August 25, 2023 - Day 237 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 257

Game: Banners of Ruin

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jul 30, 2021
Library Date: Aug 9, 2023
Unplayed: 16d
Playtime: 19m

Banners of Ruin is a roguelite deckbuilder in which a mouse and a bear attempt to take back their city from the corrupt folks who stole it.

With two and a quarter hours sleep last night, I figured I'd get in early for a NewPlay and review, because I'm not even sure I'm going to make it through the morning.

Banners of Ruin came in the same bundle as Shred 2, and where Shred 2 felt like a "oh well, nothing lost", Banners of Ruin is a bit of a surprise.

Although it's quite different, it reminds me mostly of Slay the Spire, and while initially put off by the idea of trying to play a deckbuilder and remain conscious, it's actually fun.

The tutorial was well done, but a little bit too loquacious, and determined to hold my hand even after I'd grasped the basic mechanics, but once through the tutorial, I had a fun, if short run.

On the downside, it insisted on starting on a secondary monitor, and we had a fundamental disagreement about which monitor is which. It also supports a quite limited number of resolutions for a game that was released mid-2021, only running up to 1920x1080, but Fullscreen is an option, and the graphics don't suffer at all.

All in all, Banners of Ruin seems to be a fun way to kill 15 minutes here and there, and is:

4: Good

#BannersOfRuin #RogueLite #DeckBuilder #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 24, 2023 - Day 236 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 256

Game: Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 18, 2018
Library Date: Aug 9, 2023
Unplayed: 15d
Playtime: 19m

Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim is a 2.5D mountain bike game. I'm not sure simulator quite fits.

Firstly, I don't know who Sam Pilgrim is, and I don't really care to find out. I assume he's the mountain biker you play in-game.

I got an email for a 5-game bundle from Fanatical a couple of weeks ago, and as I wanted one game in the bundle, and $8.00 for 5 games was cheaper than that game on its own, I bought the bundle.

I have a terrible sense of balance which means that riding a bike is a chore, and pulling stunts or tricks is utterly impossible.

Riding a skateboard (or anything with small wheels) is a non-event. Yet I lost countless hours to Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 2, & 3 (even 4, to a degree).

I also got invited to the Rider's Republic beta, enjoyed it enough to buy the game when it went on sale. In both the THPS games and RR, I've managed to pull some pretty wild stunts and had fun while doing it.

None of that mattered in Shred 2. Shred 2 wants you to pull technically correct tricks... perfectly timed. Fail? Start the level over.

I started a lot of the tutorial levels over. The restart level button on the controller is the Y button, which meant I started more than a few levels over because I hit the wrong button.

When I started playing THPS2, I found it incredibly frustrating, but the risk/reward balance was just enough to keep me in the "One more try" loop, and I kept improving.

This was less of a loop, and more of a grind, and it just didn't feel like fun.

It actually felt a bit like OlliOlli World, but without the sense of humour that underlies that game.

Oddly enough, the closest comparison I can make is Forza Horizon to Forza Motorsport. I own Forza Horizon 1 through 5. I've sunk countless hours into Forza Horizon, and I'll tell anyone who'll listen how it converted me to playing arcade racers.

I also own Forza Motorsport 7. I think I've raced three laps, if that. Forza Motorsport is technically demanding, requiring focus and discipline, and understanding the technical limitations of your car and the track.

Forza Horizon, I just press the accelerator on the controller and steer the car, and have a lot of fun.

Shred 2 feels like Forza Motorsport. If I had excellent hand eye coordination, and the ability to repeat the same bio-mechanical movements over and over, I might be able to enjoy it; unfortunately, I don't and I can't.

For me, Shred! 2 - ft Sam Pilgrim is:

2: Meh

#Shred2 #MountainBiking #SportSim #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 23, 2023 - Day 235 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 255

Game: Desktop Dungeons: Rewind

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 19, 2023
Library Date: Apr 19, 2023
Unplayed: 126d (4m4d)
Playtime: 23m

Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is Desktop Dungeons Enhanced Edition in 3D.

Literally.

Gone are the pixel-art bitmaps, replaced by glorious detailed 3D artwork.

The gameplay is (at least at this point) identical.

Like, last night I played through the first map multiple times before I understood it and beat it.

