September Roundup
10 out of 10
Beaten in September 10 games
Another day another little puzzle game in the bag. This one was made by the same guy who made ‘Knights’, that I beat last month and it shares many similarities in UI and general design. Puzzles are pretty much the same thing throughout, jump over pegs to remove the one you jumped over. Boards change shape and the layout of the pegs can lead to varying degrees of challenge, but it never throws in new ideas, which leads to a pretty one note game. This one also has a daily levels mode to extend the game play. It’s ok, but don’t expect anything great
I know Call of duty games are frowned upon by the gaming elite, and I get it. They are the poster boy for style over substance, which each year bringing a new ‘flashy’ entry to the franchise that does very little to innovate or push boundaries of gaming. And of course the MP mode is where all the serious hard core players go to hang out.
However, I still love playing the single player campaigns of these games. They usually have great motion capture and even if the story is usually pretty ‘hoorah for the US’, it’s still an enjoyable cinematic ride. And generally the gameplay is pretty easy, even on the hardest setting, so it’s a nice relaxing ride. I enjoyed WWII’s return to the classic setting, although I wish we could have spent more time with the other characters instead of the brief cameos. I could have played a whole game based around the french spy. Anyhow, overall, a pretty fun experience that got to the point without overstaying its welcome.
What a fun little game. It’s listed in various places as a hidden gem, and I can see why. It has very good ratings on steam, but it’s not a game a lot of people talk about. I gave a spare copy to my nephew and the younger couldn’t stop talking about it and asking me about things, and being as I hadn’t really played much, I got more into it and ended up finishing it all.
Look it’s not the easiest game to get into initially. The goals aren’t extremely clear and there’s actually a lot of things that aren’t necessary to the plot so it can be confusing if all you want to do is finish the game. But when you get into the world a bit more, the level of detail put into this by the very small team can be appreciated. Oh and getting all the achievements is a proper challenge if that’s what you enjoy. Doing the boss run with no extra healing items? Insane!
But yes, if you have this game sitting in your backlog and you like nintendo style adventure games, you might find you enjoy this as well.
So with the introduction of the new steam library function, I found myself searching through a lot of different tags and discovering games I had forgotten about. I had a bit of spare time and so ran a search on games tagged as ‘short’ and this popped up, so I thought why not.
It’s an esoteric story taking place in the head of a girl who is presumably recovering from an accident or something. It plays as a series of fetch quests essentially, like a metroidvania-lite, in a way. And yes, it’s pretty quick, but I guess it was fine.
During another quick browse through my library using the new tools, I rediscovered a few games I’d nearly beaten but never got around to finishing up. This was the first one. It is an interesting concept. Using your ears you have to recreate the song you’re given, using a few sound samples and things like repetitions. It’s not that difficult if you have any kind of musical ear, but a few of the achievements require you to do not do specific things like using hints or switching layers, so I had to go through them all again to do this. My only criticism would be that the actual songs could have been more creative, but I guess the creator went with what they knew.
Another game that cropped up which I’d never beaten. I saw I’d never even beaten the final boss when I played this game first time round. It was because I played it with the kids, and they were a bit scared about the witch, so I stopped playing. Anyway, realising there wasn’t that much left to go, I sat all by myself and beat the boss then went through and collected all the missing collectibles to finish this game up.
It’s a charming throw back to the classic 2d style platform games Disney used to make. I know it’s very much 3d in actual design, but the perspective gives it that same feeling. The challenge is aimed at younger players, but it’s still fun and I can’t really think of anything I didn’t enjoy about the game.
And another game that I rediscovered in my library searches.
This game feels like one that could be a lot better with the help of a director or someone, taking a more objective look at the gameplay and streamlining it a bit more. The voice acting needs attention definitely, but other aspects could do with a little tweak. With just a little bit of change I think the game could have been much better. It’s not horrible to play through now, but it lacks the polish of a lot it’s competitors.
I am a sucker for punishment, so it’s pretty much a given that at any time I’ll have a few different brutal platformers on the go. This one is definitely one of the more punishing I’ve had the pleasure of playing. Look the standard level set I think most people could get through easily enough. Yes some of the boss fights are frustrating, but you keep trying and you get there. But then they’ve also got a ‘heroes’ mode. With another set of levels tweaked with new difficulty, and those will leave you wanting to throw out the controller. If that wasn’t enough, getting all the achievements also means hitting certain goals on the survival mode. Mercifully, you can play local co-op and revive each other in this mode, otherwise I don’t know how I would have done it. My wife might not be as good at these games as me, but there were still enough times that she could revive me and keep it going.
So yeah, don’t let the simplistic presentation fool you, this is a tough one! Right up there with some of the hardest games I’ve beaten. But as a result, having it done and dusted feels really good!
So it’s pac man. I guess there’s not much else to say. If you don’t know the classic gameplay, then you’ve probably been living in a nuclear bunker for the last 40 years. This game adds a more ‘pix the cat’ type twist to the game play, where you’re going for a score attack and trying to perfect your route through the courses. Thankfully the achievements are pretty generous in terms of what they require, so I didn’t have to spend hours perfecting my technique to wrap this one up.
Saw this on gamivo going for really cheap, so picked it up. It’s a short little point and click type puzzle game with robot heads that have to be manipulated and ‘solved’. It’s got bright colours and cute animations so even though the puzzles are not too hard, it’s fun to play through. My baby enjoyed it very much too, thanks to the aforementioned bright colours, and fun sound design. So it will stay installed for a while, as a means of distracting when mommy needs a break.
Well that month certainly recovered. About halfway through I'd only managed to beat 2 games. And then the steam library update came and I started exploring my library in all sorts of different way. And it highlighted a few games I needed to get back to and finally did. So there was a sudden flurry of shorter games and returns to older ones that resulted in September being one of my best months this year. 3 months left to go and I think we're well on track to hit 90 by the end of the year.
Apart from what I finished, I played some co-op games with the kids and wife, and I'm sure a few of those will be done before too long. I didn't really spend a lot of time playing 'bigger' games, just because I wasn't in the mood really, guess it just goes like that sometimes. With spring in full effect there was of course also a lot to do in the garden, so that was where I spent a lot of my weekends.
That's a wrap for September, I think October will probably be spent more on longer games, so less completions, but you never know, moods change. Have a great October everyone
Other stats
Achievements Gained 232Most difficult (according to TSA) 'Boss Run: Impossible' in Wuppo
Games added 22
Number of different games played25
Achievement streak 1254 days
Average Game completion 75%
Total number of completed games 431
Games completed in 2019 70
Yeah, I couldn’t get past the final boss and I didn’t want to ragequit in front of my kids (who were probably 4 at the time), so we just watched a video of the finale. I can’t even imagine getting all of the collectibles. Then again, I never played these games as a kid and kind of suck at them.
Oh yeah it was definitely a big jump in difficulty, and at the time I was playing it with kids sitting next to me and they did not like the witch, so when I died a few times and had to replay the unskippable movie a few times they were getting a bit upset and I decided I’d save it for when I could do it myself. It was a pity they didn’t get to see the finale and at least end with a happy memory of the game. Maybe one day they’ll play it for themselves.
I grew up playing platformer type games in the time when they actually didn’t give a damn if you beat them or not, so I guess that skews the opinion on the difficulty, but I’d say objectively this is a great game for people who don’t normally play platformers to get into it. It’s got a decent challenge to get better at platformer games without having ridiculous random elements or twitch action sequences that require precise timing.
It was a fun game, even if I struggled with parts of it. It made it that much more rewarding when I got certain collectibles or got past an area.