a sequel to Elex, which I reviewed on May 19th. and the third game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

Usually, when someone's making a sequel, they'll take the things that worked about the first game or movie, try and amp those up, while introducing something new to give those same elements a twist.

As I'm playing through a game, I'm making notes in my head about the game, things I want to touch on when I write about it.

Elex II was released four and a half years after Elex; after playing through Elex II, I went back and read my review of Elex from May.

With Elex II, the devs decided to so something different to the usual strategy for a sequel. They instead took the elements that didn't work in the predecessor, and amped those up instead. The review almost writes itself.

The game opens with a narrator drawling the story of the planet Magalan, and the terrible disaster that befell them, leaving them in a post-apocalypse that feels like the designs of Skyrim, Fallout, and Destiny 2's EDZ got put in a blender, but the devs decided to roll their own gameplay. [Check]

They kept the aspect of Fallout's "collect all the things just in case" gameplay, but while I managed to collect a stash of stuff, an hour in I still have no idea what to do with any of it. [Check]

Combat feels mushy, and the mobs I've run into feel overpowered. [Mobs seem a little less OP now]

...and then there's the voice acting. Our protagonist is a gruff emotionless white guy who's been done wrong, and left to die by his faction. Early on, he meets a character from a different faction, and the conversation itself felt like a grind. [Check]

To call the voice acting wooden would be an insult to trees. [Actually, this changed. It's now wooden with a thick cheesy topping.]

Unfortunately, I think Elex is another game that might have been interesting in 2017, but suffers in comparison to everything that's come since, and there's little here that makes me want to keep playing.

[Dec 10] The worst thing is that last paragraph from the Elex review feels accurate for Elex II in the worst possible way. This game from 2022 FEELS like a game from 2017.

The UI is clunky, the character graphics feel firmly lodged in the uncanny valley, and don't get me started on the teeth. They're going to give me nightmares.

Oh, and one more thing. This game takes up 86.5Gb. That's bigger than Death Stranding, Horizon Zero Dawn Complete, and bigger than Cyberpunk 2077 (WITH DLC!). Wut? Why??

Elex II takes everything I disliked about Elex and gives more of the same; so, uh...

2: Meh

#ElexII #ARPG #ThirdPerson #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 10, 2023 - Day 344 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 364

Game: Mordhau

Platform: Epic Game Store
Release Date: Apr 29, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 9, 2023
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 19m

Mordhau is a first-person or third-person medieval combat simulator/slasher.

I picked it out of my unused Steam keys list last night, then realising I already owned it on EGS, decided to install it there.

I thought, for some reason, it was a Soulslike.

It is not. It like a twin to Chivalry II, right down to the annoying knight doing the tutorial.

Multiplayer game, enter tutorial, use the mouse to try and do a bunch of different sword moves and parries.

Unlike Chivalry II, you also get the option of training with a bow and arrow (which was OK), and jumping on a horse and using a lance.

Somehow, as frustrating as Chivalry II was, this was *more* frustrating. I could not, for the life of me, coordinate the horse and the lance, and after spending half of my playtime trying to hit the second of four targets with the lance, my frustration exceeded my patience, and I quit the game, and recovered 36GB of SSD space.

For someone who's into multiplayer swordfighting, this game might be right up your alley, which is why I'm throwing the Steam key into my giveaway list.

Like Chivalry II before it, Mordhau is a big old:

1: Nope

#Mordhau #Slasher #MultiPlayer #MeleeCombat #FirstPerson #ThirdPerson #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 11, 2023 - Day 345 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 365

Game: Nobody Saves The World

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 19, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 11, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 41m

Nobody Saves The World is a cartoonish top-down fantasy RPG dungeon crawler, number 4 in this month's Humble Choice bundle.

It's weird as hell. Waking with amnesia, and no pants, you set out on an adventure to find out who you are, and what's happened to the world's greatest wizard, Nostramagus.

Armed only with Nostramagus' wand (which you obtain early on from the crime scene), Nostramagus' protege sends you tumbling into a dungeon cell.

From there, you start a series of quests, leading to the ability to shape-shift, first into a rat, then into other forms, and developing skills for each form, as you level them up. This leads to further quests, etc etc etc.

It's just a mad lot of fun, and given that the RRP for Nobody Saves The World is AUD$35.95, and a month of Humble Choice is AUD$16.95 it makes this month's bundle almost worth the price, even moreso if one of the earlier games is something you want.

However, for my money, Nobody Saves The World is:

4: Good

#NobodySavesTheWorld #TopDown #RPG #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 12, 2023 - Day 346 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 366

Game: The Gunk

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 30, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 12, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 78m

The Gunk is a third-person action-adventure platformer, with some puzzle elements thrown in. It's game number five in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and honestly, was not a game I was looking forward to playing.

The game title, and the thumbnail on Humble's website really put me off; had I stumbled across this game, with a name like "The Gunk"? Ew. No thank you.

But here I am, forcing myself to play through each of the games each month, so I installed The Gunk and loaded it up.

The game opens with an external shot of a workhorse ship, in space. This is a no Starship Enterprise, more of a yellow brick.

From inside the ship, a conversation between Rani (a crew member) and Becks (the captain) ensues.

