samwise84

Update 10: May 2019 or I really hate myself for playing so much this month

This month I actually played 16 different games and finished most of them, yeah me!
I will sort the games according to the events I participated in:

PAGYWOSG:

Silence

Silence

8/10
6.8 hours
35 of 46 achievements

What a fun little game. I really loved the caterpillar. A great if rather sad story about life and death. The story is really well told, great voice actors, especially the little girl. And the graphics are also really nice. The riddles are not too hard, so everyone should be able to finish it. I can totally recommend it :)

ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition

ENSLAVED™: Odyssey to the West™ Premium Edition

7.5/10
17.1 hours
31 of 58 achievements

I would give it a 7.5/10. It's a nice enough story (sometimes a bit predictable) , graphics are good. Game play is good, if you like that sort of game. Your main character uses a staff to fight a bunch of different mechs in close combat and can also use that same staff as a long range weapon by firing projectiles/stun shots with it. As you traverse through the levels your main character parkours through the level, though you cannot fall anywhere since he can only jump at certain point where he will land savely, it is quite fun. Sometimes you have to go help the secondary character, which can be a hassel since you have to throw her to a certain upper level or further away point, which is not clearly indicated and you have to run around a bit and smash buttons for it to work.
You can "customize" your main character by earning/collecting tech globes and giving them to your secondary character for skill upgrades (weapon/fight/shield/health).
In about the last third of the game you meet a third character which will also join your little troupe by the name of Pigsy. He is a small, rotund man who only owns some long range weapons (he's the character for the DLC). He "helps" you until the end of the game.
Then we come to the DLC. The idea is nice. You see some episode of what happened before the main characters arrive. But here we come to the big problem in my opinion. Pigsy is a character for long range weapon use only (with little to no health, two hits insta death) in a world that is made for either stealthily trying to avoid enemies (not really possible with that character and its limitations) or close quarter combat (which he cannot do). Which means you die a lot. Which can get quite annoying really fast, since there is no possibility to save your progress, it gets automatically saved at some checkpoints that are not actually shown beforehand.

So I would suggest, get the game, avoid the DLC.

By the way I played the game with a controller. Not sure how it would play itself with mouse and keyboard.

The Little Acre

The Little Acre

8/10
3.4 hours
27 of 27 achievements

Another cute point'n'click adventure that I really liked. Same as for Silence I liked the story and graphics a lot. Small tip if you want to 100% it, follow a walkthrough if you just want to play it once, since one of the achievements is that you complete the game in under 1h. If you need to check something just hit pause and the timer will pause.

Steel Rats

Steel Rats

6.5/10
9.0 hours
21 of 46 achievements

On the one hand I really liked it. It reminded me of my youth and Motocross Maniacs, that I played endless hours on my gameboy (don't judge me I'm old), it played like it just in colour and with enemies. But then I crashed through a barrier and could not advance any more because I had not cleared the original target and I had to reload the game. This happened several times.
Also on some stages you get insta killed by the bosses or you drop down in some gap and die :-/ And don't get me started on accidentily flipping over and dying, when activating some switch without tapping any button except the ones to activate the flipping switch. Or the god damned ramps and flipping/jumping from one to the other.

Actually this is where I gave up. After several hours of trying to jump from one ramp to the next in one of the last levels I just had it. The special skills you needed to make the jump only worked every once in a while and never when I needed them :(

Puddle

Puddle

7/10
10.7 hours
12 of 23 achievements

Nice little game with interesting game physics. Unfortunatley my natural screen resolution is 1980x1080 and for the life of me I could not get the game to run on that resolution. The whole screen was off, even though according to the settings it should work. it was so bad that I could not even start the game since the whole screen was somehow moved and was blocking the button. I had to kill the programm to get out.
Set it to a different resolution and the problem went away.

Didn't finish the game in May (played a bit more in June and am at the last level, but stuck because the physics are totally reversed for the last level).

Challenge me until May 15th

Contrast

Contrast

9/10
4.7 hours
22 of 22 achievements

Game with a really nice atmosphere and really interesting gameplay. The shadow parts are an interesting change from normal game play, but sometimes it gets really annoying, because the riddles are sometimes a bit hard, mostly due to having to figure out how to place stuff correctly, so that you can use the shadows and you can miss some things without a walkthrough if you are going for 100%

12 Labours of Hercules III: Girl Power

12 Labours of Hercules III: Girl Power

7/10
12.4 hours
20 of 22 achievements

Nice addition to the series. First time I ever got stuck on levels. A bit stupid that you can get stuck and the game does not notice it by ending the game.

