Seraphon

Hope you all have, are having, or will have, a great Christmas!

Hey all. I have continued cracking on with my gaming backlog challenge, making some great progress. Sure, I could be doing something productive with my time, but pfffhahahaha!

Just to recap, the theme of the challenge is - there are 26 fortnights in a year, and 26 letters in the alphabet, so each fortnight I will pick games that begin with a specific letter and play those.

- I'm playing them at least until normal game completion,
- If the game has no ending, then until I get bored of it and feel I have experienced most of the content,
- I may or may not complete all achievements or trophies, depends how quickly it can be done. I'll just file those away and work on them another time,
- I'm generally ignoring things like 'The' and 'A' in a game's title when determining the starting letter, but ultimately it's at my discretion.
- I like this kind of challenge; even if I can't keep it up, the progress I made has been fun and isn't 'undone' in any way.

With that out of the way, this is what I have been playing, and my thoughts on those games. I'm not Jim Sterling or anything, I'm not going to analyse anything in depth, just give a few comments.

Fortnight 4 - D

Deus Ex: Mankind Divided,
What is it - An action role-playing stealth game,
Who made it - Developed by Eidos Montreal, published by Square Enix, in 2016,
What platform - PC,

Following on from the ending of Deus Ex: Human Revolution, the main character Adam Jensen spends a year in recovery before going back to work in a world where people now hate and distrust 'augmented' people like himself. The plot is all about conspiracies, agendas, and punching people out before shoving them in ventilation shafts. Jensen is a mechanically augmented superman, you choose which augs to unlock based on your preferred playstyle - stealthy, aggressive, or anywhere in between.

Highlights - the environments were awesome. I spent hours in the main hub city, breaking into people's houses, hacking their computers and stealing their stuff.
Lowlights - by the developer's own admission, the planned story was split in two, to make two games, and this definitely shows. While you do get a decent enough conclusion to the game, it still leaves you with a feeling of 'now what?' - the final boss of this game would have been a pivotal exposition-yielding midboss in any other.


Dear Esther - Landmark Edition,
What is it - An HD update of the original 'walking simulator'.
Who made it - The Chinese Room, originally in 2012, updated as Landmark Edition in 2016 for console and 2017 for PC.
What platform - PC,

An exploration game in its purest form, with no puzzles or items, your only purpose is to explore an unnamed Hebridean island, as the narrator reads letters to his deceased wife. You are introduced to names and events with little context, leaving you to come to your own conclusions on their meaning.

Highlights - The visuals are beautiful, as you'd expect as they were the main focus of the game. It was free due to me owning the original release and had 10 relatively simple achievments.
Lowlights - There isn't much to say. If you were expecting more from it, if you wanted more to do, if you expected everything to be explained, you may be disappointed, I guess.


Fortnight 5 - E

Ether One - Redux,
What is it - A first-person adventure game,
Who made it - White Paper Games, who released 'Ether One' in 2014, and a remastered version 'Redux' in 2015.
What platform - PC,

Ether One has you take on the role of a 'restorer', inserted into the memories of a dementia patient, attempting to reconstruct her memories by solving puzzles. You can only hold one item at a time, but you have access to a 'safe room' of sorts that you can freely warp to and from, in which you can store items and review important notes which are saved on a whiteboard.

Highlights - The puzzles were decent and there was a minimum of hand-holding.
Lowlights - Sadly the achievements in 'Redux' are borked, only a few work. With no achievements, my interest in replaying the game just evaporated. Further research shows that others have encountered broken puzzles and unsolvable bugs, so maybe it's for the best that I stopped.


Edna and Harvey: The Breakout & Edna and Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes,
What are they - Point and click adventure games,
Who made them - Daedalic Entertainment, 2008 for The Breakout, 2012 for Harvey's New Eyes.
What platform - PC,

Edna and Harvey: The Breakout has you play as a girl in a mental asylum with no idea how she got there or what's wrong with her. Guided by Harvey, a talking toy rabbit, she has to escape and learn the truth.
Edna and Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes has you play as a new girl, Lilli. Early in the game she is brainwashed by a modifed version of Harvey, which severely restrict the actions she can perform, ie, she may need to set fire to something to progress, but is forbidden to do so. She has to put herself into a trance and unlock those restrictions from inside.

Highlights - The games are darkly humorous and I quite like the game premises.
Lowlights - 'The Breakout' started life as a university project, and it shows. The art style is just plain unappealing in places, the user interface is needlessly clunky. 'Harvey's New Eyes' has a limp, anti-climactic conclusion which really didn't make sense, even in a game with potato gnomes and a talking toy rabbit.


Fortnight 6 - F

F.E.A.R, plus two expansion packs, Extraction Point and Perseus Mandate.
What is it - A survival horror first-person shooter.
Who made it - Developed by Monolith Productions, published by Sierra Entertainment, in 2005,
What platform - PC

You take the role of 'Point Man', a member of a special forces team trained to deal with paranormal situations. On the trail of psychic cannibal Paxton Fettel, you fight through an army of his mind-controlled 'replica' soldiers, and witness strange (and often very bloody) events caused by a ghostly girl in a red dress. 

Highlights - the enemy AI is excellent, enemies will lay down suppressive fire (throwing up blinding clouds of dust), retreat behind cover, look for opportunities to flank you. This went hand in hand with the level design, which turned perfectly normal locations into sprawling mazes, by blocking doors and piling up debris. The weapons were fun, and quite evenly balanced - earlier weapons in no way felt 'weak', some just suited certain places better than others.

Lowlights - If you're looking for a cohesive story, this isn't it. The big twist was pretty pointless, it didn't really add anything to the plot.


Fitz the Fox
What is it - A platformer with a simple 4-bit graphical style.
Who made it - Bread Vision Studios LLC, in 2015.
What platform - PC

When Fitz's family is kidnapped by hunters, he has to get them back. Does he call the police or wait by the phone? No, he goes on a journey through spikes, floating platforms and various living hazards.

Highlights - The 'continue' system was interesting. If you get a game over, instead of having to start from the beginning, you would be moved six or so checkpoints back. So as long as you could regain that lost progress without losing all your lives, then you wouldn't get pushed further behind.
Lowlights - You get a shotgun for the second 'act' of the game. The weapon has considerable recoil and the section revolves around shooting downwards with the weapon to perform airjumps. It was pretty awkward stuff.



Also completed...

Soul Sacrifice,
Think to Die,
Might and Magic X - Legacy


Total games completed in 2017: 24

Hey everyone, thanks for the birthday wishes!
Did anyone else get a Nintendo Switch? You can add me if you want, SW-4299-8989-2664

Hey all. Over the last few weeks, I have been working on a New Year's Resolution challenge. It's not art, sorry, (But I have been doing a bit of doodling) nor is it even that interesting or worthwhile, but I think it's something a fair few of you will appreciate. It is an attempt to work on my gaming backlog, you know how it is; you see cheap games, you buy a load, you add them to all the cheap games you bought last year and never played. So I have been working on that, playing some games that I may have picked up on impulse, that I might overlook when looking for something to invest my time into, etc.
The theme of the challenge is - there are 26 fortnights in a year, and 26 letters in the alphabet, so each fortnight I will pick games that begin with a specific letter and play those.

- I'm playing them at least until normal game completion,
- If the game has no ending, then until I get bored of it and feel I have experienced most of the content,
- I may or may not complete all achievements or trophies, depends how quickly it can be done. I'll just file those away and work on them another time,
- I'm generally ignoring things like 'The' and 'A' in a game's title when determining the starting letter, but ultimately it's at my discretion.
- I like this kind of challenge; even if I can't keep it up, the progress I made has been fun and isn't 'undone' in any way.

With that out of the way, this is what I have been playing, and my thoughts on those games. I'm not Jim Sterling or anything, I'm not going to analyse anything in depth, just give a few comments.

Fortnight 1 - A

American McGee's Alice,
What is it - A third-person psychological horror action-adventure game,
Who made it - Rogue Entertainment, in 2000,
What platform - PC,

Following on from the events of 'Alice through the Looking Glass', Alice is orphaned in a fire, and spends ten years in an asylum. Finding herself sucked back into Wonderland, she finds it a broken and macabre shadow of its former self. Alice has to fight against the tyrannical Queen of Hearts, while coming to terms with her past. Gameplay revolves around 3D platforming and puzzling, and combat.