They're low on funds, and space hauling is no way to make money. They've found a barren planet, which set off an alert on the ship for an energy source, but as Rani disembarks from the low-flying ship, her "power glove" barely holding together, all they find is a few worthless crystals, and a bubbling mass of "gunk".

We're off on an adventure... and what an adventure it is.

The gunk, as it turns out, is drawn to the energy pools that triggered the ship's alarms, and Rani's power glove has a build in "vacuum" that can suck up the gunk (don't think too hard about this). Once the area is freed of the gunk, it springs back to life.

Gorgeous, colourful, life. As you move through the various tunnels and platforms, they're rendered beautifully, but watching the bubble of life expanding outwards from your position as you remove the last piece of gunk, is wonderful.

Built into Rani's power glove is a scanner that can scan the various resources you encounter as you can explore, and you can extract them in much the same way as the gunk.

You'll need them, too, because scanning every new thing you come across is how you unlock upgrades to the power glove.

The platforming and puzzles are not too complex, and the laid-back accompanying score is fantastic, and suits the game perfectly.

The best thing for me about The Gunk, though, is the narrative; the back and forth between Becks as she waits back at the ship, and Rani as she explores further afield is fun, and it's this that genuinely kept me exploring for more than an hour, only quitthing because I was going to be late to start work if I didn't.

As they say, "Never judge a book by its cover", and missing out on The Gunk would have been a terrible shame. For me, this game alone makes this month's bundle entirely worth the money, because The Gunk is:

5: Excellent

#TheGunk #ThirdPerson #ActionAdventure #Platformer #Puzzle #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 13, 2023 - Day 347 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 367

Game: The Pale Beyond

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 25, 2023
Installation Date: Dec 13, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 22m

The Pale Beyond is a survival RPG which appears to be set in the late 19th century; it's the sixth game in the December Humble Choice bundle.

You play as the first mate on a ship that's setting out to try and find what became of its sister ship after it went missing five years earlier on an Arctic expedition.

At first I thought it was a graphic novel. A lot of flat, hand-drawn graphics, and clicking to read text.

One line at a time. My frustration levels started to grow at this point. Eventually after clicking through all that text, and setting my character traits in the process (a "Muttwash criminal"), I found myself at the docks.

Well, more like found everyone else. My character is nowhere to be seen, which feels vaguely disorienting for a game that is split between barely animated isometric views, and first-person perspective interactions with paintings of characters and text boxes.

It has a touch of Frostpunk to it, without any of the things that kept me engaged, and ultimately I felt no desire to keep going.

An added point of frustration was that the game only saves at particular points, which meant that when I decided to quit, but changed my mind, I was actually back at the start of the "level", which would have meant clicking through all of the previous ten minutes of interactions again, which completely took the wind out of my sails (pun intended).

The Pale Beyond might be more suited to someone with an interest in survival games and/or 19th century nautical adventures, but I found it a bit:

2: Meh

#ThePaleBeyond #FirstPerson #Isometric #RPG #Survival #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 14, 2023 - Day 348 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 368

Game: From Space

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 4, 2022
Installation Date: Dec 14, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

From Space is a post-apocalyptic (alien invasion!) isometric action twin-stick shooter; it's the eighth game in the December Humble Choice bundle.

The game opens with a short exposition to set the game world, then gives you the option to pick a "specialist" from an extensive range of options.

The characters look like Fortnite avatars run though a chibi filter, but they work well enough with the games stylised graphics.

You load into a training area, then you're off on your first mission. You start with a weapon slot (plus melee weapon via right-click), with more slots unlocking as you progress.

There's also a cache for your weapons at each destination location.

The game (at least as far as I played) seems to be set entirely at night, and makes excellent use of lighting and sound effects.

It's a perfectly serviceable twin-stick shooter. Whether it will draw me back, I don't know.

From Space is:

3: OK

#FromSpace #Isometric #TwinStick #Action #Shooter #HumbleChoice #HumbleBundle #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 14, 2023 - Day 348 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 11

Game: Last Call BBS

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 4, 2022
Library Date: Aug 14, 2023

Playtime: 30m (2h48m)

Last Call BBS is a Zachtronics game, and is the seventh game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and the final bundle game this month.

I'm going to broadly group the folks reading this into folks who saw "Zachtronics" and went "huh?" and folks who saw it and went "ohhhh".

Most (but not all) of the Zachtronics games are variants of programming games.

Last Call BBS however, is a final labour of love for Zachtronics fans. The name is a double entendre, for this was also the last game by Zachtronics before Zach Barth closed the studio, and left programming (at least temporarily).

It's difficult for me to describe Last Call BBS, because it's a callback to an earlier time, before the web, before the internet was everywhere.

It's a pixel-art simulation of a computer from the late 80's-early 90's, that comes with its own simulation of a PDA ("Kids, when we were younger, we didn't have fandangled smartphones, we had "Personal Digital Assistants" with monochrome pressure-sensitive screens, and we had to learn a whole new way to write the alphabet, and we LIKED it! Well... we accepted it."

The game sets you up with a modem, allowing you dial into a BBS (Bulletin Board System), modem screeches and all, and download 8 different "pirated" 'warez'. Last Call BBS even simulates the download process, making you wait for up to 15 minutes for the "download" to complete, and then forcibly logging you off, in much the style of real world BBSes of the time.

