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October 2024

  • Ender Lilies: 2D Soulslike/Metroidvania. Character build variety was excellent, and bosses were satisfying to fight. Navigation and traversal was ok – assisted by fast travel and late game equipment. Non-boss combat was a little grindy. Map design and secret hunting and the rest of the game itself was pretty unmemorable 7/10
  • Five Dates: FMV game. Acting was mostly good (with a couple of very good performances). Chemistry between the main character and the dates was a bit variable (this is a pandemic era game so they were mostly front-on to the camera, and not sure if they always had someone to act with). Script was a bit artificial, and some opportunities to adjust for player choices felt missed. The weightings required for “wins” were quite generous with choices. 7/10
  • GNOG: Puzzle boxes. Short, nicely varied, silly, and fun. 8/10
21 days ago* 2 comments

September 2024

More of this month’s playtime was in progress (including progress to likely hard stops) than completion.

  • CARRION: Metroidvania with very fun original gameplay, with good puzzles and satisfying pseudopod physics. Fairly easy – the most difficult thing was probably the lack of a map. Free Xmas DLC also completed.
  • Death and Taxes: Somewhat Papers Please-ish game in that you decide who lives and who dies, but with an underlying world-tendency mechanic that provides quite amusing writing at times.
  • Death’s Door: Overhead Zeldalike (soulslike/metroidvania) - better in style than gameplay/puzzles, and would have been improved if stats had been raised through found items rather than purchases (which was too slow / would have required grinding).
about 2 months ago 0 comments

August 2024

  • Headlander: A weird highly original metroidvania whose gameplay is not too difficult. On the other hand, as much as it innovates in the genre, the actual gameplay feels missing something in the area of fun that I can’t quite put my finger on.
  • Midnight Fight Express: Orthoview beat-em-up with a fair amount of variety and depth available. Worth a play, might be worth beating, probably not worth completing unless you really love this style of game and the challenge.
  • Steamworld Dig: Digger/metroidvania I’d previously long left incomplete, but restarted after enjoying SWD2 last month. Ok, but nowhere near as good as its sequel.
  • The Forgotten City: Interesting timeloop adventure with some action-y bits (Jumping is awkward but very rarely needed) — definitely worth playing.
  • The Spectrum Retreat: Part liminal adventure game, part post-Portal puzzler. I liked the latter more than the former, even though it is somewhat unkind with the potential for softlocks. Even less kind for the completionists is that the last achievement requires another full playthrough for a couple of minutes of different ending (savescumming won’t work).
  • TOEM: Charming puzzle adventure based significantly on taking photos, though occasionally lacking reminders/signposting (can be a bit obscure when picking it up after a while).
  • STAR WARS Jedi: Survivor: Soulslike/Metroidvania - good combat, pretty good level design (better than the previous game). The downside is the amount of grind in the collectables which should ideally be limited and each individually require some level of skill to get and be meaningful — this is true only of a certain percentage of them. Played on grandmaster with the exception of the final boss which I eventually bumped down to hard. Then I tried NG+, and that is really a step up in encounter difficulty even on easy — a lot closer to a true grandmaster difficulty for regular encounters.
3 months ago* 3 comments
  • Children of Silentown: Reasonably good adventure game, with nice graphical style and some atmospheric creepiness.
  • GRIS: I bounced off this the first time I played it, but restarted as it was a Play or Pay pick. Graphics are lovely art nouveau meets Moebius. Difficulty is very gentle once you understand the mechanics required - there’s no death, only the potential of a little slowdown or regression. Story … well, it’s another indie puzzle platformer representing dealing with trauma. Overall I’m left feeling that it was … ok.
  • Little Orpheus: Essentially this is a post-Inside game (I really liked Inside). For this game, the art is great - with highly varied levels in a pulp world. The puzzles and platforming are generally subpar, and mediocre at best. There is generally excessive level to traverse vs gameplay. In between each level are long static cutscenes - fairly well written and okay with the acting. These are unskippable even on a replay, which is required for the majority of achievement completions. Even worse, the collectables I saw require no (additional) skill to get and were all on the main path - a real Feels Bad. This is the second game I’ve played from The Chinese Room (after Dear Esther) that I’ve played, and I am consequently not at all hopeful for what they will end up doing with Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines 2.
  • Steamworld Dig 2: A resource digger mixed with a metroidvania. Quite good, with some tricky traversal at times required, particularly for collectables.
  • Supraland: I partially played this 3d metroidvania before ages ago, put it down, and restarted after having completed and enjoyed Supraland: Six Inches Under. The major issues I have and had in this one are:
    • the respawning enemies (which they acknowledged and fixed with the latter game) - these can be nullified, but only late in the game, and make exploration and noodling out the collectables before then more annoying than ideal. Combat in the sequel was used more as a puzzle/gate.
    • keeping a mental map for area traversal. There is a player map and there are signposts for the land routes but not so much for the unlockable pipes and jumppads, and the map for those links is unlocked only after the endgame and is a static world object rather than a pickup. It does become a lot easier once you get various unlocks, and can wander on the high “out of bounds” areas
      Nonetheless, still recommended, and am looking forward to Supraworld.
  • The Turing Test: An unmemorable post-Portal 3d puzzle game.
  • Tunic: A love-letter to Zelda with some great ideas of its own (go in unspoiled – seriously). Not particularly difficult with the exception of the final boss fight, which I found Soulslike hard, failed repeatedly on and off over months, and finally came back after hearing that there was a no damage switch in the options - yeah I cheated (I’d have been happier with a lower difficulty/damage level), but it gets it out of my pile of shame/annoyance.
4 months ago 6 comments
  • Afterimage: I had to undervolt to get this to work - only game I’ve had this problem with, and not one I’d expect to need to given it’s a 2d game. It’s a good soulslike metroidvania, though a somewhat overlong one - the game just kept going and going. I completed the main endings, but not the New Game Plus one (a 5+ minute run back to a difficult boss is not fun). Lots of variation in combat styles available.
  • Chants of Sennaar: Stealth/Linguistics puzzle game. Very nice imagery - like a Mœbius graphic novel. The language puzzles were made easier by not only locking in terms when you matched them correctly, but giving the official translation (which in a couple of cases I was slightly off)
  • Mad Max: You can tell that this game was made by a people who really love the series - I wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was. Side areas – and there were a lot of them – felt individual, though collectables have the usual Ubisoft/Warner/Rockstar problem (they could cut them by 40%, lose nothing except busywork, and make the collectables more meaningful). It could definitely use difficulty settings because combat is too easy and the snipers are almost never a threat. One achievement is no longer able to be completed because WBPlay went down - companies really should have a plan/patch ready for that. Bottom line: Strong recommend. (SG win)
  • The Legend of Tianding: Good combat, some soulslike/metroidvania elements, but it’s ultimately pretty linear. Bosses can be pretty difficult - I picked this up again this after previously bouncing off the final boss, lowered difficulty, and finished. (SG win)
  • The Bookwalker: Thief of Tales: Adventure/RPG game where you jump from the 3d real world into isometric worlds within books. The book worlds were interestingly weird and varied. In theory there’s some choices and consequences but it doesn’t feel like it mattered much.
5 months ago* 0 comments

