Εμεθ

Two-Week Report: August

Half-Life 2
Never Played -> Completed

Refind Self: The Personality Test Game

17.2 hours
no achievements

It's the kind of experience I'd want to recommend to as many people as possible while saying as little about it as I can get away with.

I will say that the game is much shorter than my playtime suggests. I got a bit obsessed and explored every little corner of it.

Half-Life 2
Never Played -> Completed

Dogs Organized Neatly

5.3 hours
20 of 20 achievements

The sequel to Cats Organized Neatly. In that game, there were a few late-game cats that were big and awkwardly-shaped, and they often offered the best clues as to what the solution could be, since there were only a few places in which they could fit. It led to an awkward difficulty curve where the game almost seemed to get a little easier near the end. Dogs Organized Neatly went way overboard with the big and awkward pieces, which led to a much easier game in my experience. The "big dogs" are your best friend, and not necessarily in a good way. They make the game easier much earlier on and the game's difficulty curve never quite recovers. The last level of Cats felt like a proper final boss compared to the end level of Dogs, and that would be the fault of one particularly big dog that takes up about 70% of the board. Some of the puzzles try to throw you a curve ball by using these "big dogs" to present a "most obvious" first move that will funnel you into a dead end, but once you become conditioned to these red herring setups you can quickly breeze past those levels too by just ignoring these stumbling blocks and trying something a bit less obvious. I dunno. It wasn't a bad game. It didn't quite drop the ball. It did chase its own tail a bit, though.

Half-Life 2
Unfinished -> Mastered

Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

12.8 hours
61 of 61 achievements

Decided to do another RetroAchievements set. This one was free aside from the orbless run and the hard mode fishing game, neither of which were that bad. I decided to beat the game with 0 orbs, but the achievement allows 25, and the only place you'll need the margin for error is in Precursor Basin (and Citadel, I suppose, if you decide not to skip it). The hard mode fishing game was kind of wild, though. They come at you at Guitar Hero speed and that's not an exaggeration. It makes me wonder how hard the fishing game was when the game was being developed, before someone on the QA team told them it was too hard—and some people think 200 is still too hard!

-14 Backlog

Games Completed: 2
Games Purchased: 0
Free Games Deleted: 16
Free Games Added: 4

Mortvie

ooh I’ve been keeping an eye on Refined Self, but never heard anything about it after learning of its existence, which is also why I’ve been hesitant to buy it. Whenever someone says that you should know as little as possible about a game before playing it, you know it’s gonna be a good one. Thanks for giving me hope with this one, nice reviews!