Activities
Today
I recently joined Play or Pay group and here is the progress after 2 months!
Completed
Beaten
Playing
Yet to Start
August 2026
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STASIS: BONE TOTEM
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Pseudoregalia
7.4 hours playtime
no achievements
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Fourmiworld
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Voidwrought
16.9 hours playtime
51 of 69 achievements
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PixelJunk™ Eden
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ILA: A Frosty Glide
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Candellum
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Where the Water Tastes Like Wine
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Mind Over Magnet
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Late Shift
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DAVE THE DIVER
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Bomb Rush Cyberfunk
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Etrian Odyssey II HD
- Stasis: Bone Totem: Highly atmospheric horror adventure, as a couple and their deceased daughter’s robot bear (so ugly a design!) explore an abandoned deep ocean rig, descending into a post-Lovecraftian nightmare (post Tomb Raider 2015 too, I think). Satisfying puzzles, reasonable acting, and story development that on a number of occasions answered some initial skepticism. You will be handwaving the science throughout; the ability to teleport objects between the characters is a core mechanic introduced almost immediately. It has body horror, gore, and the deep ocean, and is tense but not scary (there are some death scenes, but they’re more of a tension break because of the way they’re rendered). Particularly welcome was how the game immediately identified necessary points of interest. There were two earlier games (Stasis, and the free CAYNE) which I haven’t played, but they don’t appear particularly related, or necessary to have played first. 9+/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Pseudoregalia: 3d metroidvania platformer built around a range of movement abilities. There’s only a few times when you actually need to fight, and most enemies are just a minor hazard that can easily be ignored, particularly the near-harmless chickens – it’s the traversal and exploration that’s the star of the game. Particularly nice is the way that so many small shortcuts can be unlocked to facilitate speedy backtracking. The interconnectivity plus the range of abilities consequently allows for some flexible routing; there were a few times when exiting an area that I realised I could have approached from that way instead. Geometry and texturing is very N64-era (though thankfully without the pop-in of those games), but this can actually aid readability as your agile anthropomorphic jackalope (?) navigates the world: a hazy crumbling castle, which is perhaps influenced by those in games from Ueda and Miyazaki. The map is where it falls down very slightly, with no markings for collectables or save points, no identification of your position and orientation in the “room”, and no way to look at other areas to help plan what to do next. The challenge ramps up towards the end as you need to do some fairly well-timed sequences of wall runs and multiple wall kicks, but it’s still all on the right side of frustration. No achievements, so endgame screenshots a,b,c 9/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Fourmiworld: A truly open world 2d side-on digger/metroidvania, where almost all terrain is destructable. It’s a little hard to explain, but this feels particularly unironically old-school UK (say mid-80s to mid-90s) in a way that I’ve not seen too many modern retro games even aim for: it’s not just the aesthetics, but the combination of overall focus (there are requirements for completion that aren’t digging, but it doesn’t feel discontinuous from the core game) and playful experimental weirdness in the details. A very subjective and debatable 9/10. (free, but you can pay for the lore tracker DLC)
- Voidwrought: A metroidvania, which got much much better once I finally defeated the second boss (I should have done it sooner rather than exploring thoroughly… although it might have been possible to get Phased Flesh before that, which would have opened things right up)… and then I accidentally sequence broke my way to a late-game ability. Routing is highly flexible and much of the game is optional, as the map is nicely interconnected , and there’s a range of core and special abilities and buffs (double jump was my last ability gained, I apparently missed an ability, and there’s a method of augmenting a different form of traversal which I barely used). The world record is well under an hour. I took much longer. 9/10
- Pixeljunk Eden: In search of five “Spectra” blossoms in each Garden world, you collect nearby pollen to grow new plants that you can scale on your way upwards and outwards. Each world adds something new into the mix, whether moves, enemies, or changes in the world rules. You are mostly leaping from perch to perch. There’s a swing, but this is mostly for area control/collection and only every so often for additional distance in traversal but it’s not really chainable. Good electro+vocals music, and abstract/psychadelic silhouette graphics. Overall an enjoyable experience. Interestingly (?) there’s no recorded speedrun.com completions for Garden 10 or Any%, so you could become a World Champion if you were so inclined to time and record it. 8.5/10