There's almost a sense in which Last Call BBS feels like a Roman à clef, and that some of the stories in the game are Zach taking an introspective stock how how he "got here".

For all of the pixel art games I encountered (and complained about) this year, Last Call BBS is the one game that actually DID give me a sense of nostalgia for that era. It feels... earned, I guess.

As for the "mini-games" themselves, they appear to be inspired by many of Zachtronics hit games. In keeping with tradition for Zachtronics games, Last Call BBS contains two different solitaire variants.

I don't know how old Zach is, but I get the feeling that we lived at opposite ends of a particular era in computing that all but disappeared in the wake of the internet becoming omni-present.

There's a layer to Last Call BBS that may only be appreciated by those of us who lived through that period of time, yet still provides the kind of challenges that lead to an entire subgenre named for Zach Barth: "Zachlikes".

Last Call BBS is:

5: Excellent

#LastCallBBS #PixelArt #Narrative #Programming #Zachlikes #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #RePlay

December 15, 2023 - Day 349 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 369

Game: Dear Esther: Landmark Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 15, 2017 (Feb 14, 2012)
Installation Date: Oct 25, 2020
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

From Esther is a first-person walking simulator. The Landmark Edition is a remastered version of the original 2012 version.

You find yourself on a deserted island in the Hebrides, off the coast of Scotland. You can move using the WASD keys, and zoom with the mouse button, and... well, that's it.

You walk around this beautiful windswept island, and as you do, you encounter abandoned houses, shipwrecks, cave systems with glow-in-the-dark cave drawings, and the occasional figure disappearing into the mist.

As you walk, voiceovers are triggered intermittently, of an older English man, reading letters addressed to "Dear Esther", which begins to lay out the story of how you find yourself there.

It is, to my mind, the purest expression of the walking simulator genre.

Sometimes when I write reviews, I do some reading up on the game, to see if I missed something, or to see if there's a context for a gameplay decision that seems nonsensical, or just to understand something like "why is it called 'Landmark Edition'?"

In this case, I learned something unexpected.

Dear Esther isn't just a walking simulator. It's THE walking simulator. Dear Esther's gameplay is the gameplay for which the subgenre was named. It was apparently the subject of much debate back in 2012, as to whether it truly counts as a "game".

One of my favourite games is a walking simulator (Firewatch), so it's not that I have any particular bad feelings towards, them; it just feels unfortunate that given this particular game's place in gaming history, it didn't grab me more.

With that said, this game evokes a very specific, melancholy mood, and it's a game I can see myself returning to, when I'm in a particular frame of mind.

So for me, Dear Esther: Landmark Edition is:

3: OK

#DearEsther #FirstPerson #WalkingSimulator #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 16, 2023 - Day 350 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 370

Game: Land Above Sea Below

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 14, 2023
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 35d (1m5d)
Playtime: 30m

Land Above Sea Below (LASB) is a hex-tile isometric strategy game. It answers the question "What if you added pressure to Dorfromantik (2022)?"

I haven't reviewed Dorfromantik (DR) this year because this was mainly games that had sat in my pile of shame, not a game that I bought the day it was released. It's a very chill little hex-tile strategy city-builder.

LASB was released almost 18 months after DR, and the influence is obvious, right down to the identical gameplay controls.

However, where LASB veers away from DR is in going upwards. In DR, you have several different types of items that can appear on a tile; houses, forests, fields, grasslands, rivers, and railways.

Each hex tile in your pile can have any combination of these items on any edge. Match an edge, score points, match more edges, score more points.

In LASB, while it has rivers, the cards instead have themes. And instead of just spreading out into nothingness like DR, in LASB, you're building islands surrounded by water, which is part of the "pressure" that LASB adds.

LASB has game rounds called "seasons". Each season lasts seven "days", with icons at the top of the screen showing you what the tiles you're going to get are.

At the end of the season, the water level rises. Your island is centred around "the fall tree" and if the fall tree gets flooded, it's game over.

However, when you're placing your tiles, if you connect them on three sides to three other tiles with the same theme, all of the tiles connected (of the same theme) are raised higher, with many potentially above the water level rise.

If you connect a tile on four or more sides, you get extra days (and extra tiles) in that season.

River tiles behave differently; they neither get flooded, or raised.

It becomes a balancing act of trying to decide whether you can lift enough tiles, above the water level rise, or if you want to try and extend the season; being that there's no guarantee that the tiles you'll get for the extra day(s) will match the theme - which may result in more land being flooded.

It's an interesting alternative to DR, but it doesn't have quite the same chilled-out feeling.

With that said, LASB feels slightly rougher around the edges. Dorfromantik feels polished, cleanly adapting to my ultrawide monitor, where I had to fiddle with LASB's settings just to get it to run letterboxed at 2560x1440.

LASB also adds a slight blur at the edge of the screen which I find more annoying than "cute tilt-shift".

Although clearly derivative, Land Above Sea Below presents an interesting twist on Dorfromantik's gameplay, which is quite:

4: Good

#LandAboveSeaBelow #HexTile #Isometric #Strategy #Puzzle #CityBuilder #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 17, 2023 - Day 351 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 371

Game: Mind Scanners

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 20, 2021
Installation Date: Aug 31, 2022
Unplayed: 473d (1y3m17d)
Playtime: 1h15m

MInd Scanners is a 2D pixel-art game about psychotherapy in a dystopian society.

