A terrible June for videogames (not.. really)

though in truth, I disliked the games a bit more than I did enjoy playing them this month.
Octodad being the best and Maize being an odd second because it’s half boring and half somewhat charming (a little). Layers of Fear being somewhere around there, too.

Knytt Underground could have been a lot more enjoyable but it was plagued with what I think as of pointless padding and having to maneuver across the map without being able to teleport to a previous saved location to skip all walking you already did.

• Knytt Underground
  

  24 hours playtime

  18 of 20 achievements

• Maize
  

  5 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Octodad: Dadliest Catch
  

  11 hours playtime

  32 of 32 achievements

• Shelter 2
  

  5 hours playtime

  5 of 26 achievements

• Ryse: Son of Rome
  

  10 hours playtime

  27 of 73 achievements

• Layers of Fear
  

  21 hours playtime

  27 of 27 achievements

• Sid Meier's Pirates!
  

  6 hours playtime

  no achievements

Knytt Underground: My biggest gripe is how Episode 3 is really huge compared to Episode1+2 (which were more tutorials), but the lack of being able to quickly travel to another specified location all the way across the map each time instead of WALKIN’ pads on to the time. I just figured since I’ve already travelled across and filled most of the dumb map I could skip doing it again since it’s a videogame.

Slight spoiler for travel
because there is actual ‘quick travel’ in the Disorder, but unless you’ve played the game or remember where these areas are on the map are you’re just randomly teleporting and not choosing where you end up. Despite it being intended by the developer it is entirely dumb for the player to try to make use of generally unless you want to waste the limited crystals used to enter the Disorder or like to quit and reload so you don’t lose them if you make a mistake and waste one. You can buy a few more with coins, but you also have the choice to use coins to pay the bellguard to open the path (the main goal of the game basically) as you have 4 bells to pay for. So around 8 coins out of 27 if you find them all.

Somewhat more minor spoilers about travel, but more of a disdain for the travel
You only have a minute to explore in the Disorder and the screen continues to grow darker in the Disorder as each second passes. If you stand on the object that lets you go in the Disorder in the Disorder you can brighten up the screen again a bit, but it still goes dark fairly quick. You’re limited to what you can even see after 3 or 4 rooms, and so your ‘quick travel’ is almost still blind as to where you may end up. I usually would like to go all the way across the map but I end up a dozen rooms in the next direction and then walking the rest of the way.

I suppose my biggest gripe with it is as an exploration game, I didn’t really have fun exploring (nor felt value in finding anything) and there are too many rooms which serve, barely, any purpose except to make your journey that much more longer It was definitely intentional that the items you find aren’t rewarding, but I’m just putting my personal thoughts ahead of developer intentions. Plus having to walk through all the rooms, that are mostly empty, back and forth, sometimes, downs the experience and made it feel like a major waste of time. I think the game is.. pretty fun in some ways, but I just look towards most of the wasted time having to walk through areas I had already been as a major con, though.

For a rant, there are 1440 (48x30) rooms that are visible on the main map (slight spoilers if you like finding achievements yourself or finding hidden rooms yourself). Most areas often make you zig zag to get back to where you want, so you’re often going through several rooms near the end of the game just to get across the map. Going from a corner to the next… and just pretending on average of a room being 8(?) seconds to get through and we can pretend it’s maybe 200 rooms to suffer through to turn back. A random 25 minutes to kill. It’s a lot more if you like to check out every room as you might stop in the middle and turn in a new direction and then later retrace your steps back.

It’s a bit funny to think checking every room by walking through it to take around 4 hours. Assuming a very minimum amount of time spent in each, but the trickier rooms are repeat attempts with several deaths. It really adds to the time simple spent trying to move across the map.

I’ll finish the last two achievements later tonight though one should be from the secret ending and should unlock from watching the ending scene.. fully.

Raiden IV: OverKill: Ah, you beautiful bastard. I can’t even run the game because it crashes and after looking into a few solutions.. I gave up. So I may never play this one… for a while. So let’s put it on here.. anyway. I’d like to play it, but I don’t think I want to try to troubleshoot. I heard some problems with usb connected (controller) devices, but I just am not in the mood to unplug everything to test it right now. I don’t have many usb devices plugged in, though.
edit: apparently it was this GC/N64 usb adapter* being plugged in that caused the crash, so I guess it is now moved down to my play queue. I really wonder why it can cause the game to crash, though.

