November 2023 Progress Report
Well, I had a pretty great November. Busy.
Originally, I planned on finishing Sandrock instead of New Vegas, but I think they might have left early access too early, maybe for the Steam awards? Regardless, I don’t want to touch it until the weekly 70+ big fix patches slow down. I bought two games from the autumn sale, Ever Forward, which I really liked, and SOMA, which I’ve exited the game four times in one hour. I might be playing in Pacifist mode but I’m still scared.
Next month is looking kinda rough for me, I won a SG win, butttt it’s the third game in a long series I haven’t started so PAGYWOSG is gonna be very touch-and-go. POP isn’t looking fantastic as it was, I’m planning on removing two games from my library and the other two are not something I want to play right away due to my win and sudden schedule upheaval. Digimon is still in the works! I was planning on doing a combo of Digimon, Tem-tem, and Sandrock for December but now that I need to work on the SAO series it’s not possible. Hoping to have Sandrock finished next month!
Total games added to backlog: 5
Total completed: 7
Maya is a little girl who lives alone on a peaceful island far, far out at sea. The waves are calm, stone pillars loom out in the distance like faraway guardians, and a huge tree stands tall and strong with its roots entangling the earth. Maya isn’t completely alone though, Hestia is Maya’s floating companion cube, a quiet friend who is with her always. One day, out on the beach, something strange appears – a familiar building manifests and a puzzle appears, leading to a memory Maya has forgotten. Seek out all of the memory shards to find the truth about the island, and the secret hidden in Maya.
2-3+ hours to complete, Ever Forward is an adventure puzzle game that is short and sweet. Beautiful graphics, a great soundtrack, fun puzzles and an interesting storyline. The Island is explorable and has secrets and animals you can pet, and the puzzle domains are interesting enough and can be challenging. If a puzzle is too hard, the key for many lies in the layout and the environment. A mix between fantasy and sci-fi, Ever Forward was super fun to play and I’m glad I took a chance on it!
Fallout: New Vegas
Shot in the head and left for dead, rescued by a robot and the good doctor of Goodsprings, Courier Six sets off across the Mojave Wasteland on a quest for vengeance. Hunt down the dead men walking who stole your package across the heat-blasted desert to the twinkling lights of Sin City to retrieve your cargo and your dues. Deliver the chip.
27-100+ hours to complete, Fallout: New Vegas is a post-apocalyptic desert wasteland survival open-world RPG with enough content and questlines to seriously keep you busy. While the graphics are outdated, the gameplay is very exciting with each playthrough feeling different due to the various ways you can solve a questline, the multiple factions to join, and the various game endings to find. In addition, I highly recommend purchasing the DLCs, as they introduce new maps, weapons, items, apparel and npcs to keep things fresh. However, due to Bethesda being notorious for their bugs, I sincerely recommend downloading an anti-crash and game stabilization mods from Nexus.
I had an unforgettable time playing Fallout: New Vegas for two reasons, one, it’s genuinely a fun and incredible game, and two, the insane game crash rate I experienced in the DLCs. Old World Blues must have been over thirty, and Honest Hearts was unplayable. I dropped the game for about three months to take a break, and upon coming back, the game seemed to have fixed itself somehow, as I only crashed once in Dead Money. Despite the game's unreliable stability (or reliable instability), it’s still worth buying and playing, although personally, I like Fallout 4 more by a significant margin
Child of Light
The beloved princess Aurora passes away in her sleep one night, only to wake up in the fantasy land of Lemuria. After making friends with a blue firefly, seek out the Lady of the Forest trapped by The Black Queen and recover the stolen Sun, Moon, and Stars with a band of friends to wake from this vivid dream.
11-15 hours to complete, Child of Light is a storybook side-scroller fantasy game with turn-based combat and hand-drawn, watercolor graphics. Local co-op is available, with the first player controlling Aurora and the second player moving Igniculus, the firefly around the screen. Several party members are available as the story progresses, with one being locked behind DLC. Quality wise, it’s a fantastic game for children and adults with an engaging storyline, simple mechanics, delightful music, and forgiving gameplay, typically, I would absolutely recommend something like this, except there are some problems.