The game is set in a society where everything within the walled city in which you live is tightly controlled, while outside the walls, people are gathering.

This society is seemingly run by some kind of AI system, and that system has locked up your daughter for being mentally ill.

You take a job as one of the titular "mind scanners", with a goal of infiltrating "The Structure" to get to your daughter.

You're sent out each day with your little machine, which runs a "mindscan" on each target, allowing you to declare them "sane" or "insane".

If "insane", you play a series of minigames with each minigame targeting a particular type of "insanity" to proceed through a process of "curing" them.

I kept playing as long as I did in the hope of "rescuing my daughter", but the game ultimately became repetitive and boring, feeling like I was just treading water waiting for the next story beat.

This is another game whether the game didn't rise above the pixel art, and the subtext of the game just made me feel icky.

In spite of spending over an hour playing Mind Scanners, I wish I could get that hour back; it's a:

1: Nope

#MindScanners #PixelArt #2D #Dystopian #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 18, 2023 - Day 352 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 372

Game: KARDS - The WW2 Card Game

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 15, 2020
Installation Date: Sep 25, 2022
Unplayed: 449d (1y2m23d)
Playtime: 18m

KARDS is a free-to-play (F2P) deck-building customisable card game (CCG).

Just like what it says on the tin, KARDS takes inspiration from battles and military units of World War 2.

My main exposure to digital CCGs was Hearthstone. Where Hearthstone kind of lost me was the sheer number of cards, and the ever-changing "meta-game", which I could not keep up with.

In 18 minutes, it's not really possible to grasp whether there's a meta-game involved, but the tutorial was fun enough.

Given that it's F2P, I'd need to spend a lot more time coming to grips with it, but what I saw was enough to make me want to come back again.

Of course, without digging deeper, there's a risk that it's actually pay-to-win, and my opinion might change if that's the case, but on the surface, KARDS seems:

3: OK

#KARDS #DeckBuilder #CCG #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 19, 2023 - Day 353 - Now for something completely different!

Steam's review system wasn't exactly designed for this project.

https://s.team/y23/hdrpjj?l=english

I might continue it into 2024, but just a Game - Rating post, just to try and break Steam completely next year :p

December 19, 2023 - Day 353 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 373

Game: Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 3, 2021
Installation Date: Dec 18, 2023
Unplayed: 1d
Playtime: 61m

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition is an isometric RPG based on the Pathfinder TTRPG.

I'm making a bit of a last ditch attempt to reduce the number of unredeemed keys before the end of the year, so I'm rapidly losing storage space on my PC.

In all my years of playing games, I don't think I've ever really played a party-based RPG that was based on a TTRPG.

Having never played a TTRPG, when the game offered me a pre-fab character, maybe I should have just taken it, instead of spending the next 20 minutes creating a character from scratch, only to realise that I was (in effect) picking random options with no real idea how they'd work in-game.

Oh well. Game is fun, lighting effects in the dungeon are gorgeous, will probably kick it around a bit more, unless BG3 shows up under the Christmas tree, in which case, all bets are off.

As far as I can tell, the "Enhanced Edition" includes QoL changes that were back-ported from the console versions to PC.

Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous - Enhanced Edition is:

4: Good

#PathfinderWrathOfTheRighteous #Isometric #RPG #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 20, 2023 - Day 354 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 374

Game: Roboquest

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 8, 2023
Installation Date: Dec 20, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m

Roboquest is a "FPS Roguelite" set in a post-apocalyptic future world.

I tried to activate this key a couple of days ago, only to get a Steam error saying it had been activated by another account. Since I hadn't given it away, I guess it was duplicated at some stage, but Humble replaced it without breaking a sweat.

The game opens with Max at the wheel of her hover-Kombi travelling through the desert alone, until she stumbles across a 500-odd year old robot buried in the desert sand.

Somehow, this bright yellow "Guardian" hasn't been ravaged by the sand and time, and Max pops a battery into the Guardian's chest cavity, and you're as good as new

In terms of gameplay, it's pretty fast and smooth. It feels very Borderlands-inspired, with brightly-lit desert environments and cel-shaded graphics, but movement is less Borderlands and more... something else I can't quite put my finger on.

Your missions is to "save the world" (apparently), and to do this you need to shoot a lot of "bad bots"; literally, that's what the game calls them.

It feels kind of breezy, but definitely confirmed it's time to crack open my G13 and replace the microswitch actuator again, because the "space" button has crapped out again. I really need something more solid, or a full rethink of the design.

Anyway, I think Roboquest is:

3: OK

#Roboquest #FPS #Roguelite #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 21, 2023 - Day 355 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 375

Game: Warstone TD

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 24, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 19m

Warstone TD is an isometric tower defense game with some basic RPG, strategy, and city building elements (so says the blurb).

I've started hammering my unredeemed keys list a little bit harder, with the challenge to get it down under 200 before the 1st of January. Just to make the next 10 days a little more gruelling!

Warstone TD was one of them, from Feb 2020; the "TD" is for Tower Defense.

