You opened your door and this weird little dog was there. In its mouth? Roses. In a tiny little doggy-sized Jansport backpack, a copy of a book you've been meaning to read.
This is the 4th entry in the Inheritance Games series. The books are a mashup of #ActionAdventure and #mystery and are a lot of fun, with snappy dialogue and good puzzles. Recommended on #audiobook too.
Salut mes camarades perv- euh mes amis "connaisseurs" ! C'est un grand moment pour nous car la Director's Cut (la "True Route" ?) de <b>AKIBA'S TRIP: Undead & Undressed</b> est enfin disponible (sous forme de DLC) !
L'occasion de nous replonger sans honte dans notre jeu fétiche (oui, je l'ai terminé sur PlayStation VITA et sur PlayStation 4)🤓 Que ce soit sur Steam et surtout sur @gog ;)
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.
Mar 4, 2023 - Day 63 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 69. Nice.
Game: Tomb Raider
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Mar 5, 2013
Library Date: Jan 8, 2018
Unplayed: 1881 days (5y1m24d)
Playtime: 29m
No, not that Tomb Raider. Not that one either. The other one. The 2013 reboot. In terms of franchises I've never played, Tomb Raider might be at the top of the list.
The closest I've come in all the time since the first Tomb Raider in 1996 to playing anything in the series is Tomb Raider GO several weeks ago.
Not exactly representative of the series. If you've been living under a rock for the last 27 years, Tomb Raider is a series of action-adventure games centred on the character of Lara Croft, an archaeologist.
The biggest surprise to me about this game is that it does not feel like a 10-year-old game. It plays like something far more recent.
I'm already hooked; the only reason I didn't keep playing is that it was time for our evening walk.
Mar 15, 2023 - Day 74 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 80
Game: Mini Ninjas
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 9, 2009
Library Date: May 1, 2018
Unplayed: 1780d (4y10m15d)
Playtime: 19m
The 15th was my birthday, and while I played this on my birthday, I spent the evening with my family, so the review is much later than I planned.
Mini Ninjas is 13 years old, and feels like a 13 year old game; while it plays at full 2K resolution, it just feels kind of empty, and a little frustrating.
It's a third person action-adventure game in which you play... mini ninjas. You're the last remaining ninjas in the dojo, sent out in desperation to find out what happened to all of the other ninjas sent out to investigate strange events.
Mar 16, 2023 - Day 75 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 81
Game: Saints Row: Gat Out Of Hell
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Jan 23, 2015
Library Date: Sep 7, 2020
Unplayed: 921d (2y6m10d)
Playtime: 22m
I appear to have possibly broken my "no sequels" rule, because it appears that this is a sequel to Saints Row IV. (Checked before posting, and it's actually a standalone expansion).
I realised this too late, and so this is, unfortunately, my NewPlay for the 16th.
If you've played Saints Row IV, this is basically Saints Row IV in hell. Not in a "this is terrible" way, but literally the Saints Row version of hell.
It too is a third person action-adventure game, in which you play one of the characters from SR:IV, trying to rescue your boss from Lucifer, where he(!) is being married off to Satan's daughter Jezebel Morningstar, because he's so chaotic, that the devil decided he was perfect husband material.
I think my head is going to explode from writing that sentence. If you enjoyed SR:IV, you might enjoy this, if not, well... you probably won't.
Apr 23, 2023 - Day 113 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 124
Game: Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
Platform: Steam PC
Release Date: Oct 1, 2014
Library Date: Mar 13, 2018
Unplayed: 1867d (5y1m10d)
Playtime: 74m
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor is a third-person open-world action-adventure (some light RPG elements) that is, surprisingly, set in Middle-earth, between The Hobbit and LotR.
However, the most surprising thing about this game for me, other than the ~20 minutes of introduction video, was how it does not feel like a game that's almost 9 years old.
You play as a Gondor Ranger that's been murdered and trapped between life and death, and... look, I'm not sure what the end-game is meant to be, but I was having a hell of a time just sneaking around and kill Uruk-hai.
Combat is fun (if a little counter-intuitive, being that space is "run" and left-shift is "sneak".)
Sneaking up behind an unaware Uruk and shanking them with the dagger is satisfying, as is straight-up swordplay.
You can also "stealth" into wraith mode, and put an arrow into into a distant orc, and watch them drop with a satisfying whistle-and-thunk.
This game feels like motivation to keep playing through library, to discover gems like this that I'd missed completely.
I've hit a weird inflection point in this little project. One of the things driving me forward was my list of unplayed games in Steam, that when sorted chronologically dated back multiple years.
Now the earliest unplayed date, in terms of sorting, is May 2022. It's not entirely accurate, because prior to this project, I went through a stage of starting each game and stopping it to try and reduce my mental load, but it's removed some of the tension & impetus.
