Tomi on 14/3/2019 at 09:36
Yeah, the metal umlaut is an exception, and it was actually Brütal Legend that made me add the word "almost" in my previous post. :p Speaking of which, I gotta get that game off my backlog some time as well!
reizak on 14/3/2019 at 10:42
I thought Wuppo was a lot of fun even though I don't much care for platformers, but it felt more like a sidescrolling adventure game than a platformer as I recall. I gave up on it though because the bosses were frustratingly hard and that wasn't what I was there for. I enjoyed everything else about it though. Might give it another chance some day.
N'Al on 14/3/2019 at 13:04
Quote Posted by Tomi
metal umlaut
As a German, the fact that this is a thing still tickles me every time.
henke on 14/3/2019 at 17:05
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/410110/12_is_Better_Than_6/) 12 is better than 6What I knew about it going inSome kinda top-down Hotline Miami-alike.
What it actually isPretty much that, but with a more complex reloading/aiming/ammo-management system, and a minimalist hand-drawn aesthetic.
I played the first: 20min
What I thought of itThere were a few tense and exciting moments in my short session where I was frantically reloading my revolver as baddies came rushing towards the nearest corner which I really enjoyed. But mostly this is too punishing and hard to be very enjoyable. The storytelling, graphics, and sounddesign also have an un-inviting amateurish vibe to them, which isn't enticing me to keep playing. I do get the feeling this might be fun if you got really into it tho, but I can't be bothered making the time-investment.
henke on 15/3/2019 at 13:48
I ended up sticking with Tastee, played 4 hours of it now, here's a replay of a recent mission:
[video=youtube;Ggwhvagr1Kc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ggwhvagr1Kc&feature=youtu.be[/video]
edit: another one, because why not.
[video=youtube;Q7BQygBJAes]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7BQygBJAes[/video]
I'm kinda a sucker for photo modes and replay viewers no matter what, so even if this one is extremely barebones I enjoy messing around with it.
henke on 20/3/2019 at 17:48
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/402750/Giant_Machines_2017/) Giant Machines 2017What I knew about it going inJudging from the title it's a game about machines, possibly ones of significant size. Also it's a period piece. Jesh gifted it to me.
What it actually isSurprisingly story-driven lightweight simulator where you drive a series of giant machines.
I played the first: 75min (think I might've gotten about halfway through the game)
What I thought of itGood variety of vehicles and tasks. The controls are more on the easy arcade side than the hardcore-simulator-side, which I don't mind. Sadly the physics are also kinda cheap and flimsy feeling. I liked it tho, but probably not enough to finish it.
henke on 21/3/2019 at 19:02
(https://store.steampowered.com/app/38440/Sacrifice/) SacrificeWhat I knew about it going inDespite being a big Shiny fan and hearing nothing but good things about this, I've never gotten around to it til now. I knew it was some kinda third person RTS thing, and being a Shiny game it's probably weird and wonderful as hell.
What it actually isPretty much what I expected. Tho I didn't expect to be taking orders from a god who has a balloon for a head (and is voiced by Tim Curry).
I played the first: 91min
What I thought of itThe gameplay isn't really grabbing me, but I gotta say, for a 19 year old game it's a beauty. Slap on a (
http://www.wsgf.org/dr/sacrifice) widescreen patch, crank the detail settings to max, and it's a real looker. The skyboxes in particular outdo even a lot of modern games.
edit: here's some footage:
[video=youtube;V24-bGkXXVY]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V24-bGkXXVY[/video]
Tomi on 21/3/2019 at 19:22
Giant Machines looks like such a henke game. :) And Sacrifice... I remember buying and playing that when it was somewhat new, and I thought it looked super awesome back then! I also remember it being a very weird game, but in a fun way. I never got very far in it though, the gameplay didn't really grab me either, I suppose.
I've been playing
Ice Lakes and
Regions of Ruin, two more games from some random bundles.
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/393430/Ice_Lakes/) Ice Lakes
I expected this to be some epic RPG, but of course, it's a game about
ice fishing. I find it kinda endearing that people actually make and play games like this. :D It seems like a rather simple game at first glance, but there are lots of different lures and other fishing equipment and different kind of fish (etc), so you'll actually have to know a thing or two about fishing (or get really lucky) to catch any big fish. It's not exactly an action-packed game; at first you'll have to find a good fishing spot, then drill a hole in the ice, sit down, choose a lure, and start fishing. You'll spend most of the time waiting and moving the fishing rod with the mouse which doesn't sound particularly exciting, but there's something quite relaxing about it. Just like real fishing I guess. What this game needs though is gamepad support... In my opinion the best thing about real fishing is that feeling when the fish bites the lure and you can feel the pull in your fishing rod - so instead of getting a notification on your screen, it'd be cool if you could actually
feel your controller vibrate or something. I'm gonna have another try at this later, not that I know much about ice fishing.