It's a little bit different to most tower defense games I've played, as the game starts with several (I guess they're called) warstones along the path that the mobs follow, and you can choose to build from several optional unit types at each location.

During each round you might unlock an extra warstone to place somewhere else, but I think this is where the element of strategy comes in.

Also, after some rounds, you get a double-strength warstone which increases the range of the units (not sure what else it does).

So far it doesn't seem like you can change or upgrade a unit once activated, so it's an interesting twist on the genre, and I don't have a lot of traditional TD games anyway, so it's kind of fun.

After the initial gameplay introduction, the game sets a story about a wizard who's seen the future, and that he's going to be handed over to a group of invaders by the town, and so he enlists the help of the player (fourth-wall break, nice), to do the city-building thing, and build and arm the city so he doesn't meet that grisly end.

It's a cute framing device and gives some nice RPG elements to push the game outside of the standard tower defense genre.

Warstone TD is kind of fun, and definitely something I'll return to when I'm the mood for that kind of game; it's

3: OK

#WarstoneTD #TowerDefense #RPG #Strategy #CityBuilder #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 21, 2023 - Day 355 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 376

Game: Okami HD

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 13, 2017
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 53m

Okami HD is a third-person action-adventure game, and a HD re-release of Okami, a game that was originally released for the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii.

It's genuinely like nothing else I've played this year. The game is set in "Nippon", and you play as the reincarnation of the Shinto sun goddess "Amaterasu", embodied in a white wolf.

You are accompanied by a bug named Issun who doesn't like being called a bug, and WILL NOT STOP TALKING. Issun is your guide.

You can break things throughout the game by headbutting them; in combat you fight with a sword that's held in your mouth.

However, what truly makes this game unique (other than the art style, which is based on classic Japanese painting styles, including Sumi-e), is that one of your combat techniques is literally painting.

You can fight an enemy until they are drained of colour, and then go into a "painting" mode, and use your brush to attack them with the various brushstrokes you learn throughout the game.

I've found some games hard to categorise because they're a mashup of so many game ideas that I end up with a long hyphenated description. I borrowed the description for Okami HD from the game blurb, because I just don't have a frame of reference to apply.

My only points of frustration with the game are that the camera was wildly frustrating until I found that you can (and I needed to) invert both the X & Y axes, and that manual saving is required, which can only be done at specific locations.

I've become so habituated to auto-saves, that even though the game goes out of the way to highlight the save system, I still managed to wipe out over half an hour of game progress before I realised what I'd done.

Okami HD is very:

4: Good

#OkamiHD #ThirdPerson #ActionAdventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 21, 2023 - Day 355 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 377

Game: Heave Ho

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 29, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 27m

Heave Ho is a 2D platformer, primarily designed for couch co-op play, but that does have a solo campaign.

However, just calling it a "2D platformer" would be like calling Forza Horizon 4 a "car game", or calling Dredge a "fishing game".

Nothing prepared me for the sheer hilarity of trying to play this game; at some points I was sitting doubled over laughing, yelling at the screen for how ridiculous the game is.

Primarily, you play as a head with two arms attached to the side. Use the left stick to swing both arms (yes, that sounds counter-intuitive, but it makes sense when you play), and use the left and right triggers to grip surfaces with either your left or right hands (or both!).

Whichever hand is gripping a surface then becomes an anchor point to wildly flail your other arm and headbody around in a desperate attempt to try and grip another surface, as you try and navigate across the platforms to the goal point.

This was another game from my unused keys list, but as my eldest already had it installed in his library, I installed using family sharing instead of my key, in case I hated it.

Six minutes later I quit the game and redeemed my own key, because Heave Ho is hilariously:

5: Excellent

#HeaveHo #2D #CouchCoOp #Platformer #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 22, 2023 - Day 356 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 378

Game: Death's Gambit: Afterlife

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 15, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 22, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 49m

Death's Gambit: Afterlife is a 2D pixel-art soulsvania.

It's a updated version of the original Death's Gambit, where the dev team took the feedback they received about the original game, and reworked the game, while increasing the size of the game.

For reasons that I can't quite explain, particularly after playing so many soulsvanias this year, this somehow managed to hook me and keep me playing for 3/4 of an hour.

Death's Gambit: Afterlife is:

4: Good

#DeathsGambitAfterlife #2D #Platformer #Soulsvania #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 23, 2023 - Day 357 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 379

Game: Venba

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 31, 2023
Installation Date: Dec 17, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 79m

Venba is a 2D narrative-based cooking game.

The game tells the story of a Tamil couple, Venba and her husband Paavalan, who have emigrated from Tamil Nadu, to make a new life in Canada.

Throughout the game, you proceed by preparing dishes from Venba's mother's tattered cookbook, frequently needing to solve what are, effectively, simple puzzles to complete each recipe.

There is so much that I'd like to say about this game, but to do so would spoil many of the emotional beats of the narrative.

It's not a long game; I completed it in a single sitting, and collected most of the achievements along the way.

Venba is a lovely, and occasionally heart-wrenching game; it is:

5: Excellent

#Venba #2D #Narrative #Cooking #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 24, 2023 - Day 358 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 380

Game: Smoke and Sacrifice

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 31, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 18, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 29m

Smoke and Sacrifice is an steampunk-themed isometric survival RPG.

