I'm not one for "New Year's resolutions", but I am one for overly ambitious projects.
For 2023, Project365 is "One New Game Per Day".
Given that I have 634 unplayed games in my Steam account and {mumble} unredeemed bundle Steam keys, there's a reason my unplayed collection is tagged "Pile of Shame".
I'll pin this to my profile, and give a brief summary here each day (or x, if I miss x days due to work or stuff).
I'll play 15-30 minutes of (at least) one new game I've never played before (or played less than 15 minutes of). I'll give every game at least 15 minutes, even if I hate every minute of it.
I'm also open to suggestions; if you reply to this thread with a game, I'll schedule it, or tell you what I thought of it.
One of the things that's come up is that I have a bunch of games that I've played once, and not touched again.
BPM: Bullets Per Minutes is a rhythm-based FPS roguelike. I discovered BPM when I was reading about Metal Hellsinger, and added it to my wishlist.
Joke was on me. Turns out I already owned it.
After the 250Mbps fibre was installed today, I went looking through my unredeemed Steam keys list, and spotted BPM. "Ooooh! I'll install that!"
While this has the same basic concept as Metal Hellsinger, it plays very differently.
Instead of raiding hell, you're a Valkyrie raiding randomly generated Viking-esque dungeons, rendered in an eyewatering, almost monochromatic colour palette.
You also absolutely MUST fire on the beat, or the gun just doesn't fire. Even on easy mode, the mobs hit hard. Each hit does 25% damage.
You walk into a darkened room that may or may not have a wild number of mobs in it, and you run around trying to make out where you're going, and not get hit.
If you're unlucky, there's a boss in the room, who might completely blind you for a moment... and then you're dead.
Ultimately, it was the graphics that killed it for me. I would probably persevere if I could easily make out what I'm shooting at against the backgrounds, but it just becomes too much work, particularly when there are a lot of mobs on screen.
I really wanted to like this game, but unfortunately, BPM: Bullets Per Minute is another:
Homefront: The Revolution is an open-world FPS reboot of 2011's Homefront, a game I reviewed on the 5th of January.
The setting is much the same; a unified Korea has invaded the United States, and you find yourself as a member of the resistance seeking to fight back against a superior military force.
It was only when I started playing it that it started to feel familiar.
Of my 29 minutes playtime, about half of that was just watching things happen on screen.
The biggest problem though is that it's not a game that's aged well. The game mechanics themselves seem totally fine, it's an issue of timing.
Right now, while Israel's government commits war crimes against innocent Palestinians while claiming self defence against Hamas, and the war by Russia against Ukraine continues, and with an ascendent US fascist movement painting themselves as the resistance, this game does not feel like a game.
When I play a game, it's partially to escape from the world, not to remind me of it, and Homefront: The Revolution does exactly that, so it all feels a bit:
I Am Fish describes itself as a physics-based adventure. It's a game about four fish, in a full 3D environment.
I don't normally talk about the developers behind a game, because I like to take each game on its own merits.
However, I Am Fish has a callback to at least one of Bossa Studios previous games, but also takes a particular gameplay cue from them as well.
In I Am Fish, you start out as a goldfish. The game opens in a bakery, where the baker hands two loaves of very wriggly bread to a customer for free, one of which ends up at a pet store, where you are currently swimming with three friends (a puffer fish, a flying fish, and a piranha).
The bread is wriggly because it's sentient bread, a callback to Bossa Studios' previous game "I Am Bread". When fed to the fish, the bread seemingly makes them far more intelligent, and after your three friends are captured and removed from your tank, you awake the next day in a round, sealable goldfish bowl, and it's time to escape... by rolling your bowl along the handily placed shelves to ground level, and then to freedom.
This is an utterly gorgeous game. The lighting is incredible, the fully realised 3D levels are wonderful, and the music is delightful.
The control scheme was designed by a sadist.
Bossa Studios are also responsible for Surgeon Simulator, and if you've played Surgeon Simulator or I Am Bread, what both of these games have in common with I Am Fish is that the games are designed with the most incredibly frustrating control schemes.
I played -and gave up- on both of these earlier games in sheer frustration. Much like platformers that require pinpoint accuracy, and playing well known guitar licks, I lack the fine motor control necessary to achieve the required goals.
