censorthulhu

August 15th, 2k2k

going with three extremes for this post just to keep it short and sweet. also because my brain feels like a sponge saturated with blood right now! guuuuuh.

best game

Half-Life 2

Murder by Numbers

9/10
23.6 hours
4 of 4 achievements

really charming VN with picross puzzles. i had it on my wishlist because Hato Moa did the character designs, and my friend bought it for me cos that's just who she is, so i made an effort to install and finish it ASAP. glad i did, it was worth the full price of $14.99 USD seeing as i got 20+ hours out of it. music is by the same dude who did Phoenix Wright so you just know it's good, the art is great, and the story is engaging. A+, absolutely recommend to all who want an interactive murder mystery to go along with their picross.

meh game

Half-Life 2

Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure

7/10
6.6 hours
48 of 48 achievements

it's an okay game. art is very Don Bluth which is very much my jam, music is appropriate and doesn't get annoying, good variety of characters, etc. but the story is a major weak point. whenever i fetch up against a story like this i think of the quote from Palahniuk's Invisible Monsters, "Don't expect this to be the kind of story that goes and then, and then, and then," because this game? totally does go "and then, and then, and then." it's not very engaging as a result, and i didn't care about the resolution at all.

disliked game

Half-Life 2

Agents of Mayhem

4/10
44.8 hours
42 of 49 achievements

it was fine until the last two batches of story missions where it started to glitch out during major fights so i had to redo twenty plus minutes of work just to keep the checkpoint, and then the absolute last batch of missions where it was just waves upon waves of enemies that were completely at odds with how the game functioned up until that point. before you could reasonably clear out the enemies until they slowed or outright stopped then do whatever hacking you needed to do, but wow suddenly no enemy thinning at all, just hit the hacking UI and hope you don't get shot out of it before it's complete!!! god that was frustrating, and by the time i slogged through i was actively hating the game and wanted to jettison it into the sun.

playing as Johnny Gat was fun, at least. whole reason i wanted the game in the first place was cos Gat was a playable character. i am shallow and predictable, and in this case it came up to bite me in the ass.

other games were finished since…. April? but they’re all HOGs and solitaire and jigsaw puzzles so just assume a neutral rating on all of them and call it a day.

currently playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Observer for the “play six HB Monthly/Choice games in a month to qualify for a giveaway” challenge that’s running on the SG forums. DEMD is annoying me terribly and i have no idea why since i really enjoyed the last one, and Observer can only be played in small doses because it’s freaking me out a lot more than i expected it to. at this rate i might just buy Horizon Zero Dawn on my own since with the Humble discount it’s only $40 anyway and then i can go finish Death Stranding like the Kojima Shill i am, lol.

adil

Wow, you didn’t drop Agents of Mayhem! I really wanted to like it, but it was rather lacking sadly. I don’t think I went far enough to be on the last two missions but I tried really hard to like the game. Johnny Gat wasn’t enough for me sadly.

censorthulhu

i wanted to drop it!!!! but i’ve got a thing about completing games before i uninstall them, so i kinda just grit my teeth and swore up a storm just to get through the final missions. didn’t even consider grinding for the last few cheevos tho, my sanity wouldn’t allow it.

the concept was interesting, but the lack of optimization and the lack of… variety in missions really ensured that it wouldn’t be a game that stood the test of time. or stood the test of anything, holy crap that game is such a gauntlet of misery.