Anyhow, we continue with a relatively recent purchase; Lost in Random is a third-person "action-adventure" game, that apparently inspired by gothic fairy tales. You play a young girl on a quest to rescue her older sister from an evil queen.
The game starts by thrusting you straight into combat, which shows how aspects are the game are driven by the randomness of dice rolls, before dropping you into the game-play proper.
It's another utterly gorgeous game; the graphics and sound effects are wonderful. Control is fairly simple, although a little counterintuitive, using "E" to jump down. My main gripe is the camera control doesn't always follow correctly, leading to some frustrating moments.
May 17, 2023 - Day 137 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 153
Game: Batora: Lost Haven
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 21, 2022
Library Date: Mar 10, 2023
Unplayed: 68d (2m7d)
Playtime: 29m
Batora: Lost Haven is an isometric action-adventure with RPG elements (RPGlite?)
It's another quite pretty game. It also has a female protagonist, which is frequently something that improves my chances of enjoying a game.
One of the small pieces of the puzzle in coming to terms with being trans was looking at all of the small signals strewn across my life.
Playing games, reading books, watching movies... when the protagonist is female, I connect with that story in a way that rarely - if ever - happens with a male protagonist.
Batora has an interesting "save the post-apocalyptic world" storyline, which has my interest; on the other hand, as often happens with isometric games, I find the fixed camera angles somewhat stifling.
Batora does allow you to zoom in and one by one level, but it feels like it could have used an extra level of zoom-in.
Batora: Lost Haven has piqued my interest, and so far it seems:
ReCore is a third-person action-adventure platformer with a female protagonist and robots.
The game opens in medias res with Joule and her "corebot" dog Mack, trying to find out what's gone wrong in the post-apocalyptic desert where they're located.
Joule is on the trail of an unusual energy source reading, and as you go, the game introduces you to the core gameplay mechanics, which was pretty well done.
One of the unusual mechanics is that the corebots that attack you all have energy cores that can be extracted mid-fight, once you've done enough damage, by essentially entering a tug-of-war after firing your extraction device.
Occasionally, there's an "instant extract" option, but I'm not sure what triggers that. Fight through to the end-of-mission boss, defeat, extract core, return to your "crawler" home base, repair, upgrade, next mission.
I quite enjoyed it, and am interested to see how the underlying storyline of "New Eden" and what's gone wrong there develops.
I would have kept playing, but sleep is coming on fast. Again. Will be glad to be over this virus.
ReCore: Definitive Edition seems fun so far, so it's:
August 18, 2023 - Day 230 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 250
Game: Darksiders Warmastered Edition
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 30, 2016
Library Date: Dec 4, 2018
Unplayed: 1718d (4y8m14d)
Playtime: 27m
Darksiders Warmastered Edition is a remastered version of the original Darksiders released in 2010. It's a third-person hack-and-slash action-adventure.
The game opens with a explanation of the universe of the game; For eons, heaven and hell were at war, until "The Council" brought the war to a standstill. The Council had their own four-person army to take down anyone from either side who broke the law.
The army? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
After a period of time, humans arose, and it was predicted that one day Heaven, Hell, and Humans would engage in a final battle when the seventh seal was broken (a lot of repurposed religious imagery here).
The game opens to a scene of world wide devastation, as meteor strikes across the planet turn out to be monster demons attacking humans, angels attack monsters, humans running around and dying a lot, and then you show up.
"You" being one of the Four Horsemen: War.
Angry looking dude with glowing eyes, long blond hair, and a huge sword. You take down demons and angels left and right, until you get smushed by a big demon in a boss battle.
Then you show up in front of the council, and they're kind of unhappy, and blaming you for the battle, as you weren't supposed to show up until the seventh seal was broken, and the seventh seal is intact.
Basically, War has been set up.
Playing with keyboard and mouse, the controls feel a little bit sloppy, and habitually going for the shift key to sprint doesn't work well when the shift key is set to focus fire.
With a little bit more playtime it might feel a little bit better, but I don't know if it's because it's a seven year old remaster of a thirteen year old game, or it's just overly bombastic, but it's not grabbing me and yelling "keep playing", but there's something interesting there.
August 29, 2023 - Day 241 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 261
Game: Hellblade: Senu'a Sacrifice
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 8, 2017
Library Date: Jun 29, 2019
Unplayed: 1522d (4y2m)
Playtime: 31m
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is a third-person action-adventure game, in which you play as Senua, a Viking-era Pict warrior, on a mission to enter Helheim, and save the soul of her dead lover.
The game opens with a mental health warning that it features representations of psychosis, with good reason.
Senua is experiencing psychosis, and hears voices.
I immediately found this challenging. I have lived with mental health issues for all of my adult life. While I have not experienced psychosis, I felt... a familiarity... with the game's expression of psychosis.
