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.