Fenchurch's Mid-Monthly Update of Backlog Assassination #1

Hello again and welcome to my first official update post! I’ve not been here long but I’ve been reading and commenting on lots of articles and it seems that (sensibly & probably quite predictably) most people seem to do their main update posts at the end of the month/start of the new month. Well I’m not most people and I like to do things a little differently so I’ve decided to make my update a mid-monthly project that probably won’t contain much in the way of actually finishing games. Being a lazy so-and-so this also gives me a bit of leeway to procrastinate with the exact days of posting which is always nice too!

In a crazy turn of events It’s actually been quite a good start to the backlog assassination as I actually finished a couple of games (believe me this is not a regular thing to happen).

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New Games: 4

• Gorogoa
  

  2.1 hours playtime

  7 of 11 achievements

• The Council
  

  5.0 hours playtime

  15 of 42 achievements

• Infinifactory
  

  0.9 hours playtime

  2 of 22 achievements

• Titan Souls
  

  0.3 hours playtime

  1 of 27 achievements

Gorogoa is a nice little puzzle game I picked up from a GA win on Steamgifts that’s had some great reviews from friends.
The Council Episode 2: Hide and Seek released a couple of months ago and I just realised I hadn’t got around to it yet!
I traded for Infinifactory a while ago and it just took my fancy recently for absolutely no reason other than I happened to spot it on my list in Steam one day!
I’ve had Titan Souls for so long I don’t even remember where I got it, probably a Steam sale. It’s been on my rader as a ‘maybe’ for playing for a while now.

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Finished This Month: 3

I’m gonna start of by explaining that I’m realistic and honest with my ratings. 6/10 certainly doesn’t mean that a particular game was bad, just average. In the same light you will very rarely find me giving a game a 9/10 rating and probably never 10/10 as there’s really no such thing as a perfect game! I might actually make a post about game ratings one day if I can be bothered.

As I had never played the original Dishonored (only watched a let’s play) I actually thoroughly enjoyed my first 10-15 hours of Dishonored 2 discovering how the stealth mixed with supernatural abilities felt really intuitive to play and really suited my style of gaming. When it comes to stealth games I love to explore, find the best way to complete an objective with minimal disruption to the world around me and Dishonored 2 was a good example of allowing a player to pull this off if they wanted to.

The level design is top notch, there are lots of different paths to take to get to your objectives and upgrading skills didn’t take too long. This meant that the gameplay never really felt stale as it often changed when you upgraded your character and skills. It was definitely the strongest point of the game and what kept me going with it. Story wise it wasn’t so great. I though the original game’s story really fitted well, but this time around it almost seemed tacked on in a lot of places. Not very well though out, not much too it and the supporting characters weren’t as strong (with the exception of the return of Sokolov). This is why after 15 or so hours I found myself not really enjoying the story but instead treating each of the levels like challenge maps to mix up my abilities and have some fun with.

All in all I enjoyed my time with this game and would recommend it to anyone who enjoyed the first or who like stealth action games like the Deus Ex reboots.

Rating 7/10

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Gorogoa is a great little casual puzzle game with an awesome sense of design in terms of the puzzles it produces. It’s a hard one to review as half of the fun is discovering how these puzzles transform themselves in front of your eyes. What I can explain is the basics of the puzzle mechanics and how well this works with the game as a whole.

The on screen ‘puzzle board’ is split into four areas, these areas can be used to manipulate the picture you are given in various different ways. Sometimes that means joining pieces together like a jigsaw, sometimes splitting pieces apart to find more clues and sometimes, well sometimes there is much more to do than first meets the eye! The puzzles are really intelligent and never did I feel cheated or frustrated. The gameplay is really fluid and enjoyable and if you don’t mind minor spoilers you should watch a trailer to get the best idea of exactly what I mean.

Gorogoa isn’t a long game, it took me just over 2 hours to complete and as good as those two hours were I find that hard to justify the price tag if I were to have paid for the game. If you like casual puzzle solving, intelligent and beautiful design and don’t mind splashing out for a couple of hours gameplay then by all means go for it. My recommendation would be to pick it up in a sale

Rating 8/10

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As a whole The Council leaves me with a mixed bag of feelings. After playing and finishing two of the five planned episodes there are bits about it i like and bits I’m not so keen on.

For starters the overlying story and game mechanics are great. There’s a lot of mystery to the story and the dialogue with each of the characters, giving you just enough to keep you thinking about what could be going on. The game mechanics also work well for the most part. The developers Big Bad Wolf have called this an Adventure game with RPG elements and the skill tree they have implemented works really well in terms of branching the story and the paths you have available at your disposal. For example you can choose to train your character in manipulating people through conversation, knowledge and etiquette, or you could go down the detective role that I chose and excel in questioning, spotting clues and understanding the psychology of someones actions and remarks. Both paths would allow you to access certain routes and conversations in the game and for this I really think The Council is making a great and long overdue change to the Adventure genre.

On the other hand there are a few things that are off putting and that drag the game down a little. Like the voice acting, which sometimes is passable but for large periods is noticeably dodgy especially when concerning the main character. While the overall level and character design is also pretty good the animations can also be pretty dodgy. Sometimes a hand bends the wrong way or a person moves as if they’ve broken every bone in their body and this is another off putting factor but one I’m sure that many people wouldn’t be all that bothered about.

So far after two episodes (the second a lot shorter than the first) I still have a positive feeling about the game and while it’s not done much in terms of advancing the story so far, I’m still interested to see where it ends up. Hopefully the last three episodes can improve.

Rating 6/10

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Still Playing: 5

• Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin
  

  28.7 hours playtime

  6 of 38 achievements

• Shadow Tactics: Blades of the Shogun
  

  3.4 hours playtime

  2 of 44 achievements

• Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire
  

  7.9 hours playtime

  0 of 37 achievements

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance
  

  19.8 hours playtime

  no achievements

• Elite Dangerous
  

  113.4 hours playtime

  no achievements

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Given Up On: 1

• FreeCell Quest
  

  6.5 hours playtime

  10 of 36 achievements

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Hopefully a bit of my fancy-pantsness is starting to showing off, you guys gave me a lot of tips and I’m going to try adding a few things on each new post and keep what I like. One thing I couldn’t find out how to do was change the colour of normal text (not the generated game box stuff). Is that possible? Can someone show me an example. Thanks in advance! Thanks uguleley, I made the post heading your chosen red in honour of your teachings! XD

Feel free to comment if you’ve played any of these games and want to discuss something or just want some general chat! I’ll try to get back to you all eventually!

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First post - Hello BLAEO!

Probably my entire gaming life I have had some kind of backlog and as a competitive gamer and I CANNOT LET THIS STAND!

… well maybe I can, but I hereby stand by my word as a semi-completionist to summon all my willpower to do something about this backlog for a bit before the next Steam sale comes around and I probably have an even higher percentage of unplayed games… ach well, it’s worth a shot eh?! ;P

Not sure how I’m going to structure my postings here, but I plan to do something each month at the very least. Maybe game of the month, or an update on what I’ve played/started/finished/given up on or a review of something I’ve played recently… time will tell!

For now, hello, goodbye and I’ll see you around!

(P.S. I see all you guys with your fancy posts, I wanna learn how to do that! Any tips welcomed for fancy-pantsness)

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