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.
Over the last 279 games, I felt like I'd played every type of game that's available. I've played games I would not normally choose to play.
Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus is a FMV murder mystery, and the seventh game in the September Humble Choice Bundle, and the first FMV game I've reviewed this year.
The video quality is good, the actors are OK, and Uncle Marcus is played by Andy Buckley, arguably best known as David Wallace in the US version of The Office.
I won't spoil the storyline, but you're presented with choices to make which leads to a branching decision tree as you try to solve a murder in one night.
If you like Andy Buckley, and FMV games, you'll like this. If you don't like either or both, this probably won't be your cup of tea.
In any case, I'll probably end up playing this through, because I'm a bit meh about FMV games, but I do like Andy Buckley (he was great in Avenue 5 too).
Autonauts vs Piratebots is a 3D base-builder survival strategy programming game. It's the last of this month's Humble Choice games and not an entirely bad way to end the bundle.
You're sent to Rigel VII (I guess the devs are Star Trek fans?) after your base of Autonauts is attacked and destroyed by Piratebots.
The survival comes into things with the good old "build stuff from blueprints by despoiling the world around you".
As an aside, even with what we know about climate and the environment, it's kind of wild how many games just fall back on "cut down or dig up the environment, and kill things" as the basic gameplay loop.
With that said, Autonauts vs Piratebots actually makes you build sustainable forests to cut down trees once you get started; it's just something I got to thinking about while playing.
The tricky part is that once you can start creating the bits you need, you can create robots to cut down the trees. Then you program the robots how to cut down trees.
However, their axes break, so you teach another robot how to make an axe, and program it to make an axe, and wait until the axe is taken before making a new one.
Cut down a tree? Someone has to gather the wood. It has to be put somewhere. Program the bots! Run out of bots? Build a bot factory.
41m in I'd worked my way through the basics of the tutorial, but just like programming in the real world, doing it when you're tired is going to lead to mistakes and debugging, like wondering why the bot won't do what you asked because you completely missed a section of the programming.
It's more scripting that programming per se, but you get the general idea.
October 18, 2023 - Day 290 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 310
Game: The Quarry
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 10, 2022
Installation Date: Oct 18, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 30m
The Quarry is a third-person interactive horror adventure game.
I've made no secret of my dislike of horror games, and I feel much the same about straight horror movies. I'm OK with horror comedy, and there are a handful of horror movies (the original "Last Summer" movies, most of the "Scream" franchise), but as a rule, if a horror movie is on, I'm somewhere else.
When October's Humble Choice Bundle dropped earlier this month, I opened up the email to see the AAA game for this month was a horror game I'd already looked at briefly before, and added to my Steam "ignore" list.
So here we are.
The first surprise was the cast list: there are a number of well-known names in the cast, including horror staples, David Arquette, and Ted Raimi, as well Ehtan Suplee, and Lance Henrikson - which was an even bigger surprise, because for some reason I thought he'd passed away recently. Nope. Still alive and well, and doing the voiceovers for the game tutorials.
The second surprise was that while this time I wasn't going in completely blank, as I knew this was a horror game, I didn't realise it was effectively a playable movie.
Which meant it actually combines two of my least favourite things, horror games AND horror movies.
The graphics are good, with a couple of caveats.
They've used the likeness of the actors, and in the prologue you encounter a couple of recognisable faces.
Unfortunately, it feels a bit Polar Express; the uncanny valley is strong with this one.
The other thing, is that one of the characters is played by Skyler Gisondo (you may know him from The Righteous Gemstones, or Santa Clarita Diet).
He doesn't seem to blink; it becomes really unnerving, because the intro doesn't appear to be setting him up as a bad guy, it's just REALLY disconcerting.
The navigation controls are a little frustrating, with the camera swinging around wildly, occasionally leaving me wondering which direction key I needed to use. In the TellTale games of this style, the QTE key is clearly defined. Here it's a black keyboard key icon, with a small white triangle that appears at the last second to indicate which direction to go. More than once I hit the wrong key at the right time.
On the other hand, the environmental design and sound design are very well done, leading to exactly the kind of extremely heightened dread and anxiety that is the exact reason I don't play horror games.
If you enjoy that overwhelming tension that doesn't seem to have any catharsis, this might be the game for you. Me?