The game opens with Senua in a canoe paddling into a horrifying gorge in which bodies are floating in the water, and are impaled on stakes along the riverside, as the narrator speaks of Senua in the third person.
Senua is paddling into Helheim.
This tableau, however, is not an expression of Senua's psychosis.
The narrator is.
As the Senua paddles on, the narrator joins with a cacophony of other voices challenging, attacking, and goading Senua.
This is discomforting.
As Senua makes landfall, and progresses on foot through an environment that is no less harrowing than the river, light appears and fades; the screen distorts, the voices rise and fall.
The weight of this presses down on me. On Senua. On us.
Memories explode into view, and then fade.
Senua reaches the gates of Helheim, and engages in her first battle, which is frightening, and devastating in turns.
This has been a difficult and long review to write; the way in which the game shifts between the mental and physical is both visceral, and somehow weightless.
This too, feels familiar. It makes this a complicated game to play.
On a technical level, the visuals are excellent. The sound design is is something else; it lifts this game to another level.
There is no HUD, no health bar. No instructions on what to do.
With keyboard and mouse, the game relies on the standard WASD + F to use. Swordplay and blocking felt instinctive.
This game is only a few months newer than yesterday's game, yet almost perfectly embodies "show, don't tell". The attention that was seemingly lacking for gameplay in yesterday's game, is seen here in buckets, and the game is better for it.
However, these reviews aren't entirely a review of the quality of the game, but also whether I want to invest my gaming time in a particular game.
That is far more complex, because while this IS an excellent game, it's a difficult one for me to play; it is affecting on a level that I need to assess further.
October 3, 2023 - Day 277 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 9
Game: Cyberpunk 2077 + Phantom Liberty DLC
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 10, 2020
Library Date: Dec 25, 2021
Playtime: 94.3h. It's complicated? (CP2077 has a launcher, which I sometimes launched, but didn't play, and Steam counts the launcher being open as playtime, which is why I have 1750+ hours in Warframe).
For anyone who's been living under a rock for the past three years, Cyberpunk 2077 is CD Projekt Red's follow-up to The Witcher 3, and is based on the Cyberpunk series of TTRPGs, of which I've played... none.
Truth be told, I've never played any TTRPG. I grew up in the era of the Satanic Panic, and I was the fundie Christian trying to save my friend's soul by getting him to quit D&D.
Same friend who decades later was one of the first people I came out to as trans, and the first person to ever see me dressing as myself.
This isn't really a digression, given the themes of identity and body modification in CP2077; the game touches some very sensitive parts.
In CP2077 you play as a mercenary, "V". (You choose gender/sex at the start of the game). I'm not going to go into the plotline, because there be spoilers.
CP2077 was released in a blaze of glory, followed by a million screams of "WTF is this, CDPR?"
It was an utterly gorgeous disaster. It had multiple systems that had been stripped out of the game compared to the demos, and it was delightfully buggy.
It was released two months into my breakdown, and I had a VERY bad Christmas in 2020. I had no desire to game at all, or do much of anything. By Christmas 2021, I was myself again (thanks chems!) and got CP2077 for Christmas.
While CDPR had ironed out some bugs, I found it somewhat of a chore to play. It just felt... frustrating? I didn't have a lot of fun. I opened it up every few months and played for an hour here and there, getting about 16 hours into the game between Dec 21, and Sept 2, this year.
Then the free update 2.0 dropped a few days ahead of the Phantom Liberty DLC, and I thought I'd give it another shot. Reviews suggested starting a fresh playthrough, and so I did, and it's a whole different ballgame.
The gameplay feels completely overhauled, and it now feels like it supports the narrative instead of fighting it. I'm hooked (sorry, Bethesda).
Per other reviews, the Phantom Liberty DLC isn't a post-game add-on, but more of a mid-game add-in. It kind-of weaves into the existing narrative timeframe, that opens up a new set of missions mid-game, and being several hours deep into the initial DLC missions, I'm glad I decided to buy it.
It's obvious that they took advantage of 2.0's systems in the gameplay design, and it feels far better developed thematically than even post-2.0 CP2077.
If you tried CP2077 pre-2.0, it's worth updating and jacking in, chooms.
Just Cause 4 is a third-person action-adventure open-world-ish game.
You play as the ongoing lead character from the Just Cause series, Rico Rodriguez; previously a mercenary working with "The Agency"; Rico has apparently parted ways with them prior to the events of Just Cause 4.
In each instalment, Rico has been tasked with taking down a dictator in small "South American" countries.
Playing as Rico, you're required to intricately gather intelligence while designing a mission to quietly take down the dictator... but seriously, no.
The storyline of each game is basically a fig leaf for creatively blowing up as much stuff as possible.
Rico's primary interaction with the environment is a wrist mounted grappling hook, that allows you to come up with all sorts of creative ways to navigate the open-world.
