Mid-Month update
Hand of Fate ⏱ 16 hours - 🏆 14/53 📷 Show/Hide
Finally finished story mode, half the time was spent on the last boss. After one too many runs repeating the same actions mindlessly I’ve decided to give in and switch to easy mode (which I barely managed to beat, damn rats).
Voice acting, music and the general atmosphere is great. The encounters and storylines are interesting, when you are seeing them for the 100th time the texts and animations become time-consuming annoyances. Would have loved an option to skip them entirely or at least speed them up.
Difficulty scaling felt off, jumping from effortless to frustrating on the last mile. Presumably, the game expects the player to revisit earlier levels and the endless mode to gradually improve gear and the encounter cards. Didn’t went that route myself. Don’t mind the challenge, however, it had plenty of non-RNG frustration. Most significant being the introduction of QTE for the final boss where a mistake is an instadeath, was playing on the couch with the lights turned off, rip that run. Spent the last hour watching twitch streams while replaying the first two levels until lady luck rolled me an early “Nymphs of the Sweetwoods”, that gave me plenty of time to gear up for the final battle.
Even with its faults, it deserves a recommendation.
A Story About My Uncle ⏱ ~3 hours - 🏆 1/15 📷 Show/Hide
Fast paced, polished and fun platformer with a good story. You will journey through beautiful environments with your special suit to track down your uncle. A combination of jump,power jump,sprint jump and grappling (up to 3 charges) are used to complete the stages.
Apart from my single achievement, didn’t face any difficulty throughout the game. I’m guessing the real difficulty lies in those, luckily I’m not a completionist. Would have loved more variety from the levels/puzzles (apart from the falling boxes and eye of danger, nothing really stood out), its great mechanics felt underused.
It is really short (around ~2-3 hours, not sure, played some in offline mode), quick assassination is guaranteed!
Tesla Effect: A Tex Murphy Adventure ⏱ 7 hours - 🏆 -/- 📷 Show/Hide
In this neverending B-movie you play the role of detective Tex Murphy, who wakes up with the last 7 years erased from his memory. Contains many puzzle elements, but the main focus is the story, playing it in casual made it felt like a visual novel. In this mode the flashlight will reveal essential objects, hints are available via the menu and puzzles are skippable after a period of time.
Puzzles came in many variations but felt unsatisfying for the most part, jokes fell flat, and the ending was unsatisfying( obligatory save the world, turns out and you don’t need your memory back as in the past 7 years you turned into a horrible person).
Never played the previous games, can’t call myself a fan (presumably where most positive reviews come from), my strong backlog clearing will was the only thing that made me push through it.
Been playing a lot of Paladins on the side, it’s a broken game held together with duct tape. Hi-Rez is dedicated to breaking it, even more, one patch at a time. As long as you have friends to joke around while playing, it’s not the worst way to spend a Sunday. I’d never launch it to play alone.
Trust me, unless they changed it, A Story About My Uncle is neither lacking difficulty nor short for many of us mere mortals. It was the hardest game I’d ever finished until I finished Ori Definitive Ed. Both of those games kicked my @ss at times, and I faced many struggles. I don’t purport to be fantastic at platformers, but I don’t think I’m the worst out there either. Kudos to you for your skill.
Kept the quick reset button close and used it plenty, it took many takes to finish some segments, but it never got to a point of frustration. Got the most fails with Maddie’s challenge, the timing of a single jump (half accelerated jump), the rest were just jumps or sprint jumps.
The game is really forgiving, can’t remember this many checkpoints in any game, and it did a good job visually indicating the course you’ll need to take. Had some moments where the grapple inexplicably didn’t work (Windmill part), or grappling a falling box was a hit or miss, momentum based actions were not always consistent. But these were few and far between.
I liked A Story About My Uncle, but didn’t like most of the achievements. Never was motivated enough to get them all, although I want to get as many 100% games as possible ;)
2-3 hours sounds correct. I have 4 hours and tried to do some additional achievements.
They do look like a lot of effort with finding all those hidden objects and faster routes, I’m satisfied with a chill and beautiful story. There must be guides on how to get them easily. That probably doesn’t sound like fun, though.