BigBlueWolf
Batch 31 completed!
This batch progress took a huge, multi-month pause in the middle of playing Dead in Vinland. I was going through my backlog, loaded up Skyrim Special Edition just for nostalgia and got sucked into modding it.
I never learn.
While I have mostly got Skyrim modded the way I want, I haven’t started seriously playing it yet. I returned to my other games because I needed a Skyrim break!
Beaten: 9-Apr-2020
I bought Black Mesa years ago based on the strength of its Early Access reviews, but I put off playing it until it reached full release. So I came to the game with no previous runs to color my perceptions. My opinion is that its a great homage to Half-Life that pulls the neat trick of using the Source engine and a lot of original game assets while updating it with newer high-resolution textures, more fleshed-out areas and a longer story -- especially the Xen levels. It's the game you wish Valve had released as an "enhanced edition" of the original. It even rivals Half-Life 2 in terms of sheer beauty, creative spaces and level design. Only NPCs don't quite live up to the same level as the sequel, but that has a lot to do with what the developers had to work with.
The Source engine of course lends itself not just to keeping the original feel of the game and its control work but also its deficiencies. Getting off a ladder is still a nightmare. Odd collisions with the random small object or enemy can still send you flying skyward. You just have to keep in mind when this happens that it's part of the nostalgic charm.
For achievements, most are do-able with minimum effort, you'll probably need a guide to get the more obscure ones. Unfortunately there's also three carry quests in the game like the Garden Gnome from HL2: Episode Two. The only tolerable one starts in Xen and concludes in the following chapter. It's difficult and a pain-in-the-ass, and I'd not recommend but for the fact that there are four achievements you can't complete without doing it. The others start near the beginning of the game and resolve at the very end. If you are a masochist, go for it. I didn't bother.
Overall a great game with plenty of action packed moments. Boss fights are intense. The pacing is excellent except for some chapters that drag out too long, but that's a minor complaint. A big thumbs up and hearty endorsement!
I bought Black Mesa years ago based on the strength of its Early Access reviews, but I put off playing it until it reached full release. So I came to the game with no previous runs to color my perceptions. My opinion is that its a great homage to Half-Life that pulls the neat trick of using the Source engine and a lot of original game assets while updating it with newer high-resolution textures, more fleshed-out areas and a longer story -- especially the Xen levels. It's the game you wish Valve had released as an "enhanced edition" of the original. It even rivals Half-Life 2 in terms of sheer beauty, creative spaces and level design. Only NPCs don't quite live up to the same level as the sequel, but that has a lot to do with what the developers had to work with.
The Source engine of course lends itself not just to keeping the original feel of the game and its control work but also its deficiencies. Getting off a ladder is still a nightmare. Odd collisions with the random small object or enemy can still send you flying skyward. You just have to keep in mind when this happens that it's part of the nostalgic charm.
For achievements, most are do-able with minimum effort, you'll probably need a guide to get the more obscure ones. Unfortunately there's also three carry quests in the game like the Garden Gnome from HL2: Episode Two. The only tolerable one starts in Xen and concludes in the following chapter. It's difficult and a pain-in-the-ass, and I'd not recommend but for the fact that there are four achievements you can't complete without doing it. The others start near the beginning of the game and resolve at the very end. If you are a masochist, go for it. I didn't bother.
Overall a great game with plenty of action packed moments. Boss fights are intense. The pacing is excellent except for some chapters that drag out too long, but that's a minor complaint. A big thumbs up and hearty endorsement!
Beaten: 1-Aug-2020
I liked many aspects about this game. The story was more filled out and explained a lot about the island, which later becomes the setting for Dead in Bermuda. As the prequel in the series it has taken great strides in game design. Beyond the original assignment of survivors to tasks there are encounters with other survivors that can be added to your camp (each offering different talents), combat sequences and more sophisticated puzzles.
And yet, I feel like this game was WAY too long. The game loop can get tedious, even if it is habit-forming. But to reach the game's true end I had to explore the entire island in order to collect the required quest items. Or maybe it was just bad RNG luck that the last 20 unexplored plots contained the last 8 items I needed? Quite literally the last unexplored spot on the map was the last puzzle to get the last item. And it took what felt like forever even when during the last quarter I had 2-3 people exploring with all the speed upgrades.
This is by no means a bad game and you'd expect it to be longer than the first one, but I finished a single run of DiB in 17 hours. Even if I took out some of the back-tracking I did and achievement hunting, I'm guessing this would have still been a 50-hour game instead of 84. And that's a really long time for a game of this style.
I was glad when it was finally done. I put it aside for several months before returning to finish.
I liked many aspects about this game. The story was more filled out and explained a lot about the island, which later becomes the setting for Dead in Bermuda. As the prequel in the series it has taken great strides in game design. Beyond the original assignment of survivors to tasks there are encounters with other survivors that can be added to your camp (each offering different talents), combat sequences and more sophisticated puzzles.
