Welp, this game sure did happen.

• Shu
  

  2 hours playtime

  19 of 42 achievements

This is a platformer. You have five lives to get from one checkpoint to the next, with your lives being restocked at each checkpoint. At certain points in each world, you’ll get two NPCs following you, each one giving you a different ability (e.g. double-jump, ground pound, etc.) until the NPCs go away at the end of the world. Also, for the last one or two levels of each world, you’re being chased by a wall of death; not only does it seemingly move at different speeds for different levels (and maybe even different speeds for the same level), and not only does the level not autoscroll so you don’t know how far behind it is or how fast you need to go, but the wall can defy its speed just to lean forward and open its mouth and be scary, even if you’re not that close to being caught by it. Oh, and if you do get killed by the wall, it starts at a predetermined distance from the last checkpoint even if it was much closer when you made it to said checkpoint, so there might be points where you have to die (at least if you get one of the collectibles).

Each level has six main collectibles, and while they aren’t exactly in your way, they aren’t too hard to miss, either. If you do miss one, chances are it’s because you went the “wrong” way on an obvious split path rather than any clever level design. The game also has achievements for collecting enough of the yellow butterflies in each level (think coins from Mario), though the game isn’t above putting butterflies on one path and a main collectible on the other path during a chase segment, adding artificial replayability since it’s impossible to get both on one run. There are also stone tablets hidden throughout the levels (usually one per level), and the path to these items are always obscured by foreground objects, sometimes without anything sticking out to indicate anything being there.

Beyond that, there really isn’t much to this game. The level design is extremely flat, empty, and basic (even going into the post-game), and if you do get killed, it’s usually because the game does something cheap, like the same-model statues falling when you’re at different distances from them, or the horizontally-moving thorn bush moving into the screen too quickly, or just general hazards not standing out from the scenery. At least horizontal movement is responsive, even in midair (push forward = move forward; let go of forward = stop moving forward), but holding the “float down” button sends you forward automatically (so you have to push left and right to fall relatively straight) and the power that lets you be pushed by updrafts also has momentum, meaning you can let go half-way up the room and still run into the spikes.

So yeah, I wouldn’t recommend it. Like, it’s better than Famicom-exclusive shovelware titles like Tadaima Shugyou Chuu, but even if you’re looking for an easy platformer, the cheap hits will dampen your experience.

I have completed Teleglitch!

And if you don’t understand how awesome that is, you haven’t played that game (much). Also I have completed 140 (again) …. like 10 minutes ago:

• Teleglitch: Die More Edition
  

  58 hours playtime

  39 of 39 achievements

• 140
  

  12 hours playtime

  8 of 8 achievements

Teleglitch: Well, what to say here. Teleglitch has been sitting for the longest time in my Completion Rate Downer list. I had 24 from 39 achievements and didnt think I would some day get more because …. you know …. the game is hard. I played the game for over 20 hours and I have seen at best Level 7 from 10. The game itself is a rogue-lite top-down low resolution shooter in a dystopian future where different factions are developing new ways to kill each other and you are a scientiest in one of those lovely research institutes …. which had recently some kind of accident - the Teleglitch incident. You wake up with a pistol and a knife and a lot of stuff which wants to kill you. Each level you have to search for the teleporter to progress. Ammo is scarce in a sense that if you don’t know what you do, you will run out …. fast. If you miss to much … again. The game starts easy enough: Level 1 - Mutants, can be killed with the knife, melee only, Level 2 - Larger Mutants and Zombies, horrible moving pattern but still easy, Level 3 - First armed enemies, if you don’t have an armor 3 shots will kill you, Level 4 - 20 armed enemies, the game starts separating the casual player from the dedicated, Level 5 - Roboter bosses; yea you are screwed. With Level 4 the game really becomes difficult and failing means you have to replay previous level again. While there are unlockable shortcuts you need to beat levels further down the line to get them. For the starting point in level 3 you have to have reached level 5. For Level 5 it must have been Level 7 and so on. This means in order to unlock a new starting point you need to get at least past four consecutive levels. Luckily, past Adelion manage to reach Level 7 like …. once. And so I could start in Level 5 which was my starting point for most of my runs as it gives you quite a good selection of items and let you craft - yes there is crafting - powerlegs (faster movement) and a teleporter (second chance in case of death).
And so I played, and tried and tried. And I reached Level 7 again …. and died. I tried and tried again and found out that level 8 has another boss …. and died. I wondered how much farther I could get. Achievement wise I would be happy with 4-5 more achievements and beating Level 7 gave me already one. Reching level 9 would unlocked the arena. Usually another easy one, plus the achievements for beating the Level 8 boss and completing Level 8. And then it finally clicked, I could reproduce my games. I tried again. I’ve beated Level 8 boss and died. I tried again and reached level 10 and I died again. I found out that the Level 7 starting point is shit and kept the Level 5 one. Then, I managed to get to the last boss in the game - literally a rotating wall of death - and died again. And then ….. I survived the Teleglitch incident, the first time. And I become greedy. Teleglitch - in an odd similarity to Toki Tori 2+ (see previous update) - is a game where knowledge is power. The more you know the easier it gets. The game can still screw you over by placing three welders, 2 scientists and a squid directly at the start of a new level. But, it becomes manageable, reproduceable. And I started to go for the harder achievements - Surviving without Teleporters (can be done by starting from level 9, still difficult), completing the game starting from Level 1 (takes about 3-4 hours) which is easier if you know what you are doing. And then I had accumulated three wins and only one achievement remained. Beating the last boss in 10 seconds which took me ….. another 20 hours and 10 runs to finally get this done. But yea, I have completed the game which I never thought i could do. But most of the game becomes manageable once you get past the knowledge lock. Also the later levels feel easier, there is some kind of difficulty spike from level 4-7.

140: Euphorized, I decided to tackle another old burden. The last mirror level from 140. I completed the game before by beating all three levels and the respective three mirror levels and then the developer meant it would be cool to update the game with a fourth one. I have a different opinion about that. As the mirror levels have to be beaten in one go, I wanted to skip this one as the fourth level has a weird rhythm. Ah, yes. 140 is a minimalistic platformer where you unlock new level elements accompanied with new rhythms and the deadly elements move with the music.
Playing the fourth level over and over again - first in normal mode to get practice, then mirror mode - I started to wonder why the game has so many good reviews. And I think it is because most people don’t play the mirror levels. Because in there, a horrible design flaw gets visible. The game expects you to move anti-rhythmic. So the platform you are standing on will become deadly with the next beat. This means you have to jump prior to it which means you can’t use the beat as indicator but have to anticipate it. And in Level 4 this gets to a point where the music becomes counter-inuitive for the movement and you have to rely a lot on visual cues to solve the sections. In addition, the game has a kind of difficulty where a mistake means death, not repeting a section because you fell down, no …. death, repeating the whole level. And it doesnt set you to the beginning of the level but to the selection hub. You have to waste 10 seconds to restart the level, have to watch three seconds falling down. EVERY TIME. I sweared a lot but I managed to find reproduceable solutions for most selections. I feared that I would need several restarts caused by death by boss. But luckily I’ve beated him the very first time in mirror mode (non-mirror mode it always took at least 3-5 tries). So yea, right now I’m happy to have this annoying one completed to. If the developer makes another update I’ll get angry ….

So, two old burdes are done. One down from the Completion Rate Downer AND Unfinished list. And one more completed from my Steamgift Wins. Now, I will lock into what to tackle next. Maybe the euphorisation is enough for another no-death achievement …… Deadlight.

Ninglors Log 114

May Progress:
4/6

Completed Games:
The Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya

Won/Gifted Games:

Bought Games:

Played this week:

The Men of Yoshiwara: Kikuya

26 hours, 17 of 17 achievements

More

Cat Story ahead!
Cat story temporarily on hold – sry! :(

As stated before:
I’m happy to paint for each and everyone of you. Only fee are the material and shipping costs \o/
If you wanna give me something extra, that’s totally up to you and not expected ;)

Ninglorious
Ninglor_ious on Instagram

So much from me :)
Have a lovely week!
Queen Ninglor

Dad Tip #83 - Minimize eating fried foods, candy, and sweets

Today I finished Quell - a relaxing puzzle game (well, relaxing up until the very last 4-6 levels). The game starts out thoughtful and relaxing, then suddenly (without any warning) there is a huge up-tick in difficulty starting at the 6th-to-last puzzle or so, and continuing at that level (rising slightly higher) by the time you reach the end of the game. Would have enjoyed the game completely had the difficulty level been the same throughout, or slowly increased rather than rammed up at the very end. 6/10

I also participated in the May challenge and finished 12 Labours of Hercules IV - Mother Nature, a nice Time Management game with nice artwork, amusing story / dialog, pleasant atmosphere / music, and you get to “build” your own base (a temple on the top of Mount Olympus) slowly over time by completing each level with Gold status. As a side note: this is the first Time Management game I’ve ever played, and I’m really glad I played it!