You can use the grapple to quickly jump from point to point, or use it to get airborne, then switch to a parachute or wingsuit depending on your goal. You can also grapple onto moving vehicles, and then hijack them for high-speed hijinks.
Then there are the guns. You can only carry two at a time, but each gun generally has an alternate firing mode, giving you up to four options for creative mayhem with the highlighted targets; destructible environmental objects are helpfully painted red or marked with obvious red highlights.
This is not an RPG where you carefully assess which weapon has better DPS. Pick up gun, shoot stuff until you're out of ammo, pick up another gun. These small dictatorships sure like to leave weapons lying around all over the place.
One of the reasons I put off playing JC4, even though I enjoyed the mayhem of JC3, was that reviews essentially made it out to be "Rico vs the weather", and made it sound like something I wouldn't enjoy.
Anyway, they were pretty much wrong. As per the previous games, it's grapple around and blow things up. It's not exactly Shakespeare, but sometimes it's just fun to blow things up.
Arietta of Spirits is a pixel-art based retro action adventure game, about dealing with grief and monsters. You play as 13-year old Arietta, who is staying with her parents at her recently deceased grandmother's holiday cottage.
When I looked up the activation history, I couldn't initially make sense of why this game would be in my library. It wasn't part of a bundle, it looked like I'd bought it. Digging deeper, I found that it was a bonus game that came with the other game I'd ordered from Fanatical that day.
Unfortunately, while I like the idea of games that deal with grief, because sometimes I find them cathartic, Arietta of Spirits is SO retro that I spent much of my time glancing at the clock.
Firstly, the game includes a mechanic that I'm not terribly fond of: character graphic with a text box full of text to tell the backstory. Click, different talking head. Entire conversations like this. At least you can click through them.
Then there's the sound effects. They're /really/ retro, like C64 retro. The death noises of the mobs (see below) was really jarring and set my teeth on edge.
Start off on the adventure to... pick apples. Get stopped by dad, get given a wooden sword, to defend against wasps.
Encounter wasps. Discover that mob hitboxes aren't terribly consistent. Gets worse in the boss fight at the end of the level, when fighting a big wasp, and some little wasps.
I know from reading up after quitting out that I didn't quite reach the core gameplay about dealing with unhappy spirits, it's just... there was just nothing that made me want to keep playing.
For gamers with a deep love of retro gaming, this might be something that would appeal to them, but I'm not part of that group, which is why Arietta of Spirits is, unfortunately, a:
November 14, 2023 - Day 317 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 10
Game: Hardspace: Shipbreaker
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 26, 2022
Library Date: Jun 20, 2021
Playtime: 59h20m
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is the first game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and on the short list of games that I've completed - on July 24, 2022.
Also, you may note that the "Library Date" predates the "Release Date", and this is not a typo.
It was released in Early Access in 2022, and I did not once regret buying it.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker is a 6DOF first-person action-adventure sim, in which you play a blue collar space worker, who has signed up to work with Lynx Corporation as a ship breaker.
Living in space, it's your job to dismantle, sort, and destroy, recycle, or recover, all the parts of junked spaceships.
There's just a small catch. While you can make good money ship breaking, Lynx Corporation uses cloning technology, and when you sign up with them, they own you and your DNA until your pay out the billion credit debt you incurred in training.
Ship breaking is a dangerous job, with a lot of risks; for instance, one of the big ones is death.
But that's OK; if you die, Lynx will just reconstitute you, and you get to keep on working. The cost of the reconstitution is added to your debt, so no biggie, right?
The actual mechanics of breaking up the ship involve a ruggedised spacesuit, a tether tool, and a laser cutter.
The procedurally generated ships become increasingly complex, with new dangers involved as you level up.
Each ship floats in an orbiting salvage yard with a furnace & salvage bay on both the left and right hand sides of the yard, and a recovery barge below.
You use the laser cutter to break up the ship, and the tether tool to either send recoverable whole objects to the barge, recyclable materials to the salvage bay, and junk to the furnace.
You're paid on the basis of how much usable material you recover from each ship, as well as earning "Lynx Credits" that you can use to upgrade your tools and skills.
It's a surprising amount of fun cutting up a ship, and tethering all the recyclable parts together and firing them off to the salvage bay.
As long as you don't get too close, and get recovered too, because... yeah, I died that way. A few times.
The whole thing is set to a soundtrack that wouldn't be out of place in an episode of Firefly; in some ways, the whole game has a bit of that vibe.
Hardspace: Shipbreaker isn't just a game, it's a game with an excellent narrative that has lot to say about capitalism, corporate exploitation labour abuses, and unionism.
I genuinely love this game, and it's up there with Firewatch as one of my favourite games.
It's worth buying this month's bundle JUST for this game, because Hardspace: Shipbreaker 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: