May: A Month of Progress and Degeneration (Part 1)
With freedom from academics I have been able to focus down my backlog for a bit. I did have some semblance of a plan, but then the Steam Spring Cleaning Event happened and now my plan and downloaded games are in disarray! Though there is chaos I will certainly thrive and kill, and I think my current update shows that. There are also plenty of influence on my recent backlog activity from the recent Steam debacle involving Japanese VNs with “suggestive themes”. There is plenty to post, so I will post my non-steam games in a part 2 post, and as always I will likely have a little bit to say at the end of each post. One day I will finally implement a drop down feature, so that my posts are shorter and you all can click the game you wish to read about, but I am too lazy have yet to implement that and save the template for future posts, but today is not the day, c’est la vie
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A Bird Story
5 hours playtime
1 of 1 achievements
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Cibele
57 minutes playtime
no achievements
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DEUS EX MACHINA 2
61 minutes playtime
no achievements
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Dragonia
3 hours playtime
46 of 46 achievements
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Frisky Business
4 hours playtime
20 of 20 achievements
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Gun Metal
2 hours playtime
no achievements
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Pixel Puzzles 2: Anime
25 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements
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Receiver
9 hours playtime
no achievements
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Super Star
7 hours playtime
32 of 32 achievements
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Batman: Arkham City GOTY
19 hours playtime
22 of 64 achievements
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Beat Hazard
6 hours playtime
26 of 63 achievements
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Dead by Daylight
31 hours playtime
15 of 101 achievements
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Depth
26 minutes playtime
0 of 40 achievements
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HunieCam Studio
3 hours playtime
3 of 16 achievements
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I, Zombie
53 minutes playtime
10 of 13 achievements
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Mirror
6 hours playtime
69 of 86 achievements
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Serious Sam 3: BFE
17 hours playtime
35 of 62 achievements
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Tattletail
3 hours playtime
10 of 11 achievements
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War Thunder
4 hours playtime
1 of 40 achievements
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Eaten Alive
43 minutes playtime
no achievements
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Minimum
36 minutes playtime
0 of 7 achievements
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Unknown Battle
3 hours playtime
no achievements
A Bird Story At first, I didn’t think I would like the game as it seemed like it played itself more than anything, but as the story went on I soon appreciated it’s visual storytelling. Relatively short with a strong narrative, and enjoyable.
Cibele I would like to say this is a game with a strong narrative, but the narrative wasn’t all that poignant. It had “gameplay” where you would click on enemies to auto attack while you listened to the chat happening in the background, but the gameplay wasn’t engaging enough, while the story wasn’t engaging enough. I do have some bias, where I had experienced something similar, but still could not keep enough interest. I do give the game a lot of props for trying to tell its story, particularly something that can be easily relatable, but not very talked about.
DEUS EX MACHINA 2 A random game I picked this month, and honestly, I did not know what to expect from it. Nor did I expect to have Sir Christopher Lee (Rest in Peace) be the narrator throughout this kickstarted indie game. Definitely an experience more than an actual game, as it is essentially an hour long interactive album. Still highly recommend as it was an experience that I enjoyed, with great music.
Dragonia Steam had recently targeted Japanese Visual Novels with “suggestive themes” and threatened to take them down. Thankfully it did not actually come to pass as I am against most censorship that could possibly inhibit freedoms to access certain or any games. In response to this I decided to go through a few in my library, though this isn’t quite a VN. Dragonia is a bullet hell, though a bit of a weak one. You become more powerful the more power ups levels you pick up, so at high level it is easy to stay up top, but if you get hit you get lowered a level, and later on it becomes very difficult as it is easy to stay stuck at a lower level once there. You are a “dragon” who must “cleanse” other dragons in your secret dragon society on behalf of your “dragon” witch.
Frisky Business Another game I played due to the steam crackdown. A more “western” VN, that despite its looks held some sort of promise with me. Unfortunately, it did not live up to that promise as it kind of stumbled around and left vague routes to get the true ending. You have to be nice to your partners, but despite my attempts the first time, could not get it. I tried. No really. Although it is most definitely Americanized and took inspiration of the clown sprees that happened not so long ago, it still felt uninspired and boring. To boot there was no real way to skip/fast-forward through parts of the game you have already read, and would often break through certain segments.
