November Roundup
9 in 11
Beaten in November 9 games
This was a little puzzle game that took a simple concept and slowly added to the complexity. Never got too frustrating and I think most people can probably figure it out without a guide. Recommended as a nice little time waster
Another little puzzler that came in a pack with Zenge. The concept was simple, just shoot balls blocks until they all crumble. Again not too difficult, but the achievements require you save balls on some of the puzzles, and those were a bit trickier. Not bad if you have a bit of wallet money and want to kill an hour or two.
A point and clicky sort of game where you move between different scenes and do some basic puzzling. Feels very much like a ‘my first game’ attempt. But I’m grateful that the puzzles are generally pretty straightforward, no ridiculous ‘adventure game’ nonsense. Another quick game to play if you have an afternoon free.
Played “to the moon” a few years ago with my wife, and we enjoyed it immensely. So it was great to finally get to play the full sequel. I know they kind of throw some ‘gameify’ things in there so it feels more like a game, but let’s be honest, it’s all about the story and once again Ken Gao shows a deft hand in his pacing and exposition. I loved that often a character would say something random and my wife or I would react a certain way, and then the other characters would react in exactly the same way. It showed a real thought to how real people would react instead of the usual game character writing where often they’ll just go along with it, because that’s what the game demands.
I think the story was probably on a par with ‘To the moon’, but perhaps less emotionally charged. Still made the eyes a little moist. Can’t wait to one day play a sequel to this and hopefully get answers to some of the lingering questions.
I know Age of Empires gets a lot of praise as possibly the pinnacle of real time strategy gaming. But I also loved this one back in the day. In many ways I enjoyed it more because there was less micromanaging resources, and more building up a supply base and then just heading out to conquer. I know that probably meant it was less balanced, but it’s still a lot of fun.
I was looking back on games I’d started and never completed and was shocked to see I’d never finished this, only to remember the reason I got put off was because of the ridiculous ‘build X unit’ achievements. Luckily the game supports mods and custom maps, so I found a few that could just be run on auto mode to help buff those stats, and I could then play the campaigns happy in the knowledge that I would be able to get all the achievements.
Glad to finally have this classic ‘in the bag’
I guess they were going for style over substance with this one. It’s a very slickly presented little game, obviously trying to give the ‘vibe’ of being a lost gameboy cartridge, complete with customisable game console body and buttons. But at it’s core the game is just a little too boring to sustain the kind of long play time it demands in order to unlock all the achievements. I mean, yes the game gets more complex, but there comes a point where it stops escalating and you just keep doing the same thing until you die. It’s fine if the thing you’re doing is lots of fun, but this is just shooting a chain at bubbles to pop them, without getting hit. Maybe I’m not the target audience, but it’s just not that fun
This is a hard one to pin down exactly. Basically you are taking over drone robots on a hostile planet mining for data and exploring the map. There’s shooting and points of interest to capture as well as a bit of progression as you need to unlock hazard suit upgrades to get further. It’s fun enough to play through, but it felt like there could have been more of everything, and it feels a bit like a bite sized chunk of a bigger game. Still worth checking out if it looks like something you’d be interested in.
Another day, another little puzzle game to waste away my life. As per the usual puzzle game design 101 we start simple and add more concepts to get to the end where we are doing much more complex things. I did enjoy this one overall so if you have a few cents during a sale and like little puzzle games, do look at this one.
Saw this when it released and it piqued my interest as a quick thinking top down action game and after playing hotline miami last month I felt a need to finish this one as well. It’s fast and a bit frustrating at times, especially if you’re going for the no deaths achievement, but it’s pretty well balanced. And like all ‘twitch’ games it’s quite satisfying to beat it and get it off your backlog, so all the imaginary people who care about your achievements can be impressed.
And just like that we are staring down the barrel of another year. November was a bit of a strange month for me. Started out in a burst of activity but then I had to go to hospital for a couple of tests and some minor surgery and things really slowed down towards the end of the month. The upshot is that I only need to beat 4 game in December to get my 90 for the year, which should be easy enough. Getting to 77% completion might be a little harder as I've recently started a lot of new games that brought me down again, but we'll see. I will take leave over the last couple of weeks, so maybe I'll find inspiration to play a lot during that time.
Asides from what I beat, I also started a few new games, the biggest of which was Hitman 2. Wow, it's really a great game. The level of detail and thought that went into every level is outstanding. The series always seemed like it had the potential to become a murder sandbox and I'm glad technology finally got to the point where a game like this is possible. So many approaches to every problem. I'll be playing this a while as it's got a lot of content, and I also don't want to burn out on it, but it was definitely worth the purchase.
I succumbed to a few purchases on the sales, mostly smaller games, but I will probably get a 'big' game in the winter sale later this month. I really want to try Just cause 4, and maybe AC odyssey, but I'll need to do a deeper cost/benefit analysis... haha
Other stats
Achievements Gained 264Most difficult (according to TSA) 'Squid God' in Slime-San
Games added 13
Number of different games played23
Achievement streak 1314 days
Average Game completion 76%
Total number of completed games 447
Games completed in 2019 86
Lots of good stuff here– thanks for the update.
- I played Zenge and Through Abandoned: The Underground City and agree with your assessment. Unfortunately they added the (fairly easy) achievements to the latter after I’d already played it. I guess I need to fire it up again and try to remember what I did.
- I thought Finding Paradise was okay…maybe 3.5/5 for me, somewhere between A Bird Story and To the Moon.
- Thanks for PUSH. Added it to my pretty small wishlist. I liked their other games in the genre.
- I activated The Signal From Tölva on an alt and it’s squarely in the “I’ll probably never make time to play this game” category. But it looked interesting enough to activate the key in any event.
Yeah, I was sure I didn’t remember abandoned having achievements, so was surprised to see it pop up when I filtered my library by games with achievements. They are pretty simple at least, much like the rest of the game.
I do agree that to the moon was the better story, it had a lot more emotional beats to it, but I still love the writing of Ken Gao in Finding paradise, it’s a very natural way of writing that manages to avoid a lot of the melodrama stories about death usually give in to. I believe the next one has officially been announced, so I’m keen to see where it goes next.
And yeah, I’m also always looking out for new little puzzlers. I don’t have high expectations, just something that will keep my monkey brain working during a lunch break or cup of coffee. My expectations are never that high for them, but it’s always nice when they do a proper build up from simple concepts to the more complex.
Signal from Tolva, yeah I would have probably left it if it hadn’t given me an achievement or two right off the bat, so it was just sitting there in my low completion pile, and I pushed past the first little bit and got into the flow. It’s definitely not an easy one to recommend to everyone, but I guess it’s ok.
Just completed “Finding Paradise” myself. You should really play “A Bird Story” since it’s more relevant to Finding Paradise that To the Moon is
Yeah I did play A bird story a few year back. It’s pretty short but obviously it ties into the story of Finding Paradise a lot more, but there is also the overarching story of whatever is going on with the doctors and the machine.
I always saw Rise of Nations as the next evolutionary step for Age of Empires. We have concepts like actual cities and their zones of influence, expanded technological tree, squads vs individual units to simulate armies more easily, etc. Unfortunately, large number of nations also still means you’re mostly dealing with statistical variations between them as they lacked visual identities. I enjoyed the Risk-style campaign a whole bunch, though.
Yeah that is a perfect assessment. I think RoN sits in the gap between Civilization and AoE perfectly. I find Civ games can get a bit boring over the course of a big game, but I also like being able to run a whole ‘take over the world’ campaign, so AoE single battles don’t always cut it. It’s nice to see the world map slowly turning to your colour, and the idea of controlling resources as a boost to your endeavours makes each territory gain feel like it has an impact.
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