And finally, before I forget, I also finished Earth Defense Force 4.1. I had previously decided to just retire the game after it became super boring near the end as a Wing Diver (a class that has some really great weapons that essentially auto-target and kill stuff for you, just hold down the “Fire” button). For some reason or other, I came back to it and decided to swap out and play as Ranger, which was way more interesting and fun (though also a lot harder to win levels, since that class lacks any crowd-control weapons that don’t also blow yourself up if you accidentally fire them when a foe runs up just slightly too close). I ended up finishing the game by swapping between Ranger and (if needed for harder levels as a last resort) Wing Diver. I fun little romp.

Update Three Hundred and Eight: 19 May 2019

Tokyo Dark

32 hours playtime, ~7 hrs actual, 39 of 44 achievements
7.5/10

☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

Hovering just shy of greatness, Tokyo Dark is a point and click-lite/visual novel about one woman’s descent into Darkness—proper noun and all.

Surprising no one, this is a heavy game—the few spots of levity are soon quickly subsumed by the unrelenting gloom. It works, though I’m glad the game is pretty short; it would’ve been insufferable if it had gone on much longer. Suitably, there’s vanishingly few good ways out, and while I didn’t get all the endings (this time) I got the majority of them, ranging from really bad to bittersweet.

There’s some truly affecting moments in the game, particularly revolving around Detective Ayami and her missing partner (in all senses of the word) Tanaka. The story of the main ‘antagonist’ of the game, Reina, is also interesting, and the two women play off each other well. It’s nice to see different parts of Tokyo in Ayami’s travels, even though it’s definitely not meant to make you want to visit. Tokyo Dark’s Tokyo is… …. … (okay, it’s too easy, I can’t not) dark. You even get to visit Kabukicho, which I was jazzed about, and meet a yakuza boss, which I was even more ecstatic about, and she is really cool and a HUGE cat lover, which I was over the moon about.

The game doesn’t play as well as I would have liked—moving around the screen doesn’t feel great, and it’s very easy to walk into and out of proximity of hot spots without realizing it. The game’s text is also WAY messier than I was expecting, seeing how polished the art and UI is. There were more than a few errors like missing punctuation, missing dialogue tags, or the wrong name/icon coming up for who is speaking. The writing overall could’ve used another pass, too, to tighten things up here and there.

I ended up replaying the game in full THREE times, which is a lot of times. The game isn’t terribly long, but there’s only intermittent skip opportunities, and you don’t get access to save points until your New Game+. Even then, there’s only 6 slots and you don’t pick where those points are. It hampers the replayability that the game is looking for.

… god, that sounded much more negative than I actually feel about the game. I liked it enough to replay it three times in, like, three days! I’m just not having a very good one today. My anxiety’s been spiking a lot this past week. It’s not fun.

It’s not perfect, but it’s a good showing! Give Tokyo Dark a chance.

Next up: It’s about time I play this one, huh? (I’m glad there’s an in-game shop where you can buy achievements bc I’m sure as fuck not looking up that poor girl’s skirt, yoko taro’s a fuckin creep for that one)

See you soon!

Third week of May

Not much to be seen here, just a couple of “do more work after you come home from work” games :) I played some PC building simulator too because working all day in IT is not enough for me apparently.

Completed SG win

Take Care of the Paperwork

Playtime: 23 minutes
Achievements: 0 of 0
Review:A lesser/easier version of Papers, please. It is entertaining enough for 15 minutes or so because I am missing it having any kind of progression. It runs very well on Linux but it doesn't seem to remember your progress as it tried to have me do the tutorial again the 2nd time I started it.

Other completed game

House Flipper

Playtime: 18.2 hours
Achievements: 38 of 38 (100%)
Review: It is a great game if you like Viscera Cleanup Detail and The Sims as it incomporates the cleaning up and house design from those games. It is limited in the design aspect as there is less furniture/options than in The Sims but I still enjoyed it game a whole lot anyways. Runs 100% fine with the newer versions of Proton.

May '19 Play Log

So I got two more games to add to the backlog, but they were both on my wishlist even before being in the last monthly so I’m pretty happy getting them.

Yesterday

7/10

3 hours playtime

no achievements

More

Overall a decent point & click game, it’s not going to win any awards for it’s story or gameplay though.

Pros:

• The hints are decent for the most part
• There’s a button that shows you all of the different things you can interact with
• The voice acting is quite good

Cons:

• Another game where you pick up random stuff without knowing how it’ll be used, although it’s not as bad as some games I’ve played
• I came across a hint that didn’t make sense. It turned out to be referring to something I hadn’t discovered yet.
• Multiple endings. Some people may not consider this a con, but seeing as it’s the only place where you can influence the story at all personally I’d much rather knowing exactly how the story ends than being able to pick between multiple different ones. It made me feel like the game had left me hanging.

Verdict: 7/10

This was on my wishlist, and I already had the prequel but couldn’t play it since apparently this one should be played first. Picked it up in a trade recently. Not the best point & click I’ve every played, but not too bad.

F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin

8/10

14 hours playtime

no achievements

More

This game continues the overarching storyline from the first game but with a new protagonist. Gameplay wise it’s practically identical to the first with no new mechanics added. Frequently I find older games don’t age well, especially shooters. This is one of the few series’s that does.

Pros:

• Decent voice acting, though it’s a bit weird to me that the you (the protagonist) are always silent
• Excellent graphics given the age of the game
• AI is quite good
• Good controls for the most part
• Levels are varied which keeps things interesting
• Decent story, with various bits of intel to be found that expands on it a lot. I highly suggest looking for all of this as without it the story may make less sense.

Cons:

• Hard mode is very hard, frequently in a bad way. For example, you can git one hit killed even with full armour and full health.
• Given that left shift and control are very frequently used, having z as the health kit button is really awkward
• For some reason sounds straight ahead of you are very muted, which sucks during cutscenes since you can’t hear someone talking if you’re looking at them - you have to look to one side of them in order to hear.
• It’s frequently not clear why you die - you don’t hear/see a bullet/melee enemy, but you die anyway. This can lead to strange situations where you think you’re alone in an empty room and then die for no apparent reason, which is frustrating.

Verdict: 8/10

Play or pay pick. A worthy successor to the first game. I really need to learn to stop playing games on hard mode though (and to be less stubborn about reducing the difficulty). I’m curious what happened to Point Man from the first game. I recall the ending being vague as to whether he survived.

The Talos Principle VR

9/10

45 hours playtime

39 of 40 achievements (97.5%)

More

Quite a good puzzle game. It’s a port to VR, but still makes use of motion controllers. Given that it’s a puzzle game though, the additional immersiveness of VR doesn’t add as much to the game as something like Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice. It’s still worth playing in VR, but I wouldn’t bother buying the VR version if you already have the non-VR version.

A warning for achievement hunters: leaving the terminals till the end may make it faster to get all achievements, but the game is much more enjoyable if you read them as you go.

Pros:

• Uses tracked motion controllers
• Movement is heavily customizable, supporting both teleport and traditional movement, snap and smooth turning, and reducing FOV to prevent motion sickness
• Includes the DLC
• The difficulty curve from easy puzzles to harder ones is good
• Lots to explore and find, with multiple endings possible
• There are backups automatically created that you can restore to get other ends/achievements without having to replay the whole game
• I thoroughly enjoyed the story, especially the audio logs
• Road to Gehenna is a brilliant addition

Cons:

• I found the elevator buttons to be really finicky to push
• Towards the end the tetromino puzzles get really large and difficult. Personally I didn’t enjoy them so I ended up just using a guide to get past them. I’m not sure how this could be improved though.

Verdict: 9/10

Technically I beat this one a while back, but took a break before playing through the DLC. It’s absolutely brilliant. I especially liked the audio logs found throughout the game. For the DLC I interacted with terminals as I found them. For the main game I waited until the end to make all of the achievements easier to get, which I really regret. The DLC felt so much better because I got the story and the gameplay at the same time as opposed to mostly just gameplay then 80% of the story concentrated at the end. Sadly the last achievement seems to be bugged in VR. Overall I highly recommend the game.

The Uncertain: Last Quiet Day

6/10

4 hours playtime

31 of 32 achievements (96.88%)

More

Decent if short game. My biggest complaint, and the sole reason I’m not recommending it, is the horrible, horrible, movement system. It’s janky, slow, hard to control, and imprecise. Part of this has to do with the way the camera changes angle when you go to a new area. A click to move system, or even a first person POV with more typical behaviour, would make the game much more enjoyable. I’m curious to see what happens in the next chapter but don’t want to deal with the frustrating movement again.

Pros:

• Graphics-wise it looks pretty good
• None of the puzzles are overly challenging - the game is more about the story.
• You don’t just pick up random items and find a use for them later. If you find an area where an item in a previous area could be helpful it becomes interactable.
• Some of the comments about things you (the robot) doesn’t understand are chuckle-worthy

Cons:

• As previously mentioned, movement system can’t get much worse
• No chapter select on beating the game, so you have to replay it to get any missed achievements
• Cutscenes are unskippable. That’s fine for the first playthrough, but for a second one to get missed achievements it’s incredibly frustrating.
• There’s almost no emotion. Given that you’re playing as a robot with other robots this makes sense, but it also makes it much more difficult to become invested and drawn into the game.

Verdict: 6/10

This was a wishlisted game that I got a free key for from a generous SGer. It didn’t live up to my hopes. The horrible movement by itself ruined the game to a large extent. I just noticed there’s a free VR experience for it though. I suspect it’d be better in first person so I’ll probably see what that’s like.

Recent Acquisitions

• Do Not Feed the Monkeys
  

  0 minutes playtime

  0 of 33 achievements
• Finding Paradise
  

  0 minutes playtime

  0 of 1 achievements

Click here to jump to the next update

Angels with Scaly Wings ⭐️⭐⭐⭐☆

Visual Novel
22 hours playtime, 63 of 63 achievements (100%)

Pros:
- dragons
- bugless
- bits of biology, but not overly scientific

Cons:
- not many romanceable characters
- interactions between NPCs are rather shallow

Conclusion:

Story: We're sent to world where dragons live, to trade our PDAs for their generators in order to save humanity. Similar to Hatoful Boyfriend things are not as easy as they seem to be, and there is hidden ending. But in overall story is worse and more predictable than in HB. And playing through romances of all characters, in order to unlock true ending, was not really satisfying. There is no thrive that we learn something new about characters around us in every gameplay repeat.

Gameplay: It's visual novel with decisions and save system. Skipping already seen cut-scenes and dialogues works fine. Not much more to write here.

Graphic, music, bugs: Game is bugless, characters models and backgrounds are of high quality. Only problem is that characters do not have many poses, so they repeat really often. Music is more like ambient thing, nothing extraordinary

I’m alive. Barely. With whopping 4h of sleep daily for past month, and working 12h per day :D

I will hopefully have more time now, so can play more games. Steam Sale is approaching and I still did not beat everything from previous Sale…

Finished:
Anima Gate of Memories - enjoyable and flawed
Degrees of Separation - very beautiful
Finding Paradise - I missed Eva and Neil. The walking speed could be a bit faster, though.
Freedom Fall - quick and fun
Forgotton Anne - liked it, but expected more story-wise.
Marvin’s Mittens - simple, lovely ending.The go-home-for-the-day mechanics is a bit annoying, though.
The Journey Down: Chapter Three - nice little point-and-click
Wandersong - a musical adventure? It’s forgiving to play and a little odd and even if it tries so hard you want to shrink away from it at times and there are segments you mutter along, some parts just stick with you and stay. If its protagonist became a game, he would be Wandersong.

Road to Blog Recovery Alpha

Hello BLAEO Assassins, it’s been quite some time since I made a post. I saw the thread for recruitment up on SG and was like hey is my account still on there? Lo and behold it was. I was pretty busy for a while since I had decided to go back to school after 22 years. I did 1-1/2 years of college and decided to take a break and rethink my plan. Money and all is a big factor with kids and paying on the wife’s student loans. Really didn’t sound worthwhile to be 100k in debt.

Anyways I plan on posting on here again with random stuff I’m gaming on and trying to knock out. Of course, my backlog didn’t shrink or stabilize during my busy time. I have sunk more time into my PS4 for a while and mostly playing Destiny 2 but I burned out on that. I beat Division 2 on my PS4 and then sunk close to 200 hours into that. Took a break and finally decided to really focus on single player games with Apex as my main multiplayer game for now.

The first game I’ll list for my working towards completion/beat is Days Gone. I feel like I’m close to 75% complete. I plan on getting the platinum for it since it seems pretty simple to do and I have enjoyed the game. The main story and side stories have gotten pretty interesting this far into the game. I am starting to see some bugs show up more often now or I’d say one bug and that’s where the freakers(zombies) just appear out of nowhere. It’s not just one of them either it’s usually six and up. Overall I think Sony Bend did a fine job.

On PC I started Rage 2 which I like so far. I’m only like an hour worth of gameplay into so don’t really have a lot to say yet about it. There seems like there is a lot to unlock and upgrade so it could be fun.

Last but not least I did break down and buy two new games and many might not like it but they were on the Epic Store. With their sale active, I just had to buy World War Z because I’ve heard a lot of good stuff about it and it looks fun. I also picked up Hades because I enjoy SuperGiant Games. It really just comes down to wanting to play some games no matter where I get them from. I’ll probably get some hate for this but I just don’t really care. I’m here to have fun and that’s what’s going to happen.

I look forward to the next post which maybe I can get some screenshots posted up. If you read through this then I’d like to say “that’s awesome and thank you for wasting some time on my nonsense. Also feels good to be back writing about gaming again.