Steelrising

Steelrising was a game purchased specifically to test my graphics card.   It was a "Mostly Positive" soul's like clone but the biggest complaint people had was that it was poorly optimized, so I thought it would be a good test of this new Mamma Jamma.  Was it beautiful?  no ... I'm not sure why it needed a high end PC even on ultra, the landscapes were nothing better that we've seen. 

The game has you playing as a clockwork marionette/guardian of Marie Antionette, who is husband to a rogue king that has taken over the city with gigantic robot cyborgs in an alternate timeline where the French Revolution was quelled by automata. 

It played *just* like Dark Souls; iFrames, "souls", "bonfires" even talking to a bunch of NPCs hidden behind doors, all renamed to fit the time period/theme.  The enemies were all clockwork creatures, with the bosses being just gigantic steampunk versions of these.   Nothing spectacular for the story, effectively only you can travel the streets because of the metal killing machines - and you're rescuing the various aristocrats responsible for the situation who had enabled the mad king until he turned on them, hypnotized and imprisoned them in ... gigantic metal hurkuloid monsters, you know - as you do.

Story made no sense.   Time period was a bizarre choice.  No idea why this got a NC-17 rating, no boobs. No great memorable bosses.  Short game with a weird ending.  BUT - Damn fine Dark Souls gameplay.  This goes to show, if it is fun to play -- I don't even need boobs.

V Rising

I was confused in V Rising at first as to why I was building a castle, but that's because I thought this was also a single player game.  It's a multiplayer game that you play solo -- your castle is your place to collect gear and upgrade equipment, but much of the fortifications and minions you create serve no purpose in a single player server.

V Rising is a vampire MOBA, the kind of game ex-League players would shine at - you don't level as much as your skill level is based on the gear that you equip.  Defeating progressively tougher enemies awards upgrades that facilitate base management and gear upgrades.

Where the game seems to though is in PVP -- I've seen in videos and I almost don't want to bother at all.  My playstyle solo is so slow compared to the way these people are able to efficiently manage inventory/windows/upgrades.  

Also, my computer is crashing more and more regularly -- and this game that was one of the last that would actually play, is now starting a slow decay to repeated blue screens.

(cut to ...)

My computer has been repaired by my cloud save is corrupted and I both don't want to repeat what I've played and am too intimidated to try and do it online.  And I suppose thirdly, I'm excited to put my new graphics card to task.

Stray

Stray was a fun little jaunt as a cat.

While travelling as a group, you get separated and fall into the bowels and deep dark dystopian underground that is populated by robots who are making the best of it after all the humans died out.  There was a great plague that wiped out humankind you discover as you find your way to the control tower to open the city again.

Your companion and narrator is a small drone-once-human, a scientist who slowly regains his memory and leads you on the path to open the dome.  You never speak back to the robots, you're an animal - not a mutant, they simply assume (rightly so?) that you can understand them.

Thankfully the developers had the sense to keep it short enough that the novelty of quests where cats bat stuff off of shelves to find quest items didn't wear too thin.

Cat was adorable and well animated.

Modded Minecraft - All The Mods 7

I watched a couple videos and then got bit by the Minecraft bug again.   

All The Mods 7 is quite literal, the packs consist of every mod they can cram in for a certain version - so there is a good amount of overlap and a bit of finesse you need to put into to understanding that there might be 15 different types of lead bars.  

A big part of the resource gathering was with Productive Bees, so I managed to make few different bee factory monstrosities; a gigantic bee tower for end game resources, a self-radiating radioactive honeycomb cube, a menagerie cube with every type of bee. 

The end game requirements were absurd in their demands, and it encouraged some massive factories and terraforming to control game aspects, but I ended up crafting the Starry Bee.   I would consider this the end of the pack because the remaining bit would simply be waiting for a billion starry bee honeycombs to build the other end game items.

My base is not impressive, it's 80 pounds of factory packed into a 50 pound bag -- factory sprawl, spaghetti cable, an unorganized hodge-podge.  I like doing the stuff, I like making it work --- I am not very good at making it pretty.