Metal: Hellsinger is a rhythm-based FPS. The rhythm in question is heavy metal. Very heavy metal.
This is the second of the October Humble Choice Bundle games, and the second game that I'd looked at before and decided "Ah... no."
It's nothing to do with being an FPS, or a fundie* aversion to the setting, or being a rhythm game.
It was the soundtrack, which seemed to me more like death metal than heavy metal, but I'm old.
In any case, you're more likely to find me listening to Sara Bareilles than Slayer. Dire Straits rather than Dio. Counting Crows, not Cannibal Corpse.
You get the idea.
The idea of a game with a soundtrack featuring the lead singers from bands like System of a Down, Dark Tranquillity, Trivium, and Lamb of God is not my idea of a good time.
I found Nine Inch Nails in Quake was a lot to deal with.
So... I was wrong. Killing mobs in hell, slashing or firing on the beat of screaming thrashing metal is an intense but incredibly fun time.
It's not a game I'm going to play to unwind, by any means, and I can't understand a single word they're singing (which is probably for the best), but Metal: Hellsinger is:
October 21, 2023 - Day 293 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 313
Game: Rebel Inc: Escalation
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 14, 2021
Installation Date: Oct 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 29m
Rebel Inc: Escalation is a top-down political/military strategy sim.
It's the fourth game in the October Humble Choice Bundle, and is by the same developers as Plague Inc: Evolved.
Plague Inc is a game about pandemics, released in 2016, and it's game that, while it wasn't "fun" in the traditional sense, it's even less so now.
Rebel Inc: Escalation brings that same sensibility to taking control of a war-torn country to "stabilise" it, and needing to "deal with a deadly insurgency".
The game doesn't really hold your hand, but it's fairly easy to work out. You have a budget that's provided by... the UN, and you need to spend the money on local initiatives to improve support, and remove support from the insurgents. You also need to create government and military strategies to build towards a win-state, which appears to be finding a way to remove the insurgents while maintaining your own popularity.
While I "won" the first level, it vas vaguely disquieting to play a game about war and "insurgents", and would probably feel a bit on-the-nose at the best of times, but even more so at the moment.
October 22, 2023 - Day 294 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 314
Game: Spirit of the Island
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 18, 2022
Installation Date: Oct 22, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 72m
Spirit of the Island is a third-person farming sim and is the fifth game in the October Humble Choice Bundle
It's a cutesy game that feels like a mash-up of Minecraft, Stardew Valley, and Animal Crossing: New Horizons, with a hint of Disney Dreamlight Valley.
It scratched the go-here-do-this-make-stuff itch, but not real well.
Unfortunately, it has a lot of rough user interfaces edges that still need to sanded off. Inventory management is a multi-click nightmare, and in a game like this, inventory management is everything.
The game also uses a fixed camera position, and tells you this up-front, but it doesn't make it any less annoying.
I want to enjoy Spirit of the Island, but if I want a chilled out experience like that, I'm probably going to look at something else like the games above first.
October 23, 2023 - Day 295 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 315
Game: Lords & Villeins
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 11, 2022
Installation Date: Oct 23, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 15m
Lords & Villeins is a top-down pixel-art medieval city-building sim. Number six in the October Humble Choice Bundle.
I generally try to find something good to say about a game, but I genuinely can't find anything to like about this game.
Top-down & pixel-art was a hard sell to begin with, but Stardew Valley is top-down pixel-art and that worked for me.
This just didn't click. It's not so much of a city-building management sim, as a micro-management sim based on city-building.
The systems in the game seem disconnected from one another.
You assign land to a family. A 10 block x 10 block area of land is "10 acres". Each person takes up 1 block, so I guess each person is 10% of an acre in size?
But then you turn that area into a house, and now it's a 10 acre house?
I have to give the villeins everything single thing they need from my "warehouse". There are things in my warehouse. How did they get there? I do not know.
For instance, I had to give them X amount of straw.
Then they need walls on the land I zoned for them, and I can build the walls out of straw or wood. Do the walls come out of my warehouse pile of straw or the straw I just gave to the villeins?
The game does not tell me, and at this point, I do not care. I just want it to be over.
I attempt to build walls. You place the icon and drag out the wall. I dragged it in the wrong place. I can't cancel it. I need to delete it. I can't delete it with a drag. I have to click on and delete every single piece of wall individually.