First, you need to have a Ubisoft Connect account to play Child of Light, most people are not a fan of having two launchers to play one game. Second, if your computer has more than 16 cores, it will forever crash upon start-up, making this game literally unplayable unless you download a specific Windows package and mess with a bunch of game files to trick the game – simply going to your advanced control panel and disabling cores doesn’t work. I couldn’t get the game to function even after 2 hours of messing with it, and as usual for Ubisoft, contacting support isn’t exactly convenient or easy as I’m still waiting for a response three days later.
Hidden Cats in Paris
1-2+ Hours to complete, Hidden Cats in Paris is an Indie Point & click Hidden Object game where, as the title suggests, you find cats hidden around Paris. Two modes, normal with 100 cats, and Advanced mode, with 150 randomized cats with 6 bonus stages with an additional 425 kittens; for a total of 675 cats in the game to find. Clicking all the cats on a building will color in that building, making it fairly simple to find any sneaky missing ones. There are a wide variety of felines regarding their shapes, sizes, and fur types. Discovering and clicking each cat gives you a cute assortment of meows.
Originally, in 2022 I reviewed this game as negative due to the fact it took only 15 minutes to complete, there was only one “meow” sound when clicking a cat at the time, a lack of visual variety of felines in what was essentially the same cat in 5 separate poses, and a bug encounter. I naturally refunded the game but with the August 15th massive update, every single one of my complaints was fixed and I can happily say this is a game worth spending your time on. Usually, when a game is finished, the chances of it getting improved is very slim while the developers focus on future games, and I’m pleasantly shocked and surprised Hidden Cats in Paris got such a massive quality-of-life update.
Fresh Start Cleaning Simulator
5-7+ hours to complete, Fresh Start is a cleaning sim with 10 levels and features a skill tree in which the garbage you collect and recycle becomes points to purchase a variety of upgrades. While there is no story besides cleaning up areas, oil spills, and restoring nature back to its beautiful self, Fresh Start is a very enjoyable cleaning sim with satisfying before and after results. I didn’t experience any bugs. Levels are easy to complete to 100% due to the locator perk which highlights missed objects even if it’s hidden on the other side of the map when the skill is fully upgraded.
When I think about any complaints to share, it would be that the Iceland cleaning chapter is located in Greenland and shown incorrectly on the map, as well as a minor spelling error I’ve caught and reported in the skill menu. Otherwise, it's a relaxing and mindless cleaning simulator you can finish at your pace that has a cute ending. Yes, you can pet the animals.
Narcissu 10th Anniversary Anthology Project
10+ hours to complete, Narcissu: 10th Anniversary Anthology Project is a story-rich kinetic novel about death, life, and terminal illnesses. 6 stories that you will ideally read in this order – Narcissu 1, Narcissu 2, Himeko’s Epilogue, Zero, then Sumire with A Little Iris as an unrelated short story that can be read at any time. While a lot of comments recommend the game, calling it dramatic and emotional, I just found it to be exceptionally boring, and a little irritating due to things like the ending of Narcissu 1 being spoiled by the game creators themselves in the first 10 seconds of opening the novel, the fact you can’t take screenshots in half of these (Only in 1, 2, and Epilogue: Sumire), as well as noting the poor proofreading and spelling errors.
Recommending Narcissu or not was conflicting for me. Overall, I was having a dull but acceptable time reading, then I got to Epilogue: Zero which I enjoyed! Definitely my favorite of the bunch, and with a happy heart, I started the last Epilogue: Sumire, and promptly regretted picking up this entire kinetic novel in the first place. Truly and legitimately, I have no idea what the hell was going on. There seemed to be a genre change – The story starts as the protagonist heads up to the school rooftop and finds a middle-aged man proclaiming immortality and then jumping off the rooftop, dying, then meeting him again two days later as a busty blond, who leads him to an abandoned building where they teach them how to possess other people in exchange for being bound to a stone bed. (leaving it instantly kills you, for some reason.) The protagonist proceeds to do that for these supernatural powers, then robs people to survive and ends up killing a few people until he possesses a purple hair girl – then suddenly the story gets even weirder and more absurd, ending with an evil nurse, yet another suicide, a 10-year time skip and a mother hating you so much she wants to kill you. Credits roll. The End. What?
com__et
Sitting on a precarious ledge, with a dangerous drop on one side and you on the other, She sits and you both talk about Him. A comet falls from the sky, and you ___ talk about what you want to. Say about how much he ______ ___ ___ ___ ___ ____ likes ___ __ _ you. She smiles and you both ____ _____ and get ice cream. Try again.