Breathedge - Survive in Outer Space

I like Breathedge a lot - it has a 4th wall breaking GlaDOS style developer goofball humor, it's a crafting/survival game, it seems to be everything I might want in a survival game in fact ... unlike Raft, the crafting makes sense as a futuristic space game where you're actually replicating stuff and not using a gigantic wooden mallet to build it.

Like only reading the first 5 pages of what might be a great book -- I feel like this game didn't make it to the "gotta finish it" part of catching my interest.  

I gave up for a couple reasons ... Fussily I gave up because moving around in space without resistance was really frustrating.  Like I would have a vehicle parked outside an airlock, and if I didn't catch sight of it or missed it as I floated out, I might gas myself around for a bit just trying to reorient and find it.  Interest-wise I gave up because there wasn't a really good questing system, I saw I had quests - if you caught the voice over when you scanned whatever it was that spawned the quest, you might know a bit about it, but I couldn't figure out a way to track quests and fairly soon my screen became a mess of waypoints in space -- "Lower Radiation 0/6" okay --- but ... give me the waypoint or at least a vector and show me the damn quest log!   

Raft

Raft is a survival game where you are, as the title might suggest, on a raft.

In ocean world, you are harangued by a great white shark and have a hook with which to gather resources.   The shark, while not as deadly as I thought a big fucking shark that is relentlessly chasing you would be, makes up for it with being an always a present danger.   Entering the water means you have to deal with it in some fashion.

The game has you follow a series of map coordinates discovering more of the stories of some of the survivors and collecting bigger/better upgrades for your floating fortress.  The land missions are weak Zelda-esque "gather the parts" or "get the key", and seem like they were thrown in rather than being intentional.  Tacked on parkour and fighting gamification that took away rather than added to the game.  I didn't finish thinking that I wanted to keep playing and build the most epic raft - I ended thinking "I hope this is the last round in this stupid dog fight".

It is a great survival concept and I don't think they should have added buildable tech resources  I would get it if tech were limited in some fashion, like a found ancient artifact, limited charge perhaps late game you could create a bicycle to generate electricity, a solar charger -- it just seems weird to be able to hammer a blender out of barely refined ore and seaweed goo.

Desperados III

Desperados III is a real time strategy game set in the old west.

Controlling one character in the tutorial levels was enjoyable, controlling multiple characters while avoiding patrols and trying to do the missions without just hunkering down and being a murder hobo I found a bit on the stressful side of fun.

I quit before I got all the Steam card drops even and am left reminded once again that despite how nice/funny/cool/fun something looks in a demo, I really don't like real time strategy ... it would have to be themed AF, catered specifically to me. 

Let it be said that I hope they never make a RTS about Dune, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or anything with Natalie Dormer smirking as box art.

 

Trimps

Oh good freaking lord I hate that I played this game so much.

Trimps is the gaming equivalent of managing a spreadsheet, but every cycle through unlocks one new skill or one new challenge or one new bit of automation that kept me playing through one more cycle.

... and because automation is my jam, I have way too many hours setting up and managing this bit of it while my population slowly grew in power.  I think I'm mainly writing this so that I can delete this damn game.

Toilet Chronicles

Toilet Chronicles is a short "Groundhog's Day" experience where you are tasked with ... surviving? escaping? .. .dealing with? being trapped in a bathroom.

In true Groundhog's Day form, your progress moves forward by trial and error and repeated deaths, with the environment updating based on some major events.  In the beginning this felt very repetitive as I didn't do one of these major events a few times because ... IT WAS SPARKING AND I WAS TOLD NOT TO TOUCH IT.  

Fun little quick escape-room type adventure.  Would poop part 2.

Silt

I certainly am enjoying playing these brand new games and having no idea what to expect.  Silt is a game that came out only a few days ago and had an interesting artsy style that intrigued me in the same way Limbo did.

You are a side scrolling diver/explorer with the ability to use your brain to control most other animals.  For example, you might need to possess a piranha type fish to bite through some vines.  You progress through a series of obstacles using the resources provided in order to fight four different leviathans.

I say "fight" but really they are just another puzzle that has to do with a big scary monster. 

It was fun for a while, the soundtrack is okay and it delivers on all of it's promises, but with no real reason to play again and I felt like I was done with the experience about halfway through.  I have no idea what I was doing or why doing it made a ton of divers surface, but then some kind of object opened and maybe .. shot lasers or something?   If you know you know.