You play as Sachi, a mother seemingly forced to sacrifice her first-born child to "the Sun-God", a machine that provides light and heat to Sachi's village, after "the freezing".

However, all is not lost; turns out that the children being "sacrificed" are not actually being sacrificed (killed), but transported to an underworld, and being sacrificed to a form of slavery, forcing them to work to feed the "Sun-God" and keep it running.

Sachi finds herself transported to the same underworld location, where she begins her survival journey to try and find her now-seven-year-old son.

Unfortunately, the story wasn't enough to overcome the frustrating survival mechanics that I encountered in the first 30 minutes of the game, with successive fetch quests required to slowly grind the story forward, by the time I hit save, I was hoping that I could find a recap of the storyline of the game somewhere, just to find out how it ends.

Sadly, for Smoke and Sacrifice, the last thing I was interested in sacrificing was any more of my time; it's a:

1: Nope

#SmokeAndSacrifice #Isometric #RPG #Survival #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 25, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 381

Game: American Fugitive

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 21, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 18, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 20m

American Fugitive is a top-down 3D open-world action-adventure game.

Feeling a lot like early GTA games, you play as a petty thief who's been framed for the murder of his father. After breaking out of prison you set out to clear your name.

By committing other crimes.

After escaping from prison, you need to avoid the police until you escape from the general area of the prison. Apparently, they're looking for a red-haired bearded man in a yellow prison jumpsuit, and not a red-headed bearded man in a white shirt and blue jeans (that I just stole off someone's clothesline).

Graphically, it's well executed, although I found the steering of vehicles to be incredibly twitchy.

One of weird little things that became clear to me this year is that I really don't enjoy games where I'm playing as a criminal.

A game that expects me to commit crimes against NPCs portrayed as innocent bystanders, is something that just rubs me the wrong way, and as potentially interesting as the setup for this game is, I just felt kind of icky afterwards.

Also, playing as a male character still continues to make me feel disconnected from what's happening in the game.

Unfortunately for American Fugitive, that just leaves me feeling pretty:

2: Meh

#AmericanFugitive #TopDown #OpenWorld #Action #Adventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 25, 2023 - Day 359 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 382

Game: Baldur's Gate 3

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 4, 2023
Installation Date: Dec 25, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 91m

You had to know this was coming.

Baldur's Gate 3 is an open-world RPG featuring turn-based combat, and the ability to move the camera to play in an isometric top-down playstyle, or third-person.

After more than four months of reading people raving about it, I opened up my Steam client this morning to see a gift from my son: a Baldur's Gate 3 Steam gift, just waiting for me to accept it.

Of course, then I needed to re-arrange a bunch of games to find room for the 137Gb required to install it. Freshly installed, I then went and spent some time playing games with my wife and son.

I put the roast into the oven for dinner, and sat down to start playing.

Things immediately went sideways. I found myself thrust into a cut-scene that ended in one of the most viscerally horrifying ways I could have not even imagined.

I was not prepared.

Then, suddenly, I'm in a character creator. OK. Create my character. Create her guardian.

...aand now I'm back in the scary room, and the cutscene continues.

I am becoming increasingly confused by what is happening, and then... oh. OK, that's what's going on.

Wait... no. What the hell is going on? Whatever I expected... it wasn't this.

Finally, I find myself in playable territory. Movement is... counterintuitive. Years of right clicking where I want to go means that the left clicking doesn't come naturally to me.

I start breaking things that seem to need to be broken, and then suddenly... I am dead, and I have to start over again (fortunately, at the playable part, not the cutscenes).

I am staring at the screen, and thinking about all of the people who raved about this game, and all of the people who told me what an amazing experience it was.

...and feeling how terribly they had undersold it.

The environments are stunning. This feels like a fully realised world. When I finally start encountering other characters, they're not woodenly delivering clunky dialogue like other RPGs I've played recently.

The characters feel... real. At one point, I wonder if I'm going to have to break up a fight between two party members.

After 90 minutes in-game, I've completed, apparently, the prologue.

But the roast needs to come out of the oven, and dinner needs to be prepared.

Tomorrow morning, I will sit down and play 15-30 minutes of some other game, and probably spend the rest of my day in Faerûn, because Baldur's Gate 3 is:

5: Excellent (as if it was going to be anything else.)

#BaldursGate3 #RPG #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 26, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 383

Game: Niffelheim

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 26, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 26, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 45m

Niffelheim is a Norse-themed 2D survival crafting game with some RPG elements.

As part of my two remaining goals of attempting to review 400 new games by the end of the year, and to get my unredeemed keys list down to under 200 (current count: 201 left), I had no idea what this key was actually for.

At some stage I'd overtyped the title without noticing. Niffelheim it is.

The game opens up with a Viking funeral boat, aflame and disappearing into the mist, while a narrator intones about how my boat has been hijacked on the way to Valhalla.

I then found myself at a character selection screen with a choice between three burly male warriors, and a well-endowed Valkyrie.

My Valkyrie then found herself armed with some basic weapons, and a basic hut, and a series of quests delivered by a raven.

Other than that, you're in pretty standard survival game mechanics; kill things, cut down trees, gather food. The 2D aspect makes playing with a controller natural, and before I noticed, I'd been in-game for 45 minutes.