May 2024

  • Arcade Spirits: A Visual Novel - and one I really didn’t enjoy very much. Writing, story, characters, art weren’t bad, per se, but I didn’t find it particularly realistic/true/verisimilitudinous. In theory one would need to play much of it 8 times – even with strategic saves – for achievement completion, which sounds beyond grim to me.
  • Balatro: I wish that BLAEO had an extra completion setting for marking games designed to be beaten multiple times; this is one of those. I got it because a lot of people loved it … but I ultimately didn’t. I had much the same reaction to Roll. Narrowing it down, I don’t think I particularly like abstract Roguelites - Binding of Isaac > Slay the Spire > Ring of Pain > Balatro > Roll
  • Botanicula: Old-school (early 2000s Flash) point-and-click adventure from the folks who did Samorost. Quirky, charming, and mostly enjoyable apart from the maze-iness of Chapter ?5?.
  • Machinika Museum: Adventure game where you rotate and fiddle with weird alien objects to get them to work. Enjoyable, and things build nicely to the final chapters.
  • Supraland Six Inches Under: Pretty good exploration 3d metroidvania – I should go back and play the original.
6 months ago 0 comments

Gomo: Ok puzzle adventure game, with only occasional need to notice the necessary detail as a blocker making it difficult.
The Gunk: 3d puzzle platformer - overall pretty good, but not so mad about the character interaction or the pace of gunk removal (a little frustrating even after upgrading)
9 Clues 2: Enjoyed this well-implemented HOG, but it was very gentle on standard difficulty (and I did a quick run on easy afterwards to pick up the remaining achievements) - there appears to be no driver to do it on Advanced difficulty other than the satisfaction of having done so.
Red Dead Redemption II: Far more enjoyable than I was expecting. I played RDR Online a while back (the achievements ported over to RDR2), and found it very sterile, and have never particularly enjoyed the quests in the GTAs. The single player on this game had a fairly vibrant world, mostly non-annoying quests, and lots of short contextual conversations available. Actual gunfighting was relatively easy with autotargetting, and the ability to skip on failure during missions was a reassurance (though never used). Lots of game still available if I feel like getting completionist (but I probably won’t – HLTB is saying another ~130 hours for a complete run!)

7 months ago 3 comments

March 2024

Lots of semi-complete/incomplete games this month, and quite a few SG wins are likely to remain frustrating non-completes, either because of difficulty (Legend of Tianding hardcore mode; Remnants of Naezith) or un-funness (Eidolon, There is No Light). As for the completes:

  • Sniper Elite 4: Completed on Sniper Elite difficulty, which is really an arcade mode with its nice red targetting reticule. The Authentic and Authentic Plus modes are far more brutal. I bounced off this the first time I played it, really enjoyed Sniper Elite 5, and went back to this… and also really enjoyed it.
  • Carto: Reasonably good puzzler based around shuffling map tiles.
  • Omno: Impressive work for a 1-man indy developer. Pretty fun 3d puzzler/explorer
  • Teacup: An adventure game that was more charming than fun or good.
8 months ago 1 comment

February 2024

9 months ago 7 comments

January 2024

  • 12 Is Better Than 6: Pretty good top-down shooter/puzzle game marred by a somewhat stingy visible area.
  • Roadwarden: Solid as interactive fiction but very gentle as an RPG (I managed to get a lot of the rarer achievements in my only run ). Deals with a bunch of issues including colonialism and displacement.
  • Who Pressed Mute On Uncle Marcus: FMV game, apparently shot during lockdown. Quite funny at times, acting pretty good, but limited branches, and it is improbable that Uncle Marcus wouldn’t have more-present medical attendance given his state.
  • Eventide 3: Legacy of Legends: Enjoyable enough but rather unmemorable Hidden Object game.
  • Sea Legends: Phantasmal Light: Better puzzles than Eventide 3, but would have been a bit friendlier with a map.
  • Monument Valley II: As with the first game it had great style, but a little slight as a puzzler - most levels were pretty straight-forward.
  • 5 hidden Cats games: All were free on Steam, and quick fun at that price, but not worth much more. The Cats Hidden in… series disguises the cats better than the 100…Cats series does.
10 months ago 2 comments
Statistics
681 games (+2 not categorized yet)
16% never played
46% unfinished
16% beaten
10% completed
12% won't play
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