The Expanse: A Telltale Series

I LOVED "The Expanse" tv series, so I was pretty jazzed when I saw it was a Telltale series game.  Now that I've played it I can say that as a fan, they did a fantastic job.  You get to play as Drummer, which is brilliant, especially in a game like this where you have to make an immediate and thematically appropriate choice in a limited time window.

As Drummer, I knew exactly who I was an what I stood for.   I was actually shocked when I saw the results of the first episode when people decided not to space the captain who tried to have me killed.  70%!   Buncha innas think they beltalowda!

STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor™

Jedi:Survivor is the continuation of the Cal Kestis storyline and the sequel to Fallen Order.

If you've read this blog, you'd know I'm a huge Star Wars nerd, I love the (original) canonical universe and therefore I hold it to a high standard.   I was distracted by a few other pursuits when I first tried this and it did not grab me ... but when I went to go write this, I realized I hadn't really given it a fair chance.

Now I have.   It was great, not too embarrassed to say I might have shed a tear even in the drama, there was a "Micah-sized" double-cross that caught me completely unaware, I had chills when Darth Vader stepped around the corner when I was trying to flee the archives.  Well done.

I guess the one complaint I have is with Darth Vader -- and in general all games like this that rely on you struggling hard with combat.  First, it's Darth Frikkin' Vader, the most powerful dark lord next to the Emperor Palpatine -- he should cleave me ruthlessly and dispassionately.  I should fight to barely survive and be thankful if I do.  The terror I felt when seeing Vader was something of my own manufacture -- I parried his shit, I was on the offensive and as I took him down in 25% increments I was given a cutscene were it showed I was really struggling.  I wasn't.  He wins in the end, but in that Bushido 'one second oops your dead' way after I made him a clown.

If you are going to have a boss kick my ass, you should do it in a more cheaty way where it soaks damage or reacts quicker and has a moveset that make me seethe with frustration.   Respect your big bads or you will develop a Superman problem (constantly needing to outdo yourself with the next bigger/tougher thing).

First Class Escape: The Train of Thought

First Class Escape: The Train of Thought is a puzzle game built that puts you on a train.  Each car has a puzzle that you must solve in order to unlock the door to the next car.

It was well done, there wasn't anything that left me too lost with what to do -- my only complaint would be that I didn't do the math myself.   There were a few puzzles where (for example) pulling one of 4 levers would move one to four different things by varying amounts, and I just felt my way through all those puzzles instead of writing down and planning X number of lever pulls.  Kind of like doing a Rubik's cube, I can solve it when it's close -- and I do a bunch of random stuff in patterns that sort of reliably get me to that "close enough to solve logically" state, like trying to isolate one correct answer and then get a second answer in place while the one answer is isolated, then using those two to figure out where the third needs to be set so that the other two are right.  

This is the first of three that this company has made so far -- and if this is proof-of-concept, I think I am looking forward to the next two.

The Exit 8

The Exit 8 is a small indie developer distorted reality game where you are looking to leave an underground passage at exit #8 -- the problem being every time you see an anomaly you need to turn around and go in the opposite direction.

The anomalies can be obvious, like all of the lights turning off - or very subtle, like the man passing you eyeballing you as he goes by, or even occur late in the hallway - and you are given a limited amount of time to assess and run back if necessary.

I ... struggled ... with some of the less obvious ones because you're not told what you missed, you only see that you failed after you turn through the tunnels and realize that you're back at the starting location without the ability to go and assess.  Super frustrating when you get to 7 and feel like you saw nothing ... perhaps it was because I had failed so many times previously that I had seen all the anomalies, but I lucked out at the end of my first playthrough with two rather obvious ones at the end.

RoboCop: Rogue City

Robocop: Rogue City feels like an 80s movie that you are participating in.  That's with the good and the bad of it -- you are Robocop, and you clonk around like a tank, but you also stand toe to toe and deliver some massive cannon blasts from your pistol to a seemingly never ending supply of bad guys.

These are bad guys ripped straight from the 80s, punk bikers with spiked hair and simply "anarchy" on their minds and overly high pitched voices discussing said anarchy.

I was enjoying the story, but it did get a bit long in the narration exploring Murphy's psyche, and I found myself skipping or bypassing all of that.  Plus it falls into the video game tropes of "I'm about to walk into a briefing room where I am the one person who can take on a deadly menace, and you want me to first take a greeting card around to the rest of the office and have them sign it for you because you're too busy?" missions.

The story is fairly predictable, and you get a bit of a denouement at the end where you see where all the people you either helped or harmed ended up getting on with their lives.   I helped everyone except the reporter and the psychologist are still suspicious of androids because I just couldn't bother anymore ...

Worth it for sale price.

Project Zomboid

Project Zomboid is early access despite first releasing over 10 years ago - it's a 3/4 view zombie survival game that has a surprising amount of depth for the relatively simple interface and gameplay.

You spawn in a house, gear up with what you find, and try to reclaim the world.   Everything is important to keep your character alive, do not stay wet for too long or you might get sick, be careful what foods you eat, make sure you have tweezers in your kit to pull out shards of glass if you climb through a window that you haven't cleared.

There is base building and barricading, there are multiple cities to visit including many fun POIs like prisons and malls and military encampments, it's really a game that you can lose hours with and never ever get to that point of "safe".  The jump scares make sense and they will still shock you when clearing unknown buildings.

I have hundreds of hours invested in this game, not all of it idling time like some ... 

Dredge

 Dredge is a simple game that has you take the role of a fisherman/delivery person, upgrading your ship and town and avoiding hazards (especially at night) as you do so.  

This game seems like one designed for playing on a phone or tablet, it has a good amount of content though -- about 5 different areas that you travel through as you upgrade your boat and fishing supplies and work your way through the quests from the various townsfolk.

This effort is all for a mysterious person in a shack who you are looking to retrieve for magical trinkets.  (each of which enhance the power of your ship)  I am writing this a bit after my playthrough but I believe that if you end up returning all of the trinkets it's not a good thing ... more of a world ender IIRC.  I remember restoring my game and then going and doing something other mission that I was midway on. 

This is a toilet reader of a game, fun to play if you have time to waste.