#Returnal is, simply put, a damn masterpiece. And it's not for its great gfx powered by #UE4, nor for the superb soundtrack. No, it's cos of the various gameplay mechanics you make acquaintance with little by little, as you die and live again, from the beginning. All of them force you to make decisions that will deeply affect your fate. Somehow this punishing, fast paced #thirdperson#bullethell#metroidvania#roguelike mongrel manages to keep you glued to the screen till the very end. #gaming
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.
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.
The Gunk is a third-person action-adventure platformer, with some puzzle elements thrown in. It's game number five in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and honestly, was not a game I was looking forward to playing.
The game title, and the thumbnail on Humble's website really put me off; had I stumbled across this game, with a name like "The Gunk"? Ew. No thank you.
But here I am, forcing myself to play through each of the games each month, so I installed The Gunk and loaded it up.
The game opens with an external shot of a workhorse ship, in space. This is a no Starship Enterprise, more of a yellow brick.
From inside the ship, a conversation between Rani (a crew member) and Becks (the captain) ensues.
They're low on funds, and space hauling is no way to make money. They've found a barren planet, which set off an alert on the ship for an energy source, but as Rani disembarks from the low-flying ship, her "power glove" barely holding together, all they find is a few worthless crystals, and a bubbling mass of "gunk".
We're off on an adventure... and what an adventure it is.
The gunk, as it turns out, is drawn to the energy pools that triggered the ship's alarms, and Rani's power glove has a build in "vacuum" that can suck up the gunk (don't think too hard about this). Once the area is freed of the gunk, it springs back to life.
Gorgeous, colourful, life. As you move through the various tunnels and platforms, they're rendered beautifully, but watching the bubble of life expanding outwards from your position as you remove the last piece of gunk, is wonderful.
Built into Rani's power glove is a scanner that can scan the various resources you encounter as you can explore, and you can extract them in much the same way as the gunk.
You'll need them, too, because scanning every new thing you come across is how you unlock upgrades to the power glove.
The platforming and puzzles are not too complex, and the laid-back accompanying score is fantastic, and suits the game perfectly.
The best thing for me about The Gunk, though, is the narrative; the back and forth between Becks as she waits back at the ship, and Rani as she explores further afield is fun, and it's this that genuinely kept me exploring for more than an hour, only quitthing because I was going to be late to start work if I didn't.
As they say, "Never judge a book by its cover", and missing out on The Gunk would have been a terrible shame. For me, this game alone makes this month's bundle entirely worth the money, because The Gunk is:
December 21, 2023 - Day 354 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 376
Game: Okami HD
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 13, 2017
Installation Date: Dec 21, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 53m
Okami HD is a third-person action-adventure game, and a HD re-release of Okami, a game that was originally released for the PlayStation 2 and the Nintendo Wii.
It's genuinely like nothing else I've played this year. The game is set in "Nippon", and you play as the reincarnation of the Shinto sun goddess "Amaterasu", embodied in a white wolf.
You are accompanied by a bug named Issun who doesn't like being called a bug, and WILL NOT STOP TALKING. Issun is your guide.
You can break things throughout the game by headbutting them; in combat you fight with a sword that's held in your mouth.
However, what truly makes this game unique (other than the art style, which is based on classic Japanese painting styles, including Sumi-e), is that one of your combat techniques is literally painting.
You can fight an enemy until they are drained of colour, and then go into a "painting" mode, and use your brush to attack them with the various brushstrokes you learn throughout the game.
I've found some games hard to categorise because they're a mashup of so many game ideas that I end up with a long hyphenated description. I borrowed the description for Okami HD from the game blurb, because I just don't have a frame of reference to apply.
My only points of frustration with the game are that the camera was wildly frustrating until I found that you can (and I needed to) invert both the X & Y axes, and that manual saving is required, which can only be done at specific locations.
I've become so habituated to auto-saves, that even though the game goes out of the way to highlight the save system, I still managed to wipe out over half an hour of game progress before I realised what I'd done.
GreedFall is a third-person action RPG set in a fantasy version of the 17th century.
