October Roundup
Lucky number 7
Beaten in October 7 games
Well I guess they didn’t lie. The ‘short’ was right in the title. This was a humble original that they expanded on a bit for a full release and it feels like despite the short size there was a lot they squeezed in and at the same time there existed the potential for a lot more. It’s a bit like animal crossing in some ways, but with a definite end goal. There’s fish to catch, feathers to find and a few races to win as well as a few little side quests/ activities. Any one of these could have been filled out with more of the same to make a longer game, but the developers stuck to their goal and the result is a little 4 hour slice of fun.
My assessment is based on the fact I got it for free essentially, so I’m not sure how the value would hold up if you bought it, but it’s a decent little game for what it is.
Last month I guess I was in a bit of a pac-man mode. I beat the championship DX version then but this one was also started then. And so I just mopped the last few achievements up.
It’s a very one note experience. It’s fun to play with a friend or two, but eventually the perpetual score chase will get boring and you’re left to grind for money to upgrade all the power ups to maximum. So it’s fine to a point, but only the most die-hard pac-fans will keep going for too long.
Since the demise of lucasarts classic adventure games, Daedelic have been trying for years to fill that gap and I think this is accepted as the first time they started getting it right. I started the game a few years back and forgot about it, only to return this month. It has it’s fair share of illogical puzzles, and the main character is a bit of an unlikeable dolt, but it’s enjoyable enough.
Oh yeah, apart from the stupid droggeljug achievement. Here, play through the entire game you just beat again, this time with no actual words included apart from droggeljug. Wonder which genius thought that was a great idea.
Anyway, that aside, it’s a worthy enough entry into the genre and has some fun moments and puzzles. I’ve got the sequel installed for next time I feel a need to play a point and click adventure
I played the 4th tropico game a few years back and I loved it. I enjoyed sim city 2000 as a kid but always found the mechanics could be a bit unforgiving. Tropico 4 is a much kinder city building sim. It wouldn’t penalize you too harshly for doing the wrong thing and there was generally a way to fix your mistakes. And this carries through in 5 as well. The features they added didn’t really change the dynamic too much, although it’s nice to be able to tweak individual buildings with a manager as you need.
They added forced multiplayer achievements on this one, but luckily I had a spare copy which I could activate on my wife’s computer, and the achievements were pretty easy to get with a few games.
I will pick up tropico 6 some time I’m sure and hopefully it will maintain its status as my favourite city building simulator.
This was a game I’d wishlisted and forgot about until it was included in the humble monthly and it certainly was unexpectedly fun. It’s got a fun sense of humour and design and it’s a great game to play with kids as well, as the platforming and combat aren’t difficult and the array of colourful characters and silly story have a certain childish appeal.
In terms of longevity, there are cupcakes and stickers to find but none of them are too well hidden and once those are done the game is pretty much over, but it’s a fun ride while it lasts, so if it looks like something you might enjoy, I can confirm that it lives up to the promise shown ‘on the box’
I played ‘12 is better than 6’ years ago and was informed at the time that it was a ‘hotline miami’ rip off. But when I played hotline miami, I found the game was just too brutal for my liking. But I’d earned an achievement or two by that point so it stayed installed. Then as I was exploring my games breakdown on completionist to see which games were bringing down my completion percentage, I saw this sitting there and thought I should have another crack at it.
It’s still pretty violent and I’m not going to pretend I enjoyed every minute, but it does what it does well and there’s a certain art in doing a level over and over again until you get the perfect run. The story can be difficult to follow as it involves dream sequences and hallucinations, but I guess they felt like such brutality needed a motivation.
The one thing I did really enjoy was the soundtrack, so there was that.
I have the sequel as well, maybe one day I’ll install it, but for now I got my fill of hyper violence thanks
Wow this was a short game. I mean I got it, knowing it was a short game and I was still surprised. And maybe I’m too old now to understand the humour but it really wasn’t as funny as it seemed to think it was. It felt like one of those art pieces where every psuedo-intellectual praises it for being very clever and every one else just looks at it and “doesn’t get it”. And yes, I ‘got’ the jokes, they just weren’t funny.
In a nutshell the game is probably about 15 minutes of adventure game fetch quests, where you find a thing to give to someone to get another thing and listen to their random conversations. Then you do the thing you needed to do, find the ‘big surprise ending’ and spend another 15 minutes watching credits and random character dancing. I mean if the game had been a bit longer and allowed you to explore the characters and world a bit more it would probably have been a middle of the road adventure game. But like this, it’s hard to recommend.
If it wasn’t so short I probably wouldn’t have finished it though, so I guess that’s a plus.
Well just like that we are staring down the end of another year. It always seems like the last 3 months of the year hit the gas in a big way and next thing you know it's Christmas and another year. This month I made a concerted effort to revisit some games I'd started years ago and abandoned with a completion percentage of 20% or less. It resulted in a few completions and also a few upgrades to a higher completion percentage. I figure even if I can't beat them all, just moving them up a few notches will help fix my graph break down on completionist, where there's a big number of games stuck in that zone. Asides from that I didn't really play any 'big' games this month. I've been a bit tired in the evenings and so loading up something that requires my full attention is not always an appealing option. So thank goodness for the smaller games doing their part to keep me entertained.
And so with 2 months to go, my average completion is up to 76 percent and my total for the year is 77 games done. So I think the goal of 77% AGC and 90 games total is still very much on track. In terms of adding to the backlog however, this month was terrible. Fanatical had a couple of decent bundles and then the humble monthly had good games, and the hydra grew far more heads than I wanted. But when I take leave at the end of this year I will get brutal with the library and remove anything I'm probably never going to play, and see if I can't shave the library back down to less than 2500.
Other stats
Achievements Gained 302Most difficult (according to TSA) 'Even Heavy Armor Cannot Withstand Fire of this Magnitude' in Company of heroes 2
Games added 37
Number of different games played25
Achievement streak 1285 days
Average Game completion 76%
Total number of completed games 438
Games completed in 2019 77
Man, I love how in Hotline Miami at some point I just started playing to the beat. Really intense experience.
Yeah the soundtrack is lit. It got added to my ‘soundtracks’ playlist straight away. This one is one of my favourites, along with the other M.O.O.N. and Perturbator tracks. I find game music is actually some of the best to listen to when you’re working.
…you do know you could have used a premade save to get the Droggeljug achievement easier… right?
Yeah I saw that the devs actually provide saves for the game, but unfortunately using other people’s save games can be seen as ‘cheating’ on some achievement hunting sites, even if in this case the devs are providing it. Apparently it also used to work to just flip to ‘droggeljug’ mode at the end, but they patched it out. I just sat with a guide and did the steps exactly and skipped as much as I could on the dialogue, so it took the least amount of time, but still, achievements like that ruin otherwise perfectly good games.
Whew, okay. I was worried for a second there. Not wanting to be seen as a cheater is totally fine though. :D
Damn. IIRC I actually replayed the whole game to get it :(.
Aw no, I’m sorry :( I liked the game myself but when I noticed I couldn’t even get through the tutorial with Droggeljug mode on, I snooped around the forums and found that Daedalic post bunches of saves for their games in case you’ll ever find yourself in need :)