December 3rd, 2023
Quick post about games I beaten since the last post. Don’t really feel like writing anymore, so from now on I might stick to writing short reviews. Or not, we’ll see! I wrote down my thoughts on Screamer and AOE:DE long time ago, just never posted them on BLAEO until now.
Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Normal
Disturbing, weird and interesting little horror game with story I haven't seen like in a game. What if I told you that at the beginning it seems like you are going after a pedophile ring? And then it gets worse. And children are still involved.
Pretty simple to play, you can try and be sneaky, and kill only when necessary or go on a killing spree. Feels unpolished in some places. Interesting save system where you save by smoking a cigarette, but smoking too much causes you to cough really loudly and makes you easy to find in the dark. So save, but not too much!
Most of "horror" comes from the story and the disgusting characters that live in that world.
I enjoyed it because I have never seen a game with story and setting like this. But obviously it's not for everyone, especially if you don't like seeing children getting harmed in video games.
Beaten 1st time on difficulty – Moderate
Favorite Tracks:
03 - Cradle of Civilization
07 - Whirling Dulcimer
13 - Mountain Temple
Strange remaster because the visuals are completely overhauled, some missions slightly changed and they implemented a small yet a very important change – your units can walk over farms! They no longer count as a building that units have to walk around! But at the same time, they left the original pathfinding – which is horrible. Units often get stuck on each other, it takes a few seconds for the game to calculate a new path if something just obstructed the way. On one hand it’s cool – you get the OG experience, but on other it sucks because it’s not very good. I don’t like this mixed game preservation. Would much prefer more changes or just make sure the game launches on modern OS with support for >1080p and leave the rest.
And I wish I played this AoE before the second game, because AoE II is first game with improvements to everything – pathfinding, units, civilization variety, better campaigns and goddamn gates!
But there’s a good game in here when everything works. When pathfinding doesn’t cause issues and you’re free to play however you want in skirmishes/late campaign missions. I often would fall into that automatic mode where I just gather resources, build my army, hold my base, all without much thinking and time just flies. That’s a mark of a good RTS.
If you, like me, want to see how series started I guess it’s not a bad remaster. With untouched pathfinding you’ll definitely experience the same frustration like people did in 90’s. But if you just want a good RTS, start with the second game.
Screamer 
Beaten 1st time on difficulty – N/A
Favorite OST:
07 - Screamer Soundtrack 7
Average. Championship can be finished in 2 hours and after that you can play Time Attack, normal single races and Cone Attack, where you are on timer and hitting cones extends your time. I put N/A in difficulty because the AI plays better with each league. In rookie league (easy) and amateur league (normal) the AI was pretty easy to beat. In Pro League they start to be trouble and I had to really pay attention and play well to stay in lead.
Tracks have different settings but most of them feel the same. The last track is the exception, with long highways that throw you into valley of corners. It also happens to have the best music track.
Driving is fast and fun when you’re on straights or soft corners where cars go into this wild drift, with the body of your car barely holding on. Entering harsh corners is frustrating because you absolutely cannot do them with drift and whenever you brake at high speed your car becomes unstable and hard to control, but it’s necessary to learn how to drive in this state if you want to win in Pro League.
AI cheats because they’re not affected by this, they can drive 300km/h and suddenly brake with no trouble, I also noticed they get slightly pushed if they are about to screw up the corner. And driving on gravel/grass has no effect on them. But at least they don’t rubber band from what I noticed, it’s possible to lap them even on Pro difficulty and if you don’t screw up they won’t magically reduce the distance between you and them.
There are 5 tracks, 5 cars, reverse versions of tracks are available after you beat the last league. Interestingly, each car has automatic and manual option and cars with manual transmission have a slightly higher top speed. But we’re talking 5-7km/h faster and I noticed AI in automatic variants were always ahead of their manual variant which shouldn’t happen, unless the AI is not good at switching gears. And frankly the difference is barely noticeable, you’re just handicapping yourself. Key bindings are horrible for playing manual and there’s no option to change key binds in options. You drive with arrow keys, to switch gear up you press right Alt button, to switch gear down, left Control aaaand to play like this my right thumb was uncomfortably extended to reach the Alt while I used other fingers for arrow keys. But it is an interesting design choice that in theory rewards those who pick cars that require more control to drive, it’s just not worth it in this case.
This game also crashes a lot. Steam version, GOG version, retail version, no exceptions and there’s no fix for this other than playing in 320x200 256 color mode. I decided to stick to 640x480 and just shrug off the crashes. The game looks stretched even in 480p at 4:3 ratio on a 1080p monitor, can’t imagine what it looks like in 200p. I also had minor visual glitches, but nothing that hinders the gameplay. In my 2,5 hours with this I had around 8-10 crashes to desktop.
I don’t recommend this one given crashes and not the best gameplay. I am looking forward to play the second game as it doesn’t appear to have many technical difficulties and has higher User score on metacritic.
You can tell from the get-go it's a one man project and there are way worse games on Steam. It's pretty average and the story is incoherent, I don't really see the connection with everything that happened on the island and in the flashbacks. It did got few screams out of me (but some were just cheap jumpscares).
nice progress! How was Outer Wilds? I stopped playing because I was reallly bad at it, but I’m wondering if I should try again. Also It’s exciting to see others play AC2. I beat it many times when it came out!
This comment was deleted about 1 year ago.
I don’t get the hype behind Outer Wilds and game failed to make me really curious to discover the story. But I also played it with long break (>1 week) because of work and that probably didn’t help. I had to use walkthrough to figure out couple of final puzzles to beat the game.
If you are a curious person and like it when game doesn’t hold your hand I guess you could give it another try. Keeping an eye on your journal and reading everything you find will help you a lot.