Tonight, exactly the same map, with the same mobs, and the same drops, but all in 3D.

So: Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is an isometric 3D roguelike dungeon crawler puzzle game.

Where last night it was a great example of a game where the gameplay overcomes my dislike of pixel-art games, now the fun gameplay is also pretty.

Still a pretty standard dungeon crawler. Explore the dungeon, attack mobs.

However, each square you uncover goes towards refilling your health and mana. You need to explore the fog of war to find mobs, but if you clear the fog of war and then try and kill the mobs, you're gonna have a bad time.

I cleared the first level with exactly the same strategy I used last night, still hooked. The only reason I didn't keep playing was that it ran into my actual work shift.

Between dungeons there's some resource management and basic city-building going on, but the game is designed to be played in short chunks. No change, just prettier city-building, in 3D!

In a shocking and surprising turn of events, Desktop Dungeons: Rewind is:

4: Good

#DesktopDungeons #Isometric #DungeonCrawler #Puzzle #3D #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 21, 2023 - Day 233 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 253

Game: Golden Light

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Mar 12, 2022
Library Date: Apr 2, 2023
Unplayed: 141d (4m19d)
Playtime: 22m

Golden Light is, in the description provided by the developer, a "Survival-Horror FPS Prop Hunt Roguelike about meat".

Honestly, I need to let the devs describe it, because I couldn't.

It's a pixelated bitmapped mess. It uses procedural generation to decide what something you pick up will do each run. You're apparently in some monstrous "gut", and you can eat anything you pick up.

There are weapons, but if you use them, you'll make the gut angry.

You can eat the weapons. They might do something good. They might do something bad. They might do nothing at all.

Some props will turn into vaguely defined and difficult to identify monsters. The graphics are awful. "Meat" panels randomly appear on badly lit walls.

I viscerally hate this game, pun intended. This is the third-worst game I've played this year. I cannot understand how anyone would enjoy this, let alone rate it 9/10.

It came as part of the March Humble Bundle, and I'm just glad that I didn't buy it by choice.

Golden Light is:

1: Nope

#GoldenLight #HorrorSurvival #FPS #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 20, 2023 - Day 232 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 252

Game: Hotshot Racing

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 11, 2020
Library Date: May 13, 2023
Unplayed: 99d (3m7d)
Playtime: 18m

Hotshot Racing is a intensely colourful polygon-based retro arcade racing game.

In May a couple of games I wanted came up in a Fanatical Bundle, where the more games you bought, the cheaper each game was; buying three games was the minimum bundle level. Hotshot Racing was the filler game I added to the bundle to hit that level.

I love a good arcade racer. Hotshot Racing is not a good arcade racer.

Again, I have no love for retro-style graphics, but if the driving was good, I could get past the graphics.

The driving is not great either. The AI-driven cars are incredibly aggressive for a game that's meant to be a racer, and not something like Wreckfest.

Getting out in front of the other cars is always temporary, because they magically catch up every time... then immediately try and run you off the road.

The same two AI drivers in each race would box me in and bounce me, no matter if I got ahead of them or not.

It was just a frustrating 18 minutes of racing that I would have preferred to have spent in Forza Horizon or Wreckfest.

Hotshot Racing is:

2: Meh

#HotshotRacing #ArcadeRacing #Retro #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 19, 2023 - Day 231 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 251

Game: Glass Masquerade

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 19, 2016
Library Date: Aug 19, 2023
Unplayed: 0d
Playtime: 1h10m

Given today's exhaustion levels, I wanted something simple to play, and it just so happened that I got an email that Glass Masquerade was on special, as it's been on my wishlist for some time.

Glass Masquerade is a gorgeous stained-glass puzzle game, in which you're presented with a shape that you need to fill in with a series of random pieces arrayed around the outside of the play area, on two concentric "trays", with very much of a jigsaw puzzle vibe (without being a jigsaw).

The only downside is that it can be frustratingly fiddly to rotate the trays to find the piece you want.

It's beautiful, with a chilled soundtrack, and a great way to just kick back and relax when that's what I need.