What changed to the previous ones: Now you have the possibility to get big caches of food and other stuff. And your char needs to water the plants first before you can get any fruits.

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered

Fahrenheit: Indigo Prophecy Remastered

6/10
10.8 hours
17 of 17 achievements

It’s official, I still hate QTE and this game is full of it. Had to switch back to the older version because in the newer version a lot of times the QTE commands were not recognized so you failed the tests :(

Overall the gameplay and story was interesting, but the QTE's were really annoying. If you hate QTE like me, it might not be the best game for you.

Challenge me until June 15th

Negligee

Negligee

6/10
6.0 hours
17 of 17 achievements

It's a VN that plays in a lingere shop. You are looking for a new employee since your boss just suddenly quit on you. A lot of girls in lingerie. Not much more to see.

PoP

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2

Sniper Ghost Warrior 2

6.5/10
8.4 hours
18 of 38 achievements

Pretty basic sniper game. Kind of fun, sometimes the controls do not work a hundred procent.

RAGE

RAGE

7/10
19.2 hours
21 of 60 achievements

Fun game. Kind of reminded me of Borderlands 2, which I recently played too, but only in the regard that you drive around in a car/buggie and that you shoot stuff. Liked the different weapon choices a lot, though after a while I only used the sniper rifle and the shoutgun.mNot much else to say about it.

Golden Month: Monthly Theme

BAD END

BAD END

6.5/10
3.1 hours
14 of 14 achievements

VN is okay. Should probably be renamed "100 different ways to die" for all the different ways the protagonist dies in all the bad ends.

Strawberry Vinegar

Strawberry Vinegar

7.5/10
7.1 hours
28 of 28 achievements

Cute little VN. I got hungry reading it. Though I'm not sure what to think about a couple of 9 year olds (demon or not) in love ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Galaxy Girls

Galaxy Girls

6/10
11.2 hours
23 of 23 achievements

A bunch of girls on a star ship, most of them abducted from their previous life with no way back. During the game they decide to get mostly nacked several times.
One of the things I did not particularly likes was that sometime what was said and what was shown were complete oposites. Stuff like people were upset and the picture was of a smiling person.
Overall it was ok.

SeaBed

SeaBed

8.5/10
7.5 hours
1 of 14 achievements

I really like this one, though I'm not even halfway through. It's a kinetic novel dealing with loss/mental health issues.
This is what makes it quite problematic to follow the storyline in the beginning since the protagonist has hallucinations and jumps between past and present and hallucinations without any delay.
Also it is a game with the longest prologue I've ever seen. Reached the prologues end at around 5 h of constant reading.

Starlight Drifter

Starlight Drifter

8/10
15.1 hours
44 of 44 achievements

I really liked this one. Did not finish it in May, but finished it a few days ago. You can choose to play either as male or female (you have to do both if you want to 100% as far as I know) and you have a lot more choices to make than in a normal VN, for example you can explore the space ship or choose to fly somewhere with it to visit planets, other ships etc.

With only 6 new additions in May and 13 games either beaten/completed or abandoned, that leaves my backlog happy. Meaning -7

makes happy dance

SG wins

21%
19%
5%
47%
9%

Overall backlog

3%
5%
8%
81%
2%
Trent

I’d like to play Silence, but I need to play The Whispered World first. Can’t decide if I’ll play it with my kids or not. It sounds like the protagonist is awfully depressing. :(
Enslaved has looked like a lot of fun, but although I finally picked it up a while ago, I haven’t picked it off the backlog.
The Little Acre was a lot of fun. I’d definitely recommend playing it without a walkthrough, then doing your speedrun with a walkthrough handy. But yes, your advice is sound if you want to 100% it in one go. I’d just recommend against actually doing that. :)
I loved Contrast! I bought and played it a long time ago when it was unbundled and just really enjoyed it.
Nine-year-olds in love, eh? These VN writers just can’t help themselves, can they?

samwise84

Never played The Whispered World though if it is anything like Silence I’m not so sure if it is a good game to play with kids because of the subject matter. Depends probably on how old the kids are. The world and characters look cute, but the subject matter can be rather depressing and heavy at times.

Yeah at least the VN writer had the decency to wait until they were older before anything “happened”, but the dialogue was sometimes pretty suggestive O_o

Arbiter Libera

A bunch of girls on a star ship, most of them abducted from their previous life with no way back.

Oh, really?

samwise84

🤣🤣🤣 Yeah, I dare you to try. I did and then the ship got blown up remotely 😑