jah.

November 2023

I planned to play a few more games this month, but still I managed to complete quite a lot of them… In the spirit of this month’s theme, most of the games I played (except for one), at some point I’ve won at SteamGifts. Some of them are from 3 days ago, some have waited for 8 years…
P.S. I would like to share something with you. This month I attended my first movie festival! So for a movie freak like me it was a pretty big thing. This is why I played only games that were few hours long :D

Best game this month:

Half-Life 2
Quick, cute and pretty. I like it :)

Donut County

73%
2 hours
20 of 20 achievements

It was pretty hard decision for me to decide wich game is better - Donut County or Tacoma. Two very different, two pretty short, and finally, two suprisingly good. But in the end I picked this one, simply because I have a weakness for racoons…
Donut County is a short, simple game. It has easy to learn and not very challenging mechanics and you can beat it in around 2 hours. But even though I don't really like games that are that easy, this game captivated me :D Maybe it's because of the cheesy humour, maybe it was this cute art style, or maybe earlier mentioned raccoon… I don't know. The only thing I know is that I really enjoyed those 2 hours of gameplay I had. Especially in a time where I had not much free time…

Worst game this month:

Half-Life 2
I don't want to play this game anymore...

Windscape

23%
2.6 hours
12 of 12 achievements

Technically it was not the worst game I played this month… The worst one was something called Dolphin Hustle, but in reality it was a simple and unfinished project that's hard to even call a game. Windscape in the other hand in theory is full release…
In the last few months I started to fight with my backlog it's the first game that I actually didn't finished… I have all the achievements, so it's kinda completed, but it was so bad I didn't want to play it anymore… This game is an RPG, but really, really, REALLY simple one. It looks like somehting you make as your first game project (maybe it actually was, so I'm sorry then). Every quest is as basic as you can imagine, locations are totally empty, NPCs are often bugged or just in weird places and it's only the beggining. Playing this game was actually frustrating for me because I didn't feel any fun… and if you ask me, video games should probably provide at least some of it…

Biggest positive suprise:

Half-Life 2
Walking simulators can be good, if you're not only reading the notes...

Tacoma

72%
3.5 hours
12 of 12 achievements

It didn't make it as the best game this month, but it's definitely a winner in this category.
It's story driven, walking simulator, so not my first pick when it comes to genre :) But, as you can see, I really liked it. It was really pretty, had really interesting story and the gameplay was not boring… and I associated those type of games with being boring. I think the way it managed to convice me to like it, was simply telling the story in some interesting way. It was not based on reading hundreds of notes, letters and files but it played in some way like an interactive movie. Because you could replay the same story but with different characters POV, it was more fun than just having everything reaveled to you part by part.

Biggest negative suprise:

Half-Life 2
I expected masterpiece, but I got nothing like that...

Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

64%
3.7 hours
12 of 12 achievements

I guess it has become a tradition that every month I play some classic indie game, which turns out to be a great disappointment for me.
I always thought that Brothers was one of the best indie games of that time. I never played it, because well… I never had money for games, but seeing that it has so good reviews, I felt really hyped to finally beat it. And after those few hours I think it's only "ok". I don't get why so many people loved this game. The story is not that emotional (at least for me) and was pretty frustrating when it comes to progressing through it (simply because everything felt really random). To make matters worse, I encountered many graphic bugs that spoiled the game, which is focused on beautiful views. The best thing in my opinion was its mechanics that required us to control two characters at the same time. But even that sometimes was an issue…

Summary:

  • Donut County

    2 hours playtime

    20 of 20 achievements

  • Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons

    3.7 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

  • Super Night Riders

    5.8 hours playtime

    20 of 20 achievements

  • Tacoma

    3.5 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

  • Windscape

    2.6 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

  • The Ramp

    1.8 hours playtime

    12 of 12 achievements

  • Evo Explores

    1.8 hours playtime

    8 of 8 achievements

  • Nightmares from the Deep 2: The Siren`s Call

    5.1 hours playtime

    29 of 29 achievements

  • DOLPHIN HUSTLE

    21 minutes playtime

    no achievements

  • House Flipper

    40+ hours playtime

    26 of 86 achievements

  • The Textorcist: The Story of Ray Bibbia

    0 hours playtime

    5 of 40 achievements

Amitte

Congratulations on your first movie festival! I’m not even much of a movie aficionado, but I enjoy movie-related events, challenges, etc. - there’s always at least one good movie (or even just an aspect of a movie) to take away from the whole thing and just thinking about it all makes me smile.

I totally get your disappointment with Brothers, but maybe that’s just because I don’t like mute “storytelling” and can’t help but be vocal about it. The good thing is that Josef Fares’ second game - A Way Out - is, in my opinion, brilliant and I highly recommend you check it out whenever you can ^^

jah.

When it comes to this specific festival I watched many great movies (many of them few months before premiere) and few of them were really suprising. Like one of them was my first ever movie from Kazachstan and it was really good.

I heard that other Fares’ games are also “great” (you know, now I especially am reserved when it comes to that word), especially It Takes Two, but it will take me some time to play it because at the moment I don’t have anyone to play it with

Amitte

Oh man, pre-premiere screenings! Last time I got the chance to see a movie like this, I slept through most of it… granted, it was the last one in an all-night marathon! Still makes for a funny story though xD

it will take me some time to play it because at the moment I don’t have anyone to play it with

I hear ya. If I had the choice, I would have played A Way Out with someone I know, too, but I don’t really have friends to play with. Plus, I got an EA Play sub for peanuts and that was the one game from their catalogue I wanted to play the most. (I know It Takes Two is longer and I didn’t really have the disk space for it at the moment.)

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