Glass Masquerade is:

4: Good

#GlassMasquerade #StainedGlass #Puzzle #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 18, 2023 - Day 230 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 250

Game: Darksiders Warmastered Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Nov 30, 2016
Library Date: Dec 4, 2018
Unplayed: 1718d (4y8m14d)
Playtime: 27m

Darksiders Warmastered Edition is a remastered version of the original Darksiders released in 2010. It's a third-person hack-and-slash action-adventure.

The game opens with a explanation of the universe of the game; For eons, heaven and hell were at war, until "The Council" brought the war to a standstill. The Council had their own four-person army to take down anyone from either side who broke the law.

The army? The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

After a period of time, humans arose, and it was predicted that one day Heaven, Hell, and Humans would engage in a final battle when the seventh seal was broken (a lot of repurposed religious imagery here).

The game opens to a scene of world wide devastation, as meteor strikes across the planet turn out to be monster demons attacking humans, angels attack monsters, humans running around and dying a lot, and then you show up.

"You" being one of the Four Horsemen: War.

Angry looking dude with glowing eyes, long blond hair, and a huge sword. You take down demons and angels left and right, until you get smushed by a big demon in a boss battle.

Then you show up in front of the council, and they're kind of unhappy, and blaming you for the battle, as you weren't supposed to show up until the seventh seal was broken, and the seventh seal is intact.

Basically, War has been set up.

Playing with keyboard and mouse, the controls feel a little bit sloppy, and habitually going for the shift key to sprint doesn't work well when the shift key is set to focus fire.

With a little bit more playtime it might feel a little bit better, but I don't know if it's because it's a seven year old remaster of a thirteen year old game, or it's just overly bombastic, but it's not grabbing me and yelling "keep playing", but there's something interesting there.

Darksiders Warmastered Edition is:

3: OK

#Darksiders #HackAndSlash #ActionAdventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 16, 2023 - Day 228 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 248

Game: Praey for the Gods

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Dec 15, 2021
Library Date: Mar 10, 2023
Unplayed: 159d (5m6d)
Playtime: 29m

Praey for the Gods is a third-person "open-world" boss-climbing adventure game.

Set in a harsh frozen post-apocalyptic wilderness, you play a nameless woman on a quest to kill the "Gods" in an attempt to try and save your world.

I bought this as part of the "Humble Heroines" bundle in March, and had no idea what the game was about. I started playing at 11:58pm last night.

After playing it, I was still struggling to grapple with understanding exactly what was going on.

Apparently, the game is inspired by a PS2 / PS4 game called "Shadow of the Colossus"; the PS2 version was released in 2005, and remade for the PS4 in 2018. I have no experience with that game either, & I feel like the devs expect the player to be familiar with the concepts underlying the gameplay.

The game opens with an intro giving the basic concept of the world, & the "gods", after which you find yourself in a tutorial level that guides you through navigation & interaction; you progress through a map, interacting with various items along the way, including a pull-switch that you "attack" to open doors and activate items.

Until suddenly it doesn't.

I activated one of these switches as I had several times before, and instead of moving into the next section, I was somewhere else entirely different, with nothing in common with the environment I'd just been in (that would give me some clue to how I'd arrived there), with a skyscraper-sized monster trying to kill me.

I'm unarmed.

At this point, I'm glad I'd left the difficulty set to the easiest level, because otherwise I would have been dead. A lot.

After punching the monster proved ineffective, I eventually realised that maybe I could climb out of the way.

Success.

After an eternity of sluggish climbing, there was a switch at the top which activated a bell that affected the monster.

At which point I noticed that the monster had three of the switches attached to its body. Turns out you can climb the monster too.

Did I mention that climbing is sluggish and awkward?

These boss fights are the core of the game, and the core gameplay is just frustrating. Each time you attack the boss with one of these switches, which you need to do multiple times for each switch, it tries to shake you off, so you need to wildly tap a button to stay on.

This drains your stamina, until you get knocked off and have to climb back up again, frustratingly grinding your way to killing the boss.

The game is a good looking game, and apparently open-world with a "survival" mechanic as well, but with feeling like I'm just grinding to achieve anything, it doesn't feel worth the effort.

Praey for the Gods is:

2: Meh

#PraeyForTheGods #ThirdPerson #Adventure #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 15, 2023 - Day 227 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 247

Game: The Stillness of the Wind

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 8, 2019
Library Date: Jun 5, 2023
Unplayed: 71d (2m10d)
Playtime: 22m

The Stillness of the Wind is a third-person game about loss and getting old.

Talma lives alone on her farm in the middle of nowhere, with a couple of goats, and a few chickens.

This is a very quiet game, that involves just... living. As Talma, you milk the goats & make cheese. You collect eggs from the chickens, and mushrooms from under the windmill. You plant seeds, and collect water from the well, to water them. You cook dinner, read a letter should one come, and go to bed to start over.

Rendered in warm watercolour tones, you feel Talma's age as she makes her way around her tiny farm. Various items bring memories to mind, and several of them are quite sad.

This is not a game to play for fun. It evoked in me a sense of melancholy and loneliness.

I will probably play it through to completion, but when I'm in the right frame of mind to engage with it.

The Stillness of the Wind is:

3: OK

#TheStillnessOfTheWind #ThirdPerson #CozyGaming #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 14, 2023 - Day 226 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 246

Game: Submerged

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 4, 2015
Library Date: May 13, 2023
Unplayed: 93d (3m1d)
Playtime: 24m

Submerged is an third-person post-apocalyptic open-world exploration game. You play as a young girl, Miku, who is trying to save her brother's life, and to do so, must sail around a submerged city, climbing the buildings and exploring the ruins to locate crates containing survival items.

It's very pretty, but based on my movement through the game so far, it seems like it will be a reasonably short game that won't outstay its welcome.

I think the sail->search->climb->find gameplay loop could get pretty old pretty quickly.

As you move through the story, you uncover pieces of Miku & her brother's story, and the story of what happened to the city in the form of pictographs, and as you explore, there are 60 collectables to find.

Submerged is:

3: OK

#Submerged #ThirdPerson #OpenWorld #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 13, 2023 - Day 225 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 245

Game: Save Room

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Apr 28, 2022
Library Date: Sep 11, 2022
Unplayed: 336d (11m2d)
Playtime: 32m

Save Room is a military-themed organisational puzzle game.

It's pretty simple. You have a case. You have X amount of space in the case. You have guns, and ammo. Make everything fit, with nothing left over.

Later on you get extra bits and pieces. You have a health meter, and sometimes you have things that add and take away from health, and you might have to take away from your health with an item and then replenish your health with a booster, thus using up both items.

There's actually not a lot to say here. It's a fun little puzzle game, and not a bad way to chill out and kill some time.

Save Room is:

3: OK

#SaveRoom #Puzzle #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 12, 2023 - Day 224 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 244

Game: Hot Brass

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 17, 2021
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 8d
Playtime: 16m

Hot Brass is the final game in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and answers the question, "What if Rainbow Six Siege was a top-down game about SWAT cops?"

I'll start out with saying I'm wary about reviewing this, purely on the basis of it being by a local Melbourne developer, and if I rip it to shreds, I feel like there's a chance that I probably know someone who knows someone.

However, I need to get this out of the way. I cognitively understand why "ACAB" is a thing, yet I still struggle to reconcile it personally with some people I know who are very much C, but very much not B.

However, one cannot get away from the fact that SWAT teams are militarised police, and Hot Brass is a SWAT team simulator, so TCAB.

On a purely gameplay front, I wasn't quite sure how to make sense of the game, but a couple of minutes of the tutorial and I was ready to jump ahead and into the game.

It's much the same as most first or third-person shooters: WASD movement, CTRL to crouch, point weapons with mouse. Space to sprint is an odd choice, though. 1 & 2 to switch between primary & secondary, 3 & 4 for flashbang & door breach charge.

Right-click to yell at a non-compliant suspect... F to tase a suspect into compliance, E to handcuff a compliant suspect...

...it got ugly quickly.

I tried to just play without thinking about it too much, but I couldn't compartmentalise.

I've lived with depression and anxiety for most of my adult life, and my late Dx for autism explained a lot of that. I'm trans.

I'm now painfully aware in a way that I wasn't when I was younger that there are several different aspects of my identity in which an encounter with police could end badly for me, and I still have the privilege that comes from being white and educated.

I'm not Breonna Taylor, or Elijah McClain, or Eric Parsa, or Maddie Hoffman, or Clare Nowland. These names and more are burned into my brain, countering the lifelong messaging that the police are there to protect me.

As I breach the door in the first mission, then start yelling at someone expressing thanks that the police have arrived, followed by handcuffing them, it's all a bit too visceral, even as a top-down game with my character represented by a circle with a MP5 icon. I'm not having fun.

The mechanics of the game are well executed, and on a purely technical level, it seems like a good game. Some of the illustrations in the loading screens are... I can see a lot of effort and love went into them, and I'll leave it there.

Unfortunately, I can't enjoy playing as a cop; Hot Brass is:

2: Meh

#HotBrass #TopDown #Shooter #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 11, 2023 - Day 223 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 243

Game: SuchART

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 7d
Playtime: 25m

Tin Can is game number seven in this month's Humble Choice bundle, and answers the question, "What if Breathedge, but serious?"

Tin Can is a first-person space survival sim. Your goal is to survive as long as possible in real time.

The tutorial walks you (an on-board janitor) through the basic systems of the escape pod through a set of cute over-the-radio interactions with an on-board engineer who has to be in two places at once, and seconds you a few times to run through some repairs, then diagnostics, then troubleshooting.

Then the ship starts to explode, and suddenly you need to be in that escape pod.

You have a handful of spare parts, a technical manual, and a few minutes to solve whatever problem the escape pod is experiencing before that problem kills you.

The game tells you upfront that you will die. A lot.

I wouldn't describe it as fun, per se; it's stressful, but very engaging.

With only one game left in this month's bundle, I'm genuinely surprised at the number of bangers this time around.

If you don't already own the games I reckon you can't go wrong dropping AUD$17 on the bundle, even if the final game turns out to be a fizzer.

Tin Can is:

4: Good

#TinCan #FirstPerson #Survival #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 10, 2023 - Day 222 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 242

Game: SuchART

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 14, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 6d
Playtime: 1h44m

Game number six: SuchART.

I figured this might be the game where I sigh, and force myself to 15 minutes and write my little review.

Almost two hours later...

Conceptually, this game is much like Passpartout: The Starving Artist that really surprised me back in January.

Instead of a humble garage in Paris, you find yourself in a future where all art is created by robots, and realising the dead end of this, real live artists are being sponsored to create real art, with real paints and canvases...

...based on a space station.

It's a cute twist. You're supplied with everything required to make basic art, and you can paint commissions or just create paintings and sell them in the "marketplace" (no other players required).

My first commission was a request for a unicorn from my sister.

It was a very bad unicorn. She loved it. Of course.

You can pretty much grind out anything, and it will be accepted and loved by those who commissioned it.

White polar bear in a snowstorm doesn't cut it though.

You have to put *something* on the canvas.

I kept painting, and churning out crap to complete quests and level up. It was kind of fun, and a chill way to kill some time.

Then... I saw something. An idea. An actual idea. In fiddling around with the in-game tools, something unlocked, and I found myself frantically grabbing paints and rollers and brushes, and a water pistol filled with paint, and *creating*.

When I was done, I sat back in my chair, and just loved that thing I'd created.

SuchART is:

5: Excellent

#SuchART #FirstPerson #Art #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 9, 2023 - Day 221 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 241

Game: Arcade Paradise

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Aug 11, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 5d
Playtime: 54m

There comes a time in every monthly Humble Bundle where you hit the cruft. The games they chose to pad out the bundle to eight games.

...and so we come to Arcade Paradise, game number five.

This is not that game.

I really didn't expect much of this from the title. The apparent love of retro games by indie devs is lost on me, and going on the name and the artwork, I made the assumption that this was going to be something a la Capcom's "Arcade Stadium" with a bunch of retro-styled games, and maybe some vague narrative thread to string them together.

Having just finished re-assembling my PC at 11:45pm, I figured I'd put in my 15 minutes and write the review later.

The game intro didn't do much to assuage my fears. A bunch of hand-drawn animated graphics. Not *badly* done, but I've been burned before.

The intro ends, and the screen morphs into... full first-person high resolution 3D.

*blink* wut.

This is a pleasant surprise.

As it turns out, Arcade Paradise is a love letter to retro arcade games, wrapped in a business sim.

As 19yo college dropout Ashley, you've been handed the keys to one of your father's run-down laundromats, in the hope that you'll "make something" of yourself.

The game opens with you dropped off by the bus in front of said laundromat, with a series of answering machine messages from your father telling you each step of managing the laundromat.

Hope you don't mind doing laundry, kid. There's a lot of it to do. There's also cleaning, garbage collection, maintenance, and emptying coin hoppers.

Oh, and there are a couple of arcade machines in the back room.

This is the heart of the narrative. Yes, you need to do all that stuff in the laundromat, working long days, to earn money... so that you can afford to buy more arcade machines, and prove to dad that there's more to life than just the grind of doing laundry.

I was hooked, and am tired this morning as a result.

There are some things that frustrate me about the gameplay. The "opening the safe" process gets old *very* quickly. The inability to interact with the garbage piled outside the laundromat just annoys me.

I WANT TO CLEAN IT UP. There are empty vending machines that I want to fill, and cannot interact with. I don't just want to build the arcade, I also want to clean up and renovate the laundromat, but that's a "me" thing.

Ironically, you can also play the arcade games themselves, something that just doesn't grab me at all, but that's OK by me.

In a completely unexpected twist, Arcade Paradise is:

4: Good

#ArcadeParadise #FirstPerson #Simulation #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 8, 2023 - Day 220 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 240

Game: Trek to Yomi

Platform: Steam
Release Date: May 5, 2022
Library Date: Aug 4, 2023
Unplayed: 4d
Playtime: 29m

Trek to Yomi is a side-scrolling action game, where you play as a samurai set on vengeance.

Two days in a row, two sword-based action games, and they could not be more different.

There is an elegance to a katana that's just not there with a broadsword, and comparing these two games side by side is eye-opening.

The look of Trek to Yomi took me by surprise. It's set in black and white, as if it was a Kurosawa film (with film effects and everything). While it's technically side-scrolling, the opening tutorial of the game has you walking towards and away from the camera in the Z-axis as well, giving the game a beautiful sense of three dimensions.

The sound is lush and gorgeous, and the controls are intuitive. There aren't a dozen different combinations to remember, just a few, which makes the swordplay come to life. I very quickly found myself instinctively weaving and blocking, rotating to face another enemy and seeing him off.

I'd seen Trek to Yomi mentioned a few times since it was released, but the idea of playing a game in black and white as an Edo period samurai didn't grab me at all.

Yet as soon as I'm finished writing this review, I'm going back to play some more.

Trek to Yomi is:

5: Excellent

#TrekToYomi #SideScroller #Samurai #HumbleChoice #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 6, 2023 - Day 218 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 238

Game: Builder Simulator

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Jun 10, 2022
Library Date: Jun 4, 2023
Unplayed: 63d (2m2d)
Playtime: 16m

Builder Simulator is a first-person work simulator, and most work simulators suck.

In my experience there are two kinds of games I describe as work simulators.

The first involves cleaning. I'm not sure why, but when I was experiencing quite a dark time in my mental health, I discovered House Flipper. Leaving aside the real-world ethics of house-flipping, the game is essentially a cleaning & decorating sim.

Power Wash Simulator is another oddly satisfying work sim.

Building Simulator... is not.

Building Simulator opens with your new assistant, Bill Derr. Mmm, I love the smell of bad puns in the morning (I do not.).

Bill Derr is Claptrap from Borderlands mashed up with a cement mixer, and the annoying dialed up to ten.

Bill's role is -apparently- to tell you how to play the game. I found myself in the middle of nowhere, with an outline on the ground that I had to turn into a foundation.

A cement mixer, a wheelbarrow, a couple of piles of sand, and gravel, and... "OK, now build".

I spent the next few minutes poking around trying to work out exactly what I had to do. Eventually I dug into the options menu to find the controls to see if there was something I was missing, and it turns out that the tools menu is accessible through the middle mouse button.

If only there was some kind of in-game character to provide that sort of instruction.

Once I had access to the tools, grab shovel, dig out the marked outline, buy formwork through your handy tablet computer.

How much? Who knows. Not enough, not enough, too much. Install formwork. Sell overpurchased formwork back to story. Buy reinforcement. Rinse and repeat.

