Amitte

Progress report: (whatever’s left of the) First week of July ‘20

I’m still being called much more strongly by my console games… but I’m not giving up on Steam! There’s a lot of summery stuff to play!

Here’s what I assassinated in those five days, though:

  • Dr. Daisy: Pet Vet

    3.4 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • Pixel Puzzles 2: Christmas

    10.4 hours playtime

    27 of 27 achievements

  • Summer Rush

    2.9 hours playtime

    no achievements

  • THE AWKWARD STEVE DUOLOGY

    1.5 hours playtime

    3 of 3 achievements

Dr. Daisy: Pet Vet - This was baaad. So bad. Not even naming its release year (2008) can justify how bad it is, because by that time PlayFirst was already massively popular thanks to their Dash series, which follows the same concept. Dr. Daisy: Pet Vet is about Daisy - a main character so unimportant that I forgot her last name - an aspiring veterinarian, who just started her residency. And what a residency it is! During its course, she gets to treat animals in five different places, each one casually sending her over to the next every ten levels. (Correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think many places, if any at all, are able to make up that kind of crazy residency period.) Then again, the gameplay is so lacking and repetitive that it’s impossible to look at it realistically. It all consists of check animal in - get it seated on an examination table - examine - run blood test/do x-ray (optional) - give medicine. Heart’s Medicine is about treating people and yet it did it all so much better! Also, while the Dash games weren’t necessarily aimed at children, Dr. Daisy feels very children-aimed, which is why it’s such a flop in terms of letting kids learn - the game thinks up pet-specific illnesses, which, while creative, are wildly impossible and might even go over children’s heads (Like elephants trying to work as stenographers or, uh… I think there was something about chickens banking or investing in stocks?), and even then, the medicine you give those animals is pretty the same all the time. It’s like the FarmVille controversy before FarmVille was even a thing. What also personally really annoyed me was the sound design. The BGM was already nothing to write home about, but then every animal has its own soundbite that the devs felt needed to play every few seconds, as long as the animal is in the clinic; as well as the soundbite that indicates patience loss. Now imagine playing a level with twelve different animals (the maximum a level can hold), all of whom are constantly losing patience unless you pay attention to them. Speaking of patience loss, that, coupled with the lousy and unsatisfying upgrade system (which, to add insult to injury, resets with every new stage) is what ultimately makes this game a repetitive, boring and yet fairly easy (with an occasional pinch of frustrating) clickfest. The bonuses that are supposed to help you are so weak at the start that you just want to upgrade them. Guess what? The upgrades are all decided by the game and mandatory, which means that you’ll spend half of them decorating the clinic instead of making the game less of a chore. Not that there’s any real payoff to the whole thing. All in all, I can’t, in good conscience, recommend this game to anybody. We should all do ourselves a favor and support Blue Giraffe/GameHouse instead, they seem to get it right.

Pixel Puzzles 2: Christmas - Christmas? In the middle of summer? Why the hell not? I could almost smell the pine while solving one of those jigsaws! If you’ve ever experienced any of the Pixel Puzzles games, you know the drill by now. A mildly annoying, but still playable jigsaw game.

Summer Rush - What better time to play a game about managing a beach resort than the summer… in the middle of a pandemic… Aaanyway, in this one you play as Jennifer, an FBI agent sent out to investigate recent disappearances - specifically, disappearances of beach owners. To be able to do her work undercover, Jennifer starts managing a very basic beach resort - and that’s where the player comes in. The gameplay is standard time management fare - get visitor seated and continue delivering everything they ask for until they leave. What I found unusual was that this game doesn’t have a mechanic for trashing items you don’t need - simply click what you want to carry and it’ll swap out the unneeded item. The upgrade system is just a little bit away from hitting the spot; right before you think you’ll be able to max most things out after the next level, the story takes you to another resort and locks the previous one behind you. I should probably mention that once in a while there will also be a HOG level, but while easier, those levels are just not worth talking about. And while there is a story, like I mentioned, it’s uninteresting, written in broken English and the ending is anticlimactic. I found the music okay, but it’s one of those looping track deals, so you might find yourself muting it fairly quickly; however, the voices of the clients were just outright weird (I found Jennifer’s “Hello!” at the start of every level particularly creepy). Other than the story mode, there’s nothing else to do (even though I’m not one to play endless modes anyway), so this is now completed. Progress on summery games, woo!

THE AWKWARD STEVE DUOLOGY - A two-in-one FMV about the misadventures of Awkward Steve. In both stories, you’re tasked with helping Steve survive (quite literally) the challenges he has to face. Thankfully, Awkward Steve is not much of a thrill-seeker, but… an introvert …and, as a fellow introvert, I found myself relating to Steve very easily. While the first story is the one that might be better at piquing one’s attention, I think that the second one was much more interesting, in the end. I also have to note just how awesome it is that this game was made just by one person - the man who played Awkward Steve - and released by Oh, a Rock! Studios, whom I’m starting to like more and more. I’m eager to check out more of their games now.

See you next week! :)