Highlights - I liked the unorthodox and varied selection of weapons. They weren't just fantasy analogues of the usual pistols, rifles, etc, they all had their own unique behaviour. Playing cards that acted like homing shuriken, a croquet mallet with a bouncing projectile, jack-in-the-box mines that breathed fire, an 'icethrower', to name a few.
Lowlights - For small jumps, the game had a marker to show where you'd land, so small jumps could be executed with perfect precision, but...for longer jumps, over lava, across moving, spinning or tilting platforms, you were out of luck, they were very hard to judge.


Alice: Madness Returns
What is it - A third-person psychological horror action-adventure game,
Who made it - Spicy Horse, in 2011,
What platform - PC,

Following on from where the original game left off, Alice has been released from the asylum. Starting in grimy Victorian London, she soon starts to hallucinate visits into Wonderland, learning that a new threat is tearing through it on a path of destruction. Gameplay is largely the same as the original but with some important differences. Teeth can be collected as a currency, to upgrade your weapons, and there are other collectables to be found. You still have the platforming sections from the original. This time, combat has more 'weight' to it, more like God of War than the original - different enemies have different tactics, some have shields or can block damage for example. An upgrade system and gallery of unlockables encourage you to explore off the main path.

Highlights - Alice now has the ability to glide, and perform a few air jumps while gliding, which made the 3D platforming sections much more fun. The visuals are awesome, breathtaking even. The gameplay would change itself up ever so often, so as well as the 3D combat and platforming, we had side-scrolling shooter sections, and a 2D section set in a Sumi-E style painting, etc.
Lowlights - It is a console port with few of the conveniences PC players take for granted. Awkward console-style save checkpointing meant you never knew when it was safe to quit or whether you'd be replaying whole sections, and it didn't help that some sections went on and on, they quickly wore out their welcome. Also the devs must have had live squids for hands, as the keyboard controls were incredibly awkward. Trying to move around with WASD while holding the left ctrl (it shrinks you, and makes invisible clues/platforms appear) down with my little finger was very uncomfortable. Keys can be rebound but I was warned that could actually break the game? Great.


Amnesia: Memories
What is it - 'Otome' Visual novel,
Who made it - Idea Factory, 2013,
What platform - PS Vita

A woman suddenly loses her memories, after a friendly spirit being accidentally merges with her, pushing her memories out. This spirit aids the woman in regaining her memories, hoping these will then push him out and let him go on his way. But this is hazardous, you can't just go admitting your amnesia to people, in case they take advantage of you, so you have to keep up the pretense and learn what you can on each storyline to try to get the best ending. There are four independent, parallel scenarios to play, you interact with the same cast of people each time but in slightly different circumstances, and dating a different suitor each time. After this, a fifth storyline ties the four together and brings the overall plot to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion.

Highlights - Being an Otome game (a game based around a female protagonist with various male love choices) I didn't go into this with high expectations. I mostly picked it because A) I got it free from PS+ and B) It was an easy Platinum trophy. However I was pleasantly surprised, each storyline had a genuinely intriguing plot that used the heroine's amnesia to slowly reveal and explain things up to their conclusion. The fifth story brought the game to a climactic finish, even though the whole world was trying to prevent the heroine reaching true happiness.
Lowlights - There isn't honestly much I can say for this. The fifth story cleared up any confusion I had about certain...weird moments in the others (ie, being randomly stabbed to death).


Fortnight 2 - B

Balls of Steel
What is it - A pinball game,
Who made it - Wildfire Studios, in 1997,
What platform - PC

It's pinball, on various tables, based on 3DRealms/Apogee's Duke Nukem.

Highlights - Kerchunk, click click, ping ping pi-ping, click, whoop, click click.
Lowlights - Eh, I'm not really that interested in pinball.


BEEP
What is it -2D Platformer,
Who made it - Big Fat Alien, in 2011,
What platform - PC

In BEEP, you control small robots deployed from space to explore the planets in a solar system. Their main goal is to collect nuggets of antimatter, avoiding or destroying hazards with their weapon and their anti-grav manipulator. You jump, you fly, you shoot. You beat enemies to death with blocks of terrain and pile their corpses up to reach high points.