NFS Heat

NFS Heat is the most recent Need For Speed game, and has you joining a race crew attempting to get recognized.  Racing in the day earn you money without the fear of police chase, racing at night earns you reputation and increases the available upgrade parts you can purchase.

I haven't played a racing game, let alone one to completion, in a long while it seems.  I had forgotten the joy and adrenaline rush of a perfect maneuver, or drifting around a long corner narrowly avoiding cars.  Need For Speed has always had that enjoyable "running from the police" excitement, but I found myself missing the obstacles that would impede the cops (running under the scaffolding of a billboard to make it fall, jumping over some obstacle, etc.) -- it seemed these kept pretty tight to me unless I destroyed them in some way or went in a non-conventional area where they couldn't keep up, like down railroad train tracks or taking the quick way down a twisty road.

I do think I'm done with racing games for another long while though unless there is something special to it.

Zemblanity

I really shy away from playing scary games, so I waited for the middle of the day to play Zemblanity.  (n.) the inevitable discovery of what we would rather not know; the opposite of serendipity.

I bought it as a recent release because most of the reviews were very positive and encouraging of a new developer, but one "I wasted two of my hours" is what put me over the edge.  I wanted to support the developer and be on the positive encouraging side and check it out.

You are called to a house of a childhood friend with information about your father.  Finding keys while navigating the jump scares of the house is pretty much the game play.  Things get stranger and stranger as you get lost in the property, and the story somewhat resembles AHS where getting stuck in the house is forever.  Your "friend" trapped you in exchange for a promise to get out, but you find his dead corpse ...

Escaping is living, but you go insane and spend your remaining days scratching madman artwork on your walls.  Well done game - great hour spent!

State of Decay 2

State of Decay 2 is a zombie apocalyptic team base building rogue-like survival game.   There, did it in one sentence.

Unlike Days Gone, there is no story really except general arcs.  The game is short enough and designed to be played multiple times, each generation of your clan gaining the power that your clan leader instilled in you.  The characters and stats that make up your crew, the various wanderers and traders, the teammates of other crews appear to be random, and you can carry up to 50 people onto the next generation.

That's an interesting idea and would potentially be fantastic if something changed each evolution.  Unfortunately it's pretty much the same shit, different generation - unless you manually turn up the difficulty.

I was enticed to play this game on a Free to Play weekend, but thought it would be longer so bought it before the discount expired.  Aaaaaaaaaaaand it's gone.   Ah well, I'd pay full price for SoD 3 probably.  This one I'm glad I got on sale.  It's a one and done for me.

 

The Long Road North

The Long Road North is another small and simple game that I would say is more of an art project created by the band Cult of Luna.

They released this game to accompany the song "Cold Burn" from their recent album.  They have an atmospheric metal sound - prone to long explorations in a Pink Floyd style around a theme, and the torn digital landscapes they propel you through perfectly fits the mood of the song.  There is a bit of a frantic pace as you are collect lights and escape from the tornados and crashing forces of whatever is behind you.

There are parts where it syncs perfectly to the music.  You are the music video.  Creative.  Worth the 10 minutes of gameplay, and I would love to see more bands do things like this!

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees

Gibbon: Beyond the Trees is a casual indie game where you are a gibbon, travelling with your family through 10 levels - swinging and sliding trying to maintain your momentum.

As the levels progress, the encroachment of both industry and hunters becomes apparent and it's not as easy to navigate the landscape.  Then at a halfway point, after you and your spouse have helped each other, a hand out if you were going to miss a jump, hunters chase you through a level - killing your spouse and kidnapping your child.

The remaining levels are chasing after the helicopter and navigating the (now "concrete") jungle, eventually rescuing and escaping.   The game was well done, the mechanics of swinging and sliding felt good, and with good subtle(?) messaging about the encroachment of industry on natural habitats.  

Once complete, you can play as your child "Lilac" where the game becomes more arcade-like, the landscape remains mostly urban but you rescue various birds and go for double-flip achievements and the like.  Meh - feels like it was tacked on and honestly takes a little away from the art piece of the main game.