Now make concrete. Fill wheelbarrow with concrete. Lay foundation.

Look, there's probably someone out there who finds deep levels of satisfaction in this. It's just not me.

There's something soothing about cleaning work sims that I don't experience in this kind of work sim.

I got to play the beta of PC Building Simulator 2, and having actually run my own real-world computer store for several years, I found it teeth-grindingly frustrating.

The biggest problem with Building Simulator is that it's just like starting a new job, where no-one will tell you anything, and you just need to poke at things until you get what's going on.

I have a job, I don't need to simulate having a second one.

Building Simulator?:

1: Nope

#BuildingSimulator #FirstPerson #Simulator #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 5, 2023 - Day 217 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 237

Game: Titanfall 2

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Oct 28, 2016
Library Date: Nov 25, 2022
Unplayed: 253d (8m11d)
Playtime: 78m

Titanfall 2 is a first person shooter with mechs. While it has a multiplayer mode, I was focused on trying the campaign.

Technically, this is not the first time I've played Titanfall 2. I attempted to play it via Gamepass on the Xbox a few years ago, and try as I might, I just couldn't coordinate on the controller in any way that felt playable.

It was one of those games that I'd heard people rave about, and when it came up on deep sale late last year, I took the bait.

A seven year old game, with mouse and keyboard?

Yeah, that's the good stuff. Wall-running, which is a critical part of this Titanfall 2, went from making me want to throw the controller in frustration to something fluid and fun.

The gunplay while in pilot mode is incredibly satisfying. The guns feel weighty, and the sniper rifle in particular has a wonderful heft to it; putting a sniper round into a drone is particularly enjoyable.

By the end of my 78 minutes, I'd just loaded into the mech and completed the first mission, with the mech's abilities being a lot of fun, particularly the "catch all the projectiles and return-to-sender" ability.

Titanfall 2 seems:

4: Good

#Titanfall2 #FirstPerson #FPS #Mechs #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 4, 2023 - Day 216 - NewPlay Bonus Review
Total NewPlays: 236

Game: Blasphemous

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Sep 10, 2019
Library Date: Aug 4, 2022
Unplayed: 365d (1y)
Playtime: 17m

Happy Birthday to Blasphemous. I didn't realise that I activated it one year ago today. I know that at the time, I took one look at it, didn't even open it. To be honest, I'm glad I didn't.

It's another game I wouldn't have been able to appreciate had I not spent all this time working my way through my pile of shame.

Blasphemous is a 2D pixel-art soulsvania action-platformer.

It is not a pleasant game. Laced in heavy religious themes, you are the "Penitent One" travelling through the land of Cvstodia (not a typo), with your sword "Mea Culpa".

There are locations where you can save, which cause your enemies to respawn, and when you die, you need to go back to collect your stuff. So... soulsvania, I guess?

After killing the first boss, you take off your giant pointy eyeless helmet, and fill it with the blood pouring out of him.

Then you put it on.

This is actually a game I could see myself playing, in the right mood. Just a kind-of specific one.

Blasphemous is:

3: OK

#Blasphemous #Platformer #Soulsvania #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay

August 3, 2023 - Day 215 - NewPlay Review
Total NewPlays: 234

Game: Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition

Platform: Steam
Release Date: Feb 7, 2018
Library Date: Apr 7, 2019
Unplayed: 1579d (4y3m27d)
Playtime: 15m

Dandara: Trials of Fear Edition is a 2D pixel-art Metroidvania platformer.

It's not like any other platformer I've played. Instead of running and jumping, as Dandara, you fire yourself from surface to surface, but only the surfaces that are covered in salt.

As you move around the map, the map is moving relative to you as well, sometimes rotating through 90 or 180 degrees.

After the first couple of levels familiarising you with the controls, the Metroidvania aspect of the game starts to reveal itself, as you make your way back and forth through multiple areas to activate switches to raise and lower platforms covered in salt so you can traverse to the end of the level.

You also find yourself armed, to shoot environmental threats and mobs.

Unfortunately, it just didn't grab me. I found myself watching the timer waiting for the 15 minutes to be up.

Dandara is a:

1: Nope

#Dandara #Platformer #Metroidvania #MastodonGaming #Gaming #Project365ONG #Project365 #NewPlay