The systems in this game are opaque and frustrating and when my 15 minutes were up, I gave a sigh of relief.
There is probably an audience for this game, but wherever that may be, I assume they have a tolerance for pain that I lack.
Game number seven in the October Humble Choice Bundle is "A Juggler's Tale"; a 2.5D sideways scrolling puzzle adventure game.
I have incredibly mixed emotions about this game.
You play as Abby, a young girl, who is both a juggler, and a marionette. Abby is trapped in a circus and forced to perform, and A Juggler's Tale is the story of her escape, narrated by the puppeteer.
The graphics are gorgeous, the sound design is good. The puzzles are not too challenging, although the controls (on controller) can be a little bit fiddly.
The narrator is an older man with an English accent, and is in turns condescending, and patronising in the way he talks to (and about) Abby, frequently belittling her (and technically my) failures when attempting to solve puzzles - and I utterly despise him.
I'm not sure whether the intent of the devs was to make me feel like that towards him, but his manner and commentary triggers emotional responses within me that I don't think were intended.
I'm tempted to just Google the game to find out how it ends, and if there's any kind of catharsis, because the idea of spending the entire game with this horrible person, fills me with dread.
I suspect that my reaction is partly a trauma response, from the abuse I experienced growing up. So, while I think this game is good, if you have that kind of trauma it may actually be triggering, which is a weird thing to have to say about a game like this.
October 25, 2023 - Day 297 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 317
Game: Mr. Prepper
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 19, 2021
Installation Date: Oct 25, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 32m
Mr. Prepper is the final game in the October Humble Choice. It's 2.5D cooker-themed... sorry, "prepper"-themed survival sim.
It basically feels like Fallout Shelter if it were about SovCits. And written by SovCits.
You play as the titular "Mr. Prepper" who literally goes by that name in-game, introducing himself as that to other NPCs.
The US government has been taken over by some kind of fascist organisation that stopped Mr. Prepper from escaping from his home town in the midwest, and is now monitoring him for subversive behaviour.
You need to build a bunker for him, and build a whole lot of stuff for the bunker, all while hiding it from the regular government inspections.
This is another game where if the theme of the game were different I might enjoy it more, but the whole real-world prepper/conspiracy theorist Venn diagram takes the shine off it, and just gives me a case of the icks.
November 9, 2023 - Day 312 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 332
Game: WWE 2K23
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 17, 2023
Installation Date: Nov 9, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 51m
WWE 2K23 is a pro wrestling sports sim. It's game #2 in the November Humble Choice bundle.
I am not a sports fan; my wife passionately fills that role in our relationship. I'll occasionally watch a game with her, but sports just don't do anything for me.
Then there's professional wrestling. Not only do I not see the appeal, I find it actively repellent. The showboating aggressive and sweaty men give off the same vibe as the boys who used to bully me aggressively and incessantly at school.
There are few sports I want to know less about than pro wrestling, which puts playing a game like WWE 2K23 somewhere south of playing an F1 game, and almost at survival/escape horror levels.
Although, to be honest, I once went on a hyperfocus bender on the performance side of pro-wrestling, so I know what a heel turn and face turn are, but the sports side? I was even LESS interested in knowing more.
I was fully prepared to dislike this game. I WANTED to dislike this game. I figured I'd get in, play 15 minutes and get out, have a little rant about it, and free up 80 gigs of precious SSD space.
I loaded it up. The game aggressively loading up on the wrong monitor helped. Forcing me straight into a tutorial without first letting me adjust the settings? Pump it into my veins. Hiding the settings menu somewhere other than the options menu? Just trying to get it working has eaten up a good chunk of my 15 minutes. I'm ready to rant.
However, it's not a fair review of the game, so into the tutorial with some guy named Xavier Woods, who's part of "The New Day". Already learning things I don't want to know.
Xavier tells me that I need to train so that one day I can face off against John Cena. The tutorial walks me through the various moves, and combos, and it takes me a bit over 15 minutes to complete.
There are a LOT of moves to remember. At least now I can give it a fair review... except it's straight into a Wrestlemania ring. Xavier is now dressed in pink and yellow spandex, and is going up against his first opponent...
John Cena. Apparently. I can't see him, but I know he's there (sorry, not sorry).
"One day" is today. I'm wrestling John Cena. I can remember some of the moves from the tutorial. I'm... oh no...