There are games that are designed to reward the most dextrous & skilled players who can build up the required muscle memory to make the right moves at exactly the right time; if a player can't do that, they just become a source of frustration, and even self-recrimination.
It's why I can enjoy Forza Horizon in single player mode, but am left behind in virtually every race in online mode.
It's why I was hostile towards platformers for decades, with everything from Super Mario Bros. to Celeste just winding up my frustration levels until I feel like my brain is melting.
This is also why, as much as I want to play I Am Fish (it's just so beautiful), I probably won't end up persevering much longer, when there are so many other games I can just play and enjoy.
I Am Fish is a gorgeous, frustrating conundrum of a game, that I simultaneously want to give every rating, which averages out to:
November 18, 2023 - Day 321 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 341
Game: Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 11, 2016
Installation Date: May 8, 2020
Unplayed: 1289d (3y6m10d)
Playtime: 24m
Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation is a RTS game, developed by Oxide Games, and published by Stardock Entertainment.
It is a generally serviceable RTS.
I played through the first tutorial, and having completed it, I'm uninstalling the game.
As much as I said yesterday I try not to talk about the devs behind games, I'm talking about the devs for a completely different reason today.
I was surprised to see the Stardock logo pop up, as I don't play games published by Stardock, on principle.
Both Oxide Games and Stardock Entertainment were founded by Brad Wardell; since he happily poured fuel on the GamerGate fire, and was openly supportive of GamerGate, amongst other things, I made the decision not to buy or play any of his games.
Since I'd already started up the game, figured I'd still give it an honest review (as a game, it's OK), but will I play Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation again?
November 19, 2023 - Day 322 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 342
Game: Injustice 2
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 15, 2017
Installation Date: Mar 18, 2023
Unplayed: 246d (8m1d)
Playtime: 32m
Injustice 2 is a 3Dish beat-em-up fighting game, and a sequel to Injustice: Gods Among Us.
Fighting games aren't really my go-to, because it comes back to that same issue of fine motion control and hand-eye coordination. I'd made two serious attempts to play Injustice: Gods Among Us, and failed miserably both times.
However, after playing & reviewing SOULCALIBUR VI on January 2nd, I gave Injustice a third go, and it clicked.
Still not really my go-to, and I haven't played either game since January.
In March, Injustice 2 popped up for AUD$7, and I figured it was worth a shot.
I finally took that shot.
It was not worth a shot.
I did not get off to a good start. My first attempt involved me taking a run at the tutorial in a game that insisted it had "Full Xbox One controller support" (as did Steam), and then consistently showed a PS4 controller on-screen, and showing the wrong buttons for combos.
After fiddling with the controller mapping, I quit the game, hit the forums, enabled Steam input, and finally had a working controller.
I stormed through the first part of the tutorial until I hit the combos, where I finally got stuck for five minutes just trying to get the timing and pattern right on a particular combo.
I'd probably need to go back and have yet another go at Injustice to see if there's a difference, but fundamentally, I am completely unable to time the combo moves correctly to even complete the tutorial.
After almost half an hour, my hands were sore, I was making zero progress, and the only thing I had to show for it was frustration.
It's a good looking game, and if you're a big DC fan and good at fighting games, this might be right up your alley.
Unfortunately, Injustice 2 was a waste of seven bucks, and 45Gb of SSD space; it's yet another:
Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is a third-person shooter built with a physics-based destructible environment.
Set on a partially terraformed Mars, it's a remaster of Red Faction: Guerrilla from 2009 (thus the awful pun in the name), and essentially answers the question "What if Just Cause was set on Mars, and you had a sledgehammer instead of a grapple?"
While the destructible environments are fun, for a five year old game, that was released three years AFTER Just Cause 3, the graphics make it feel like it's three years older.
I wouldn't pay full price for it at this point, but if you're looking for some Mars-based destructive mayhem, Red Faction: Guerrilla Re-Mars-tered is:
November 21, 2023 - Day 324 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 344
Game: Starpoint Gemini Warlords
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 24, 2017
Installation Date: Aug 15, 2022
Unplayed: 463d (1y3m6d)
Playtime: 20m
Starpoint Gemini Warlords is part third-person space combat, part 4X strategy, and part RPG.
I'm unable to review the 4X strategy & RPG elements, because I couldn't get past the utterly dire ship controls.
Going into the game blank, I had no idea it had space combat elements, which is pretty much "OK, joystick time".
I tried using the keyboard controls, and the ship handled like a stoned snail. Switched over to the Xbox controller, and that was actually worse, because while the ship still seemed to be handling like a stoned snail with the left stick, the right stick had the camera whipping around like a hummingbird on speed.
I went into the options to try and see if I could adjust the settings, and with the controller turned on, it just completely blacked out the options, so it's buggy too.
After 15 minutes of fighting with the game to try and get it to the point it was somewhat playable, I pulled the pin.
There might be a reasonable game buried under all that hassle, but am I going to put any more time into Starpoint Gemini Warlords to try and find it?
November 22, 2023 - Day 325 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 345
Game: Internet Cafe Simulator
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 26, 2019
Installation Date: Aug 17, 2022
Unplayed: 462d (1y3m5d)
Playtime: 26m
Internet Cafe Simulator is a first person internet cafe simulator. I wanted to play something simple and fun tonight. Unfortunately, I chose this.
I said last week that only a few of my reviews that get a rating of "Nope" are games that are actually bad games.
Spoiler Alert: Today that list increases by one.
This is a bad game. The only reason I didn't pull the pin at the 15 minute mark was because I was still trying to assemble my first internet cafe "desktop".
I thought maybe it would improve once my internet cafe was open.
Unfortunately the same care & concern that was shown in the UI & UX extends to the gameplay as well.
There is nothing even remotely approaching a tutorial. You wake up in an apartment, which you're told you've rented, with $10K in your account, and two floating signposts. One to your new internet cafe, and the other to a strip club.
There's a giant hunger bar taking up half the screen, but no directions on where to buy food.
It seems that all of the complex design work in the game went into building a working strip club.
Go to your new premises, pick up a broom, sweep all of the copy-pasted garbage off the floor, sit at the computer and buy everything you need to put together your first desktop.
Almost everything in the game is some renamed real-world item, not in an amusing Car Mechanic Simulator way, more in a "badly-ripped-off-IP" way.
All of the parts show up in a series of identically sized boxes outside your front door. Not that there's anything to explain that.
I stumbled across them. Pick up each box, carry it inside, drop it to open it, pick up the item inside, try and manoeuvre it into place, rinse and repeat until you've assembled your first desktop, and oh, it's after midnight, so no customers until tomorrow.
Go home, sleep, come back, open up, customer comes in, goes to computer, sits down, sends IM that says "Waterr. Thirsty. Waterrrrr."
I have no clue where the water is, and I'm not going looking.
Every single gameplay element feels like it was slapped together from whatever free assets the dev found in the Unity IDE, and wrapped around a single idea, but then couldn't work out how to market "Strip Club Simulator", so threw in an internet cafe as an afterthought.
I'm about to free up 4Gb of SSD space, because Internet Cafe Simulator is an unequivocable:
November 23, 2023 - Day 326 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 346
Game: Soundfall
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 12, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 11, 2023
Unplayed: 12d
Playtime: 16m
Soundfall is part rhythm-based top-down dungeon-crawler, part looter-shooter.
So far, one level in, this musical odyssey feels like a dungeon-crawler in name only. So far the dungeons are brightly-coloured floating islands, adorned with equalizer level bars rising and falling in time with the ear-wormish pop soundtrack.
Existing in a third space between Hi-Fi Rush and Metal Hellsinger, this is an interesting take on a rhythm game, and the only reason I'm writing a review instead of continuing to play is that it's been a tough day, and I can barely keep my eyes open.
The only issue I have with the game is that in spite of having previously needed to calibrate my video and audio latency for other rhythm games, the calibration tool in Soundfall insists my calibration requirements for both are 0ms.
I think it's this that left me feeling like I was constantly slightly off-beat, just enough that it didn't feel quite right.
Even so, Soundfall is already fun, and I'll happily say it's:
November 24, 2023 - Day 327 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 347
Game: Danger Scavenger
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 26, 2021
Installation Date: Oct 21, 2023
Unplayed: 34d (1m3d)
Playtime: 18m
Danger Scavenger is a cyberpunk-themed isometric twin-stick roguelite crawler set on top of a series of skyscrapers.
Pick from one of four archetypes, pick a start weapon, make your way across the rooftops, shooting objects for parts, killing robots, collecting cases, and weapons, and trying not to fall off the side of the skyscraper.
It's relatively easy to write about games I don't like, or games I do like, but after playing it last night, I've struggled all day to write anything about this game.
November 26, 2023 - Day 329 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 349
Game: Monster Racing League
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 24, 2023
Installation Date: Jun 28, 2023
Unplayed: 151d (4m2d)
Playtime: 17m
Monster Racing League bills itself as a "multiplayer combat racing game where you don't have to steer."
The drivers are cartoon monsters, with an almost generic Unreal Engine cartoon-feel, which is why the game built in Unity was a surprise.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the only surprise. Turns out that you do, in fact, have to steer, after a fashion. You just don't need to accelerate and brake. While the game is 3D, it uses a semi-fixed side-on camera angle, which makes the races and targeting weapons somewhat frustrating.
It's Free-to-Play, and like every other F2P game includes a battle pass, but with the frustrating race mechanics (a "well-timed" missile will not only knock you off the track, it will immediately drop you from first to last position, which little chance to regain any ground), the generic design of the monsters and cars, offers virtually no reason to keep playing.
While the blurb bills Monster Racing League as "non-stop fun", which is an odd assertion, because for fun to be non-stop, it would first have to start. I'll soon recover 3Gb of HDD space, because it's a:
Warstride Challenges feels like Doom, Neon White, and a 3D platformer were thrown into a blender with Warframe.
If you haven't played Warframe, there are times where the gameplay can become almost impossibly fast. There are certain warframes that, when grouped with other warframes, almost become uncontrollable.
Meet Warstride Challenges. It's kind-of an FPS using that kind of speed to speedrun levels, with the kind of platforms that require almost pinpoint precision, and then shoot demons, all while competing against a timer to earn medals.
Each level has (n) demons to kill before the door unlocks at the end of the level, with a series of goal times to achieve. The faster you hit that door, the higher the level of the medals you get.
As the game progresses, you need to collect (n) medals to unlock higher levels. However, as you progress, you also unlock increasingly harder versions of the levels you've already completed, where you can earn more medals, etc.
Time a jump wrong, and you die, and there are many opportunities to die. Miss shooting one of the mobs? No exit, and that run is wasted.
Go again.
After a couple of levels are completed, you also get a limited about of "bullet-time", to slow down for that sweet headshot, but it's not enough.
You can also add other players, either from the worldwide leaderboard, or friends who play, as a "Nemesis", and you find yourself competing against their ghosts.
I'm not quite sure how I came to own this game. I seemingly picked it up in early access. I recalled it being a beta, and I have no receipt for it, yet it's a paid game that I own.
I have mixed feelings about this game. There is definitely something thrilling about beating the timers, and getting higher medals, or nailing the exit door ahead of another player's ghost.
When I played it during early access, I played it for less than 10 minutes before giving up in frustration, but now that it's gone 1.0, I decided to give it another try (thus the 23m vs 31m above).
However, it's a game that's already bringing me up hard against my poor coordination & fine motor skills, which makes completing some levels in time feel more like luck than skill.
And even 6 levels in, with 3 of them also completed on Hard, my frustration levels are already starting to exceed my fun levels.
Still, I think I'll probably end up pushing of a bit further in Warstride Challenges until the balance firmly tips against me, so I'll say it's:
November 29, 2023 - Day 332 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 352
Game: Forspoken
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jan 25, 2023
Installation Date: Nov 29, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 71m
Forspoken is a third-person ARPG, with a magic-based weapon system, and parkour oriented open-world(ish) traversal.
You play as Frey, a young woman who was abandoned as a newborn, and grew up in a series of foster homes; after aging out of the foster system, she found herself living on the edge of society.
The game opens with Frey entering a New York courtroom, leading to a lengthy cutscene with minimal interaction. Several scenes like this follow, which slowly (and frustratingly) introduce you to the basic mechanics of interacting with the world.
Hijinks ensue, resulting in Frey being transported through a magical portal to the land of Athia, where she finds herself bonded with a magical (and sarcastic) talking vambrace she calls Cuff.
Once in Athia, a "beautiful and cruel land" under a matriarchal rule of "The Tantas", the game introduces you to the rest of the gameplay mechanics and the spell-based combat system.
Forspoken was released in January this year to some fairly mixed reviews. Having read through the reviews, I'd decided that it probably wasn't a game I would play, even though it has a female protagonist.
However, Forspoken is only an "unplayed" game on a technicality. Square Enix made a demo of the game available earlier this year, which I installed, played five minutes of, and utterly hated. A few months ago, I decided to give it another go, and fell in love with it.
The magic-based combat system requires some getting used to; playing the demo exhausted was not a success; when I wasn't exhausted it all clicked into place. Steam does not count time played on demos against the full game, so here we are.
I put a little bit of money aside in case Forspoken went on sale, & Black Friday saw a 60% discount so goodbye piggy bank.
However, there are some little quirks to the game. Because access to the various skills is gated, I found myself trying to do basic RPG things like jump, and being unable to; at other times the game forces Frey into a frustrating slow walk for narrative reasons.
Once you start picking up the combat spells & particularly the parkour spell, the gameplay improves massively.
Also frustrating are conversational interactions with Cuff, which freeze you in place for the duration, and it doesn't let you replay conversation options, which means if you don't catch something he says, too bad. On the other hand, the interplay between Cuff & Frey during gameplay can be amusing (if occasionally repetitive).
With that said, I found myself over an hour into Forspoken without even noticing, and for my money, it's:
CryoFall is a sci-fi themed 2D top-down survival game.
Realising that I'd not made a dent in my unused Steam keys this year, I picked an interesting sounding game at random, and installed CryoFall.
Lots of times this year I've had difficulty defining a game, CryoFall made it easy for me. If you've played Minecraft, Rust, Valheim, V Rising (grrr), ARK Survival Evolved, or Fallout 76 the game mechanics are fundamentally the same.
The main difference is that unlike those games, which are either first- or third-person, CryoFall is the first time I recall seeing this gameplay in a 2D environment.
I don't remember seeing the technology tree model laid out quite as clearly or extensively as CryoFall does it, which extended my playtime, but it actually helped crystallise my thinking regarding survival games.
Almost all of the games I listed above have less than three hours playtime, except for Minecraft, and Rust (neither of which I play now).
The gameplay model scratches an itch in my brain for a little while, then it doesn't. The game also has online PvE and PvP modes, but I played it solo to explore the game mechanics.
I generally lean more towards PvE multiplayer games; particularly when the game is a huge timesink like a survival game.
If the game is PvP-oriented, it's worse; returning to V Rising a day later to find everything I'd built completely destroyed? It ended any desire to play again.
What I realised is that if survival & base-building is part of the game, building towards a narrative end goal (eg. Fallout 4), or a win-state, I enjoy that element of the game; when it's the focal point of the game, without any further purpose, for me, it fundamentally becomes work, and loses purpose.
As a survival game, CryoFall's 2D environment offers something a little different to other survival games, but it's not a something I see any long-term playability in; as such, it's (just barely):
December 1, 2023 - Day 334 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 354
Game: Evoland*
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 5, 2013 (8 Feb 2019)
Installation Date: Dec 1, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 40m
[Dr. Strange VO]
"December 1st? We're in the endgame now."
Firstly, the reason for the asterisk against the name is because this is actually Evoland Legendary Edition, which was a re-release of Evoland & Evoland 2 in a single binary, but the games are the same; this is a review of Evoland (1).
Evoland is a top-down, pixel-art, bitmapped, isometric, 2.5D, 3D RPG (so far).
I randomly picked it out of my Steam keys backlog this morning, and I could not have imagined this game. Honestly, it's worth playing just for the experience.
The game starts out looking much like a Game Boy top-down RPG. It's a monochrome viewport, the same size as your character. A chest sits at each end of the viewport.
You can only move right.
Move right, and open the chest. Now you've unlocked the ability to move left.
Move left, open the chest.
The viewport expands.
As you explore further, and open chests, the game world expands and changes; as you play the RPG, it is walking you through the history of RPG gameplay mechanics and changes, and it's unique and utterly wonderful.
I can't speak for Evoland 2 yet, but I played this early this morning before I left for work, and I'm going back to play it now, because Evoland is:
December 2, 2023 - Day 335 - 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:
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:
December 4, 2023 - Day 337 - 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:
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:
December 6, 2023 - Day 339 - 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:
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:
December 8, 2023 - Day 341 - 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:
December 9, 2023 - Day 342 - 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:
December 10, 2023 - Day 343 - 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...