- ILA: A Frosty Glide: An exploration collectathon where a young witch must summit an island in search of her cat. It is not hard, but certainly a little more difficult at times than its kiddy veneer might suggest. Often not entirely different to a wintery Re:Fresh in vibe, but better overall. There was one thoroughly unintuitive progress blocker where got stuck because I needed to repeatedly stomp something a lot despite the lack of feedback or (I believe) significant cluing that that was what was needed. 8/10
- Candellum: A free very short game (there’s an achievement for completing in under 10 minutes) with an interesting life mechanic: as a warrior candle, your wax is constantly burning away, but you can send your flame to enemies and regain wax through killing them. It’s a linear set of arenas and puzzles, with one necessary upgrade, one “collectable” on a branch, and one boss – not (as the tags might have you believe) a metroidvania. It is, however, excellent for a student game. 7.5/10 (free)
- Where the Water Tastes Like Wine: You travel an out-of-time and mythic dustbowl-era America, experiencing events and hearing stories, which you later discover have mutated into taller tales in the retelling. At campfires dotted throughout the land, you’ll run across travellers and share tales with them – travellers who are in the process of transforming mythically themselves. It’s well written, overall (there’s a wide range of writers; you may recognise some), the mutation of the stories can be very amusing, and I wanted to see where everything went. The music is great. Where this game fights you – and fights you hard – is the travel. The map is large, you need to physically move from story to story, they are scattered at random locations and at named cities, the map has untraversable mountain ranges that constrain your pathing, and … walking … is … slow. You can hitchhike, but cars go only one way on roads and you can’t hop out voluntarily if you see events to pick up. You can hop a train, but each will take you to only one city, and distribution is uneven. You need to complete the journeys of all 16 fireside travellers, with multiple fireside chats at different locations per traveller, to finish the game. Each of the travellers rewards you with an item allowing fast travel to a city, but even with that they’re unevenly distributed and there’s so much tracking and backtracking and backtracking. I think this would have been more enjoyable if navigation were abstracted out. Particularly cheeky is that the final achievement deliberately cannot be obtained. 7.5/10
- Mind over Magnet: Short and pretty good puzzler about flipping switches, magnetic fields, and polarity. I got stuck on the very last level, forgot about it for a couple of months, and on returning had another few stabs at the level, and then discovered that it could be skipped in the options… which sent me to the end and gave me the final achievement. Having rediscovered a mechanic while the credits were scrolling, I then went back and solved it for real. 7.5/10
- Late Shift: An FMV, with high production values and overall good acting, but some incredibly dubious plot developments. As a made-up example, imagine if the main character had been knocked down by a hit and run driver, and a paramedic tells him “You’ve got some broken bones and internal bleeding, and you’re going to die if you don’t get treated properly. It’ll take you at least an hour to reach a hospital. Better start walking that way.” The achievements suggest that the game should be played multiple times to see its seven endings and everything in between. The game suggests that this should be arduous, because previously watched scenes are unskippable. 7+/10
- Dave the Diver: Dave the Diver is about the most jack-of-all-trades master-of-none of games I’ve played. It can be charming and amusing, and I thought I’d like this way way more than I did, as I hadn’t paid attention to reviews, but knew it had a bunch of awards, and remembered hearing good things about it in passing from a couple of streamers. On the one hand there is the more-or-less expected roguelite as its core, where you dive, catch fish, upgrade your gear, explore, complete quests and sidequests, and face bosses. On the other it’s what must be hundreds of different minigames and systems in a
trenchcoatwetsuit, and most of them are not particularly good. The real Balatro is certainly better than this one’s anemic micro version. Even the various special harpoon heads each have an individual mechanic for how they reel in resistant fish. One requires frantically waggling the thumbstick – which is pleasant for neither hand nor controller, and is a mechanic that should have gone out of fashion in the 1980s. The map variety in the Blue Hole is limited; its fish and pickups will vary in their range and location, but not significantly. The key problem in its apparent focus – catching fish – is that your harpoon damage upgrade path tops out both early and with relatively low damage, which means that you need to be spearing even small fish on deeper levels 2-5 times before you can catch it – and that adds length and tedium but generally not challenge. If you like your games to have more variety than focus, with a grab-bag of systems and a huge list of things to collect and upgrade you may well be one of the many who love it. I, however, avoid restaurant and farming and grindy crafting and bullet hell games, and Dave the Diver is all of that and more and more. A justifiably biased 7/10 (Steamgifts win) - Bomb Rush Cyberfunk: This is absolutely a love letter to the Jet Set Radio series, though I only played JSR Future and don’t remember its details after so many years (my vibe is I enjoyed it). But that released in 2002, and we’ve had a number of arcadey extreme sports with deeper mechanics and level design since (and before – THPS3!), such as Tony Hawk 4, Aggressive Inline, and various snowboarding and wakeboarding and cycling games, among others. BRC may well replicate JSR/F’s gameplay, but in 2026 it disappointed, with: perfect balance no matter how long the grind (you grind not only for navigation/mobility, but for required points/combo so it matters in a way it didn’t in, say, Gori or Sonic); a limited range of tricks; levels with way too much dead/mundane space (with limited lines, and without things like skitching to speed traversal or named gaps to keep areas meaningful); unsatisfying regular combat with unlimited enemies when you trigger heat by graffiti-ing, only being reset by changing your outfit (and at some point even once will trigger or raise heat); and overall a relatively low level of challenge. On the upside, the art and music is pleasant, controls are fine, the bosses are ok, and levels have some optional secret side areas for collectables and tag spots. 7/10 (Steamgifts win)
- Etrian Odyssey II HD: A Japanese blobber RPG whose key gimmick is that you draw your own map (although there is an automap option to skip that; I didn’t). Given that you have thirty character slots available in town, and your party size is five, there’s some complexity available in combining and optimising character builds that’s severely lacking in the dungeon crawling but I didn’t get around to exploring that. You’ll have a random encounter every twenty steps or so, there’s a few secret walls that can be passed through inspection, and a couple of minor stepping puzzles to avoid tough enemies (represented by a featureless disc of various colours), but the dungeon world is thoroughly non-interactive compared with Grimrock, Eye of the Beholder, etc, though apparently there’s some kind of gimmicks in strata after the first. I killed the first major boss on the fifth floor, climbed the stairs to the second zone, and quit. The pop-in from the extremely limited viewing-distance is emblematic of how lazy this feels. 5.5/10 (Steamgifts win)
August
Loved the original release of summer pockets, wish this was the original release because it has 4 additional routes all of which are great.
and of course being a VN I simply need to 100% it so get to do the minigames again.
oh… and I simply love out of context screenshots to much
of the 4 new routes(Umi, Boobies, Nomiki and Shiki), Nomiki and Shiki are my favorites, I can't decide which I prefer of the 2.
I have mixed feelings on this, some things felt great… others terrible… doesn't help that action-adventure games like this is one of the genres I am the toughest to please with because Zelda games spoil me.
definitely not up to my standard to give a positive review
it only took me checks notes decades to get to this game, has aged pretty well… just like basically all SNES games(why is this console the main one where most games have aged very well!)
with this my SNES era backlog is finally finished… 2 games sit on the N64 backlog(jet force gemini which I own, and Kirby 64 which a friend owns)
the start of the game was a little to slow for me but it did get better pretty quickly at least.
nice little pachinko incremental
overall its a decent game… even if a bit to easy on the highest difficulty… the only thing that really posed any trouble(outside of maybe the first time surprise of what an enemy does) was the final boss.
the game world I found interesting at first… but it kinda got… boring, copy/paste level design, empty areas, not allowed to explore(you get teleported away AND lose some health… just for going places the dev did not want you which also did not have any hazards). Same with the color scheme they went with, interesting at first… but eventually the dull grey environments just get… boring.
most of the collectibles are not well hidden either, there are some a little more hidden, I did skip a few towards the end just to finish the game..
Yesterday
August 2026
Lacuna: This was a really good game. Great story, art, music. I just wish it was longer, though. I thought it ended pretty fast. The puzzles weren’t that hard to do and I think some of the plot twists were pretty obvious, not that either of those are a bad thing per se. But yeah, had a great time with this game. 8/10.
Resident Evil 4 Remake: I was pleasantly surprised that it could run on my hardware. My CPU’s old and I recall the first time I tried the demo, it was stuttering a lot, but I think turning off Ambient Occlusion did the trick and removed the stutters. I thought it was great. There are a lot of things they improved upon, and I do prefer this one’s combat over the original. Ashley and Luis felt like better characters.
There are things that I thought the original did better though. The villains felt better then, they were kind of boring here especially Saddler. I missed Leon’s banters with the villains back in the original game. I didn’t like Ada and Wesker’s voice acting either. I thought Ada’s voice felt flat but I did think it’s getting better in her DLC (haven’t finished it yet but from what I’ve heard thus far, it sounded better) so could be a voice direction issue. Wesker, I thought his voice in general is fine, but it’s not Wesker. It felt like a generic try-hard villain. I really dislike the direction they went for his voice. I also wish they gave us a “Classic Ada” outfit. I understand they’re trying to make the remakes more grounded in reality (and her new outfit worked if that’s the goal) but the dress was too iconic.
Still a 10/10 though. I think right now, I still prefer RE8 (just really loved the atmosphere/setting and villains), but that might change once I start to 100% this game. I recall I didn’t like RE8 that much at first either then I went for a 100% run and I was sad when I finally finished it (except for that game’s mercenaries, screw that, did not enjoy playing those).
Beholder 2: I didn’t really like the gameplay that much. I thought it was too repetitive and boring. The story and setting itself didn’t really intrigued me. Sometimes it just felt edgy/shock humor for the sake of being one. Also, I’ve never played the first game, but I’m pretty sure if I had I’d probably give this game a lower score. I could see myself being very annoyed at what they did to the protagonist at the first game. Anyhoo it’s a 5/10. I’m glad that it wasn’t very long and that they didn’t really force the gameplay (mini game?) on you too much.
Penumbra: Overture: I’m not sure how I feel about this game. It wasn’t really scary and the enemies are too easy to kill. They weren’t the smartest NPC either. It takes a while for them to actually notice you. The story was… fine. It ends on a cliffhanger. When I looked it up, apparently the Penumbra series was supposed to be episodic and this was the first episode but they ended it in the sequel. I’m intrigued with what happens next though. Light spoiler: I didn’t really expect the reveal in the end. 7/10.
Blacksad: Under the Skin: Great story, but sadly the gameplay sucked and it was a terrible experience. Poor optimization, sluggish movement/janky controls, bugs. It just stutters a lot (to be fair, my hardware sucks but I’m seeing people online with decent rigs report poor performance as well) and the protagonist’s movement is so bad. He walks so slow and sometimes you need to be extremely precise to interact with some things you need to progress. He just sometimes doesn’t turn in the way you want him to so you miss what you’ve been trying to interact with for the past 5 minutes. There was also a section where you control a flashlight and that was one of the worse parts in the game to play. And two mildly annoying things: when the game starts, the music is 100% and takes a few seconds to remember your settings. And turning off controller vibration does not turn it off either. The voice acting is a bit of a hit or miss. Some of the characters are decent. I like Blacksad’s, but some of the other VAs are terrible and I wish I could just read their dialogue and skip their VA. Sadly the dialogues are all unskippable. The story is genuinely great though and it gets better as the game goes on. It just sucks that the game itself is terrible. 8/10 for the story, 5/10 for the overall experience.
Chrono Trigger: I think it’s a good and very well-made game especially considering when it was first released. I had fun playing it but ultimately, I don’t think I loved it as much as I was hoping to. My expectations going in were just too high because of how people talked about it online. I was expecting an amazing, deep story but it was more simple than what I was expecting. Not that that’s a bad thing, they did the story well, but I was expecting more. When it ended I just thought “that’s it?”. That’s on me though. I really should’ve had a lower expectation going in.
I loved pretty much everything else besides the story and the combat though. Speaking of the combat, I hate the active turn-based thing. I wish it wasn’t timed. But I appreciated the lack of random encounters. The art is legit one of the best pixel arts I’ve seen, and the OST is also one of the best ones I’ve listened to recently. I never got tired of them (and I’ll be honest, in a lot of games I play nowadays I tend to mute the music because I get sick of it looping). It was also fun to explore the different time periods (the one in 12000BC really impressed me when I first got into it). 8/10 for now. Not sure if the rating will increase as I go through the endings and 100% it, but we’ll see.
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Beholder 2
11 hours playtime
19 of 52 achievements
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Blacksad: Under the Skin
19 hours playtime
18 of 39 achievements
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CHRONO TRIGGER
56 hours playtime
3 of 13 achievements
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Lacuna
8 hours playtime
12 of 25 achievements
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Penumbra: Overture
7 hours playtime
no achievements
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Resident Evil 4
20 hours playtime
17 of 46 achievements
Goals for September 2026
All of these besides Rain World are Play or Pay picks (Rain World is a PoP win). I’m hoping to 100% as much as I can. I don’t think I’d be able to 100% Cuphead and Middle-earth though but I’m hoping I could beat them before the cycle ends.
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BioShock Remastered
6 hours playtime
7 of 65 achievements
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CHRONO TRIGGER
56 hours playtime
3 of 13 achievements
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Cuphead
19 hours playtime
6 of 42 achievements
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Middle-earth™: Shadow of Mordor™
8 hours playtime
9 of 74 achievements
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Rain World
10 hours playtime
5 of 47 achievements
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Spirit of the North
6 hours playtime
4 of 24 achievements
Mostly completed or played - August 2026
- Kill the shadow, probably my 2nd favorite indie this year, a rich and interconnected story, plenty of well written NPC, hidden masterpiece for sure !- I had received Star wars squadrons from a friend years ago. Too late my fault as it was a mostly multiplayer game, but i still could finish the solo campaign.
Urbo
6 hours, 29 of 29 achievements
Kill The Shadow
19 hours, 41 of 41 achievements
IRON NEST: Heavy Turret Simulator
17 hours, 19 of 33 achievements
Trench Lord: Eastern Front
15 hours, 30 of 78 achievements
STAR WARS™: Squadrons
17 hours, 5 of 47 achievements
August/September theme - All Things GREAT and small
- Finished Hand of fate Hordes ! I thought the studio was very dead after Hand of fate 2, but they managed to come back and release a spin-off. I’ve mixed feelings about this one. Amazing ambiance and sound effects, the power ascending is exhilarating. But it’s also extremely hard, damn grindy to get the permanent upgrades, and it needs serious balancing.
Hand of Fate: Hordes
19 hours, 17 of 24 achievements
Won on steamgifts
- Tailor Simultator - proof last outfit available actually Nice idea, i had a lot of fun exploring the machines and clothing patterns. But the further you progress, the more grindy it gets. I hired 2 assistants who sewed on their own to help me, didn't quite understand how to make the most of them, but in any case, it worked. Though the 1 million $ and 7.000 popularity points still look crazy far away. Some of the fabrics are really pretty, i really like the ones used for the dresses. But i wish we could use a thread different from the fabric. Also while the cutting system is actually pretty good, it's sad that you can't design and sew your own patterns. A faster, more user-friendly interface would also be extremely welcome. Maybe in the future as it's still on early-access ?- Golden Lap - proof ending text Good arcade game, much more accessible for those who don't know well F1 or don't want to devote oneself to a simulation with lots of complicated parameters. It's fun to manage the tires based on the weather, and learn when to speed up or slow down. After some years it becomes very grindy. 10 races per year on 10 years, that's quite a lot ! But it's still a nice experience to see the team progress and get so many victories. As a note, it's a weird game because there are so many dead and accidents, fortunately not so many in real F1 !
Tailor Simulator
16 hours, 15 of 18 achievements
Golden Lap
24 hours, 40 of 44 achievements
In progress - plan for next month
- So many good games to discover, i'm really excited !! :D
art of rally
4 hours, 14 of 43 achievements
The Last Gas Station
4 hours, 20 of 68 achievements
Silent Shark
7 hours, 10 of 32 achievements
Mandate Order
3 hours, 7 of 40 achievements
Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
24 hours (4h this month), 5 of 83 achievements
Have fun for next month !
#2 - 30 August 2026
I’ve discovered the joy of playing Coloring Pixels while listening to an audiobook in the background, and so over the next few months I’ll try to complete the packs I already own in Coloring Pixels while also tackling my literary TBR. I listened to Anna Karenina for the most of this pack, but the pack was completed before I could finish the audiobook.
I really enjoyed the Bakery Pack, I think the images were fun and none of the images made me want to commit violence due to how complicated or time consuming they were (looking at you, Cute Pack). Overall a win!
August 2026 results
| Priority | Backlog | Added this month | Beaten | Removed |
| High | 136 | 4 | 5 | - |
| Medium | 228 | - | - | 1 |
Mafia: The Old Country - Man of Honor
SILENT HILL: Townfall
Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival
Aug 29 2026
#432
#42 of 2026
August 29, 2026
Aug 28 2026
Report 95: June - August 2026
I might as well post it right now, I don’t think I’ll finish any new games in the next few days.
- Horripilant
28 hours playtime
57 of 57 achievements - Back in 1995
2 hours playtime
12 of 12 achievements - Zombo Buster Advance
20 hours playtime
94 of 94 achievements - Dead Finger Dice
2 hours playtime
23 of 23 achievements - Death and Progress
2 hours playtime
7 of 7 achievements - Bad Dream: Coma
11 hours playtime
21 of 21 achievements - Bad Dream: Fever
3 hours playtime
no achievements
- Blood Orange
2 hours playtime
10 of 10 achievements - THRESHOLD
4 hours playtime
14 of 14 achievements - Minishoot' Adventures
15 hours playtime
34 of 34 achievements - Lorelai
9 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements - Thank Goodness You're Here!
5 hours playtime
32 of 32 achievements - ENA: Dream BBQ
4 hours playtime
14 of 14 achievements - Mass Effect™ Legendary Edition
42 hours playtime
47 of 127 achievements
Horripilant It was pretty fun, but kinda turned out to be a slog later. I don’t actually remember how I felt after finishing it (maybe I should go back to monthly reports…), but I’m a sucker for incrementals, so I guess I liked it enough to complete it in a few days. The puzzle and exploration aspects were the most interesting part, kinda reminding me of what I felt playing The Longing, in a way. 7/10
Back in 1995 - While trying to replicate the older survival horror games, the creator did a much worse version of them. I mean, come on, they didn’t look and felt so ass back then. I really don’t like to shit on creators, but it was an incoherent mess, gameplay-, story- and concept-wise. I have no clue what the epilogue dev commentary tried to tell me since i skipped some of the commentary somehow and the message wasn’t really that clear. It’s a pretty bad game, there’s a lot of much better nostalgia-inducing titles for that. 3/10
Zombo Buster Advance - Sequel to Zombo Buster Rising, but now it’s a Plants vs. Zombies rip-off. It was fun to get through though, but holy shit some of these achievements are grindy as hell. 6/10
Death and Progress - Small adventure game. To get to the good ending, you’ll have to die as little as possible. Some of the segments were kinda rage-inducing (maybe I’m just bad). 6/10
Bad Dream Coma - That’s a pretty good point’n’click that reminds me of Newgrounds games. It is nearly impossible to get all of the achievements without reffering to guides, though. Had to complete it multiple, and I mean -multiple- times. 7/10
Bad Dream Fever - As you’ve already guessed, it’s a sequel. It’s much easier and straightforward, almost like a visual novel. 6,5/10
Blood Orange - Kinda cool, but doesn’t really do much with pretty much every element of itself. I don’t really know how to explain it. I’d play something a bit longer, I think. 6,5/10
Threshold - Interesting. Kind of a slog to play through again for different achievements, when you figure out how stuff functions here and the magic dissapears a bit. 7/10
Minishoot’ Adventures - Alright, it’s a Zelda clone with tiny flying spaceships, but it’s reeeeeeally fun. I enjoyed the hell out exploring it. 8,5/10
Lorelai Ah, I missed unapologetic edginess of Harvester Games. This one didn’t dissapoint either. Plays pretty much the same as the first two games in the trilogy, but I like it. The cruelty can get a bit ridiculous at times though. 8/10
Thank Goodness You’re Here - Adventure game with strange british humor. I liked most of the gags though. 7/10
ENA Dream BBQ - This is what Yume Nikki Remake could’ve been if it was on steroids (and good). The artwork is amazing. Never seen ENA before, but I think I just might check it out now. 8/10
Mass Effect: Legendary Edition / Mass Effect 1 - Replayed the first ME in it’s remastered… glory? Now when I started ME2, ME1 feels so janky, especially the sidequests’ content. All these samey rooms, planets… You really shouldn’t grind the shit out ME1 like I did (if you’re not trying to get all of the achievements at least). The main plot content is pretty good, at least. 7,5/10
I’m having a 19-day vacation in the second half of September, so September and October might be really good months for backlog assassinations. Or I’ll just play the shit out Mass Effect trilogy. And Cell to Singulartiy. That’s a really cool edutaiment incremental, learned a lot of new stuff there.
Backlog progress status:
July/August Update!
Mixtape
3 hours, no achievements
4/10 parties
More
Played on Game Pass
Mixtape is a story-driven interactive game. You play as Stacey Rockford, a music enthusiast who is spending one last day with her friends before moving away.
Mixtape is completely linear. There aren't really choices and the story cannot branch in any direction. The gameplay is very minimal. Mostly walking, skateboarding, minigames, talking, and observing things. It is supposed to take place in the 90's, but none of it feels 90's. The music is more 80's, and the dialogue and setting feels like someone trying to evoke nostalgia, but not quite hitting the mark.
I didn't really connect with any of the characters. I didn't like the music. I didn't feel nostalgic. I am a fan of story-driven interactive games, but this one didn't connect with me. I did like the artstyle. There were a couple moments that made me laugh. The coming-to-age plot will always be relevant and hit its mark for a lot of people. Personally, I was looking for a game to capture the magic of Life is Strange one and this one wasn't it.
I'd only recommend this game on a very steep discount.
The Quarry
10 hours, no achievements
7/10 camp councilors
More
The Quarry is a choice-based horror game. It is made Supermassive Games, who made "Until Dawn" and the "Dark Pictures" games.
The story follows nine teenage camp councilors. They become stranded at camp and realize that they may not be alone…
I skipped this game at first. Supermassive can be very hit or miss. After beating House of Ashes, I wanted to give this a shot. This isn't as good as House of Ashes, but I really enjoyed it!
The quarry is single player only. There is a two-player mode but it has you pass the controller to a friend, and the sections are uneven for playtime. This game also plays just like their others. It doesn't stand out as far as gameplay goes. You control each of the councilors and make choices on their behalf. Any of them can die. All of them can survive. You walk around, make important choices, and always prepare to have a QTE thrown at you. There are a lot of cutscenes.
The quarry can branch in different directions based on your choices. Most lead to a character dying or surviving. Some of the good choices do require you to think ahead or remember something from before. When I first started, I really hated the characters. They were so embarrassing to listen to that I I almost stopped playing. I'm glad I stuck with it, because they do get better as you progress. Every decision was nerve wracking because I was terrified of getting any of the characters killed!
I think the story was very neat and it had a perfect mix of horror and comedy. It does a great job at slowly building the suspense and mystery, and its a really fun time if you go in completely blind. It's also very rewarding to the players that really pay attention the the dialogue and story.
Unfortunately, even with its great setup and story development, The Quarry has a super rushed ending. The ending is serviceable, but doesn't feel satisfying. You don't feel like you got the closure you wanted and it should have been longer.
The game is intense and has a good story. They didn't quite stick the landing, but it's still worth playing. There is also a cosmetic DLC that adds a rewind feature. You can reverse three deaths if you own the DLC.
I recommend this game on discount, not the full price. I really enjoyed it, but I wouldn't have paid $60 for it.
The Complex is a short FMV choice game. The cutscenes are live action.
The game has a lot of potential. The acting and production was very good. It never felt cheap. The acting never took me out of the story. I game mainly takes place in one room, but I was fully engrossed. The problem is that It felt like a demo to an interesting story that didn't quite feel complete. Not to mention the choices were not very good and the biggest choice was confusing/misleading.
By the time the story really got interesting, the game was over. There is also no way to go back and make different choices without starting the whole game over. It is short, but since there is no gameplay, I'd rather not watch the whole thing again to see the other endings.
I didn't dislike The Complex . It's a fun sci-fi thriller, and they put a lot of work and effort into it. The actors did a great job and it felt like I was watching a well budgeted film. Would I recommend it? Not full price, personally. I'm new to the FMV space, but I have played much better ones for the same price.
Distance is a driving platformer with parkour elements. It also has an interesting sci-fi cyberpunk like story.
I'm going to be honest here. I did not like this game. When I first beat it, I was like, hey.. that's pretty good! The driving felt fluid. The levels were well designed, and the game was very atmospheric. I also love games that have a small hint of psychological horror.
But truthfully, I was not having fun. And to be honest, it was mostly my fault.
Do not make the same mistake I did. Do not play this game on keyboard.
I tend to play all my games on keyboard and mouse. Even ones that are much better suited for controller. This game should be played with controller. It was my stubbornness and laziness that drew out my suffering. I was led into a false sense of security when it started, but once I learned the gravity flips, it was downright painful.
Driving games are also not really my thing. Even with it being one of my disliked genres, I do really think Distance had a unique quality and spin to it that separated it from other driving games.
Would I recommend this? No. I was very bored and frustrated. Reviews are good though, and I don't think it's a bad game at all.
007 First Light
27.7 hours, 22 of 37 achievements
9/10 attempts to guess "M"s name.
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007 First Light is an action adventure game, where you play as James Bond before he becomes 007.
This game was crazy fun. It reminded me a lot of Uncharted, which is one of my favorite game series. I've never played Hitman, but apparently it plays similar to that series as well. Every mission has multiple paths you can take to complete it. You can also stealth or go in guns blazing, and the game doesn't penalize you or try to shame you on your playstyle. As long as you have that license to kill.
James Bond is a fun character. He does remind me a lot of Nathan Drake, or like the many other snarky charming wise cracking characters you see in media. I've only seen the Sean Connery and Pierce Brosnan films, but I enjoyed how different he was to those Bonds and how he stood out.
There are so many different ways to stealth through the game. You can even use gadgets to aid you. The settings and action sequences were top notch. I thought the story was incredibly engaging. You can also just walking up to any random npc and they are probably having a detailed conversation with other npcs. The world feels lived in.
I really loved First Light. Loved the characters, the story, the production value, the settings, the gameplay, the variety of gameplay styles. I'd highly recommend it.
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Retro Game Corner
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Retro Game Corner
👾Pokémon White
Another retro game done! I feel like my opinion on this one is going to be very controversial. Especially because I had zero nostalgia going into this.
The last Pokemon game I beat was in 2004 and it was Pokemon Emerald. I was obsessed! I didn't have a Nintendo DS growing up, so I missed out on an entire generation of highly rated Pokemon games. That's why I decided to play my first one, which was Pokemon: White.
I have some critiques. I'd actually love to hear from you guys if these critiques are valid, or if Pokemon games are just no longer for me. First of all, I felt like the gameplay didn't add anything new from when I played in 2004, even though this game came out six years later. There were tiny things added like triple battles, but the rest of the gameplay felt exactly the same. It also felt like there was a lot more battling than usual.
In between every single new area, there was a very long stretch of trainers you had to battle. That's nothing new, but there weren't fun things to discover or fun locations to explore. It was just town one, 10 trainers, town two, etc. There was also an egregious amount of wild Pokemon popping up. Once again, nothing new I know. You walk in grass, you get wild Pokemon. It was just the sheer amount of Pokemon. I'd run into 5 wild Pokemon going across 10 grass spots. It got worse as the game went on. I had to carry repels just to walk across a thin stretch of grass. There was even a cave in the game that took me 30 minutes to get out without the trainer battles. I forgot to stock up on repels going in and it was like walking through hell. Every single step was an encounter.
The formula is the same. Collect from every gym leader and then battle the Elite Four. The game was less about becoming a Pokemon champion and more about fighting off the new villain group. This actually leads me to the topic of the story, which started out very strong but then promptly tripped all over itself. The villains are stealing Pokemon from their trainers because they firmly believe that Pokemon should live free. Pokemon aren't happy being used for battle and shouldn't be imprisoned just because people enjoy having them. They didn't use those words, but it's a rough paraphrase.
I actually loved the direction they were going with this story. The villains suddenly have depth. They aren't just thug #1 and thug #2. They are doing something legally wrong, but with the belief that they are doing something morally right. It would have been really impressive if the game had the player question if it is morally wrong to carry these Pokemon throughout the game or if the bond you share is truly real. Unfortunately it's ruined when you discover that the villains are hypocrites that also use Pokemon for battle. They act like they are in a brainwashed cult, and the main villain never actually cared about Pokemon rights. He just wanted to rule the world and made the entire moral dilemma up as a means to an end.
Pokemon games were made for kids. They never had deep stories or interesting characters. I wish the creators would realize that kids can understand depth and not every piece of dialogue had to be simple and childish. Kids can understand a complex story and the adults playing it would enjoy it as well. Movies like The Incredibles, Inside Out, or The Iron Giant are perfect examples of kids' movies that have complex emotions and themes.
I'm going pretty hard on this game, so let me say what I did like. I respected their decision to only have new Pokémon in the game. I also liked the new Pokemon. The designs were neat. I thought some characters were very interesting, like the character N. I just really wish we expanded on him, since his story felt cut short. There were also a lot of cool multiplayer options that I unfortunately couldn't use, but loved the option regardless. The ending felt a little abrupt, but the final battle was very cool. I liked the cutscene animation. Also, the Elite Four actually felt difficult. They were much harder than the other games I've played.
I know a lot of people loved this game, so I'd love to hear from you. What parts am I misunderstanding or not appreciating? What game (if any) would you recommend I play next?
Next Time:
I’m currently playing through Death Stranding 2 on the PS5. I’m starting Dragon Age Inquisition for my PoP. Hopefully I can beat it this upcoming month. Lastly, I’m playing Chrono Trigger (Ds version) for the first time for my retro corner.
Thanks for reading! I hope everyone has a great September!