And yet, I feel like this game was WAY too long. The game loop can get tedious, even if it is habit-forming. But to reach the game's true end I had to explore the entire island in order to collect the required quest items. Or maybe it was just bad RNG luck that the last 20 unexplored plots contained the last 8 items I needed? Quite literally the last unexplored spot on the map was the last puzzle to get the last item. And it took what felt like forever even when during the last quarter I had 2-3 people exploring with all the speed upgrades.
This is by no means a bad game and you'd expect it to be longer than the first one, but I finished a single run of DiB in 17 hours. Even if I took out some of the back-tracking I did and achievement hunting, I'm guessing this would have still been a 50-hour game instead of 84. And that's a really long time for a game of this style.
I was glad when it was finally done. I put it aside for several months before returning to finish.
Beaten: 22-Aug-2020
This is a short visual novel, running around 5-6 hours and split into 7 chapters. You play as Evelyn, a computer engineer and software dev living in Seattle who has been on a professional hiatus for the last three years. I won't ruin anything by saying more her. The themes of this game deal with big tech, AI, burn-out, mental health, and the moral ramifications of what technology does to the people who create it and the people who interact with it.
The story is well written and the voice acting is top-notch. It doesn't try to be preachy or slant things in an "activist" kind of tone. It's structured as a series of scenes between Evelyn and her friends, business associates and customers. The topics are very relatable and hit very close to home for anyone familiar with this world. I found immediate resonance with a lot of the insider discussions about the business as well as several topics brought up by the counseling patients either in my own experience or those of close friends. My only criticism is that the Eliza counseling AI in the game seems very simplistic compared to what current AI chat technology is capable of (as recently demonstrated by Google). It didn't seem realistic that a company would get much sales traction with the product as presented.
If this topic interests you, I recommend buying. The quality was such that I could imagine it being adapted into a movie as a drama. The sci-fi elements are not fantastical and it's easy to imagine them being real news headlines in the next 5-15 years.
The single Steam achievement is for winning an expert level game of solitaire on Evelyn's phone when she entertains the idea. Thus it isn't connected to the story, just an extra thrown in by the game dev. It's played with a Kabufuda deck instead of standard playing cards. I breezed through easy, medium and hard, but expert took me about 2.5 hours and several attempts before I won. The only rule I don't think is explained well is that you can unlock one of the four "free-cell" spaces on the top row when you lock out a space on the normal playing field with a matched set, BUT this isn't possible except at medium and higher difficulty because easy starts with all four free-cells available.
This is a short visual novel, running around 5-6 hours and split into 7 chapters. You play as Evelyn, a computer engineer and software dev living in Seattle who has been on a professional hiatus for the last three years. I won't ruin anything by saying more her. The themes of this game deal with big tech, AI, burn-out, mental health, and the moral ramifications of what technology does to the people who create it and the people who interact with it.
The story is well written and the voice acting is top-notch. It doesn't try to be preachy or slant things in an "activist" kind of tone. It's structured as a series of scenes between Evelyn and her friends, business associates and customers. The topics are very relatable and hit very close to home for anyone familiar with this world. I found immediate resonance with a lot of the insider discussions about the business as well as several topics brought up by the counseling patients either in my own experience or those of close friends. My only criticism is that the Eliza counseling AI in the game seems very simplistic compared to what current AI chat technology is capable of (as recently demonstrated by Google). It didn't seem realistic that a company would get much sales traction with the product as presented.
If this topic interests you, I recommend buying. The quality was such that I could imagine it being adapted into a movie as a drama. The sci-fi elements are not fantastical and it's easy to imagine them being real news headlines in the next 5-15 years.
The single Steam achievement is for winning an expert level game of solitaire on Evelyn's phone when she entertains the idea. Thus it isn't connected to the story, just an extra thrown in by the game dev. It's played with a Kabufuda deck instead of standard playing cards. I breezed through easy, medium and hard, but expert took me about 2.5 hours and several attempts before I won. The only rule I don't think is explained well is that you can unlock one of the four "free-cell" spaces on the top row when you lock out a space on the normal playing field with a matched set, BUT this isn't possible except at medium and higher difficulty because easy starts with all four free-cells available.
Beaten: 25-Jul-2020
It's more Ori, so of course it was spectacular.
Everything that was fun about the first game is here along with new abilities and more locations to explore. Curiously though it didn't feel as difficult as the first one, and I think that's because you get several abilities early on that came later in Blind Forest. Most notable is the ability to stick to walls when climbing. While it's given to you here as a swap-able "shard" ability, it never left my load-out when I was exploring. Not having to repeatedly mash buttons to move upward or know where you are headed next when jumping on to a wall made getting around faster with fewer deaths.