Kenshi

Kenshi is probably a better game than I'm giving it credit for, one you could sink hundreds of hours into and the investment would pay off.  It's a complex open world sandbox squad based RPG.   Sheesh, even the genre is a bit of a tongue twister.

But it's not a world that has a plotline for you to follow.  There are a couple major factions, but the idea is that you can play as a trader/farmer/bandit/whatever you want and react to the world the way you want.  

Clunky complex describes the game in two words.  There is definitely a learning curve and I'm not sure wanted to try a couple attempts at building some sort of homestead base that's well defended from roaming bandits, only to bleed out while walking my animal caravan to the next city to trade wheat and copper.  The Sims - Peasant.

I'm on Observation Duty 5

I'm on Observation Duty 5 is a game where you are looking through a series of surveillance video cameras attempting to notice anomalies in the scene and survive the night.

Most of the anomalies are something simple, like an object appearing or disappearing, or a picture changing; but occasionally you get an intruder.  These are a bit of a jump scare, and you need to avoid the camera where you saw them until the anomaly is dealt with - all of them are wonderfully bizarre and intimidating, the phantom tugger wanking away in the background was definitely a shocker.

The game is simple in form, but with the quantity of anomalies you have to detect and report, it kept me on my toes wondering what I might be missing in the scenes.  It's embarrassing the amount of fun I had scrolling through 6 black and white grainy images to see if a salt shaker moved.  

STAR WARS™ Battlefront™ II

Battlefront II was the other game I picked up on the Steam May the 4th sale at 85% off.   It's the most recent Star Wars multiplayer game, but it does have a single player campaign as well.  ... Thankfully.  I am not one for twitchy multiplayer in many instances, but a game that released 5 years ago where people know every secret sniper spot -- no thanks.

Unfortunately that leaves me to rate a game that was probably designed for the multiplayer on it's campaign.

The campaign was actually pretty good though.   In the wake of the destruction of the death star, a couple imperials made the hard choices based on what they were seeing to flip sides.  There is no RPG element to it, effectively just cut scenes and then dropping you into either a FPS shooter role or ship combat.

The shooter combat was "okay", but suffered a bit from the ease of the headshot.  I played on "normal"/soldier difficulty, and since the enemies were so easy to one-shot, they threw a lot of them your way - so in most cases you needed cover, but things were easily handled by having them march like lemmings to your line of site.  AI ... lame.

Ship combat was much better, but it's always hard to get that right -- I think ship combat is designed for some sort of VR helmet.  I want to be able to look to my right and see that I'm at the point I want to turn.  As it stands, I turn like Michael Keaton's Batman, I have to commit to the motion with my whole body.

Pinball FX3 - Star Wars™ Pinball: Darth Vader

On the heels of the last lackluster Star Wars pinball table, this was pretty good.  Darth Vader is one of the tables that was part of the Balance of the Force pack.

Two things that I enjoy in a table are ramp combos and multi-ball, so this was kind of the best of both worlds in that the ramp combos would eventually spawn multi-ball.

The table was great, I'd say 8/10 --- it was nice having Darth Vader as the narrator "left kickback is lit" but a little disturbing when he would pay a compliment, "nice shot!".

My Friend is a Raven

My Friend is a Raven is a quick little indie free to play game that I had placed on my wishlist at one point.

It's a short tale in a dying world where you seek to have one last conversation with your friend(?) the Raven.  The house has minor interaction points, opening doors and picking up bird seed, and the navigation guides you down the path of the 4 possible endings depending on your actions before speaking.   It's DSBM, the game.

Extinction (do nothing), Unforgiven (apologize), Friends (become a raven), Venomous (kill the raven).

I suppose the Raven is death on some levels.  It has brought some plague or scourge that ended all of humanity and you are the last surviving vestige, whether it did this because the man ignored his plea or because it was the inevitable course is open to debate I suppose.  

Interesting "class project" type of game, I'd give an A.   As a game game, I'd give it a C-.

Trek to Yomi

Trek to Yomi is a highly stylized side scroller that feels like a Kurosawa film - you take on the role of a young samurai, Hiroki, in defense of your home.   The region is invaded by an evil warlord - and when you rush to the defense of the neighboring village, your own is ransacked and your love/ally/daughter of your teacher is slain.

