South Park: The Fractured But Whole

What would you expect from a South Park game?  The Fractured But Whole is hilarious, irreverent, inappropriate, poignant humor - and had me laughing from the character creation screen where one of the options was "difficulty", which was choosing your skin color, which actually didn't affect game play at all, just "everything else in your life".

The combat gameplay was super weak, but in between you participated in a completely over-the-top cartoon as the new kid in South Park with an incredible farting superpower.  Finishing the game starts rolling the credits similar to an episode.

It crossed the line so many times I wouldn't even know where to begin, if you like the show - you'd enjoy the game.   ... fat ass.

The Forest

The Forest is a game very similar in many ways to Green Hell.  You are the survivor of a plane crash on an island that is populated by cannibals.  What Green Hell had going for it with panthers and snakes, this has .. well cannibal detritus and mutants.

It was pretty okay, and had I not played so much Green Hell I might be enthusiastic about finishing it.  I'm a little annoyed though that some of the achievements they have are cannibalism "Eat an enemy 4 times".

I might pick it back up again when the sequel comes out next year...

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension

There Is No Game: Wrong Dimension is a game that pretends not to be game and wants you to quit, so you pretty much do the opposite of whatever you are requested and pull back the curtains and make it "gamey".   

It's silly and you have an argumentative computer that tries to thwart your every move, entertaining for a while but eventually you are taken to a Zelda'ish game-style world in this not game and do Zelda'ish things in addition to not gaming.

I completely lost interest at that point when the puzzle wasn't just beating the computer.   Strongly reminiscent of Buddy Simulator: 1984.

Remember Me

Remember Me builds a fantastic dystopian world over the course of the intro.  I was in from the opening cut scene.  Sensen is a corporation that can take and grant memories, the pitch was that you could effectively keep a loved one alive in you if the passed by the shared memories, how it would complete you to have the memories of your partner and know/feel how much they loved you.

Cut to ... you are being drained of your memories as an 'errorist' in order to be refabricated into a productive member of society.

Escaping from the facility has you slowly learn who you are and you abilities to rewrite memories.  This skill is used to effect significant change on your adversaries, you would be able to "rewrite" their motivational memory and modify it in some small ways that would change the outcome.  If your reason for being a bounty hunter was because you needed the money for an operation, but then your memory was adjusted to think that the person was killed -- you no longer have the motivation to go after the bounty.

Lots of platforming and "rooms of people to beat up" though in between epic moments.

... and I wonder if there will ever be a game where you play as a protagonist woman and are frumpy ... 

The Room Three

The Room Three is not too different from The Room Four, which I've played and talked about here already.   It was not worse or better, but it's still really really good and fun to play.

These kind of games are also brain exercise, you look at a room and have to notice that one of the screws is slightly loose on a hinge, or that the colorations of things match.  It's almost like escape room practice.  This one had multiple endings, but it was really only a couple alternate paths/puzzles at the end as there aren't really choices you make along the way ..

I'm keeping Two and One on the list.

Subnautica

Subnautica is a fantastic game where you play the role of one of the few survivors who crashed on a water filled world.   You gather resources and use various tech tools to fabricate underwater survival environments and avoid the gigantic leviathans that inhabit some of the scarier zones.

Playing this had the same thalassophobic effect that Beyond Blue had -- but it was justified.  There were growls and stalkers and glow in the dark poison pincer jellyfish, and throughout the game you are uncovering other survivor capsules that have been ripped open to recover their datapads and find patterns of things you can then build into your habitats and ships.

There creatures are done so well, you feel like you are intruding on their territory - but unlike a "dungeon monster" won't chase you to the ends of the earth just because they see you.   Interfere with some of the bigger or get in the way of their hunting or be the size of their prey though and ...

Play it.  I'm really looking forward to playing the sequel ... I just need ... some less, terrifying 1200m deep caverns with active lava vents and patrolling warpsquids or dragon leviathan games first.

 

Pixel Piracy

Pixel Piracy is a simple game, reminiscent of early 90's games - amassing a crew to plunder the digital seas.   But beneath it all .. it's really a game about controlling your shitting pirates.

The pirates just crap onboard, and you have to learn the skill to toss it overboard.  I didn't grab the skill initially because, how bad could it really get?   Well.  My floating tub of shit was really hurting the morale of my crew (despite they being the *cause*)  - so I rushed to train my captain in the skill, which became somewhat his humiliating full time job until I could train the rest of the crew in the proper way to feed the fish as it were.

I was able to min-max the game, my greater numbers would swarm the islands/ships -- and even though it cost a pretty pennydubloon to keep their morale up, we were overloaded with gold and supplies - we could buy everything a tavern could sell us.   So I decided to go after bigger prey, but hired every mercenary in the tavern to come with me - doubling my crew size to about 40, ridiculously crowded on the boat.

But ... the amount of shit the new pirates created was impossible for my main crew to keep up with.  Morale dropped to almost nothing with the filth and while attacking perhaps the second rival ship after leaving port, mutiny on my galleon, a massive free-for-all that left only 8 of my original crew alive amidst the corpses of their crew, and so .. much ... shit.

I had to quit there...  I know how I'd play it better next time.  Decent retro.  :tup:!