Gun Metal One of the games I randomly selected this month, and it was surprisingly pleasant. An older game that was kind of like Transformers, but as a mecha. You controlled the “Gun Metal” a mecha that could transform into a Jet plane and back at will and considered the ultimate weapon. The missions were short, but engaging. Messing with different weapon attachments allowed different ways to go through the game and flying felt smooth enough and satisfying. My only complaint is that it has an odd height restriction despite some of the enemies that fly and using the mecha seemed less useful as the jets mobility reigned supreme.
I, Zombie It definitely holds the feel of a mobile game put onto steam. Quite short, and not very challenging. You are essentially King of the Zombies, where you need to direct you and your zombie horde to the resisting humans that remain.
Pixel Puzzles 2: Anime My second Pixel Puzzles game, I had to slowly pick through these while having a show in the background. The last major puzzle is kind of mean in that its piece shapes are more or less a jagged mess that are hard to identify their connections, especially with a chaotic picture as it was. The real unfortunate part is I will likely have to do them all again in Pixel Puzzles Ultimate…
Receiver Probably one of my greatest achievements was this game. Spawning into seeds of randomly generated rooms and enemies with a randomly generated starting kit which includes a hand gun, bullets, and possibly a flashlight. The goal: to find 11 tapes for you to learn, “awaken”, and reveal the lore of this game. You face against turrets and drones as you progress through the game, and can be quite frustrating as one hit is all it takes for you to fall and restart. One of the more intriguing parts of the game is the level of complication for using the gun. Instead of just pressing “R” to reload, you have to eject your magazine, fill the bullets, put the magazine in, and the slide the lock. Praise the gods that after 9 hours that I was able to get all 11. Such a relief and cathartic release from finishing this game 😊
Super Star Despite the implications this game was surprisingly tame in its “suggested themes”. You are a manager who picks up a sort of dream girl that is determined to become the greatest star in every field she can (music, various acting, screen writing), while you are destined to make it happen. As you manage her lessons and what gigs she picks up you will soon find out it is a balancing act, and nearly impossible to make it happen on your first run. Finishing the game gives you special currency that transfers into further runs, and exploitable if you save at the end, as they are used to make your future runs easier. Various challenges and interactions throughout the game keep up the engagement and level of immersion. I particularly enjoyed all the references and costumes for the movies you can have her play in. Management game lovers would enjoy, otherwise it might feel quite a bit tedious.
Batman: Arkham City GOTY One of the greatest batman games of all time, particularly of the Arkham series. Featuring an open world, a believable story, improved combat, interesting side mission, and nearly endless references along with featured villains for any fan of Batman fans to enjoy. However, one of my favorite parts are all the collectibles. They aren’t the usual meaningless items to pick up like in most games, they often give you lore on characters in game and in comics and come in various forms without being excessive. My first playthrough was on console and now it is beaten on Steam. Although I do not look forward to all the challenge missions ahead, as there are MANY. A game that will not likely be completed any time soon…
Beat Hazard Mixed feelings on this one… On one hand I enjoy games that incorporate music into their gameplay, on the other this game can easily be a visual overload as bright strobing is excessive. Essentially a game of Asteroids, but with enemy ships and the effect of your blasts change by the beat of the music. The core songs are enjoyable enough, but the real nice part is you can use music from your library as well. There are also various ships and upgrades that offer different gameplay and bullet effects.
Dead By Daylight Thanks to the Spring Cleaning Event I was able to try this game out. I had been skeptical of it for a very long time, largely because of its Twitch fan base. But, I gave in when I heard Freddy Krueger (one of my favorite slashers) was being included as DLC. Now that I started playing it, I can’t seem to stop, both as survivor and Killer. The gameplay is a little more basic than I would like, but not anything that has deterred my enjoyment. The bigger bonus is that, for the most part, the community has been inviting. Not the usual cancerous environment I usually find with most Multiplayer games.
Depth Another game from the library that I played due to the Spring Cleaning Event. Rather disappointing as the game felt like a mix of Killing Floor and Dead By Daylight, but without either enjoyable aspect. Furthermore, I have been having trouble getting a pvp game, and bot games don’t unlock achievements. :/
HunieCam Studio Despite its predecessor, this game was surprisingly tame. An intense(?) management game, where you try to become the most popular camgirl business in 21 days. As of now I only got the lowest trophy… You must be able to hire, manage, and focus your girls to gain both popularity and money. The girls you hire, you may recognize, stem from the Huniepop game and completing the game offers you currency to purchase styles of hair and costumes.
Mirror Does my degeneracy know no bounds? Yet another “suggested themes game”. Essentially a match 3, much like Hell Girls, where you go down various stories involving maidens, and often their inevitable “corruption”. Not much more to say.
Serious Sam 3: BFE Where Serious Sam 2 did not take itself seriously enough, this game felt like it took itself ( and I know how silly this sounds, but) too seriously. The graphics had been updated once more to look realistic, and it takes place before the first game, which I don’t think anyone asked for. The game grows on you as you go, but it certainly did not feel like the Serious Sam game we I wanted. The events of the DLC take place somewhere in mid game, which is never a good idea as it feels like it should have been there or never created to begin with. Lastly a few new mechanics were introduced, particularly attaching items (C4) to enemies and walls. Both final bosses are defeated by this, and did not hold the intrigue that the developers may have intended.
Tattletail A game that likely stemmed from the Five Nights at Freddy’s craze. 80’s inspired, with jump scares galore. This game quickly became predictable and tedious, not to mention the very annoying from tattletail. I can’t really suggest this game to any one, so buy at your own risk.
War Thunder A F2P that I partially played due to my friends. A war game that centers around tanks and airships. Nothing crazy good or bad, except for the fact that there is a level of pay to win in here.
Eaten Alive Back2Basics brought me an enjoyable experience in Crawl unfortunately every other game they made seems to be incomplete and trash. This one in particular is seemingly lacks the ability to progress. A zombie game that once you die, you restart everything. The controls are wacky, and the death scene takes far too long. In distaste I removed this from my library and presenting it to hopefully help you all avoid.
Minimum I guess this is a multiplayer only game that is really REALLY dead. I believe it supports bots, but was unable to create a room, and thus this game is both unplayable and removed from my library.
Unknown Battle I can get past something as bad as poor audio quality, but the controls to progress through this game are non functional. You are essentially meant to escape through hallways littered with traps, unfortunately you get to a point where you have to jump across onto pillars and the jump ability does not function well and will likely kill you. Trying to fight against this issue, I continued, but it is near impossible due to this handicap. I will likely remove this from my library as well.
Final Note
The end for now. Although this has been a great backlog killing start to the Summer, I am quickly feeling a bit fatigued from it. Also, quite recently, my office chair’s back has been completely broken off :’( and it is taking a toll on my back already, yet too cheap to buy a new one quite yet… Hopefully with graduation etching ever closer I can get a better job and indulge into getting a new office chair. The time is late and my brain is going blank, so before I am finish I will offer questions for those with interest.
What does it take for you to remove a game from your library? Is the reason of it being horrible enough? I believe the only game I have kept that was broken is Clergy Splode only because I made quite a bit a progress and time spent, but I may change my mind later if absolutely no solution is found…
Do you let people ruin multiplayer games for you? In particular those who show bad manners or excessively talk trash?
Does the prospect of censorship bother you?
Finally, do you know of any good chairs to use at the computer? Preferably one that won’t bankrupt me and break frequently ^_^
Thank you and see you next post!
The Shaun of the Dead gif is all I thought about while playing I, Zombie :3.
I understand the plight of having achievement progress without ever being able to wipe them out in the first place…
My performance and mood suffers as well when bad talk happens to anybody in a match. It seems to ruin everyone’s experience. It’s hard for me to mute chat regardless as they are often team games that require some semblance of co-operation though it only seems to make things worse for me haha.
Thank you for responding! ^_^
If the chat had any strategising or cooperation on it, I’d be all for it. I am not someone who has a lot of multiplayer experience and in my very limited time playing Heroes of the Storm I witnessed that trashtalking was done a lot more often than the cooperation the team needed to succeed. I won’t even mention the extremely traumatising experience I had to go through when a friend forced me to play Dota 2 for the first time. Let’s just say that I quit it forever after only 3 minutes, not that I was interested in it but still, I wanted to try it just for my friend.
Not being able to read the chat doesn’t really matter that much to me because of two factors:
- I don’t play multiplayer games so my mute of chat won’t ruin anyone’s game (provided there is no trashtalking involved). Heroes of the Storm really is the only game I play and if I do play it, it is against AI as I quit quick matches some time ago. I wouldn’t consciously ruin anyone’s game anyway. I’d rather just not play.
- Due to the extremely unique nature of the character I main, Abathur, in Heroes of the Storm, I really don’t need to read the tactics of my team mates. As the character has global range on all abilities and needs team mates to utilise them, I’m already watching everyone at all times so I know what they are doing at any given time.
Ps, as you replied to your own post, I didn’t receive a notification of your reply.
Whoops thought I hit reply to you. Thanks for the heads up! ^_^
This comment was deleted over 5 years ago.
I feel ya re: figuring out a good dropdown layout, I’d love a good one but at the same time ehh..priorities. :P
I’m surprised Depth has as many players still after all these years. I loved watching videos when it first came out, but when I tried it myself made me feel quite sick. :/ I definitely think the gameplay is more suited with playing with a bunch of friends though.
I’m quite liberal when it comes to removing games the past couple years. If I genuinely have no interest/it has horrible reviews I’d much rather have a smaller backlog and keep things a more organised mess than filled with a bunch of clutter. They’re mostly older bundled ones I was on the fence with activating initially anyways.
I try not to let others bother me, but it really depends. I hate when someone riles up the rest of the players so that EVERYONE becomes a toxic environment. Otherwise I’m pretty good with just muting and moving on. There’s a big difference between playing a quick 10 min OW game with some jerks and still having fun vs. being stuck in a game of LoL for an hour with super toxic people (or multiple games in a row) where communication is really important and it’s basically a waste of time..it just naturally becomes a lot less fun during the latter. I’ve played thousands of games of LoL though so I’ve definitely gotten more used to toxicity and learned to have fun regardless whiling to keep the team’s spirits high. Half the time it works and we end up turning things around/people chill, so might as well cheer my teammates on.
And I too am against the censorship. Happy backlog assassin-ing. :)
Yeah League is my first and longest experience with toxicity, thus why I rarely play unless with friends. That and because their patches have become nonsensical. Glad you were able to become resilliant to it though. ^_^
I’ve been lucky and played with friends the majority of the time too, I completely understand not wanting to play solo. If it’s way more toxic and less fun playing without friends you might as well play other games at that point, until you’ve got some chums to play with. Otherwise if I really wanna play I normally just ARAM, but I’ve taken MANY breaks over the past 6 years whenever I get burnt out, often enjoy watching the pro league rather than playing when it’s too toxic. :)
The community is welcoming and not toxic in DbD!? Where’s that community? I want in. OAQ
It is definitely a fantastic game and you’ll have a blast for the first 100(or even 200) hours. After that and you starting to realize how annoying the core mechanics of the game is it starts going down hill. Yet for me I just can’t seem to put it down. Every day doing daily quests after daily quests while getting frustrated by it a lot of times. It’s a game that has much potential, but isn’t fully realized and executed correctly. The devs seems to be trying to improve it with the shop, pallet and Decisive balance chances tho so I’ll still wait and see how it turns out.
I just have two advice: For survivor, try to get friends to play with to boost you out of low rank and at least into rank 10. Low rank survivor is like bronze ELO hell in LoL or other ranked games. Since survivors rely on teammates to save you, when you get shit teammates you’re basically screwed if you’re the first person hooked. (also low rank killer tend to face camp a lot)(I have been stuck in the ELO hell cuz of rank reset for over a week now. ;-;)
For killer, try to not care too much about rank(even tho I know it’s hard not to). And take a break and stop playing after getting a SWF(survive with friends) toxic survivor group with insta-heal, purple flashlight, BNP(brand new part). Trust me, if you keep playing after that it’s only gonna make your mood even worse. Also, play the game for fun, not for winning. I personally hate getting camped so when I play killer I try to walk away from hook as much as possible(aside from face camping those being toxic that is), and those are the more fun matches I’ll have since I’m not standing there doing nothing. :P
But aside from all that, enjoy the game! The excitement of getting the first 4 men kill. The joy of killing the tea bagging obsession survivor. The thrill of finding and escaping through the hatch. The scream when a tier 1 Myers jumps on you. The game is very fun when you get a really good match. It has some of the best PVP experiences I have and I don’t regret buying it one bit. :3
As for the questions(only just noticed so edit) I do let people ruin my day in PVP games. It’s quite hard not to get ruined, and I’ve always had the problem of caring too much what other people say. That is indeed something I need to work on.
Censorship I think depends on the situation. In few situations it’ll be good(like leaking personal info or other things like that), but generally I don’t like it that much.
And sorry, don’t know any good chair. :o I do also think I need to buy a better chair since my current one is a dining chair and the height is not that good.
Perhaps I just got lucky in my DbD experience. I have been getting compliments as a Killer (when I am not scrubbing it up :p), or constructive criticism if it isn’t just gg. Though, the teasing and bad manners of survivors standing in the exit is always too consistent haha. I have tried getting my friends to play with me, but my schedule is so out of sync with them, plus I almost always do worse with them for some reason… though it is still fun to SWF.
I also try to avoid camping, it doesn’t seem to help anyways and feels too cheap. It’s a shame some killers tend to camp me at times. Thank you for the advice, I have been trying to learn as much as I can on my own, and think I am developing decently. I appreciate all this help and support a lot! ^^ Makes me excited to keep playing.
It’s a shame toxicity in PVP can ruin games, as PVP should be a way for all of us to connect and have fun in our common interests. Caring what others say can be a good thing, but leave us vulnerable as well. I hope you can harden your heart to their words, while maintaining your better sentiment. :)
Thank you for sharing! ^^
I’m glad you got lucky. First impression is really important. :P
It’s the same for me! Although I don’t have friends to play with, I found that I tend to fail more skill checks when another survivor is doing a gen with me, which results in me feeling really bad and getting away to another gen. lol And I’m the really altruistic survivor who always go for the save. xD But I will try to wait for the killer to go away before saving tho. Don’t want to kill my teammates(also borrowed time is pretty good if you like saving people, especially in low rank where killers camp. An advice if killer is face camping and you have borrowed time, if the killer is hitting the hooked survivor, you can actually first hide near, and then run and get the save when killer is wiping the blade)
A good way of learning killer(at least for me) is to watch streamers play the game. Some good streamers that I watch are tru3ta1ent, marth88, BrickyOrchid8. As for survivors it’s more about playing and improving via playing, and ofc when you play killer you kind of am improving on survivor side as it’ll all be used against you. QAQ
Such a short description of it, but you’ve reminded me how much I really do want to play Receiver all the way through! :)
I’m looking forward to playing through Arkham City a second time one of these days… I keep revisiting it every now and then just for that Calendar Man achievement (I forgot to visit on Mother’s Day though!), and I also have both copies on Steam (GOTY, and the original release).
I really need to get a new chair, too… just using a couch right now for most of my gaming, and really, it sits too low and I’m hunched over if the game doesn’t use a controller. Since I’m still on a budget though, I keep being very hesitant to buy a new chair; with throwaway culture what it is, I feel like there’s probably a good one some office is needlessly tossing out somewhere, right?!
I haven’t (and won’t) remove any games from my library. What’s there is there, and there’s no real reason for me to remove anything. (Scratch that – I had one title removed, because it was a free code for the Hitman: Sniper mini-game that ended up later being locked to a region I wasn’t in. So, I removed that copy and replaced it with one that worked.)
I don’t think I let people ruin MP for me, but at the same time… they have. I avoid toxic MP communities, and partially as a result (but mostly just because of my personality, and partially because of a slow connection), I don’t play a lot of multi-player games anymore. I love a community where there are no sore losers, or sore winners; the losers can recognize the great job the winner did and compliment them on it, and the winners can give encouraging tips to help out the losers. My favorite Counter-Strike (pre-TF2 days) and TF2 servers did exactly that, and I played there regularly. The TF2 server also had all kinds of other antics happening though… random vehicle props or watermelons spawning in, for example.
And censorship absolutely bothers me, except in the case where people or animals are being seriously harmed.
Well good luck for when you do decide to finish Receiver. Dang drones were the bane of my existence.
I remember doing the calendar man back on console. I think I will adjust my date/time this time…
Tossing out office chairs? Let’s hope. Note to self: Stakeout offices for new chair :3
Its nice you were able to find moderately friendly servers, if only it were more common. Thank you for sharing! ^_^
Totally loving that Shaun of the Dead gif.
It needs to be a game that I know for sure that I will never play. Though I am keeping a few games I really disliked playing because I earned a few achievements and they are completion downers. I need to replay them to get more achievements to stabilise my stats. How I wish I could just remove them from my library while also getting rid of their achievement progresses for good, like those mistakes have never happened in the first place.
I only ever play Heroes of the Storm which would be a fit for that genre and it gives me the chance to mute the chat because bad things being said affects my performance and mood very poorly even if they are directed at someone else. I wouldn’t even take any risk of playing a multiplayer game if I couldn’t mute the chat.
It does.