The largest change from the previous game is the combat abilities. Whereas before you had Sen to shoot at enemies somewhat chaotically when you got close enough, now you have a variety of melee and ranged weapons to choose from that through unlocks can become massively OP in some instances. While this can make some boss fights surprisingly short, I didn't feel like it detracted too much from the game. If anything it made you feel more like Ori had grown into his abilities and was becoming ever more powerful.
The story has a lot of similarities to the first one and takes place in a new location with completely new environments to explore. These showcase many of the new game mechanics as you slowly acquire new abilities while moving along the main story line. There are also side quests this time, which makes for a lot of fun side adventures and more characters to meet.
Overall it's a great game and deserving of the high rating. If you are into platformers this is a series you shouldn't miss!
It's more Ori, so of course it was spectacular.
Everything that was fun about the first game is here along with new abilities and more locations to explore. Curiously though it didn't feel as difficult as the first one, and I think that's because you get several abilities early on that came later in Blind Forest. Most notable is the ability to stick to walls when climbing. While it's given to you here as a swap-able "shard" ability, it never left my load-out when I was exploring. Not having to repeatedly mash buttons to move upward or know where you are headed next when jumping on to a wall made getting around faster with fewer deaths.
The largest change from the previous game is the combat abilities. Whereas before you had Sen to shoot at enemies somewhat chaotically when you got close enough, now you have a variety of melee and ranged weapons to choose from that through unlocks can become massively OP in some instances. While this can make some boss fights surprisingly short, I didn't feel like it detracted too much from the game. If anything it made you feel more like Ori had grown into his abilities and was becoming ever more powerful.
The story has a lot of similarities to the first one and takes place in a new location with completely new environments to explore. These showcase many of the new game mechanics as you slowly acquire new abilities while moving along the main story line. There are also side quests this time, which makes for a lot of fun side adventures and more characters to meet.
Overall it's a great game and deserving of the high rating. If you are into platformers this is a series you shouldn't miss!
Beaten: 20-Aug-2020
The Behemoth is at it again, this time with a take on turn-based strategy games. Despite the similar look to Castle Crashers (which I never played), Pit People is very loosely a sequel to Battleblock Theater, at least as told through the short mainline story. The voice of the Narrator returns also to play, well, almost everyone that isn't from the core cast of story characters. The humor is great in the same snarky way and the side quests that vastly outnumber the mainline quests poke fun at all kinds of modern topics and entertainment in typical irreverent style.
At the core of Pit People though is a game that lacks much sophistication and can be boring at times. Although it is turn-based combat, you only move your characters to positions on the board/battlefield. The characters then decide for themselves who they are going to attack. This can be modified by placing your characters so they only have one choice of target, but often this is not possible since the enemy AI is trying to jockey for position as well. You assign your positions as best you can and hope for a good outcome. The fun is in the wide variety of units you can pick from and how their abilities work as a team. The other bonus is the designers try very hard to offer battle maps that have objectives other than "kill the enemy units". These involve things like puzzles, going after specific targets, dynamic obstacles, and many other goals.
The rewards are largely hundreds of mostly cosmetic items. Armor, shields and weapons fall into broad categories giving base stats for each, but within these categories most items are just those base stats with a small number occasionally offering a different benefit (elemental damage, resistances, etc.) for trade-off with another stat. There are only a precious handful of items that don't come with a penalty, and they aren't useful in all combat situations anyway.
The game is also clearly designed for multi-player -- which is highlighted by "The Pit" offering PvP competition. I didn't try it as that had no appeal to me. If you're curious you can still gain experience playing against three waves of AI teams. There's also a mode that let's the AI play your side as well, but at the cost of good loot at the end of a round.
On the whole it's a good game. Worth playing if the idea of lightweight strategy plus Behemoth humor sounds like a good combo.
The Behemoth is at it again, this time with a take on turn-based strategy games. Despite the similar look to Castle Crashers (which I never played), Pit People is very loosely a sequel to Battleblock Theater, at least as told through the short mainline story. The voice of the Narrator returns also to play, well, almost everyone that isn't from the core cast of story characters. The humor is great in the same snarky way and the side quests that vastly outnumber the mainline quests poke fun at all kinds of modern topics and entertainment in typical irreverent style.
At the core of Pit People though is a game that lacks much sophistication and can be boring at times. Although it is turn-based combat, you only move your characters to positions on the board/battlefield. The characters then decide for themselves who they are going to attack. This can be modified by placing your characters so they only have one choice of target, but often this is not possible since the enemy AI is trying to jockey for position as well. You assign your positions as best you can and hope for a good outcome. The fun is in the wide variety of units you can pick from and how their abilities work as a team. The other bonus is the designers try very hard to offer battle maps that have objectives other than "kill the enemy units". These involve things like puzzles, going after specific targets, dynamic obstacles, and many other goals.