Inline Image:
http://i66.tinypic.com/352gnc2.jpg(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/680360/Regions_Of_Ruin/) Regions of Ruin
This is sort of like Skyrim 2D. A generic RPG with lots of go there and kill this and that quests. There's also some town building stuff and micro-management, and this game looks almost identical to
Kingdom (
not Kingdom Come: Deliverance), perhaps a bit uglier. I found the game quite fun at first and actually played it for a couple of hours. You travel around the world and kill monsters and find better equipment and gather resources, then come back to your hometown to level up and build something in the town. That's about it. The enemy AI is really terrible which spoils the combats for me, and the game gets way too repetitive way too soon, so I'm afraid I'm giving up with it.
Inline Image:
http://i68.tinypic.com/14xkmr5.jpg
Tomi on 23/3/2019 at 23:21
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/343710/Kholat/) Kholat
This one was a freebie on Humble Bundle not too long ago, so I thought I'd give it a try now. Kholat is a
mystery game alright, a horror survival game of some sort. X-Files goes Siberia. You start the game in a snowy train station. The intro video mentioned a group of students who died mysteriously on their expedition to the Ural mountains sixty years ago. I think I'm supposed to go find out what
really happened to them. But why is the train station abandoned? How did I get here? Who am I, anyway? And most importantly, what am I supposed to do now? I guess I'll just pick some direction and walk that way. There's an interesting looking building to the north. So north it is, then. Uh oh, the path is blocked by a ankle-high rock here and I'm not able to step over it. I'll go south then.
This game seemed really cool for about fifteen minutes, until I realised that it's all about walking around for miles and miles collecting some missing diary entries that are scattered around the snowy tundra. I have a feeling that these diary entries are supposed to be like puzzle pieces, and in the end I should figure out what happened to those poor Soviet students. Occasionally the narrator of the game, Sean Bean, says something that is obviously supposed to be deep and mysteriously meaningful, but his ramblings make absolutely no sense to me. Is the narrator supposed to be me, or am I hearing voices in my head or what?
I gotta say that Kholat looks pretty good! That's by far the best thing about the game. The soundtrack isn't bad either, except that the dramatic music loses its edge when it's played all the time even when there's nothing happening. Right from the beginning of the game there are some scripted oh-so-spooky things happening. Rocks floating in the sky, some weird orange ghost-like figures running around and chasing you, meteors falling from the sky, spooky noises, mysterious footprints... Nothing makes any sense in this game anyway, so it's hard to get spooked by any of these incidents either. Okay, I must admit that the atmosphere was somewhat spooky here and there, but the build up for some spooky event always ended in an anti-climax.
So you run around the snowstorm with the help of an obscure map and a compass, and try to find these diary entries that are often placed in seemingly random locations. Because you can't jump or climb or anything, you'll often have to find a way around some frustrating obstacles. Occasionally you'll bump into orange ghosts that try to kill you and you gotta run away from them. Unfortunately the protagonist isn't much of a runner, and when you get killed you'll have to start again from the previous auto-save location that is often annoyingly far away. The missing diary entries are audio logs that are full of cliches but don't make much sense. This game might work if they were just additional reading, but since collecting them is apparently the main objective, it's just not good enough.
I can't take this anymore. I tried to like Kholat, but I just don't like it at all. I'll never find out what happened to these poor students, but at this point, I don't even care anymore. The truth is out there. Maybe. Uninstall.
Inline Image:
http://i66.tinypic.com/kb3z7n.jpg
Tomi on 18/4/2019 at 20:11
I've actually tried to finish some of the games that I've started lately, but I couldn't resist trying some new mystery games again!
(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/555150/The_First_Tree/) The First Tree
I knew that this game has a fox in it and it's some sort of an adventure. It is an adventure indeed, but it's not much of a
game. And you're not a real fox doing fox things, it's all just a dream or something. The story's about some guy and his troubled relationship with his dad. You're playing this fox in his dream, running from one checkpoint to the next while the guy's having flashbacks of his past, and there's melancholic piano music playing on the background all the time which makes it all a bit depressing. The story does have its moments, but it gets a bit too over-emotional at times. There's some very basic platforming, but the fox physics don't seem right and it's not very satisfying. It took only around two hours to finish the game, and I suppose it was an enjoyable experience, but not a very memorable one.
Inline Image:
http://i65.tinypic.com/1zydkw2.jpg(
https://store.steampowered.com/app/265590/The_Red_Solstice/) The Red Solstice
A bunch of space marines are trying to survive the alien invasion on Mars. How original. It's an action game and looks a lot like Shadowgrounds, probably not as fun though. I was going to give up right after the very first mission, because it felt to simple and boring, but pretty soon you'll get introduced to the
tactical mode that makes this game stand out at least a little. Activating the tactical mode slows down the time so that you can give orders to your team members, so The Red Solstice isn't as simple as it first seems. I just find the setting so uninspiring that I'm not sure if I want to play this game any further.
Inline Image:
http://i63.tinypic.com/2r2q3vq.jpg