You play as a noble of the "Merchant Congregation", one of several competing factions seeking to colonise the island of "Teer Fradee", hoping to find a cure for the "Malichor", an illness that is wreaking havoc on the Merchant Congregation's capital city of Sérène.
I was just going to play 15 minutes, write up a review, and move on.
Instead, I found myself deeply engrossed in the storyline, and regretting that I hadn't discovered GreedFall earlier.
Firstly, the character selection screen gives you a choice of the gender, and basic look of your character, with them being fully voiced. Huge checkmark.
But the worldbuilding itself is just amazing. At least in the initial quests in Sérène, it most closely reminds me of Dishonoured in terms of setting (which is a very good thing).
GreedFall is currently on sale on both GOG for a historical low of A$8.76, and Steam for A$10.99, and if you feel like scratching an itch for a game set in the Age of Discovery (when you're not playing Baldur's Gate 3), I don't think you could go wrong with GreedFall, because it's:
December 30, 2023 - Day 364 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 395
Game: Outward Definitive Edition
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 26, 2019
Installation Date: Nov 30, 2023
Unplayed: 30d
Playtime: 37m
Outward Definitive Edition is a third-person fantasy RPG with survival mechanics.
The problem with any RPG released from here on out is that Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur's Gate 3 both exist.
However it's worse for RPGs that were released before 2023, because between these two games, they've raised the bar so incredibly high, that most games are going to suffer in comparison.
Outward Definitive Edition is an updated release of Outward release in May 2022 that includes "quality of life" improvements; given the state of the game, I shudder to think what QoL was like beforehand.
However, in trying to be fair, I looked up RPGs that were released in 2018 & 2019; which means comparing it to games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance, and Greedfall.
Unfortunately, even then it doesn't fare well. It just feels very rough around the edges, and frustrating to play.
As an example, whether you love it or hate it, most RPGs use some kind of encumbrance gameplay mechanic (and if you love encumbrance, I wonder what's wrong with you).
Outward leans heavily into the realism, which means it takes barely anything collected in your backpack before you're encumbered. Better* still, after combat I picked up two weapons from the mobs I'd just killed. One of them left me encumbered. The second left me completely unable to move.
Not that the screen indicated the change in any way. There's an icon that appears onscreen when you're over the encumbrance limit, but no warning to say I'd been completely immobilised. I thought the game had bugged out completely.
There's also a cooking mechanic (because survival gameplay as well) with some recipes, but also "manual cooking". I tried to cook something with fresh water and fresh raw salmon, but instead of boiled salmon, it resulted in "diseased mush". I probably shouldn't have eaten it, because eating it left me diseased, with an icon onscreen, and nothing to indicate how to resolve that.
It feels like the game wants you to work really hard to like it, and I'm glad that I got it in a bundle, because I don't feel bad about disliking it.
You've probably already guessed, but Outward Definitive Edition is a:
December 31, 2023 - Day 365 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 398
Game: Beyond: Two Souls
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 18, 2020 (PC)
Installation Date: Dec 19, 2022
Unplayed: 377d (1y12d)
Playtime: 24m
Beyond: Two Souls is a third-person... interactive movie?
I picked a doozy for my final primary NewPlay. The game starts by presenting the option to play in the "original" non-chronological order, or the "remix" chronological order.
I picked "original", and then found myself in a cutscene with a mo-capped pre-transition Elliot page, and then an unexpected Willem Dafoe, setting up an interesting premise.
Whoever Jodie is, she's dangerous.
After the cutscene, I found myself playing as child Jodie. This was where I ran into my first issue with the game. I'd picked mouse & keyboard to play with, but given that this was originally a console release, it really isn't designed for mouse & keyboard, and the controls just felt weird.
Switched to controller, and things started to make more sense.
The hard part of trying to provide more of a review is this: explaining what happens next goes into spoiler territory, and so... I won't.
Because the game relies on mocap, and was originally released in 2013, prior to Elliot Page coming out as a trans man, I found playing as adult Jodie in the next section somewhat disconcerting, and in a way that I really can't quite put into words. Not enough to make me not want to play, but enough to break immersion.
This is not a critique of the game, rather an acknowledgement of how events in the real world can affect my perception of a game.