The rewards are largely hundreds of mostly cosmetic items. Armor, shields and weapons fall into broad categories giving base stats for each, but within these categories most items are just those base stats with a small number occasionally offering a different benefit (elemental damage, resistances, etc.) for trade-off with another stat. There are only a precious handful of items that don't come with a penalty, and they aren't useful in all combat situations anyway.
The game is also clearly designed for multi-player -- which is highlighted by "The Pit" offering PvP competition. I didn't try it as that had no appeal to me. If you're curious you can still gain experience playing against three waves of AI teams. There's also a mode that let's the AI play your side as well, but at the cost of good loot at the end of a round.
On the whole it's a good game. Worth playing if the idea of lightweight strategy plus Behemoth humor sounds like a good combo.
Abandoned: 9-Aug-2020
This is a puzzle game in a similar setting to Myst. You are dropped on an island with no explanation and work through various sections of the landscape that are divided by theme and environment. The puzzles are mazes -- usually shown on a monitor display -- and each area introduces a new set of rules or conditions that must be used to determine solutions. Harder areas combine introductory rule sets to make for more challenging mazes.
If this sounds intriguing to you, go for it. I gave this game top ratings due to beauty and technical excellence. Then why did I abandon it? Because I got bored.
It's not that the game lacks variety. I think The Witness has far better overall design and challenge than The Talos Principle (which I finished). But after 8-9 hours spread out over 1-2 hour sessions, I simply lost the desire to continue playing it.
In closing I think this is an excellent puzzle game for the right audience. It just wasn't for me.
This is a puzzle game in a similar setting to Myst. You are dropped on an island with no explanation and work through various sections of the landscape that are divided by theme and environment. The puzzles are mazes -- usually shown on a monitor display -- and each area introduces a new set of rules or conditions that must be used to determine solutions. Harder areas combine introductory rule sets to make for more challenging mazes.
If this sounds intriguing to you, go for it. I gave this game top ratings due to beauty and technical excellence. Then why did I abandon it? Because I got bored.
It's not that the game lacks variety. I think The Witness has far better overall design and challenge than The Talos Principle (which I finished). But after 8-9 hours spread out over 1-2 hour sessions, I simply lost the desire to continue playing it.
In closing I think this is an excellent puzzle game for the right audience. It just wasn't for me.
Minamimoto
The long time to finish DiV is the reason why I still haven’t touched the game. I liked DiB but I already thought this took too long and got too repetitive so I’m quite afraid of getting bored too soon with DiV.
Also what did you think about the ending of Ori? I hear many different opinions on this. I thought it was good, left me feel a bit empty but others thought it to be unfitting and some even stupid. What’s your opinion?
BigBlueWolf
Check the answer to Vito’s post about the game length.
I loved the ending of Ori! I was enchanted the whole way through. It felt like a natural conclusion to the story. However I thought that Blind Forest was the more moving story by comparison.
Trent
Thank you for the reviews, including two games I own (but haven’t played) and two-and-a-half games I’m interested in. BTW, the last three store page links don’t work.
Good luck with the Skyrim modding!
BigBlueWolf
Thanks for catching that. Fixed!
Overall this was a really entertaining batch. Even the misfires had their appeal.
Six years ago I thought I was done with Skyrim. Then I stumbled across Lexy’s Legacy of the Dragonborn modding guide a few months ago and it was game over … or not even started? LOL
I learned a bunch of new modding skills along the way so between all my custom changes and her guide I have an instance of Skyrim that looks just as good or possibly better than many current AAA games along with a ton of content I never played before. But my PC is over four years old, so I’m thinking I could get more FPS while playing it if I wait to build a new rig – a project I’m hoping to start after the new RTX 3000 series cards start hitting the market.
Congratulations on finishing the batch! And thanks for the detailed reviews, I am interested in several of the mentioned games. Or rather, was interested in the case of Dead in Vinland. 84 hours sounds really off-putting, albeit the rest of the review does sound good. But there are enough long games in my backlog already :D
I was going to ask what you’ll be playing next, but a quick glance at your profile answered that question already. Have fun with Batch 32, it looks very interesting!
You might consider giving DiV a try if it’s already in your backlog, especially if you liked the first one. It’s a far more engaging game. There are people who completed in far less time than I did, but I think they were playing on the mode that doesn’t allow you to go back in time and pick up at an earlier save point. That would really push the game along, although it would also make it much harder.
I’m not sure if that’s the final form of Batch 32. I keep throwing them together to see if a particular combo appeals to me. What usually happens is I just start playing something rather than formally composing a batch. And with October coming out I have a lot of horror-themed games that would be good for the season too. :D
It is not in my backlog, hence my motivationloss. But that’s okay, as I said, there are already enough games in my backlog.
Yeah, horror games are a good fit for the upcoming season. I hope you enjoy the next batch, whichever games it might contain in the end!