Maize: Between boring and somewhat amusing with slight charm (very little) because the STUPID IDIOT and STUPID repeated a bit much for my liking. The beginning was rather bleak and boring and it added some life after that, but.. you are still walking looking for random objects to solve puzzles with until the next life of the game kicks in. It is not that long, at least, but it felt like it at some parts. As a guilty pleasure, I did like this game in the end a bit.. ignoring the dumb random objects you find and putting them in the outlined area as puzzles.

Octodad: Dadliest Catch: I finished the prequel (though it’s more like a demo since it was a student project, I believe) and then set off for this. Quirky dialogue and blurbs from the Dadliest.. I had my fun and only suffered when I wanted to do a few of the achievements as I endured the controls along with a few ties that were annoying.

Shelter 2: I was really disappointed by this game and entirely bored as it is, to me, pretty shallow and repetitive (as a game), but likely good enough to show.. the life of a mother.. Lynx and her cubs? It’s still a videogame, though. I enjoyed the first one much more but because I liked ‘level’ progression more and something that ended. It had 5 levels and you didn’t have to run around in the same or slightly same scene if you moved to another region.

Shelter 2 is mainly finding food, feeding food, avoiding danger if you have the DLC to visit the mountains or taking the hawk down that tries to eat your cub and all of that all over again. In an open world. A world too open that is just like the outside (but not as interesting), but in a game it is boring and unappealing without variety or anything to really do, but I know you’re just an animal.. but it just wasn’t fun.

Ryse: Son of Rome: I.. didn’t quite enjoy this game and I’m not too sure why. It may have just felt a bit too mindless to play for me. It’s not a mindless hack and slash, and you need to time some attacks especially for executions, but it just wasn’t a game I thought was fun to play in the end.

Layers of Fear: I enjoyed this game, and I would have enjoyed it more if I had looked closer at some of the achievements to cut down on the time I replayed it. The game has jump scares, though, and it jumped me a few times with the sudden strong noises a few too many. I feel it’s often hard to judge games if I were to recommend them, so I never bother with real details.. like this one. It’s more the experience than what the story likely is offering (which wasn’t something I’d bother to recommend over) and I guess it’s still interesting to see what his or her story is even if it’s not interesting once you find out.

If anyone plays and likes achievements, I would look up The Tree and the Apple for the DLC so you can get it done because you have to collect and do everything and side with the father more than the mother. Just to avoid replaying it, at least. Playing through the base game is pretty fast once you just want to finish if you’re going to see the other endings, or do achievements, or when there’s no need to look or explore anymore.. it’s just.. pretty quick to get through.

Sid Meier’s Pirates!: With this game’s slow sailing that padded more time to the game than I cared to want to spend, I started to wonder how exactly you could finish this game. After looking up how I discovered it is up to you.. and so I lost against a pirate miserably (unintentionally) and retired from the pirate life. Not exactly my type of game, but I still managed to play it to a somewhat filled ending, at least, but I read nothing really makes a difference; it’s just your rank that changes in the end when you retire which is where you can have an ending.

Future Fun filled Queue

• SteamWorld Heist
  

  5 minutes playtime

  0 of 47 achievements

• Event[0]
  

  0 minutes playtime

  0 of 12 achievements

• Oxenfree
  

  89 minutes playtime

  0 of 13 achievements

• Cornerstone: The Song Of Tyrim
  

  0 minutes playtime

  0 of 12 achievements

• Raiden IV: OverKill
  

  3 minutes playtime

  0 of 47 achievements

Steamworld Heist A game I feel like having a change of pace to play for now and hopefully something I can play in short sessions instead of trying to rush myself to finish a game for a change.

event[0] Appealing because I think the game is likely 6 or so hours max, so it will be easier to simply finish with that in mind. Not too sure if I will find the premise as interesting as I play through it, though. Lonely spaceship computer…

Oxenfree I think I’ll finally finish restart this game I won that I probably should have finished months ago, but I really enjoyed the little I played of it so I wanted to sort of hold off on it.. plus I sidetrack myself looking around and it looked like you could walk to look at all the places if you want to. I hope there is no reason to explore or dialogue from looking at objects so I can just finish the game instead, though.

Cornerstone: The Song Of Tyrim Something that is just in my win queue that I hope is not terrible.

Raiden IV: OverKill You are above.

the
end

So what fun games are YOU playing next?