I really enjoyed (and completed!) one of Quantic Dream's other games, Detroit: Become Human, which is what lead to me buying this and Heavy Rain in a bundle last year.
Based on past experience, I'm interested in continuing this playthrough of Beyond: Two Souls; so far, it's:
December 31, 2023 - Day 365 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 399
Game: Saints Row
Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 23, 2022 (PC)
Installation Date: Dec 31, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 59m
Saints Row (2022) was a poorly received reboot of the Saints Row franchise. It's a third-person action-adventure RPG, that is, this time around, based around the founding of a criminal gang named "The Saints".
You play as "The Boss", and can choose from a set of pre-made characters, or build your own from scratch, so I lost track of how long I spent in the character creator.
In this case, I didn't go into the game completely unawares; I've played some of Saints Row IV, which was cartoonishly over the top.
I remember reading reviews of Saints Row saying that they wanted it to be more grounded, and to paraphrase Inigo Montoya, "...that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."
Maybe it's not quite as OTT as the last game, but grounded is not a word I'd use either.
I'm a little surprised at this point that the reviews were so awful, as it definitely feels a lot like the previous Saints Row games to me.
I'll probably slot in some further Saints mayhem between RPG sessions in the new year.
January 8, 2024 - Day 373 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 409
Game: Twin Mirror
Platform: Steam
Released: Dec 1, 2021
Installed: Feb 16, 2023
Unplayed: 326d (10m23d
Playtime: 35m
Rating: 3 - OK
Twin Mirror is a third-person narrative adventure, and is the final game in this month's Humble Choice bundle.
The developers of this game are Don't Nod, responsible for the "Life is Strange" series, as well as "Tell Me Why" (and other games).
In Twin Mirror, you play as a reporter who has returned to his hometown for the funeral of his best friend. His best friend's young daughter believes her father was murdered, and asks you to investigate.
I already owned Twin Mirror, but hadn't played it. It hasn't quite grabbed me as strongly as I thought it would, but it's a game I'll probably poke around a bit more in.
January 27, 2024 - Day 392 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 428
Game: Palworld
Platform: Xbox Game Pass for PC
Released: Jan 19, 2024
Installed: Jan 27, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 4.9h
Rating: 4 - Good
Palworld is a third-person tree-punching survival game with a new game mechanic of seeking to be sued out of existence by The Pokemon Company.
If you haven't heard of the game that sold 8 million copies in a week on Steam, and is currently sitting at #2 behind PUBG on the Steam chart for record number of concurrent players, the elevator pitch for Palworld is "Pokemon with guns"
I didn't expect it to be quite so literal.
I'd read a piece about survival games by Zack Zwiezen a few days ago, in which he referred to them as "tree punchers" (which I've stolen from him), and he touched on Palworld in the review; so I had no intention of buying it.
However, after rebooting my PC yesterday, I found myself staring at the Xbox app and an install button for Palworld via Game Pass, which meant I didn't need to buy it, and the die was cast.
The gameplay loop is certainly addictive; I can understand why so many folks are playing it.
It starts out like most survival games; wake up in a random location with no idea how you got there, and start punching trees. It's the same gathering-and-crafting loop we've been doing since Minecraft (and probably even before).
Then there's the Pokemon... sorry, "Pals". I'm not a Nintendo girl. I didn't have any Nintendo stuff growing up, and the first Nintendo console I owned was the N64 I bought for our kids for Christmas 2000 (Christmas 2000 sounds like an awesome B-grade movie).
My first encounter with Pokemon was Pokemon GO. I lack the encyclopaedic memory of all the different Pokemon I encountered in PoGo, but upon encountering -and killing- Pals in Palword, they were definitely giving off Pokemon vibes.
You can also collect the Pals, by attacking them with a weapon until they're weakened enough to capture in a Pokeball... erm, Palsphere.
Once captured, you can put them to work in your base, or, uhh... butcher the cute little PokePals, to feed the other PokePals working in your base.
Best not to think too deeply about a game that is also apparently survival horror.
The Pokemon vibes ceased to be vibes and became "you're going to get sued for IP infringement" when I encountered Gumoss.