...I'm enjoying this.
I'm playing WWE 2K23, and I'm having fun. I beat John Cena.
I BEAT JOHN CENA.
I put down the controller. My hands are aching.
I just had fun.
Playing a pro-wrestling sim.
Who even am I now?
I'm not about to sit down and watch WWE any time soon, but I'm not getting that 80Gb of SSD space back, either.
For a game that I was prepared to dislike SO much, I can't quite believe the words I'm about to write: WWE 2K23 is actually really:
November 10, 2023 - Day 313 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 333
Game: Friends vs Friends
Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 30, 2023
Installation Date: Nov 10, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 16m
Friends vs Friends is a combination multiplayer PVP FPS and deckbuilder.
Those two things go together like chocolate ice cream and nachos; I like both of those things, but not in the same bowl.
It's the fourth game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and is reinforcing my theory that some devs are trying use the bundle to juice their player base to try and reach critical mass.
The opening of this game took me by surprise. I do not remember another game that has a fully animated theme song intro.
For a moment I was genuinely wondering whether this was a cartoon of some kind, because it feels just like the opening to a 90's Saturday morning cartoon.
The theme song alerted me to the fact it was a deckbuilder, but not that it was also a FPS, so when I found myself staring at a cel-shaded 3D environment, and while the environmental design and character designs were well done, I was at a loss as to what to do next.
I wandered around hoping that I'd trigger some kind of tutorial, some idea of how to play the game... nothing.
I found a shop, and guns I could try out, but no idea how to obtain them. I couldn't work out how to start a match, and I didn't want to start a match without knowing how to play.
Eventually I gave up, and started a 1v1 quickmatch; I muddled my way through, winning 1 out of 5 matches. I tried a 2v2 match with bots, in which my "team" lost both times.
Turns out, the guns are cards in your deck, you win matches, get cash, use the cash to buy new cards, build a new deck (or upgrade the old one).
After the 2v2 match, I spotted a question mark icon tucked away in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, which on a 3440x1440 screen wasn't exactly obvious, and it contained a set of instructions for how to play the game.
For me there are few issues with the game; the first one is in the title. It's a game that would probably work best with 1 or 3 friends (multiplayer options are 1v1 or 2v2).
With everyone either in the same room in a LAN game, or all on voicechat together, this could be amusing, because some of the card effects were amusing. Playing against randoms? No-one to laugh with.
Some cards were confusing "If I play this, does it affect me or the opponent?" No idea, even after playing it...
...because it's a PVP FPS. The pace of the game means it either feels like nothing is happening, or feels like everything is happening, as I'm trying to shoot, and look at my deck, and not get shot, and pick out a card, and I'm dead.
Unfortunately, Friends vs Friends feels like it had potential, but it all ended up just a bit:
Prodeus is a post-modern retro FPS, and is number 5 in this month's Humble Choice bundle.
Some time in 1994, a 20yo sat down in front of a friend's PC, as the friend said "You have to see this!" and fired up a new game his dad had downloaded.
I was stunned. The same computer we'd played Captain Keen & Wolfenstein 3D was showing a true 3D environment first-person shooter (even IF the mobs were bitmaps).
But it wasn't just the visuals. It was the sound. The cheap speakers plugged into the SoundBlaster were emitting snarls and growls, that felt like they were just about to burst in and kill us, and all of my hairs stood on end.
I'd never experienced anything like it. I was watching him play Doom.
I've lost count of the number of FPS's I've played since. Tens of thousands of digital opponents have been blasted into pixels in all kinds of environments, and it's rare now to get a chill playing a FPS.
Yet firing up Doom (or Doom 2), and hearing those snarls & growls can still give me chills, and in spite of having them installed, I don't play them.
When I played Doom Eternal for the first time, it felt like they'd captured the spirit of Doom, with all the advances of modern tech. It was fun, but it didn't feel like that moment in 1994.
Prodeus has all the little Doom-like touches; armor shards & health bottles, exploding barrels, secrets stashed here and there, but with added up & down mouse camera movement.
However, that could still describe countless boomer shooters; the difference is that Prodeus has somehow managed to capture the atmosphere of Doom, in a way that I can't remember experiencing in a very long time.
I felt like I was playing a true spiritual successor to Doom, and that's tough to pull off.
