Progress report: August ‘23 (a.k.a. Getting Down To Business!)
By the time August rolled around, I knew I had to pull myself together if I wanted my thesis to be done in time. And I did! In the meantime, I also got into the routine of playing on Game Pass after a good day’s work. It felt like one of the things that kept me sane throughout that time.
But what did I complete? Let’s see:
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100 hidden aliens
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DC League of Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace
3.2 hours playtime
15 of 15 achievements
GAME
PASS -
IMMORTALITY
16.5 hours playtime
27 of 27 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Otaku's Fantasy
5.0 hours playtime
no achievements
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The Big Con
9.9 hours playtime
52 of 52 achievements
GAME
PASS -
TOEM
5.7 hours playtime
48 of 48 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Venba
2.2 hours playtime
15 of 15 achievements
GAME
PASS -
Viki Spotter: The Farm
100 hidden aliens - Thought I was going to be writing about how this one was a tad harder, because “what really is an alien?”, but then I completed it in 4 minutes. The BGM for this one was really bad.
DC Super-Pets: The Adventures of Krypto and Ace - Outright Games want your attention once again, and this time, it’s superhero dogs. But not Paw Patrol, though they have made four games about those dogs already. It’s Krypto and Ace, featuring a few other animals and it seems kinda ridiculous, unless you actually read the comics. That being said, I don’t. I still haven’t even seen the movie this game was based on! Yikes. Anyway, this is just a fly-and-shoot. What was this genre called again? I won’t lie, I was terrible at playing this. I even thought I was going to have to grind for the A rank achievement, but then it popped in one of the last levels, ‘cause they’re just that long and full of enemies, I guess? I dunno, they’re supposed to be harder, yet they’re saying I was good, how does this even add up? Oh well. Between the levels, you can also upgrade your stats and take care of the animals you find to put them up for adoption later. It’s a small thing, but it’s something. In true Outright Games fashion, however, this game’s kinda borked. Nothing game-breaking on my end, but the fact that I had to use a DS3 mimicking an X360 controller (when my DS4 was connected, the game would push the cursor into the corner of the screen) is pretty out there. This is hard to recommend, unless you feel like turning your brain off for an hour at a time and are good with these shooty games?
IMMORTALITY - Have you ever been reminded of someone famous… someone popular enough to have had a steady career in the past, but who’s currently out of the public eye? They haven’t passed away… so where are they now? That’s exactly what cinema lovers have been wondering about Marissa Marcel. Well, okay, let’s rewind. Her career was less than stable; she starred in three movies in the span of 30 years, but more importantly, none of them ever saw a public release. They were thought to be lost or destroyed… until now. Now, you can take the chance to scrub through hours’ worth of footage from all three movies and learn what truly happened to Marissa Marcel. After Telling Lies, which I didn’t find all that interesting, I’m happy to say that Sam Barlow and Half Mermaid Productions absolutely knocked it out of the park with this one. While my interest in the FMV genre was originally sparked by the doofy-looking 80s/90s games, which had no shot at being taken seriously when played nowadays, this game might just be the best FMV that takes itself (and in turn, is taken) seriously yet. It’s a compilation of three movies, all so vastly different in their themes and so, so indie (though the last one seems like the kind to get a more mainstream following, or at least a resurgence in popularity years later) that they are begging to be watched. This was a big project and it shows (I have yet to listen to a podcast episode about the game I found recently, but from its description alone: each movie had a different writer!). I can’t say I’m a big movie lover myself (or at least, not as big as I would like to be), but I loved seeing different stages of production being emulated here; castings, table reads, location scoutings - it all looked and felt so real. The gameplay was incredibly smooth - sure, if you wanted to discover more of one particular movie, you’d probably want to highlight something that often appears again, but if not, no problem - you’ll get transported to a matching scene from one of the other movies and it never feels like you’ve missed anything. The only gripe I have with this game is, if you want to discover everything, it might take a little longer. I mean it when I say you might have seen everything, but not everything. If it weren’t for a guide, I would have had to spend even more time rechecking the footage; that was the one thing killing the momentum. But in the end, it wasn’t enough to sour my experience; as of now, IMMORTALITY is officially my favorite game I played this year.
Otaku’s Fantasy - This was a gift from a friend who I’m not even sure wants to keep in touch anymore? (No idea what’s going on, still haven’t asked him directly…) Anyway, he gifted me one or two nudie games in the past, because “sex haha”. Despite having had this in my backlog for a while, I somehow wasn’t expecting to be writing about an actual nukige on BLAEO, but now that I finished it, here we go! This one, correct me if I’m wrong, was made by one of those companies known for their low-budget works. Combine that with the SakuraGame “localization” (yes, I am officially a fraud) and you get the most mediocre fap material ever. The English title doesn’t even have anything to do with the plot, nobody in-universe is an otaku; it’s more like a prediction of “ah, yes, our clients are otaku and so they will surely love this”. Even though I don’t engage with explicit content often, I still have my preferences and this game did not fit within any of them. However, if being a guy whose only asset is his big dick (which he naturally gets to use with five different women) sounds like a fine setup to you and you don’t mind a poor translation (which, while comprehensible, is at times immersion-breaking), then this might just be the right next addition to your fap folder.
The Big Con - So, kid, ya feel like livin’ in the 90’s… as a con artist? Well, don’t let me stop ya, cause I wasn’t even around back then! This was a really cool game, just based on the merits of not being strictly one of the few genres I tend to play, but still having a pretty chill feel to it. I admit I was interested in this game the moment I heard about the cast (I could have sworn this used to be a marketing point! …or maybe I’m thinking of a different game), but that charm mostly goes away when the realization that it’s all partial voice acting sets in… The music’s pretty great, especially considering that some tracks have a few different arrangements to fit different kinds of stores you can enter. Most of the game consists of pickpocketing people, which is just one and the same action over and over, but I didn’t see that as a… con… heh. It’s easy, but you might still fail it from time to time and life goes on. If you happened to pickpocket someone you need to talk to for story reasons, you can always just put on a disguise you found lying around and they’ll reset; basically, the game will not softlock you. Heck, you could even change the settings so that you pickpocket people automatically. Talk about accessibility! The story feels a lot like a movie made in the 90’s, which shouldn’t be surprising, but I’m glad I can say that overall, I liked it, considering there are some kinds of American 90’s movies that are just very hit-or-miss for me. There’s a beginning, which establishes the goal, some initial confusion, learning the ropes, getting comfortable… and I’ll stop myself there, before I spoil anything. For that accessibility mention, there’s also a minigame which you can play at a few different locations to earn money and the scores you need for that are totally doable, but then there are two achievements for getting a much higher score, which may seem daunting, but the devs have implemented a setting that makes you invincible and that, in turn, makes reaching that score a total breeze. Now, what I didn’t like… there are a few visual errors, which, at times, make the dialogue scenes look like poorly made MovieStarPlanet movies, and I wish I was kidding, but that’s exactly the vibe. Thankfully none of that is game-breaking, so this remains the tiniest of nitpicks. A bigger one is that you only get one save slot. While you’re playing, this isn’t really an issue, ‘cause there’s nothing to save and load for except when you need to quit the game. After you’re done with a playthrough and you realize you’ve missed an achievement tied to something optional, though, you can only load at the last cutscene (and keep earning all the money you got in the last level endlessly, I presume), so you’re essentially forced to delete your save and start all over again… which is fine, ‘cause you can do it without closing the game, but then it didn’t want to load for me again until I closed and ran it again… so that just doesn’t make sense. Also, the “extras” menu is just the credits again, set to a whole new song. Don’t get me wrong, I love the song, but… really? There wasn’t anything cool to put in there? ‘Cause I find that hard to believe. Overall, I played this almost three times because of the achievements that I missed previously, but that’s just a testament to how easy and fun this game is; I didn’t need to pick up a walkthrough until I realized I could have worn the funny glasses to deconcentrate that one guy. (Side note: The devs have made an official one here! Accessibility triumphs, once again!)
TOEM - This was a cute little game where you play as an, uh… whatever this character is supposed to be, and your nana introduces you to the world of photography. In a Scribblenauts-like fashion, you get to run around a bunch of different places, solving people’s problems just by taking the right photos, all the way up to the mysterious TOEM… not gonna spoil you on what that is! Despite the black-and-white, this is a chill game with a cute art style and gentle indie music. I really liked the level design because of the fact that you can turn nearly every level all the way around; the fact that it’s necessary for navigation aside, this is a really cool feature, considering that most other games would instead have invisible walls, dead ends or prevent the player from jumping at will. The Game Pass version includes the DLC level for free and I have a small problem with that: a “nap” mechanic is introduced and upon taking a nap, you can switch between day and night at will. This has a solid purpose, but the map is so easy to complete that it feels like it was conceived purely as a means to extend the playtime; feeling like you’re continuously napping all over the map instead of just having fun with no interruption was a tad annoying. Other than that, this was a nice game to relax with and I would gladly replay it on another platform.
Venba - In contrast to A Taste of the Past, Venba was made, in a sense, for everyone, and it shows. It is a love letter to Indian cuisine and a humbling one, especially for me, as not only do I not know anything about Indian cuisine, I just don’t know how to cook in general. At the same time, it’s not punishing, because it is Venba. It may be a little bitter, because it shows a glimpse into the life of an immigrant family and the divide between generations (again, not something I can discuss from personal experience), but what’s important is that it ends with love and understanding. Now I can only wonder how well I would be able to reproduce the dishes in real life.
Viki Spotter: The Farm - This one… had more achievements. Oh yeah. Welp, it was also the last one I could get for this cheap, so I guess that’s it for the Viki Spotter games for now.
Ketchup? Next week.