Highlights - Each world added a new gameplay gimmick - jetpacks, freezing water, materials that would reverse your anti-grav power and carry you along instead. It kept things fresh throughout.
Lowlights - I found the anti-grav manipulator really hard to use. It would keep losing its 'grip' on things, which didn't help when you were required to build a tower out of debris. Also some sections required you to move an object while you were stood on it, that was very hard. Hey, is anyone actually reading all of this? If you did, here's a reward - 'The Stanley Parable' on Steam, the key is 7B3PN-QZ6ZA-46LGP


Broken Sword 1: The Shadow of the Templars, Director's Cut
What is it - Point and click adventure game,
Who made it - Revolution Software, originally in 1996, this remastered version was released in 2012,
What platform - PC

American lawyer George Stobbart narrowly avoids serious injury in Paris, as he witnesses a terroristic assassination. He meets french journalist Nico Collard, and together the two uncover a conspiracy involving an ancient artifact and a group claiming to be a revival of the original Templar order.

Highlights - I enjoy point and click games a lot, and the story for this one did keep me going until the end. It was good, despite what I mention below.
Lowlights - While I believed that the Director's Cut would be the optimal release of the game, it turned out to not be true. This was a port of the Wii/GBA version of the game which had several major differences from the original PC release. The first change was the inclusion of a secondary plotline involving the game's second main character Nico. While she had playable parts in Broken Sword 2, she just came and went at different points in Broken Sword 1's plotline without seeming to do anything. So the additional scenes were an attempt to flesh her side of the story out, and I think they would have been fine if that had been the plan all along and the game had been written that way. As it was, the plot felt quite disconnected, with none of Nico's actions being particularly relevant, or discussed with the protagonist George. As the game started with Nico instead of George, another complaint is that the original's iconic intro had been removed.
The second change is that all parts where you can die were removed. Choices that would have been fatal, now simply can't be done (ie in the original, deliberately walking into a room where the conspirators are talking, resulted in a brief piece of dialogue then a scene where a shallow grave is being filled..) and any section where you would die if you made the wrong move/didn't act slow enough, are now simply cutscenes and performed automatically.
The third notable change - they nerfed the infamous 'goat puzzle', a puzzle so devious there's even a wikipedia page about it. I should have played the original instead.


Fortnight 3 - C

Candice DeBéBé's Incredibly Trick Lifestyle
What is it - Action RPG/Psychological Horror
Who made it - Havishamone Games, in 2016,
What platform - PC

Billed as 'a saucy, sexy 3D Action RPG about a young woman with a heart, voice and fake tan of gold', you take control of the titular Candice DeBéBé, on a quest to travel the world and learn more 'magical bitch' powers, in order to save her friend's Tanning salon from an evil pop diva. She makes new friends and even a few enemies as she visits the King of Bling and the floating granny heads at Gran Canaria. At the end, everyone pulls together to help her defeat the true evil. Forget Undertale, this game had so many feels.

Highlights - NSFW? Warning - soundcloud.com/candicethegame/…
Also, it's something when a parody game manages to create a cast of interesting characters, keep them relevant until the end and give them all a satisfying conclusion - unlike so many 'Triple A' games.
Lowlights - Tedious backtracking through certain areas after defeating bosses.

Crimzon Clover: World Ignition
What is it - 'bullet hell' vertical scrolling shoot-em-up,
Who made it - Yotsubane, originally as a Flash game in 2011, updated as 'World Ignition' for Windows in 2014.
What platform - PC

Not much to say about this one, it is a vertical scrolling shoot-em-up, with emphasis on avoiding very dense patterns of enemy bullets. You have three slightly different ships to try, with an unlockable 4th. You fight against waves of enemies and bosses at the end of each stage.

Highlights - I had lots of fun on the novice difficulty where the rate of enemy fire and density was more like a traditional non-bullet hell shooter.
Lowlights - The arcade (and unlimited) modes were super hard. I can't see how anyone can play that kind of game, those people who can complete games like this on a single credit must be superhuman. Is it something anyone can learn with a bit of practice? I don't know. I'm not an impatient gamer, I can handle tedious grinding (JRPG) and sharp difficulty curves (Dark Souls). All I can say is, it's so hard to even work out what's going on on-screen, with all the space taken up by explosions, your own projectiles and clouds of collectable stars, you can barely see enemy shots.


So, that's where I'm up to as of now. As well as the above, I have also worked on completing a few longer-term games, so below is a list of other things that are now off my backlog.
Demon Gaze Global Edition - PSVita - Platinum Trophy
Day of the Tentacle Remastered - PSVita - Platinum Trophy
Putty Squad - PSVita - Platinum Trophy
Terraria - PC - 100% achievements

I'm working on 'D' games this fortnight, expecting most of it to get taken up by Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. Thanks for reading.