But technology is not the only thing that's changed in the last almost-30 years. I've lived through some real-life horror. The mix of adrenaline and fear, that rush that I got from playing Doom in 1994, it hits differently now.
Reaching the end of the first level, seeing that Doom-like end-screen didn't give me a rush of excitement, just a sense of relief. My jaw and my shoulders are tight and sore. My body reacts in a different way.
This was a hard review to write. It's taken me almost three times as long to write as I spent playing.
These reviews are primarily about my feelings towards a game, and whether I want to play it again, and Prodeus is difficult.
As a game, it deserves an "excellent", but as I game that I'll play again? I don't know. As I wrote earlier, I have Doom and Doom II installed on Steam (and Doom 3). I have less than two hours playtime across all three games.
Prodeus' 1.29Gb install can stay on my SSD, because it's:
November 12, 2023 - Day 315 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 335
Game: The Legend of Tianding
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 2, 2021
Installation Date: Nov 12, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 21m
Game number 6 in the November Humble Choice bundle is The Legend of Tianding.
This is a 2.5D side-scrolling beat-em-up platformer, which is based on a Flash game from 2004. Both games are based on the life of a real Taiwanese outlaw during the early 20th century.
It was a bit of a frustrating start. The game doesn't support ultra-wide screen, and instead of letterboxing, stretches 2560x1440 to 3440x1440.
The graphics are done in a comic-book style, which is well done, but other than that, it's a perfectly functional beat-em-up.
SCP: Secret Files is an odd game that's based around SCP (which stands for "Secure. Control. Protect."), and is a collaborative story writing wiki about paranormal anomalies.
I'm not going to try and explain SCP beyond that; you either know what SCP is, or you don't, and if you know what SCP is, you either know if it's a "you" thing, or if it isn't.
I know what SCP is, and it's not a thing that grabs me. In SCP: Secret Files, you find yourself as a new recruit in SCP, (the organisation that the SCP wiki is ostensibly about), and working through SCP "casefiles".
I played through 51 minutes of this game because I wanted to see how the first story ended (one of several different stories within the game), and it was somewhat disappointing.
November 14, 2023 - Day 317 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 337
Game: SCP: Secret Files
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 2, 2022
Installation Date: Nov 14, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 20m
Souldiers is a 2D pixel-art Metroidvania Soulslike platformer, and the last of this months unplayed Humble Choice bundle games.
It has a fantasy setting, which involves being saved from death due to machinations within the kingdom by a Valkyrie only to have to fight in the land that you're taken to, and I didn't get much further than that in 20 minutes.
The devs have put a lot of thought and effort into the backstory, but it's not one that grabs me.
Once again, I'm staring at a fairly average Metroidvania in a year when I've played such excellent Metroidvanias and Soulslike platformers, that a game really needs to bring something different to the table to grab me.
Unfortunately, Souldiers didn't, and it's just kind of:
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:
November 14, 2023 - Day 317 - RePlay Review
Total RePlays: 10
Game: Unpacking
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 2, 2021
Library Date: Nov 23, 2022
Playtime: 7h17m*
Unpacking is the third game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and another one on the short list of games that I've completed; this one on December 30th, 2021
My time played in Steam, however, is 0h 0m.
Unpacking is also available on Xbox Game Pass for PC, which is where I played it, and completed it.
Twice.
Unpacking is an utterly lovely, and very chill isometric pixel art puzzle game, that involves unpacking a series of moving boxes, and learning about your life. It's a game about what makes somewhere home.
Each set of puzzles is based around a time in your life, and as you unpack the boxes, you begin to tease out the narrative of your life.
The thing about Unpacking is that to explain it beyond this, risks giving away part of the narrative, and I don't want to do that.
There is so much I love about this game, both for the puzzle, but also for the narrative; those of you who've played it know exactly what I mean.
It's a game that sat with me for a long time after I'd finished it, and I ultimately decided that I want to own a copy, and put some money into the pocket of the (Australian!) devs (Witch Beam, based in Brisbane), so I bought it.
Writing about it like this has just reminded me how much I love it, and I might just need to play it through again. It's another one on my list of favourites, along with Firewatch, Dredge, and Hardspace: Shipbreaker.
Unpacking is the other game it's worth buying this month's bundle for; it too is:
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...
December 10, 2023 - Day 343 - 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.
December 11, 2023 - Day 344 - 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.