Com__et is a 30-minute LBGTQ+ horror interactive fiction game where the path forward seems fixed and interchangeable, and by searching you discover unsaid words to give new choices new meanings and uncover other pathways. 7 endings, with one ____ end. I’ll admit this isn’t a game I normally wouldn’t have taken a second glance at, but ended up enjoying more than anticipated due to a friend’s intervention. Cleverly written and with a dynamic soundtrack that can be anywhere from normal to disjointed depending on </strong>_ made, multiple endings to explore and secrets to find. </p>
Holy cow, you have completed New Vegas. That is some dedication. I am not sure I would be able to do this as I would need an evil playthrough. And I somehow struggle with them O.o
The evil playthrough can be speedrun in 2 hours, don’t worry about it, also none of the endings are completely good. I think NCR and House was the best one.
Thank you for this fantastic read! This is my first time I saw your log here (this year sadly wasn’t the brightest for me backlog-wise, so I used it quite rarely), but I’ll keep an eye on your future writings as well :-) !
I especially like the idea of including your most memorable game of the month in a special place. If you don’t mind, I might incorporate this in my future logs :-D !
I recently picked up Skyrim for the first time, and I can’t believe honestly that I slept on Bethesda games for so long, I have New Vegas in my library too, I can’t wait to try that out once I’m done with this beast!
Fresh Start is also a game I really adored; initially, in my review, I called it ‘poor man’s PowerWash Simulator’, but that was during the Early Access period, judging by your screenshots, I might have to revisit this in the near future!
Glad you liked my post and you can absolutely copy the layout - it’s my favorite way to format and it looks oh so pretty.
Skyrim for the FIRST TIME?!?! What an EXPERIENCE! I’m super excited for you, I love love love the game and I’ve only beaten it once because I keep getting distracted with RP’ing and exploring - don’t look anything up if you can help it! I’m really looking forward to that particular post. Fresh Start is still kinda unpolished, but looking at other reviews other than a spelling error I didn’t experience any bugs, so I hope it’s a smoother more enjoyable experience for you!!!
100% FNV in 95 hours? I had 70 when I got totally lost with the amount of mods I had put in the game and only got a miserable 37%… 😅
And yet I still have very fond memories of this game.
I played Vanilla and had a single-minded focus of doing all the “bad” endings first before actually making a new character and going through the DLC and NCR ending - although I’m still internally debating if NCR or House ending is better. House - character-wise but NCR community-wise - though I disliked how the Followers of the Apocalypse got kicked out of New Vegas, I figured they would stay with all their medical/agriculture advancements and assistance. They were overall my favorite group in the entire game - that and Jacobs Town.
Narcissu 1 was so boring, I still can’t force myself to go back to read more LOL. A story can only be so interesting if your characters have zero personality.
I think it’s a gamer crime to like Fallout 4 more than New Vegas ? If it isn’t, it should be, so either way i’m calling the Gamer Cops™
Jokes, jokes 🐸 I’m glad to see you finally finished New Vegas! It’s easily one of my top ten games of all time. Sucks to hear that you struggled with stability - i played with a full mod-list and i think that helped my enjoyment a lot
I try to do Vanilla playthroughs first before going crazy, I was really looking forward to it with how many people rated it so positively, and while it was good I don’t think I’ll play again as even with the stability mods to help the game crass less, it was kinda crazy and even a few of my save files got corrupted. Did you have a lot of crashing with a full mod list? There were a lot of interesting ones on Nexus.
I had almost zero crashing actually, but my mod list was mostly vanilla+ style. I tried a full modded setup a few years before (and on an older PC) and that was a lot hairier
I have similar feelings on vanilla playthroughs first time, but i’ve gotten softer over the years. Some mods are more like straight up fixes/improvements, so i kind of see them as essential to a good first experience. Obviously that’s hard to tell before you’ve even played the game, but then i just do a small bit of research