March Report
Trying to get back to backlog killing, this month. I decided to try to attack my Epic and Twitch backlogs, as well as the huge Steam one. And I’m focusing on games I have already started in the past, and abandoned for some time. At the moment I have more than 30 games installed on PC: too many! I have to free some disk space.
Also, I’m beginning to use in a (hopefully) continuous way the GOG Galaxy 2.0 launcher, to manage all my games on different platforms in a single place. It looks really nice, and I think that in some months it may become a perfect and visually appealing tool for a gamer.
Steam Backlog
Won on SG
This is an interactive fiction, divided into 4 chapters. Each chapter is a short, somewhat spooky and very strange story, and they are all connected together in the last chapter, so that in the end you understand the senseless stuff happening in the first three stories. Some stories are really nice, also for the visual style and "gameplay" (like the first one, House Abandon, that can be also tried for free); others are far weaker and dissatisfying. In the end, it's a really short experience (it could be played in one long session), and it was worth its price.
Played on Epic.
22 years late, but I came to this game. It has nearly my age. And it can be seen and clearly felt. I know this game changed the rules of gaming, in the late 20th century. And you can feel its modernity, sometimes. But overall, in the year 2020, you mainly feel its being old and clunky. A game that is hard to appreciate, nowadays.
Played on Steam.
Monkey Island™ 2 Special Edition: LeChuck’s Revenge™
The second chapter of a great, classic saga. A super funny game, really enjoyable even if it has some years. It is based a lot on dialogues - full of irony dialogues. It is pretty different from today's games, so sometimes it may be hard to know what you're supposed to do precisely... But it's good to have to use your brain, sometimes! Indeed it is a nice adventure, with an unexpected ending!
Played on Steam.
A nice, short puzzle game, where you have to roll snowballs in order to build snowmen, composed of one large, one medium and one small snowball. 30 levels in total, pretty short. Most of the puzzles are pretty easy, while a couple are much more complicated. Nothing special, nor in good sense, neither in bad sense.
Played on Twitch.
Quite meh. Yeah, LEGO and their funny sense of humour, The Hobbit and its nice story... But. The gameplay is quite boring and repetitive, destroy everything you find. The story is 99% equal to the movies, nothing is original. Legolas and Tauriel are a thing in the game. AND IT'S UNFINISHED! IT ENDS WITH THE SECOND CHAPTER, OUT OF THREE!
Played on Steam.
Finally I was able to get this DLC at a great price, and complete the nice experience that I had with Never Alone (Kisima Ingitchuna). This is a nice addition to the main game. It tells a new story - a shorter one, but still nice. Pretty easy, with the same little issues with physics and controls. And adds some new insights on the Inupiat folklore and culture, that are really nice.
Played on Steam.
A pretty nice discovery, this game. It may be considered a little gem. A good puzzle game, with some platforming aspects. Pretty hard, especially because it often requires that you do the right things, and you do them fast. There is some kind of funny story to link the levels, and it's always told in rhyme, like it was a nursery rhyme! And the funny music and the pleasant black and white graphics, together with this, create what is a pleasant experience indeed. Even if it's so hard.
Played on Steam.
First point: this has very little to relate to the great painter from whom the game takes its name. This is a casual game, inspired to the classic Breakout. Of course it adds a lot of evolution to the theme, but the main game is: bounce a ball to break all the bricks. Here you can unlock a lot of visual styles, colorful and retro, as well as changes in the behaviour of the ball and the paddle. All this adds variability to the game, but not that much. From the technical point of view there are also some strange bugs that make you miss the ball with the paddle, sometimes, even if the paddle is well placed.
Played on Steam.
No need to review PAC-MAN. This is a great version of a great classic, with different maps and music/video styles inspired to the various historical versions of the game. Great speed, great controls, great fun!
Played on Steam.
Let's March!
I was not really in the mood.Life of Pi
Jalopy. I won it on SG nearly an year ago, I tried it and then abandoned... And now decided to finish it. And noticed it could fit in the theme, great!
An interesting idea, performed so badly. An on-the-road experience, on an old car, from Eastern Berlin to Turkey, in the period just after the fall of the Wall. So many possibilities to tell stories, and create a great atmosphere here! So many different experiences, in the different states, that could have been caught! But this game fails completely in it, and the gameplay is a monotonous driving from a town to another, in a landscape where you can barely recognize anything, and also the typical things that you see are just useless. Adding to this the fact that the game is really buggy, and the physics and volumes sometimes act pretty senseless - this game becomes an annoying experience. Quite a pity, the idea was good, and it deserved to be performed in a far better way.
Played on Steam.
This is exactly why indie games will never die. Because any crazy idea you can have, can become an indie game. A kung fu fighting game, played only with the two mouse buttons. Simple to learn, hard as hell to perfect. Always harder, always faster, until you start sweating. And, of course, the only (?) game with the "No Luca No" mode.
Played on Steam.
This is the end.
Hey, that’s quite the progress you made in the last weeks. I was focusing on my unfinished games last year and it was really quite satisfying. Good luck with it!
I never played Half Life and I’m very hestitant to do so for the very reason you mentioned. I’ve played a few other real classics like Deus Ex or Fallout 1 and they were mostly disappointing because of how old they were. There are exceptions, but I can totally understand your review.
Thank you! I saw that you weren’t so satisfied with you month instead, I hope that the next will be better. Of course, having a lot of time at home, as a consequence of COVID, gave me the chance to play a little more than usual :P
About the old games, unluckily some mechanichs don’t age so well, thus games with much 3D and physics play strange, while 2D p’n’c adventures are always great. I have Fallout and Deus Ex in my library, but after the experience with Half Life, I will wait some time before playing them, I fear XD
Well, it’s not so bad, since the first half of the month was pretty good gaming-wise. And I still have some more games done, so all in all I’m still okay with the games I’ve played.
Yeah, some games age worse than others. Fallout was quite okay in that regard, but Deus Ex really tested my patience (and is quite long as well). But to be fair, there are still many people who enjoy those games!
Not sure if I get that: gog gets them all together? ALL?
That would be super sweet, but… how would that even work? thinking
And yes, I don’t have a gog acc yet :D
Good luck with the backlog on all platforms. I’m currently not officially counting anything that is not on steam. Which is nice, bc they don’t weigh on my conscience, but at the same time I never come round to play them, bc… they are not on my backlog :(
You don’t have them on your GOG account, they don’t give you the DRM-free version of every game you have. But the software, the GOG Galaxy 2.0 launcher, has plugins and addons (mainly created by the community, it’s still in beta phase) that let you connect your other platforms, so that the games are imported and are shown all together there, and can be launched from the GOG application. Of course when you launch through this system a game that you have on Steam, Epic, Uplay, or so on, the software will open the right launcher, and then it will run the game.
I find it really useful, as my library is pretty scattered around launchers, and with this tool I see all my games in one place, and I don’t forget of some just because they are in a lancher I open rarely (e.g. Uplay).
Some links:
Main page of the project
The list of integration, with their development status
Well, it really sounds useful. I should think about that :)
About the backlog, in the progress bars here I’m not counting the Not-Steam too, because I’m lazy. But the Epic and Twitch ones are getting so large that I fell I must face them XD
And GOG Galaxy, as I said in the other comment, helps me in my battle :D
Oh gosh, I know, right? Getting all the free games on Epic is… ugh. Plus I also take a lot of games I’ll probably never wanna play, but still they are there o.o
Keep on fighting! You can do it! \o/