I found Niffelheim strangely compelling, so let's say that it's:

4: Good

#Niffelheim #2D #RPG #Survival #Crafting #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 26, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 384

Game: The King's Bird

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 24, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 26, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m

The King's Bird is a 2D platformer that utilises a "momentum-based flying mechanic".

You play as a young girl, who explains in the introduction level how she's always dreamed she could fly, and has always been caged.

From there she goes on to gain the gift of flight (in a sense), and you're off to explore. Her gift of flight is less "flight" and more "momentum activated short-term gliding".

The controls are simultaneously simple and frustrating. Movement instructions are presented as pictograms, and even when following them exactly, results can vary.

When everything comes together, movement feels glorious; however, it's not entirely clear on what makes everything come together.

The game's atmosphere is gorgeous, all silhouettes and varying monochromatic colours, and the score is beautiful.

If only movement wasn't so inconsistently frustrating; at this point in the game, The King's Bird is:

3: OK

#TheKingsBird #2D #Platformer #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 26, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 385

Game: The Hex

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 17, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 26m

The Hex is a trippy, genre-bending 2D pixel-art pastiche adventure game.

From the blurb: "In a creaky old tavern, in a forgotten corner of the video-game universe, a storm is raging. An anonymous caller suggests that there is a murder plot. Six video game protagonists are the only plausible suspects..."

Beyond this, the game is difficult to review, because to try and review it is to spoil the game.

One of the things I've learned over the last year, is that I prefer games where the gameplay supports the narrative, rather than the narrative being an excuse to try and justify the gameplay.

The other thing that I've said is that given my general lack of nostalgia for pixel-art games, a pixel-art game needs to offer something that overcomes my general lack of interest.

The Hex delivers that in spades. With that said, there are some minor frustrations I have with the gameplay, but even going into those runs the risk of spoilers, so I'll just say that The Hex is:

4: Good

#TheHex #2D #PixelArt #Adventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 26, 2023 - Day 360 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 386

Game: Grid (2019)

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 11, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 26, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 19m

Grid (2019 - to separate it from the original Grid released in 2008) is a motor-racing game.

It was delisted from Steam on Dec 1, 2023, so if you don't have a key, you can't buy Grid.

I had a key, I used the key, I probably wasted the key. As a racing game, it's perfectly serviceable, enjoyable even.

However, I'm not a big "racing" player, and my go-to for racing games is the Forza Horizon series, and a racing game needs to capture me with something that Forza doesn't offer.

In Grid, I have a game that's been delisted because the licensing for the vehicles has expired, made by a company (Codemasters) who received the Electronic Arts treatment, as did all of their existing games.

Consequently, it's a game that I probably won't sink any time into, purely because it's effectively racing into a dead-end. Grid is:

2: Meh

#Grid #Racing #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 387

Game: GreedFall

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 10, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 2h42m

GreedFall is a third-person action RPG set in a fantasy version of the 17th century.

You play as a noble of the "Merchant Congregation", one of several competing factions seeking to colonise the island of "Teer Fradee", hoping to find a cure for the "Malichor", an illness that is wreaking havoc on the Merchant Congregation's capital city of Sérène.

I was just going to play 15 minutes, write up a review, and move on.

Instead, I found myself deeply engrossed in the storyline, and regretting that I hadn't discovered GreedFall earlier.

Firstly, the character selection screen gives you a choice of the gender, and basic look of your character, with them being fully voiced. Huge checkmark.

But the worldbuilding itself is just amazing. At least in the initial quests in Sérène, it most closely reminds me of Dishonoured in terms of setting (which is a very good thing).

GreedFall is currently on sale on both GOG for a historical low of A$8.76, and Steam for A$10.99, and if you feel like scratching an itch for a game set in the Age of Discovery (when you're not playing Baldur's Gate 3), I don't think you could go wrong with GreedFall, because it's:

5: Excellent

#GreedFall #ThirdPerson #ARPG #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 388

Game: Night Call

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 18, 2019
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 55m

Night Call feels like noir-ish adventure mashup between a visual novel and a map of Paris.

Being that you're playing as a French cab driver, that's to be expected. You were assaulted and left for dead by a serial killer at the site of a pick-up while driving your cab.

The game has you investigating your own attempted murder, with a touch of blackmail thrown in; another cop determined to prove that ACAB has determined your true identity, and uses this to blackmail you into assisting with her "investigation".

The screen is split horizontally, with the top half being a stylised GPS screen, and the bottom half being the inside of your cab, as if you were watching from a dashboard-mounted camera.

Each night, you drive your cab around, picking up passengers that appear on the GPS screen. You engage with the passengers, conversing and occasionally gathering clues.

It's incredibly moody, but so very slow. Fortunately, there's the option for the conversations to auto-play until you reach an engagement point, but I did end up running some CSR2 grinding races on my phone while reading the conversations.

At the end of each night's driving, you take the clues you've gathered, plus the ones left by your detective "friend" in an envelope outside your house each night, and slowly try to work out which of the five suspects is the killer.

It's this aspect of the game that has me continuing to want to play, but only just. Night Call is barely just:

3: OK

#NightCall #VisualNovel #Adventure #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 389

Game: Strange Brigade

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 28, 2018
Installation Date: Dec 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 42m

Strange Brigade is a solo or co-op action-adventure third-person shooter, set in Egypt in the 1930's.