Only because the plot forced it, I was killed by the warlord as well -- I had him in a blender flurry of my blades, whereupon you decide why you might need to fight back to life, the "Trek to Yomi" - do you want to return for duty, love or revenge.

I chose revenge at each of these junctures and fought my way through hordes of people who were condemning me for abandoning them to their doom as I went to help the neighboring village, and finally the avatar defending the way back.  Constantly harangued by dialog that that's "not the right choice" - I eventually fought my way back to my burning village to fight the warlord, who ended up being Kagerou - the bandit from the very beginning who died killing my master, and who apparently fought back from the underworld with bonus demon powers.

I turned on the blender again.

This was a fun little 4-hour quick romper stomper released yesterday, and a game I probably would have passed by if I didn't feel the freedom of not having any more games in the Steam backlog.   <3

Kagerou and I played "who's got your nose" as a young samurai

Pinball FX3 - Star Wars™ Pinball: Heroes Within

Well that didn't last long ... of COURSE there would be a Steam Star Wars sale on May 4th. 

Pinball FX3 does a great job with these machines, the feel of the machine hits right - as far as pinball simulators this is the best one.  It also has the ability to take the table design to another level entirely as you are not limited by mechanisms and wires. 

Most table are great, but they have overdone it on some franchises and it shows in this table.  There are 19 different Star Wars tables currently, and this is just "another one" in my opinion.  Dialed in with repeating dialog.  Is it good?  meh.  Is it fun?  meh.  The sad metric is that on sale this was $5 -- and even if this was a $1 price gouge game at an arcade, I wouldn't have played it 5 times.

The theme for the table was light vs. dark side, and themed events were based around those movie situations.  "Hit Darth Maul 3 times" before the timer expires, use ramp trap to launch ball and hit Yoda, etc...  The main table event was getting either light or dark Jedi Holocron on a sub gameboard you could get to easily, but was a series of quick ramps where you had to hit a frustratingly placed series of flashing lights.  After my first successful holicron, it simply said "holicron acquired" and the display showed 1/10 ... --- so I started avoiding it as an event.  

Look I don't want to nerd out too hard here, but a Jedi Holicron is a very significant thing to acquire.  It is effectively an artifact with infinite storage maintained by a lost jedi, potentially knowledge lost to the ages or secrets that could destroy a galaxy, one of a kind, finding one is a life changer, but ... yeah.  Lets collect 10.  

An amazing multi-ball experience could save a table ... it wasn't.

Heavy Rain

Heavy Rain is an interactive story with quick-time events that influence the direction of the story.  Apparently there are a LOT of alternate pathways as well.  From what I read, there were 2000 pages of script, whereas a normal movie movie would have about 120 pages.

The story centers around capturing "The Origami Killer" and you play a variety of roles to that effect, the father, a reporter, a private detective and a private eye - toggling between them as they work in parallel in trying to rescue the latest missing boy.

The story was well told, with twists and turns and a bit of a morbidity (think "Saw").  The interface needed some work though, as camera angles would change -- all the sudden your character that you were moving forward would turn around and go backwards, so you'd switch directions to walk but meanwhile your character had moved back to the frame before, correcting itself and turning around.  You walk with tank like controls, sooo frustrating at times.  

I can't complain about the quicktime events being "hard" as it's really the only gameplay (though I do wish I opted for controller over mouse motion) -- but there are things that you can't really exhibit the negative effect.  As an example, I swam away from a sinking car instead of untying the person in the front seat.   No takebacks, I chose the wrong random mouse movement from the list.

... Heavy Rain was the last of the backlog of games I have used this blog to help work through.   From 180 when I initially started way back when, it dwindled to approximately 80 or so.   This recent go at things had us start at 150.   

Good thing there's a steam sale coming up!

SteamWorld Dig

SteamWorld Dig has a classic arcade game feel.  You are a small robot that is left an inheritance of a mine beneath a small western robot city.

Mining materials can be sold on the surface to purchase mining supplies and you can find upgrades within puzzle type caves as well.   It's fairly quick paced play but more fun than I imagined when just starting.

There is incentive to keep going -- your pack gets full of gems, so you unload them and upgrade something like an upgraded pickaxe, which is inspiration to then go collect another pack full of treasure.  The full game took about 3 hours - with only one boss fight.