Gumoss is a grass-type Pal (yes, they've snarfed the 'type' concept too), which feels unarguably like Ditto in an acorn cap.
If I, with my limited recall of Pokemon, can recognise this, I've no doubt the Pokemon fans calling Pocket Pair out are on the money, and it makes sense that the notoriously laid-back-and-not-at-all-protective-of-their-IP, The Pokemon Company, are "investigating".
Which is primarily why I didn't buy it on Steam; I don't want to lose A$44 when they get sued out of existence for IP infringement.
Etherborn is a third-person 3D platform puzzle game that seems to have been designed on the principle "What if we remade Monument Valley without understanding what made it tick, and then adding a vaguely philosophical voiceover?"
Unfortunately, it means that Etherborn feels like a knock-off version of Monument Valley, just somewhat annoying.
The same kind of 3D puzzles, now with the added ability to fall off the structure, and get placed right back where you were.
A disembodied voice speaking over the top of the initial level, then at the end of the next level doesn't really add anything to the game, other than making you wait until it finishes speaking. What it has to say seems to have little to do with the actual game.
While you can navigate from any surface to any other surface that is joined by a curve, sometimes you'll jump and suddenly find yourself plummeting to your doom.
The follow camera wanders around all over the place, with some minor adjustments possible with the right thumbstick, often leading to falling to my death because of the angle of view.
More than once I found the avatar obscured from view by parts of the level itself, which just added to the frustration.
I played through the intro level, then the first level, and after that I saved and quit, because it just felt like a chore.
Life Is Strange: True Colors is a third person adventure game, and is the first game in February's Humble Choice bundle. I actually owned it already; in my head, I pictured it as a sequel, so I hadn't actually played it.
You play as 18yo Alex Chen, who has a psychic ability and can see the emotions of others as coloured auras, and hear their thoughts.
Beyond that, I'm not sure, as the pacing of the game means that even after 35 minutes, I'm not terribly far into the storyline.
However, based on the previous games, and my experience so far, Life Is Strange: True Colors seems to be:
February 9, 2024 - Day 405 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 441
Game: Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed
Platform: Steam
Released: Aug 31, 2022
Installed: Feb 9, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 24m
Rating: 3 - OK
Destroy All Humans! 2 - Reprobed is a third person open world adventure game. It's the third game in February's Humble Choice bundle.
Unlike Scorn, I actually had DAH!2-R on my wishlist. However, what I didn't know is that while it's a sequel to 2020's Destroy All Humans!, it turns out that Destroy All Humans! was a remake of Destroy All Humans! released in 2005, and DAH!2-R is a remake of the sequel Destroy All Humans! 2.
DAH!2-R is set in 1969, and you're playing as a clone of the original Furon invader, Cryptosporidium-137.
As the now-President of The United States, you find yourself under attack by the KGB, having simultaneously destroyed your mothership in orbit, and waves of KGB agents launching a direct ground assault on you, while you're attending a music festival in San Francisco. Of course.
It's feels much like a pastiche of alien invasion movies of the 1950's & 1960's, and it's kind of goofy fun.
February 14, 2024 - Day 410 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 446
Game: Snowtopia
Platform: Steam
Released: Dec 15, 2022
Installed: Feb 14, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 27m
Rating: 1 - Nope
Snowtopia is a top-down/third-person snow resort management sim. It's the last game in this month's Humble Choice Bundle.
You start out in the middle of nowhere in a snow-covered valley with the main buildings of a snow-resort in the centre, begging for you to build it out into a functional skiing paradise.
There's potential here for something interesting, but it's let down painfully by a tutorial that explains things in a way that still leaves you unsure of exactly what you're supposed to do.
However, the game's biggest failing is that it tells you to build ski runs on the vector-graphics hills, and then when you try to, it gives the cryptic error "Impossible to build on uphill slope."
It feels like it was designed by someone who understands exactly what that is supposed to mean, and since it's obvious to them, it should be obvious to everyone else.
However, having lived just south of the NSW snowfields for over a decade, one of the most important things required for ski runs is the uphill slope, so you have something to ski down.