I'd been sitting on Strange Brigade for a while, because I've previously played one of the Zombie Army games by the same developer (Rebellion), and it so thoroughly creeped me out, that I had no desire to go through it again.

But with access to the game via my son's Steam account, and a spare Steam key, and it being the middle of a sunny day, I thought I'd give it a shot.

You play as one of four members of the titular Strange Brigade, a special unit of the British Government tasked with dealing with supernatural entities.

One of the options is Gracie Braithwaite, a brawler, and a red-headed Lancashire lass. One of the things I've learned from my family tree, is that great-grandmother was from Lancashire, and was described by my grandmother as "a Lancashire lass", and it just felt right to choose her.

In terms of the gameplay, while it bears some basic similarities to the Zombie Army Trilogy (because zombies are heavily featured!) and it uses the same Asura engine as ZAT, it styles itself heavily after pulp movies of the 1930's, with an overly chirpy English narrator providing running commentary.

The game is bright and colourful, unlike the spine-chilling environments of ZAT, and I found Strange Brigade a far more enjoyable experience - at least once I remapped the rather wild control scheme.

Nothing like hitting the shift key to run away from a zombie, only to drop a grenade instead.

I had a bunch of fun with Strange Bridgade; it's pretty:

4: Good

#StrangeBrigade #ActionAdventure #ThirdPersonShooter #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 27, 2023 - Day 361 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 390

Game: Ultimate Zombie Defense

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 9, 2020
Installation Date: Dec 19, 2023
Unplayed: 8d
Playtime: 36m

Ultimate Zombie Defense is a top-down co-op wave defense shooter.

It was free last week on Fanatical, and I grabbed it because it was free, of course.

Although I'd already done zombies today, why not a few more?

You're in a fixed area, and you're armed with a gun, and a little bit of cash. Kill zombies under the wave is over, spend cash on fortification & weapons upgrades, rinse and repeat.

I got to the fifth level solo, and learned the hard way that in spite of the previous four levels with the zombies only coming from the North, they can also come from the south.

Where I had no fortifications, and no chance of survival.

I then jumped into one of 5 (!) available 4-person multiplayer servers, and played with that team until we were all dead.

At which point I quit; I would have quit earlier, but I didn't want to abandon the bunch of randoms after someone had already done so.

Ultimate Zombie Defence is ultimately boring, so:

1: Nope

#UltimateZombieDefense #WaveDefenseShooter #TopDown #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 28, 2023 - Day 362 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 391

Game: Lightmatter

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 16, 2020
Installation Date: Dec 28, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 2h12m

Lightmatter is a first-person puzzle platformer, and answers the question "What would you get if you mashed up Portal and one of the best two-part Steven Moffat episodes of Doctor Who, Silence in the Library / Forest of the Dead?"

Featuring a Cave Johnson-like voiceover, "Virgil", the CEO of Lightmatter is going to guide you out of his facility after a small technical issue occurred during the demonstration of his Lightmatter renewable energy source.

The small technical issue being that there were some big explosions, and touching a shadow will kill you (a la Moffat's "Vashta Nerada" from the aforementioned Doctor Who episodes).

The game wears its influences on its sleeve too, with Virgil making mention of Aperture Science and taking multiple digs at Cave Johnson.

Fortunately the game is different enough from Portal that it doesn't feel like a retread, and immediately dragged me in for an enjoyable couple of hours.

I'll go back to finish Lightmatter next time I'm deep in a puzzle mood because it's:

5: Excellent

#Lightmatter #FirstPerson #Puzzle #Platformer #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

December 29, 2023 - Day 363 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 392

Game: Mini Motorways

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 21, 2021
Installation Date: July 27, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 34m

Mini Motorways is a minimalistic cozy top-down traffic puzzle strategy game from New Zealand developers Dinosaur Polo Club. It's a follow-up to their previous railway puzzle strategy game Mini Metro.

Following on from the design aesthetic in Mini Metro, Mini Motorways presents you with a grid, initially containing one stylised house, and one stylised destination, in the same colour, and provides (n) road pieces to join the two.

Cars in that colour will then travel back and forth between the two locations. The destination building will tick, adding an icon for which a matching car is required, with each building having a certain capacity. If the building reaches capacity without enough matching cars reaching it, it's Game Over, man. Game Over.

Each level is presented as a specific major world city, and achieving certain goals in one city will unlock one (or more) cities to play in further levels.

Levels are played on a "weekly" basis using an in-game clock; as the in-game week passes, new destination buildings are added, often in a different colour, with a matching house in the same colour.

These houses can be on the other side of a river, or the other side of the map, or both, and you must use the roads to enable enough vehicles to reach each destination before the building "fills up".

At the end of each week you are given one of two options to choose from for extra pieces for the following week. One option may be 30 road pieces, with the other being a roundabout, with 20 road pieces, or a bridge crossing, with 20 road pieces, or one of several other options including the titular motorway, allowing you to connect distant areas of the map in a single hit.

I broke my guideline of mentioning the developers because in spite of them having only released these two games, I love both of them. Mini Motorways is:

5: Excellent

#MiniMotorways #Minimalist #TopDown #Puzzle #Strategy #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay