March 2023

• Lingo
  

  44.9 hours playtime

  27 of 42 achievements

  

• Hiiro
  

  3.0 hours playtime

  3 of 4 achievements

  

• Shady Part of Me
  

  6.2 hours playtime

  9 of 16 achievements

  

• Love & Country
  

  1.9 hours playtime

  no achievements

  

• Lingo: This is a very good pure puzzle game, but not a flawless one. Basically, there are a lot of panels, each with a word on them that require an answer in response. Learning all the ways that you are to determine the answers will take a lot longer than grasping the basics, and while some can be solved mechanically, you also have to solve a bunch with intuition and scraps of pattern and context. It can be absolutely wonderful magic when it works (I have no logical rationale for some of the answers I instantly got other than “it was the right vibe”), but there’s also a bunch of mechanical filler; and panels where you need to give the one accepted answer of many possible correct answers, which is annoying; as well as some puzzles that need you to not only read the designer’s mind, but also his accent, which I really don’t love. For instance the five letter response needed for “FIR” in a late game area should have been EARTH for me, and not (after much brute forcing) ROUGH, which would need to be FAR. I’ve completed the main level (credits rolled) and used a missing panel finder afterwards that looked at my savefile and indicated roughly where they are, though even that left quite a hunt, and I had to use the official spoiler for “LOST” which is obscurely clued past the point of unfairness. I also used an electronic dictionary and anagram finder and Wikipedia once or twice and in one case the achievements. The game’s peaks are an easy 10/10, but overall it’s an 8.5+/10 for its questionable panels, some padding, navigational irritations with use of non-Euclidean geometry where it adds confusion rather than value (though at least the map interconnects better as you solve things), and softlock pits towards the end needing a warp and runback. There’s a bonus main level available, which I’m probably over half-done but which I might well not get through as it has some even harder read-my-mind; plus some shorter areas on top of that, of which I’ve only reached The Library; and probably a meta-game as well.
• Hiiro: A 2D explorer with some fairly gentle platforming, and occasional puzzles other than navigation. It was short, it was cute, it was ok. The final achievement requires dealing with a change in genre, so no. 7.5/10.
• Shady Part of Me: If I had a dollar for every narrative puzzler I’ve played where the game is explicitly metaphorical for the protagonist coming to terms with some type of trauma, I could probably buy myself another narrative puzzler where the game is explicitly metaphorical for the protagonist coming to terms with some type of trauma. In this one you swap between a girl who moves in the 3d real world and must avoid light, and her 2d shadow, who is projected onto walls and other surfaces by light sources. There’s a few tricky puzzles, the mechanics feel sufficiently original due to their interaction, and things change up from Act to Act as new twists on the shadow-play are introduced. Not a fan of the heavy handed script – much of it voiced – though, which for me drags it down to a 7/10.
• Love and Country: this is a Visual Novel, emphasis Novel. In 80 Days or Wanderlust, say, you have only so many critical branching points, but many minor little choices between these that might not ultimately matter too much, but that shade your understanding of the protagonist, other characters, and the world. For instance there’s a nun sneaking a drink; in some other universe you’d get to react to that either through thought or action. I was 30 minutes into Love and Country before I got to make my first choice between two options, and about that again before I got to make my second and final choice between two options. I’m not mad about Kojima’s movies either, there’s a fair chance I have some form of ADD, and the lack of interactivity left me twitchy and irritated through most of it - the close to 1.45 hours it took to reach an ending was achieved in 5 short sessions. I could in theory probably get another 3+ achievements in under 2 minutes as you get an achievement whenever you make a choice, and there is a “Skip” which fast-forwards through previously seen scenes (discovered when I accidentally loaded the wrong save, then overwrote the right one), which is kind. The content is fine for what it is and it’s well-written enough, so if you like romance reading and don’t care about a game being much of a game, then add a handful of points to my 3/10. (Steamgifts win)

Games I Will Not Complete

• Super Daryl Deluxe
  

  1.9 hours playtime

  3 of 37 achievements

  

• Sundered: Eldritch Edition
  

  5.4 hours playtime

  4 of 20 achievements

  

• Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee
  

  5.0 hours playtime

  no achievements

  

• No Time To Explain Remastered
  

  6.1 hours playtime

  0 of 9 achievements

  

• Vandals
  

  2.3 hours playtime

  5 of 17 achievements

  

• Super Daryl Deluxe: I bounced right off this one - it claims to be a metroidvania, but it doesn’t really feel like one, and from reading reviews a lot of others don’t think it’s one either (skills gate chests but not generally routes, and a hub-and-spoke model). The animation is excellent - fluid and full of character. The gameplay is a beat-em-up with a little platforming/exploration, and you’ll likely need a fair amount of combat to get sufficient levels and equipment to deal with higher-level zones. I did not enjoy the combat, and found myself feeling a little nostalgic for Viewtiful Joe, so a subjective 5/10 from what I’ve seen. If you like comedic cooldown-based RPG beat-em-ups then maybe add a couple points.
• Sundered: Another combat-oriented metroidvania/soulslike I bounced off. I like exploration of tailored worlds. Sundered has frequent hordes of monsters to act as a constant interruption, and a requirement to collect enough escalating points to buy abilities and skills so you need to kill a lot of them rather than just fleeing. Rooms can feel somewhat randomly designed, with bits that just don’t do anything sensible, and that are designed to be somewhat randomly sequenced – which is at odds with the care that is put into the art and animation and AI of the hordes. I like some unashamed roguelites – Binding of Isaac and Neon Abyss in particular – but I’m yet to be convinced that roguelite elements are particularly good for metroidvanias. 6/10 (Addendum: I just discovered through a coincidental Funhaus video that it can be played 4 player local co-op, which looks chaotic fun, but again, not particularly what I’m after in a metroidvania)
• Oddworld: Abe’s Oddyssee: An old-school puzzle platformer, with old-school painful platforming. The game aligns the character to a grid square, which makes controls feel both sluggish in responsiveness and overly precise, which was very standard for a 1990s game, but aggravating in the 2020s. I want to enjoy this a lot more than I did, as the puzzle side of things are quite good, as is the world. 6.5/10 (Steamgifts win)
• No Time To Explain Remastered: You fire a beam which pushes you, allowing you to propel yourself through the dangers and gaps of a level, as well as deal with bosses. It was tricky but enjoyable and amusing. Then it switched genre and became a side-scrolling bullet heck. I died a bunch; I didn’t get good; I quit. 7.5/10 up to the sidescroller. (Steamgifts win)
• Vandals: I liked Hitman Go and Lara Croft Go, and would have liked to have played Deus Ex Go if it had ever been released on PC. Vandals is similarly a set of route optimisation puzzles, but I did not enjoy it nearly as much. Part of it is probably the fantastic graphic design of the Go series – how they abstract out familiar levels into a “toy” look. But the level design is also part of it: the Go series levels are tight. There’s still room for puzzlement as the choices available in later levels open sufficient decision space, but it’s not overwhelming - there’s a certain elegance in a correct – and optimally correct – solution. Vandals levels need to be bigger overall because unlike the Go games you can’t eliminate threats, and are more difficult for that because of the additional load in needing to mentally look-ahead in the expanded decision space. 6/10 for me. (Steamgifts win)