Don't let the time played fool you; I became determined to at least complete the tutorial. I did not. I gave up in frustration.
February 16, 2024 - Day 412 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 448
Game: Bee Simulator
Platform: Steam
Released: Nov 17, 2020
Installed: Feb 1, 2024
Unplayed: 15d
Playtime: 15m
Bee Simulator is a third-insect bee simulator. It's right there on the tin.
Back in 1991, Will Wright (creator of SimCity and The Sims) released SimAnt; unsurprisingly, this was an ant simulator.
This was among the first games I purchased, and I was very disappointed. While I learned a lot of information about ants (some of which still comes in useful), I didn't actually enjoy the game in the same way that I'd enjoyed SimCity.
Unlike the top-down nature of SimAnt, Bee Simulator is a fully 3D environment. It's a little more game-oriented compared to the po-faced SimAnt, but basically: if you're interested in bees, and/or want to experience life as a bee, Bee Simulator will be right up your alley.
It's not a bad game, just not that interesting to me. For me, Bee Simulator is just a bit:
February 17, 2024 - Day 413 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 449
Game: Edengate: The Edge of Life
Platform: Steam
Released: Nov 16, 2022
Installed: Feb 10, 2024
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 31m
Edengate: The Edge of Life is a third-person post-apocalyptic walking simulator.
You play as Mia Lorenson, who wakes up alone in a deserted hospital. It starts out feeling a little bit like the opening scenes of The Walking Dead, then goes in a different direction.
"Walking simulator" is often considered to be a bit of an insult to a game, but one of my favourite games of all time (Firewatch) is a walking sim.
It's got my interest piqued, but it's not quite as "keep-going" as I found Firewatch. I'm still interested in seeing where it takes me, and finding out what Mia has to do with the apocalypse that unfolded while she was unconscious.
I have a theory, but if it turns out to be correct, it will be so on the nose I'd probably come back and lower the rating; at this point, Edengate: The Edge of Life is:
February 28, 2024 - Day 424 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 460
Game: Earthlock
Platform: Steam
Released: Mar 8, 2018
Installed: Feb 1, 2024
Unplayed: 27d
Playtime: 20m
Earthlock is a third-person turn-based ARPG, that claims inspiration from JRPG's from the 90's, and really leans into the nostalgia for those games.
I lack the prerequisite nostalgia for 90's JRPGs, and as I did not enjoy this game, I cannot imagine any kind of context in which I'd choose this over Baldur's Gate 3.
March 9, 2024 - Day 434 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 469
Game: Nioh 2
Platform: Steam
Released: Feb 5, 2021
Installed: Mar 9, 2024
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 32m
The second game in the March Humble Choice Bundle is Nioh 2; it's a third-person ARPG, which is described by the developers as "masocore".
It's set in a fictionalised supernatural era of Japan in the 16th century, and I hope you like sharp weapons, because there are a lot of them to choose from.
Not that they did me much good, because I died pretty much straight away, and repeatedly.
Turns out that "masocore" is a portmanteau of "masochism" and "hardcore", and Nioh 2 is aimed at a subset of players for whom I guess soulslikes aren't frustrating enough?
It's a gorgeous-looking game, but I have low frustration levels to begin with, and this just didn't click with me.
I still want to give it another try though? So I'm going give it a (just barely):
Soulstice is game six in the March Humble Choice Bundle.
It's a third-person fixed-path hack-and-slash adventure game, with a design aesthetic that I really like, a night-time post-apocalyptic fantasy steampunk mashup.
However, the biggest letdown is the semi-fixed camera, which makes this gorgeous game deeply frustrating to try and navigate.
What's worse is that the game allows you to unlock the camera during the intermittent NPC battles, which makes the design choice to leave it locked at other times all the more mystifying.
With four out of eight games in the bundle out of the way, this bundle isn't batting well.
The teeth-grindingly frustrating camera drags Soulstice down from what was potentially "good" to:
March 16, 2024 - Day 441 - Humble Choice Supplemental 1
Total NewPlays: 476
I didn't skip over reviewing the 3rd & 4th games in this month's Humble Bundle, I just decided not to add extra workload on what was already an incredibly exhausting week.
March 19, 2024 - Day 444 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 479
Game: Final Fantasy XIII
Platform: Steam
Released: Oct 9, 2014
Installed: Jan 1, 2016
Unplayed: 3000d (8y2m18d)
Playtime: 19m
Final Fantasy XIII is third-person RPG set in a scifi/fantasy dystopia. I think.
I have an odd relationship with the Final Fantasy series. I did not come to it via console.
I came to it via World of Warcraft. Back in the day, when WoW was pretty much the only game in (my) town, I was part of a WoW guild with some workmates. Our east-coast guild merged with a west-coast guild that we raided with regularly, and we now kind of roam from game to game like a band of Ronin-nerds.
At some point, I got a free thirty days FF XIV game time card in a bundle, and decided to give FF XIV a go.
I didn't get it. It felt bizarre, a mash of things that didn't really seem to mesh., but I spent a month levelling a character before deciding not to subscribe. Then Square-Enix made it free to play to level 60. Unless you'd previously had a subscription (Allie wept).
I did end up playing again many years later, and it was this experience that I brought to Final Fantasy XIII.
FF XIV is a fairly typical third-person (MMO)RPG.
FF XIII... is not.
While it IS a third-person RPG, the battle mechanics are unlike anything I've experienced before. It uses an "auto-battle" system with no direct control of the character during fights.
The other thing that the Final Fantasy games have in common is... almost nothing.
While there are some games in the series that lead on from the previous game, it seems to be more of a "Part 2" than any direct continuity.
At least as far as I can work out.
Final Fantasy XIII is (at least I think... maybe?):
March 26, 2024 - Day 451 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 486
Game: The Forest Quartet
Platform: Steam
Released: Dec 9, 2022
Installed: Mar 14, 2023
Unplayed: 378d (1y12d)
Playtime: 22m
The Forest Quartet is a third-person puzzle game that's part narrative adventure, part jazz-themed exploration of grief.
It tells the story of a quartet of jazz musicians whose lead vocalist, Nina, has passed away. You play as Nina, a spirit interacting with the physical world to reunite her former bandmates, and help them come to terms with her death.
The Callisto Protocol is the second game in the April Humble Choice Bundle; it's a third-person narrative-driven survival horror game.
I went into it knowing it's classed as a survival horror game, and a great demonstration of why I try to go into these game without knowing what kind of game I'm getting into.
I don't like "survival horror" games as a category. But there are "SURVIVAL horror" games, and "survival HORROR" games. Outlast is an example of the former, The Callisto Protocol is an example of the latter (at least so far?).
Horror games take me places that feel too close to emotional spaces that aren't good for me; I'm not good with that kind of fear-based adrenaline. Occasionally, though, it's doable.
I found the first half hour relatively... OK. You play as Jacob Lee, a poor victim of "names pulled from a hat".
After the intro, the camera pans forward to the cockpit of a ship, and you come face to face with good old Kirkland-brand Timothy Olyphant, Josh Duhamel.
Voiceover and mocap work was done by Josh Duhamel, with the apparent antagonist played by Karen Fukuhara, best known as Kimiko Miyashiro from The Boys.
However, when Sam Witwer shows up soon after, it becomes clear who the real bad guy of the piece is. The fact your first interaction with him is him throwing your innocent character into a maximum security off-world prison is pretty much a "I don't know what I expected moment".
What these actors bring to the game is a sense of this being more than just another survival horror shooter, a game that might actually be serious about its narrative intentions. Whether they can pull it off, I have yet to find out.
In terms of gameplay so far, I was intrigued enough to keep playing, in spite of my nerves. There are a couple of things about the game that make me uneasy.
I don't mind a bit of gore, but The Callisto Protocol is a gorefest. Which brings me to the other thing. You don't just loot bodies in The Callisto Protocol (you little murder hobo), you actually need to perform a "corpse stomp" on them for them to give up their shinies.
That just feels a bit gratuitous.
The graphics and sound design create an incredible atmosphere, and if I'm in the right mood, I might end up trying to escape from Callisto.